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What’s wrong with this picture? Specifically, what’s wrong with signs that says “Gender diversity is welcome here, please use the restroom that best fits your gender identity or expression”? Etihad Stadium introduced gender fluid toilets for public use during AFL’s annual Pride Game between St Kilda and Sydney, and so the slippery slope continues.

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Isn’t it ironic that these signs were put up around a venue called Etihad Stadium? How well are LGBTI people treated in the UAE, where Islam is the official religion? How well are LGBTI people treated by Islam? This isn’t the first time the West-hating Left have turned a blind-eye to the ‘Islam and LGBTI’ topic when it suits them, especially given Islam’s views on radical gender diversity.

Gender diversity is unwittingly premised on the concept that gender is a social construct. Gender diversity is a fallacy because gender is not a social construct. Indeed, there are only two genders, with proven biological, and little social, underpinnings. No doubt that people’s expressions of gender could be socially constructed, just like how fashion and dress is socially constructed, like how blue used to be a girl’s colour and pink used to be a boy’s colour. Whilst society can influence gender expression over time, there still remains only two gender identities: male and female.

The social construct that there are more than two genders, delegitimises the medical status of transsexuals. It implies that transsexuals don’t experience a medical condition (gender dysphoria) that’s life-debilitating and misery-causing. So much for gender social constructionism, becaused medical conditions are not social constructs. So why isn’t gender a social construct?

Gender describes the manifestations of the two biological sexes: male and female. This allows us to see the differences between male and female. In general, we see biologically-driven differences in behaviour between men and women, and that biology comes down to hormones, interactions between genotypes and phenotypes, and brain wiring.

It’s an enduring trend we see throughout human history; maleness and femaleness have stood the test of time. There are thousands of ways to express gender, but there are only the male and female genders in existence. Medical science have pointed out to a few exceptions to the rule, namely intersex conditions and gender dysphoria.

Intersex conditions are backed by hard science, the social implications of which are generally straightforward, that is, if you accept that there are only two genders. Gender dysphoria isn’t as straightforward, but it nevertheless is straightforward. Medically treating gender dysphoria revolves around going from male to female, or vice versa. In other words, it’s just another proof that there are only two genders. And what does all of this mean for restrooms?

There are boys and men, and there are girls and women, with each gender requiring their own separate resting space for obvious public safety reasons. Inviting gender diversity blurs the genders, and therefore blurs the public safety line drawn. Safety is both a right and a responsibility for everyone, and no ‘safety’ initiative, such as ‘gender-diverse’ restrooms, should get special treatment at the expense of others. And it’s not as if our public restrooms have never been accommodating towards trans people.

Transsexuals, who aren’t really gender-diverse, have been around since the 1960s (perhaps even before then), using the restrooms of their presenting gender. They generally mind their own business in male/female/disabled facilities that already exist, and this has always been the case. As a transwoman myself, I have been using female facilities for almost 10 years, and to this day I still generally avoid making eye contact with other women I pass by, let alone start conversations. Here, I’m only interested in going in to do whatever it is that I need to do, then leave, just like the other women passing by.

There has never been an issue for me and the other women using the female facilities from what I can tell. There has never really been a need for gender diversity signs around restrooms, and there’s no need for it now. Such signs won’t change the fact that some people are cruel and nasty, and they’re everywhere, including restrooms. The trans can of worms was always there, harmless if unopened. It just doesn’t need to be opened to gender-diversify.

Identity is a product of social negotiation, not merely self-determination as purported by such signs. From the feedback I’ve received over the years, my medically-driven gender presentation is convincingly female enough that my use of the ladies’ is appropriate, due to years of hormone replacement therapy (HRT), grooming, dress, mannerisms etc. But like all transsexuals, I was in the early stages of transition at one point (ie haven’t been on HRT for very long).

Using the ladies’, just after I started my transition, was nerve-racking at first, but that and my medical transition was obvious to the other women around me. That’s social negotiation, not just me saying “I’m a woman ’cause I said so, so suck eggs”.

The path to Hell is paved with good intentions, where ‘gender-diverse’ restrooms are open for abuse, and the risks are potentially more pervasive than the little benefit this pet project brings.

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