Self-ID And Its Impacts

Women’s Spaces

A women-only space is the border and frontier for women to stay safe in public places. In the beginning, it was built to protect women.

Globally, women-only spaces and related services are harmed due to the permission for those “trans-identified males” to access both. As a result, women are deprived of personal safety and dignity.


Taiwan

12, 2019

National Sun Yat-sen University: Female student was filmed in uni-sex dorm shower

On 16 Dec. 2019, a male student was caught secretly filming a female student in the uni-sex …

NTU
2005-2012
Storm mg

NTU’s Female Dormitory

Yan Fong admitted that during her service as the Dean of Student Affairs
(from Aug. 2005 to Jul. …

NTNU
2016
Mirror Media

NTNU’s Swimming Pool Female Changing Room and Restrooms

According to NTNU’s principal, Zheng-Ji Wu, around 3-4 years ago, a NTNU’s trans-identified male …

ISTS Care
2016-2017

ISTS Care has been in a long-term collaboration with TAPCPR. Its director, Yi-Ting Wu, not only supported self-ID but also insisted that all restrooms should be modified as “unisex restrooms”. Besides, she has threatened to sue the people who suspected trans women as male predators and tried to expel them from female restrooms.

CGU
2017
taipeitimes.com

CGU’s Female Dormitory

(TAPCPR’s Lawsuit) In 2017, a trans woman, Yu-Hsun Wu, applied to live in the female dormitory at …

Jin Mountain
2018
Yahoo! News

Female Hot Spring on the Jin Mountain

On 13 Apr. 2018, it was said that a man broke into “Nanping Public Bathroom” of the female hot …

Taipei
2019
Yahoo奇摩新聞

Female Restroom of Taipei’s Startup Company

(TAPCPR’s Lawsuit) In 2019, Ms. Yang, a trans woman, joined a job interview held by a startup …

July, 2020

Reform bill of the Detention Act: Agency of Corrections of Ministry of Justice reports on how to protect trans prisoners' rights

In July 2020, The Ministry of Justice provided “Written Report No. 1: The incidental …

TAPCPR
2020

In the draft of the Equality Act, TAPCPR has added one’s gender identity. It has claimed that “the people who already change or seek to change their sexes could suffer from gender discrimination” hence “any rejection to their access to products, service, and facilities” is a type of gender discrimination.

TTHA
2020-2021

TTHA also supported gender-identity-based restrooms and lobbied for the Equality Act (including the discrimination against one’s gender identity).

TTHA said that if trans people use sex-based restrooms, they will scare others in the same room.
Source: TTHA’s Official Website
Uniforms
2020-2022
Yahoo奇摩新聞

Uniforms

In Aug. 2020, a trans woman, Chang, joined a job interview held by Tung Fang Mei Company (TFM). …

H&M
March, 2021

Woman customer sees strange man "masturbating" in changing room—H&M: "Gender equality is rooted in our company values"

In March 2022, a woman went to the H&M store in Ximending, Taipei. When she was trying on …

TAPCPR
October, 2021

TAPCPR has claimed that the trans woman criminals are not “true trans” or belong to the random cases. It also has criticized that women’s fear is irrational and boundless; thus, it should not be dealt by laws.

TAPCPR
2021

In its training plan for seed teachers, TAPCPR tried to obfuscate the ideas of home restrooms, family restrooms, racial separation, and Yong-Zhi Ye Incident with public restrooms divided by sexes. It tried to make a conclusion that “sex-based restrooms are nonsense” in order to promote the idea of “gender-identity-based restrooms”.

NCKU
May, 2022
newtalk

NCKU’s Female Dormitory

National Cheng Kung University (NCKU) did a survey on students’ attitudes to a gender-friendly …

NTU
October, 2022

National Taiwan University: Male college student upskirts female classmate in unisex toilet

On 11 May 2022, a male college student named Cheng hid in a unisex toilet on the second floor of the …

Beitou
November, 2022

Bearded trans woman "hides male genital between legs" to break into Beitou's female hot spring

On 10, Nov., a 37-year-old trans woman, Kuo, and one female friend broke into the female hot spring …

Bra store
January, 2023

Another breach of "Da Chen Bra store" allows mtf to try on underwear in changing room

Chien Tung Lin, an mtf who has not received any surgery, posted on Facebook that how intoxicating it …

How will Taiwan’s future look like?

Women’s Personal Safety and Privacy

According to Taiwan’s statistics about sex crimes, women experience sexual violence at a high rate whereas men are the most majority of sexual offenders. What is worse is, there is a low chance that these sex crimes will be appealed and convicted. The percentage of women being sexually offended in public spaces is significantly higher than the one of men. 1 Thus, women’s negative experiences in public spaces are mainly about insecurity. To allow men to enter women’s spaces is depriving women of personal safety and the right to use public spaces.

Abridging Women’s Right to Enter Public Spaces

Now, women increasingly gain the right to enter public spaces, yet they still are the weaker party in these places.

From the aspect of physical space and relational space, in mass culture, it is constantly implied that women are always a symbol of men’s potential desire objects; further, the society asks women to do self-protection. Thus, women become more vulnerable to sexual harassments. These conditions cause women to frequently feel embarrassed or limited. For example, if a public open space like park is crowded with men, women may try to avoid getting close to; therefore, it will be naturally formed into a men-only space.1

In short, the limitations on women’s bodies, behaviors, and spaces are the requests made by the society. In public spaces, the gaze and norms limit women’s body act more strictly than men’s. For example, the norm that “the women who spread their legs are inviting a sexual touching” forces women to close their legs in every public space. However, women have the needs to exercise their bodies. Therefore, women-only spaces like gyms, exercise yards, and yoga spaces are formed.
1

If women’s spaces are destroyed, women may be less willing to enter public spaces; further, they will lose the right to enter these places.

The Difficulties in Managing Gender-Identity-Based Facilities

Swimming pools, hot springs, saunas and gyms are divided by sexes. If it is impossible to prevent the opposite sex from entering these same-sex spaces, customers’ willingness to purchase and enter may be reduced.

If the Gender Recognition Act or Self ID is passed, how does any business owner know the sex of their customer? Will single-sex spaces be discriminatory even if unlawful?

The Services Preferred to Be Single-Sex

  • Providers and customers of long-term care will ask for same-sex services due to various reasons. For some customers whose family members are mostly females, they refuse to be served by males in order to avoid crime risks or persist in personal concerns. Vice versa, some providers who have experienced sexual harassments refuse to serve males or the family whose members are mostly males.

  • House cleaning companies tend to hire women due to safety concerns.

  • When seeking for medical treatments, some women who have sex organs disorders (e.g. aches of private parts and problems of uterine, ovarian, and breast) prefer to female physicians due to privacy issues. Therefore, some hospitals provide single-sex services to women by offering female obstetricians and gynecologists. This need of female patients should be respected rather than deprived.

The Jobs Requiring Physical Contacts

  • The industries like beauty salons and bridal services require a lot of physical contacts. However, if a provider prefers to same-sex customers, will it be a discriminatory act?
  • During the customs’ body search, people of different sexes may have some physical contacts; furthermore, there may be differences in the must-search body parts for male and female visitors.
  • The Police
    • For the body search after an arrest, if possible, female police officers will be asked to search female suspects and criminals for the purpose of avoiding any controversy over sexual harassments.
    • For a urine drug test, it must be monitored throughout the process; also, the restroom door needs to be open. Meanwhile, the police officers will be the same sex as the test taker is. If the test taker is a transgender without undergoing a sex reassignment surgery, it will be very difficult to carry out the whole process.

A Company’s Internal System

The examples below including company facilities, room arrangement for company trips and business trips, etc.

  • If employees are divided by sexes during their company’s health check, will this division be considered a gender discrimination and harassment?
  • Do employees have the right to ask for a company facility with single-sex changing rooms?
  • Do employees have the right to ask for single-sex rooms in an overnight company trip?
  • Do employees have the right to know the sex of their unfamiliar roommate in a training/ business trip? Do they have the right to move to another room if their roommate is found out to be the opposite sex?

  1. References above are quoted from the chapter, “From the Aspects of Public and Private Domains: The right of women’s spaces” of Suchiu Chen’s thesis: Troubling the public-private split: A feminist critique. (公、私領域的空間面向:女性空間權力 (pdf)↩︎ ↩︎

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