The recent Wi Spa video incident in Los Angeles raises some very troubling implications about both the tactics that the Gender Critical / TERF crowd are now adopting, as well as the role of emerging technologies in facilitating those tactics.
The first point is that the Wi Spa incident suggests that in the absence of real incidents supporting the claim that allowing transgender women to access female spaces will enable sexual predators, the next step is to start manufacturing the incidents needed. We've certainly heard threats along these lines in the past, where RW organizers have threatened to enter women's spaces on the basis of claiming a female gender identity. I'm not aware of any such incidents actually happening.
A willingness to manufacture incidents to support a political narrative strikes me as both dishonest and dangerous.
The potential role of technologies like Deep Fake to enable the creation of "evidence" for these moments is profoundly worrisome. It is now perfectly plausible that someone could make a video of a space, and then insert the desired person - complete with verbal cues etc. - into the video. This is a very dangerous situation for anyone, because it means that "the camera never lies" evidence is now subject to overt manipulation and outright fakery.
Now we are in the situation where "events" can be manufactured on someone's laptop and distributed around the internet very quickly. Just as the Wi Spa incident has resulted in two transgender women being violently attacked, the potential for the fundamental safety of people to be violated is much higher now.
2 comments:
Whether or not the event was staged or not - I have can't begin to guess how one would find definitive evidence either way, it is certainly a possible situation. (I find it interesting though, how far righters will claim that footage of the storming of the capital building are fake, and now I see this same sort of claim from media outlets like Slate, who proclaimed "believe women" to support the Me Too movement, but when a woman offers video evidence of her conversation with spa admin, she is not believed). I am certainly not interested in all those who may take advantage of the notion of self id (open ended policies are especially easy to abuse)just coming into the ladies change area, with minor and adult women, to view other women and show their penis. I think the part that you are missing is that a.n.y.o.n.e. - anyone at all now has admittance to what were formerly safe, private to women spaces. Have a third change room. Have private stalls for changing. Have private showers. A nine-year old daughter going with her mom to the spa shouldn't be exposed to a strangers nude adult male body, whatever the pronoun. And no, kids shouldn't "get used to" having strange males reveal their genitals as some media outlets suggest.
I'm not "missing" anything here.
You're the one walking around making assumptions about the motives and behaviours of trans women without so much as a shred of evidence to back up your fear-laden claims. The supposition of a trans woman "showing off their bits" in a locker room or other context fails to recognize the attributes of gender dysphoria in the first place.
If you read the Slate article, it explains exactly why the video is likely as not a fake - and, by the way, we have plenty of past evidence of political activists faking incidents, or threatening to fake incidents, in order to justify their positions.
In another discussion on this topic I had elsewhere, the point still stands: a predator's actions remain illegal. There is no evidence (and likely never will be) of sexual predators doing the "wolf in sheep's clothing" thing with any regularity. This makes sense because in general, a predator is largely "in it for the power" - and when it's about power, the idea of "dressing up like the prey" is anathema.
... but sure, keep on with your "if it has a penis, it's a predator" logic.
Post a Comment