Transwomen in the women's spa

Over the summer, I had a lively e-mail exchange with a Toronto, Ontario friend, Rachel.

A spa we sometimes visit was embroiled in a dispute; a Toronto transgender woman tweeted that the when her partner called to arrange a surprise visit as a gift, the spa refused to to admit her. (Source: CBC News article, posted here.)

How the matter came up during the attempted booking is not stated. (I cannot help but imagine a Pythonesque moment, when John Cleese says: "Right, then: 2 p.m. on Wednesday. Now, your guest doesn't have a willy, does she?") 

At Body Blitz, a soak in a series of thermal pools at various temperatures is completed as a circuit, and may be done nude or in a swimsuit. The spa cited a no-male-genitals policy (which I do not see on the web site) and said that they "support the LGBT community and recognize that this is a sensitive issue. However, because Body Blitz is a single-sex facility with full-nudity, we are not like other facilities." 

Rachel asserts that a transwoman does not have the same status as a woman assigned female gender at birth, saying: "There is a small part of me that bristles at the idea that a trans woman can assume sisterhood with cisgender women and demand equality at Body Blitz, when for millennia women everywhere have suffered and struggled for the most basic of human rights and continue to do so."

And she most definitely does not want to see male genitals when she has booked into a female-only spa. She fears the sight may affect other patrons because of painful past incidents. 

My view is that if that woman has transitioned (with or without genital reconstruction surgery) and can produce proof of female identification, e.g., a driver's license, she ought to be admitted. Her transition—which is even without surgery, arduous—will not impede or dilute the fight for human rights for any population. 

You might wonder, Why does that woman still have male genitals? I don't know (and it is none of my business), but an increasing number of transwomen are refusing surgery. Jae Alexis Lee has posted a list of  reasons here.

The prospect of seeing male organs disturbs Rachel. (It seems that no matter what, her brain is flashing, Men in here!) I wonder whether—to help patrons like her to accept the physical diversity of this group—a woman who still had male genitalia would wear a swimsuit, which I grant sounds repressive, but may be a temporary middle road. In the last five years, I'd estimate that at least 80% of patrons wear suits, so she'd be in a majority.

Rachel says she would be upset to see such a woman nude, but sometimes times change faster than our comfort level. In Ontario, any resident can now refuse the binary designation for the province's identity documents, designating an X instead of M or F. This tempest in a salt pool is only the beginning.

Of course another solution is to open such facilities to a mixed clientele: male, female and X: everybody in the pool! I've spent plenty of time at hot springs where mixed nude bathing was the custom, but Rachel does not want that, either. I'd be sorry to see that all-women haven go, too; there's a kind of bonding. I'll never forget one woman of about fifty who sat at the edge of the frigid plunge pool for twenty minutes, weeping into the bodice of a cherry-red two-piece, then saying, "I can do this". In she went, and the whole room burst into cheers.

But for now we circle the issue of what is a woman. Maybe there are varieties of women. If we look at other species, some fish turn into another gender; parrotfish have sex organs of both sexes. We humans continue to learn about the range of chromosome complements, hormone balances and phenotypic variations, challenging our ideas about both sex and gender. 

Though I dip into essays about gender theory and feminism, I prefer to think about how we choose to relate to one another as we make our way through life. Even essays written fifteen years ago can sound dated. In 2009, Germaine Greer wrote in "The Whole Woman", "No so-called sex-change has ever begged for a uterus-and-ovaries transplant; if (they) were made mandatory for wannabe women they would disappear overnight."

I know several transwomen or their families who are not in agreement. And what of those women who were born with a uterus and ovaries, and no longer have them? Just try telling them they lost their real-woman status.

After being confronted by my own startled response in the past, thinking about it, meeting more transwomen, and speaking to friends who work with their communities, I have decided that if a person believes she is a woman, I will accept her as one. Otherwise, I would be one of the persons who relegate her to society's edges, and that is not a world I want to support. 

Where will this all end up? Will people look back in fifty or eighty years look back and find the matter quaint as ladies-and-escorts entrances at taverns?

I am grateful to my friend for her thoughtful e-mails. She may never be comfortable with that woman in the spa, but she is questioning her conditioning. 

We have those moments as we mature; yours may be about something else. I'd learn a great deal if you would like to tell us.