If you expect the latter, you are doomed to disappointment. While the “dinner party” metaphor is misconceived, the threads on SF are more conversation than Q&A.
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The problem for the French left is that encompasses everyone from near centrists, through regular left-leaning folks to utter lunatics who think Stalin and Mao were liberals.
Not that there aren’t some proper wrong ‘uns way out on fringes of the right as well, but they don’t appear to have any great support.
Experience, Porridge.
Perhaps you “go” in much posher places than me?
On second thoughts, that’s not it. Poshness does not seem to be the differentiator.
On Mélenchon other than my fear of what Madame Le Pen appears to be and represent I would not say I know much about French politics.
But I am probably going to break several rules here and say I think Melenchon is too old. If elected the term he’d serve… it’s hard to imagine there would not be risks. It feels a bit Biden - why didn’t he move over sooner and give a successor a chance? I think some of the electorate might be thinking this too and wish there was somebody with more time on their side.. this is what Le Pen has in her party. A relatively young and glamorous sidekick to carry things on as and when.
I’ll duck now
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I’d suggest that’s the least of his shortcomings 
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Most assaults in these spaces are committed by cisgender men posing as women, not by trans women.
Seriously? You don’t think there is a difference between a heterosexual man coming into the women’s toilets (clearly with no justification other than creepy or dangerous intentions) and someone who truly identifies as female and may very well have had hormonal and/or surgical treatments?
I think you are being intentionally thick.
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+ You’d want him on your side in a ruck
- If he’s there, there will be a ruck
Have I misread this?
There is no difference between “men posing as women” and “trans women”. The first is the definition of the second.
We should, of course, treat people with mental illnesses with kindness, whatever form that illness takes but, by analogy, you don’t help an anorexic woman by agreeing she’s too fat.
Anyway…I have heard that Marine le Pen refuses to sit on the toilet, she pees well to the right of it. Melanchon is very similar apart from his aim being well to the left.
Me, I always sit on the bog, better to get a bit of a well earned rest, and pee in the middle. 
I have no clue who decides who is one and who is the other.
Is Eddie Izzard a trans woman or a bloke in a skirt?
For “real” trans women who have had surgery and hormones then they probably used the female toilets before all this fuss kicked off. Nobody probably noticed or cared.
But now there are probably more men with a fetish than there are “real” trans women. And those people are definitely a risk!
Like the court case with nurses where the guy/trans kept asking when the women would be undressing.
National Gallery in London has just such an arrangement. Unfair on us men, though, as we have to queue, whereas in the past we would have just waltzed in, whizzed, and waltzed out.
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From Medicine Net:
“ A transgender female is someone who identifies as a female but was labeled as male at birth.”
Your decision to ignore the definition above and go with what you see as the case does not make you right. It is simplistic and politically motivated.
You and I have been through this at length before and I know that we see it very differently and that won’t change. But claiming there is no important distinction between Joe who lives as a man, putting on a wig or coat and claiming to be a woman (for almost certainly nasty goals) and Nadine who has lived 24/7 for years as a woman and feels (rightly) unsafe using a men’s washroom, is disingenuous.
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I believe Suzy Izzard is a trans woman, Eddie Izzard is a comedian who has been bending the gender for almost 40 years now, I’m not sure we’ll ever find out what’s going on there, but that is part of the delight of their persona.
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It has been a long while but I once worked in maintenance/cleaning at a ski resort. Since there were only male workers, we had to clean both. Sorry, but the women’s facilities were always in far worse shape. It took twice as long to clean. Among other things, small bits of toilet paper everywhere. I can’t speak to current conditions or other settings.