I pit the people behind anti-transgender "bathroom bills"

The BBQ Pit
1

I’d like to begin this thread with a bit of a personal confession.

A year or two ago, I was what many people would call “anti-transgender” or “transphobic”. It was my belief that sex and gender are intrinsically linked to one another, and that if someone thinks they’re something other than what they were born as, then that’s a problem that only exists in their own head and they should learn to deal with it. There are any number of posts I’ve made which are archived on this board in which I express that belief.

I can’t exactly say that I’ve come around to a different point of view. I am a man, I was born male, and I’ve never had any doubt as to what I was. I don’t believe that I can possibly understand, on a fundamental level, what it would be like to be a male who identifies as female, or vice versa. What I’ve come to understand, however, is that whether I understand or empathize with this worldview or not, that these people exist, that they’re not going to go away, and that they deserve to be treated with dignity and respect, and to be allowed to live their lives in a way that makes them feel comfortable and harms no one.

And that’s what brings me to the subject of Pat McCrory, Republican governor of North Carolina. The state of North Carolina is not currently considering any anti-trans legislation. The queen city of Charlotte, however, is considering pro-trans legislation that would recognize the rights of transgender people, including their right to use public bathrooms in accordance with the gender they identify as. In the event that the Charlotte city council passes this bill, which it appears it will, McCrory has vowed to call the state legislature into session for the purpose of passing a bill countermanding this one, which he will gleefully sign into law for the sake of protecting women from men who’ll claim to be women in order to peep in women’s rooms.

I could go on for ages about the hypocrisy of the Republican party claiming to be in favor of small government and local control, but then suddenly being in favor of federal supremacy when religious/sexual conduct is subject to legislation. But that would be a sidebar to the topic at hand.

The claim that transgender rights will be abused by men to peep in women’s bathrooms is a red herring. If a person in a bathroom or locker room is peeping on people, that’s illegal regardless of the gender or gender identity of anyone involved. Besides that, there’s no documentary evidence that such things have actually happened in any place where transgender rights have been acknowledged; the only instances that I am aware of are of cisgender male trolls who have invited themselves into women’s rooms for the specific purpose of provoking controversy, much like the people who attempt to cast fraudulent votes in order to prove that voter fraud is a problem.

Those who are acting against these laws are not acting out of any genuine concern for the rights of children, or women, or anyone really. To the contrary, the existence of these laws is a net benefit to people who would be at risk of humiliation, assault, or worse if they used a public facility concurrent with their biological gender. All these “bathroom bill” campaigns are little more than the same kind of small-minded bigotry that manifested against gays 20 years ago, and against blacks 30 years before that, the same anti-progressive rage insisting that things must always be as they are now and that anyone who doesn’t conform must learn their place.

Let us hope that this belief will pass away as did those that preceded it.

2

Wow. Dude, this is great. Well said all the way through. And thanks for showing that sometimes people really can change for the better.

3

This is a strawman. As a general rule, Republicans favor a federal government of limited, enumerated powers, supreme where it has power but lacking plenary legislative authority, and state governments which have plenary legislative authority.

Here, the state government proposes to use its plenary power. Local governments derive their power from the state government. There is no Republican position that generally favors local over state.

As to the meat of your complaint, I agree that the contemplated state action is unwise. I oppose it.

But I oppose it on policy grounds, not separation of power grounds.

4

Agreed. Good for you, Smapti.

As someone who lives in Charlotte I find this situation interesting on many levels. Pat McCrory used to be the mayor of Charlotte. He is now making veiled threats against the city if it passes this legislation. Raleigh controls the purse strings, even though Charlotte is the population/business center of the state. While Charlotte has evolved a lot recently, I am surprised this legislation has gotten this far. It will be interesting to see how it plays out.

5

I was aware of Charlotte’s attempt at pro-transgender legislation, but I had not heard that McCrory had pulled himself out of bed with Duke Energy long enough to wade into this non-issue. >.< Why do these conservatives seem to think that women’s restrooms are some kind of pantsless free-for-all??

6

Well said. And good on you!
(It’s hard to believe republicans want small government when they regulate my uterus more than guns!)

7

I see no problem. Turn half the toilets into real personals wherein you can lock the door behind you. Those who want to use the “open” ones, you don’t go in there to look at your brothers (or sisters, it depends.)

8

Questions for Smapti:

  1. If I’m a male-born person identifying as a woman, and a FTM transsexual cop orders me to give him a blowjob (an order that you endorse following), should we use the men’s or the ladies’ room?

  2. If afterwards, the same cop orders me to unlock my iPhone for him so he can ensure that I didn’t surreptitiously take any pics during the encounter, am I also obligated to do that?

  3. Should I be concerned if he then mentions using the “backdoor”?

9

It passed 7-4…yay Charlotte!!

Now I wonder what kind of embarrassing nonsense will come out of Raleigh as a result…

10

I’ve never seen a ladies’ that wasn’t like that. If anybody can watch you while you pee, call Maintenance! (Oh noes! They’re usually guys! We cannot allow them into the ladies’ room!)

11

Do you think maybe that’s the real problem here? Could it be that all these mad dogs howling about “transgenders in the ladies’” really think there’s a row of open toilets, like they have a row of open urinals? Surely not. Surely they’ve seen rows of stalls in movies, at least.

12

I hope not, but really, what do they think we do in the general area of the ladies’ that we couldn’t do in public? I’ve seen a couple of instances of armpit washing (without removing any clothes) and some zit hunting… neither seems particularly sexy.

You ask me, bathrooms should just all be stalls and unisex. Leave some bigger stalls for accesibility, people with kids, etc.

And how come they never think it’s going to be someone peeking in the men’s, where you can actually see dicks in the general area?

13

What WhyNot said. Ladies’ bathrooms are all private stalls, no exception. And the trend here is to make these stalls more like rooms, with walls from floor to ceiling znd full length doors.

14

But in general, bigots like to cloak their bigotry under the guise of " protecting" some " weaker" group. Rarely or never that group complains themselves.

15

Excellent OP, Smapti.

I went through a similar epiphany at some point in the past.

16

I’ve only encountered two ladies’ restrooms that didn’t have stalls…in both cases, the building owner had opted to install handicap-accessible and standard toilets side-by-side, even though there was no room for stalls. But guess what…both restrooms also featured locking doors, so there was no chance of having to share the restroom with a stranger! Maybe the bigoted politicians have seen restrooms like these, but failed to recognize the presence of door locks?

17

This seems like the simple solution to a rather silly problem.

I was recently in a restaurant with a general, gender-neutral restroom. It had two doors, both simply reading “restroom” which usually indicates single-user restrooms. I picked one and walked into a larger restroom with a man washing his hands. I thought, “Whew! I picked the right one.” But then I noticed that I was not looking at a mirror behind the sinks, I was looking at the other side of the restroom! No urinals, all stalls, with high walls, low floor clearance, and locking doors. Didn’t bother me, and it didn’t seem to bother any of the women in there either.

18

Except that urinals are far more time-efficient than stalls. Have you never noticed that busy public bathrooms often have lines of crossed-legged women whilst men can go straight in?

19

That’s got to do with how long it takes to remove/pull up/pull down/pull both ways your clothes vs whipping out your dick, not with the efficiency of stalls vs urinals.

20

That’s because of clothing adjustments, far more than the shape of the hole you’re peeing into. And for about a quarter of us at any one time, dealing with menstruation products. And farting, since we’re not supposed to do that in public. And breastfeeding, because the world sucks.

But if you want urinals, I have no problem with that. Put a row of urinals behind a wall within the unisex bathroom.

Heck, whip it out and pee in front of me. I. Don’t. Care. But if you do, have a wall.