This seems slightly different from others. As far as I can tell from a quick perusal, it says bathrooms must be either (1) single gender, or (2) mixed gender but with an attendant on duty. There’s no mention of what “gender” means in this context.
What do the authors of the bill think it’s going to accomplish? Does this prevent transgender people from using the correct (i.e. corresponding to their identified gender) bathroom, if that is indeed the intent of the bill?
These are the same people who mock “Gun Free Zone” signs because no criminal is going to let that deter them. But yet, the gender symbols on bathroom doors have been protecting us from perverted transgenders for hundreds of years! And the liberals are trying to force a 40-year old creep in the stall with your 7 year old daughter in the name of “acceptance”! Well, we’ll put a stop to that! They’ll have to have someone in the bathroom at all times watching for this type of thing!
Off topic, but being an Alabamian whose accepted that we’re doomed to be on the wrong side of history on every issue, I count on the federal gov’t to keep us sane. But I no longer have hope for that. The Alabamification of America continues.
I can only imagine how many people are waiting for this bill to pass so they secure employment as a bathroom cop. Surely that will be the most respected type of cop in all the land…
I find that bill quite difficult to understand. It appears to be totally ignoring the fact that “gender” means different things to different people. It also appears mostly to be targeting the compromise of allowing multi-gender restrooms, by forcing such rooms to be “staffed”, a prohibitive expense, surely, for most businesses.
Since almost all businesses already provide “single gender” restrooms, how does this bill attempt to keep “transgender” people from using the “wrong” bathroom? I must be missing something fundamental here… :dubious:
Yeah, you seem to have the right of it. I think maybe the author of the bill is so ignorant of gender-identity issues that they failed to draft a law that actually does the bigoted thing they think it does.
I have searched but failed to find the definition of “gender” under Alabama state law. However, Alabama does refer to “sex” with respect to the designation on birth certificates and the changing of such (Alabama Code Title 22. Health, Mental Health, and Environmental Control. § 22-9A-19). Unless someone else is better at searching their database and can find a definition of gender which is problematic…then it’s difficult to see this bill as anything but a scarecrow.
My legal gender on every single piece of paperwork or ID that I have, save for my birth certificate, says “F,” so unless Alabama defines gender differently, the law would have no impact on me. Likewise, as I don’t see any documentation nor paperwork requirements, it appears that all one would have to do is simply claim their gender identity was X to not fall afoul of the law. In other words, it doesn’t do anything to improve “privacy”, and of course as we know it also will not do anything to prevent a sex predator or criminal (who won’t care about the law anyhow) from entering, especially as it seems there is no penalty for them.
It does potentially target non-binary persons, in that if the bathrooms are strictly defined as being single-gender or multiple, then it’s unlikely a non-binary or non-conforming person who identifies as agender, bi-gender, genderqueer, questioning, etc. could find a single-gender bathroom matching their identity. They could simply lie and claim to be gender X or Y if questioned by the Alabama Bathroom Cops, but why should a person be placed in such a position at all?
I cannot believe that Alabama decided to target NB/NC persons, so again the law is strange.
Una, in the face of such laws, have trans activists considered a protest of actually obeying these laws en masse? For example, if Alabama or another place mandates single sex/gender anti-trans bathroom laws, a bunch of trans men, particularly burly, bearded trans men, go to women’s bathrooms? Perhaps they could be escorted to the site (but not into the bathroom) by cis allies with cameras.
Given it’s Alabama, the legislators are probably daydreaming back to those Days of Trump’s and the Alt-Right’s Twisted Imagination, where every bathroom had a polite negro in a white uniform who said “Yasa boss, here be yo’ white towel fo’ yo’ lily-white hands…aw thank ye, suh, for the shiny penny tip!” Women’s bathrooms, of course, featured a “black mammy,” wearing a kerchief and singing gospel tunes. :rolleyes:
"It’s a bad cop that can’t find a reason to arrest you for ‘disturbing the peace.’ " - anonymous.
So far the protests garner no backlash. The police have been too smart to actually do anything to groups with obvious political motives. North Carolina has had scattered reports of individuals being targeted in rural and small-town areas, but in the cities enforcement has been nonexistent. For now.
I didn’t realize this was a “compromise” used in some places, is this becoming common? That at least seems to explain the motivation, however misguided, for the bill.
But I’m at least glad to see that I’m not the only one who is confused.
What exactly is the attendant going to be attending to? Something tells me the state isn’t mandating that someone always be present to hand you a towel and make a little small talk.
I wouldn’t limit such a demonstration to such a small demographic. If this happens in my state (rumors that it’s coming to Virginia), I will be right there using the “wrong” bathroom. I’m a hetero, white female. I have used the men’s room on occasion (with men in there!), and used the ladies room when there was a male janitor in there. Doesn’t bother me a bit. As long as everyone minds their P’s and Q’s, this is a complete non-issue.