My guess is that the requirement of an attendant is meant to address the concern one frequently hears that mixed gender bathrooms, locker rooms, pool changing rooms, etc. will be made less safe for women because some number of predatory cis men will take the opportunity to loiter and stare.
The people that are pushing for these “toilet safety” laws need to wake up and take a look at the real world. Their argument is that they’re trying to protect their womenfolk from having perverts putting on a dress and following them into the ladies room. (That idea probably mostly says how their minds work.) But how are they going to react when somebody who looks like this follows their daughter into the ladies room?
(for those who don’t know, the man above, Benjamin Melzer, is a transgender man)
Probably with violence, calls to the police (followed by the transman being arrested for “disturbing the peace”), and who knows what else. Maybe some alt-righter will claim he had to “stand his daughter’s ground” and put a bullet into the transman, as Jesus intended.
Coming this Fall to NBC:
PLOP COP!
Crime really does stink…
My thought is that Alabama’s Sen. Williams knows this bill will never pass, but that he can tell the yokels back home that he tried to protect their wives and daughters from the pervs.
It probably doesn’t even occur to them that transmen even exist. A few months ago I had a very awkward conversation with my mother on the subject.
I hear bicycle cops really support this idea, just so that they won’t be the most disrespected branch of the police force anymore.
What the hell is all this bathroom regulation stuff? Have any of these people ever been in a public bathroom? The scary thing is how many of them there seem to be.
ETA: By “how many” I mean “these people,” not “public bathrooms”
I’m not familiar with him so I’m probably making exactly the same point, but in another thread I pointed out that if you fight against these things, then people like Buck Angel (seems like a super nice guy, watch the doc) are forced into the women’s bathroom, (where you want them, right?), instead of the men’s bathroom, where you wouldn’t even notice them.
The over the top reactions of people putting up Hamburger Mary’s style drag queens or rednecks in bad wigs turned into memes asking if that’s who you want watching your kid go to the bathroom are just stupid…because there’s so many drag queens and rednecks in bad wigs hangout in the bathroom at Target.
In fact, that’s a perfect case of even though I totally disagree with it, I understand what your getting at, but you’re doing such a bad job of making your point that your just hurting your case.
This took literally seconds to find. As I said, just keep in mind that you really don’t see people out and about like that on any kind of a regular basis, but if ‘bathroom bill’ were some how magically enforced, I think people might be surprised who actually did end up peeing next to their daughter.
They have these in women’s restrooms now? :eek:
Um, I’m not sure what point your making.
I think the point was that women’s bathrooms have stalls, not urinals, and the stalls have doors. So your daughter won’t even see who’s peeing next to her.
Given how politically unpopular these laws are, and given the loss they led to in North Carolina, you kinda have to wonder why they’re continuing to push them. Are they winners on a local level? Are they simply doing what they think is “right” and have absolutely no idea what the hell they’re doing? I’d call it admirable, but given how fucking wrong the entire justification for this is… it isn’t.
In addition to all of the standard bigoted stupidity, these people do know of the existence of unisex restrooms, right? A little room containing but a single toilet and a single sink, for use by either a single person, or a parent and small child, and open to whatever gender happens to need them when they’re available? Because a lot of public places have a least a couple of those, and I think most people would probably not want an attendant in them.
The attendant route sounds prohibitively expensive for most businesses (ie. those that don’t already have bathroom attendants in even single gender bathrooms already. Are they really going to pay a guy to sit in the bathroom for 8 hours or even rotate my regular employees out for hours at a time, losing actually productive manhours? Probably not, so they will be forced to have single stall or single gender bathrooms, which will de facto make it like every other bathroom bill depending on how they define gender (it isn’t defined in the act).
I notice the same general erroneous logic in the openings to the bill:
“The law of this state has further upheld the premise that one’s
11 emotional sanctum is due the same measure of protection in
12 this regard as one’s physical expectations of privacy.
13 (2) The use of rest room, bathroom, or changing
14 facilities creates an inherent call for physical and emotional
15 security and an equally strong right to privacy for the
16 residents of this state and any visitors to this state. Such
17 rest rooms, bathrooms, or changing facilities are places of
18 increased vulnerability and present the potential for crimes
19 against individuals utilizing those facilities which may
20 include, but are not limited to, voyeurism, exhibitionism,
21 molestation, and assault and battery.”
Emotional sanctum is so vague as to be able to encompass anything from reasonable fear to moderate discomfort. It’s of note that implicitly, the “one’s” in this section are those uncomfortable with transgender people in restrooms and not transgender people themselves, who also have clearly stated how their “emotional sanctum” is negatively affected by such rules as birth-gender restrooms. Finally, the latter portion implies many errors, namely that non-transgendered gay people don’t exist and can already commit these acts, that non-transgendered non-gay people don’t exist and can already commit these acts, and that that single-gender sign outside the bathroom is magically doing anything to reduce the risks of these events.
Man, taking a shit is complicated in the US.
Reminds me of a similar tactic some proposed of wrongly claiming they are Muslim as backlash against a potential Muslim registry.
Totally make sense. I’m sure women…or rather these foaming at the mouths fathers sending their daughters into Target bathrooms, never notice other people as they walk in or out of the bathrooms though, right? I mean, I don’t glare at each person, but if I use a public restroom that doesn’t have urinals and a woman/man wearing a dress and wig was using the stall next to me, I’m going to notice it.
So, to get back to what I was saying before. What it really comes down to is that people really should be careful what they wish for. Let’s be honest. If a bathroom bill goes through and it’s somehow enforced. There’s going to a lot more people like this using the women’s room with your daughters then there are these guys.
If you are fighting to make sure that a man can absolutely can not, under any circumstances not enter the women’s room because ‘we must protect our women’, are you really going to be okay with transgender men using the women’s bathroom? OR, are many of these men more concerned about the transgender issue and just think it’s icky and and don’t like it and using the ‘gotta protect our wimmin’ thing as a coverup for ‘can’t they just pee at home’? I mean that’s what I’ve always assumed and we could probably work through this whole issue a lot faster and get it resolved one way or the other if they’d just say what they’re feeling instead of beating around the bush.
They certainly don’t lowball the job requirements.
i think it’s more the Trump revenge factor and ‘we don’t have to be politically correct any longer’ factor. Alabama isn’t likely to be the focus of boycotts, it is a rural state and doesn’t have many major corporations located there.