NC LGBTQ pro-discrimination law to cause more straight discomfort

[akrako1]

Some updates - and clarifications - from a recent Slate story - it seems UNC will unfortunately be enacting the new regulations…

a relevant section about birth certificates:

This rule effectively excludes most trans UNC students from using the correct bathroom. HB 2 defines sex as “stated on a person’s birth certificate.” But in North Carolina, you cannot change the sex on your birth certificate unless you receive gender reassignment surgery, a procedure which many trans people forego for medical, ideological, or financial concerns. Other states, like Tennessee, explicitly bar trans people from changing their birth certificate sex—even if they receive gender reassignment surgery. So a trans UNC student born in Tennessee, for example, is now banned from public bathrooms for life.

[Left_Hand_of_Dorkness]

@puddleglum

I have not been following her case very closely but I recall hearing the Caitlyn Jenner would dress as a woman when on speaking trips in the 80s while living as a man with a wife and family at home.
I think you might be underestimating sexual offenders. I just read a storyabout a guy with a voyeur fetish and he bought a hotel and installed special vents in the ceilings and special viewing areas in the attic to serve his fetish. There are also stories periodically about people finding video cameras in the ladies bathrooms. If someone is willing to do that, putting a wig and dress on an lying about your gender identity is not a huge reach.

What those stories have in common is that the people engaged in these activities were attempting not to be noticed. Someone trying to claim a gender identity dishonestly would have a plan that relied on being noticed and having immunity from being noticed, and who would go into the bathroom and engage in activity that was inappropriate only by virtue of their presence in an inappropriate bathroom.

I’m really unconvinced that there’s a significant population of people for whom that plan would appeal.

[Slash1972]

@Left_Hand_of_Dorkness

Without the law, Bob goes into a women’s restroom. The police arrest him, because what else is he doing in there? He says, “I identify as a woman!” The police say, “That’s no defense; we think you were perving.”

With the law, same scenario, the police say, “Let’s see some evidence you identify as a woman.”

I think it’s an extremely weak defense. Or, more accurately, it’s only a defense against the weakest possible charge of peeping tommery.

There are precious few reasons a man would go into a woman’s restroom. Here’s what I can think of:

1. Maintenance/custodial or other similar reasons.
2. Helping a female relative who really doesn’t want to go into the men’s room.
3. The men’s room is completely crowded or completely filthy, and he really has to go NOW.
4. Man? Wrong, trans woman.
5. He’s a perv trying to get off on being in there.
6. He wants to know if there really is a couch in there.

Number six isn’t a good excuse. If Numbers 1-4 are eliminated, #5 starts looking likelier and likelier. The NCGA is equating 4 and 5, which is pretty dang wrong.

Maybe I’m misunderstanding you. I mean, wouldn’t a person, regardless if they were a transgender woman or not, be subject to a “peeping Tom” charge if caught looking over or under the bathroom stalls in a women’s room?

[Left_Hand_of_Dorkness]

@Slash1972

Maybe I’m misunderstanding you. I mean, wouldn’t a person, regardless if they were a transgender woman or not, be subject to a “peeping Tom” charge if caught looking over or under the bathroom stalls in a women’s room?

Yes. Definitely. The scenario I’m talking about isn’t getting caught peeping under the stalls. Let’s switch it up, make it a combination bathroom/locker room instead. What if Bob strolls into the women’s locker room at his city pool? Around here, folks are often in a state of semi-undress in those rooms in public spaces. I suspect Bob as a cis guy would face charges for such behavior, absent a very good reason for being there.

[Slash1972]

@Left_Hand_of_Dorkness

Yes. Definitely. The scenario I’m talking about isn’t getting caught peeping under the stalls. Let’s switch it up, make it a combination bathroom/locker room instead. What if Bob strolls into the women’s locker room at his city pool? Around here, folks are often in a state of semi-undress in those rooms in public spaces. I suspect Bob as a cis guy would face charges for such behavior, absent a very good reason for being there.

I would like-wise suspect as much.

[Human_Action]

@Left_Hand_of_Dorkness

Yes. Definitely. The scenario I’m talking about isn’t getting caught peeping under the stalls. Let’s switch it up, make it a combination bathroom/locker room instead. What if Bob strolls into the women’s locker room at his city pool? Around here, folks are often in a state of semi-undress in those rooms in public spaces. I suspect Bob as a cis guy would face charges for such behavior, absent a very good reason for being there.

I’m sure state and local laws vary, but he wouldn’t face charges in the great Commonwealth of Kentucky, where the voyeurism statute requires that “The other person is in a place where a reasonable person would believe that his or her sexual conduct, genitals, or nipple of the female breast will not be observed, viewed, photographed, filmed, or videotaped without his or her knowledge.” If you’re undressed in a locker room, clearly you don’t have the belief that you won’t be observed.

[OldOlds]

@Smapti

Let’s just ban people from having genders at all and cut the problem off right at its source.

I take issue with your very poor choice of words.

[Whack-a-Mole]

@Fotheringay-Phipps

The other situation - which has been the focus here - is where it’s anonymous strangers using public bathrooms. In such cases, regardless of what any law says, as a practical matter it would seem that trans people whose clothed appearance is in line with their gender identity can use that bathroom with impunity.

Honest question:

Gender reassignment is not an instantaneous thing but rather a process that takes years (I have read two years at a minimum).

So, there is a gray area in there. Where is the line drawn? When does the individual decide to change bathrooms?

[Ethilrist]

@Whack-a-Mole

Honest question:

Gender reassignment is not an instantaneous thing but rather a process that takes years (I have read two years at a minimum).

So, there is a gray area in there. Where is the line drawn? When does the individual decide to change bathrooms?

That really depends… one benchmark is, do they feel safe changing? Do they feel SAFER if they change, or if they continue using the one appropriate for the gender they were assigned at birth? The process of transition is to adopt the gender identity that they feel is appropriate for them, and if women use the women’s restroom, then as soon as they begin to present themselves as women, they probably feel they should be using the women’s restroom. Also consider that some transgender women will never pass… and also that some psychiatrists will refuse to authorize reassignment surgery if they’re not living their lives as their preferred gender, which puts them in a huge bind… they’ll never get the surgery if they don’t live as women, but if they try to live as women, they’ll never pass, so they’ll be under a constant barrage of criticism and persecution.

[spamforbrains]

So that cuts down on opportunities for pervs to access the women’s room for their skeevy purposes. The notion, FWIW, is that now that people of any appearance can legally access the women’s room without anyone being able to stop them, then it would become more acceptable for people looking like men to access the women’s room and this would encourage people with nefarious intent to do it for their purposes.

I’ve been in a lot of women’s bathrooms and I don’t really know what a pervert hopes to see. It’s not like we strip naked and have pillow fights or something. Watching women wash their hands is oh so exciting. Anyone who tried to crawl into or peer into a stall in use would be so obviously up to no good that there’s really no problem. If a man in obvious need came in and quickly used a stall and politely left, after washing his hands, I don’t think anyone would say a thing.
Urinals in a men’s rooms are a bit more revealing. Perhaps straight men should consider banning all gays from using men’s rooms.

[Una_Persson]

@Whack-a-Mole

Honest question:

Gender reassignment is not an instantaneous thing but rather a process that takes years (I have read two years at a minimum).

So, there is a gray area in there. Where is the line drawn? When does the individual decide to change bathrooms?

Before a few years ago, the unofficial rule was “you use the bathroom you are dressed for.” This is solely because you do not want to cause a ruckus and end up suffering harassment, arrest, or assault by dressing male and going into the women’s bathrooms, etc. As the goal is to start appearing in public as your gender identity, in order to give your as much real-life experience as possible, you may end up using the “other” bathroom within a month after you come out.

As “genderqueer” identity began to be suddenly much more widely accepted and pushed, there is an issue now with folks in androgynous clothing and appearance and bathrooms, where you can have a femme but still male-dressed person going into the women’s bathrooms.

Transgender people with strong binary gender identity (like myself) really want to use the correct bathroom as soon as possible. I never, in all my life, felt like I belonged in the men’s room. I used the stalls every single time, to hide from the men in there, and hated meeting men at the sink because I felt so awkward. It didn’t matter how much I tried to psych myself up for it, every time I went into a men’s room felt like I was transgressing gender in a bad way. I remember one time a year before I came out, when a police officer entered the men’s room as I was at the sink, and I actually had a completely irrational fear of “OMG! They’re here to arrest me for using the men’s roo-oh yeah, never mind.” I had a persistent and insistent innate feeling that I simply did not belong there.

When I started using women’s bathrooms, all my awkwardness died away. It was no longer a sense of dread, having to go to a public bathroom. I could even make small talk at the sink or the mirror. And as my transition is essentially done, and I’m an activist, I’m just not worried about being confronted in the rare chance someone guesses what I am and decides to make a fuss.

Pretty much all of my strongly gender-binary transgender acquaintances have given similar sentiments. One told me of how for more than a decade she would walk across the corporate campus to use the single-stall unisex bathroom, rather than the men’s room just 50 feet from her cubicle. Even in the winter, snow, rain, etc.

People who are not so gender binary do not have the same issues of course. Similar, but not as strong.

[phantom_lamb]

I agree OP that those would be the “unintended” consequences but I guess for them it’s worth it cause they get to force trans women into the men’s bathroom and all the discomfort (and potential danger) that would cause them.

The whole thing is just disgraceful and infuriating, to be happening in a 21st century democracy that tries to be an example for human rights to other parts of the world.

[Left_Hand_of_Dorkness]

So, serious question, either to attorneys or to experts in trans issues: what legal penalties could a trans person face for going into the bathroom of their gender identity in a government building in North Carolina? I’m not seeing anything mentioned in the law itself, but there may be implications as it relates to other laws. Would this be better in GQ?

[RivkahChaya]

@spamforbrains

Watching women wash their hands is oh so exciting.

I have a friend who once said that “No matter what it is, somewhere, it’s someone’s fetish.” There are probably people who get off solely on just transgressing the space. They need really firm rules to prevent themselves from doing it. When you start to loosen things up to include trans people, they worry they won’t be able to contain themselves anymore. You know, it’s kinda the same mentality that puts women in burqas so that men won’t look at them and get excited.