Sure. It’s a public record. There’s nothing to prevent them from getting the information, just like there’s nothing to prevent them from getting a copy of your criminal record from another state.
But the problem I have is that they shouldn’t have to do that. On the one hand, shouldn’t a legitimate trans male be able to demonstrate with a card, or some notation on his driver’s license or ID card, that he has every right to be in a particular bathroom? You know, avoid the hassle and embarrassment? On the other hand, is it a good thing if we start issuing IDs to trans people? Why not tattoo it on their arms or make them wear cloth patches on their clothes?
It is a conundrum. I don’t think that either LGBTQ advocates or LGBTQphobes have the right answer yet.
It seems likely to me that there will be far fewer examples of HB2 being enforced by police than it being an excuse for civilians to badger people using what appears to be the wrong restroom. Which probably leads to non-gender-conforming people* avoiding public restrooms that aren’t single-occupant altogether.
*Not just trans people. One of my former students, a pretty butch but still obviously female (and female-identifying) young woman, had horror stories about getting booted from mall and movie theater restrooms by patrons and security guards. It made her feel like not going places where having to pee might be an issue.
This is very unfortunate and I wish I had a solution. It is obviously an unsafe situation.
My wife and I are advocates for LGBTQ, but we also understand the discomfort that the average parent might feel about the following scenario. (Keep in mind that the Charlotte, NC, ordinance specifically includes locker rooms, not just bathrooms.)
“Hello. Mr. Principal here”
“Hello, this is Mrs. Conservative. Jane’s mother. She says that she has to shower and change for PE with a 16-year-old boy named Joe.”
“Her name is Josephine. She’s a trans female.”
“Well, Jane’s just 13 years old and she feels very uncomfortable about it.”
“There’s nothing I can do. She’s completed her form XYZ123. Even had it notarized. She has every right to use the showers and locker room.”
“But he walks around without a towel or robe. Jane says he’s even…aroused…sometimes.”
“Understandable. But there’s nothing I can do.”
“What if he has a camera or cell phone?”
“I’m sure she wouldn’t do any such thing.”
“But what about that Playboy Playmate who fat-shamed that woman at the health club? SHE was taking pictures.”
“I doubt that would happen here.”
“Well, OK. But I don’t like it. He’s the son of our next-door neighbor.”
“It’s ‘she,’ Mrs. Conservative.”
You get the point. Are people uncomfortable with the idea? Sure.
I’m pretty sure the prevalent answer around here is a teenage girl who doesn’t want to shower with somebody who has an erect penis should just get over it in the spirit of acceptance or else she is a bigot.
It prescribes no penalties. No one should ever go to jail for it. Among other things, the law requires public schools and public agencies (including the University of North Carolina) to establish policies that limit bathroom and locker room use by a person’s “biological sex,” which the law defines as what a person’s birth certificate says.
If this were a criminal law, the state would have to prove that you violated it. It’s not up to you to prove your innocence. That’s not how criminal law works in the U.S. The state has the burden of proof.
It is spectacularly easy to apply the Charlotte rule – let people use the restroom they feel comfortable with. It is spectacularly difficult to apply the policies mandated by HB2. This argues in favor of the Charlotte solution. You have suggested a false equivalence where there is none.
Again, it’s not a criminal law. If it were a criminal law, I’m not sure that the officer would have probable cause to arrest you unless the officer knew what was on your birth certificate. I’m leaning towards there is no probable cause. Since the debate around this bill has made it clear that people’s gender presentation doesn’t necessarily match what’s on their birth certificate, the officer in your case does not have any particular reason to believe that you are using a bathroom that doesn’t match your birth certificate.
They almost certainly could get it. Birth certificates are public records. North Carolina could subpoena it from another state and I’d be surprised if anything in that state would stop North Carolina from getting it. If you were born in some foreign country that doesn’t want to cooperate, North Carolina might have a tougher time. Getting the birth certificate, or otherwise proving its contents beyond a reasonable doubt, would be North Carolina’s job in a trial.
This seems like the entire purpose of the rule.
What is an obviously unsafe situation? I’m really not sure what you mean here.
This simple answer is that fearful students (and fearful parents) don’t get to dictate the terms of other children’s education. Replace this scenario with white mother calling about her daughter having to share the bathroom with black people and see if you feel as sympathetic to the mother.
You are also trying to paint a sympathetic portrait of the concerned mother but look at how bad your example is. The mother is projecting on transgender people bad behavior – photographing and shaming people in a shared locker room – that was done by an apparently cisgender woman. Then this mother wants to discriminate against transgender people due to her unfounded fear of someone who has done nothing like this. So her rule does nothing to protect her daughter’s privacy against the action she describes but it does shame and ridicule someone different. I get that people who are different sometimes make us uncomfortable. The question we need to ask ourselves is why we demand that other people should be forced to live their lives in such a way as to make us comfortable.
Can you explain the discrepancy between these two statements:
[QUOTE=Tired and Cranky]
The question we need to ask ourselves is why we demand that other people should be forced to live their lives in such a way as to make us comfortable.
[/QUOTE]
I read somewhere this morning that an agreement had been reached between the state and city that Charlotte would repeal its ordinance and the state its law. Charlotte complied but now the state legislators have balked.
This hypothetical, like Mike Huckabee’s “guess I’ll shower with the girls today!” scenario, shows a pitifully low expectation of behavior for young men (or men in general).
And hey, I kind of get it. My junior high school boy’s locker room was a cesspool of sexual and other harassment. (There’s a “Freaks and Geeks” episode that depicts one aspect of this well: the scrawny nerds go to extreme lengths to avoid the strictly enforced requirement that they shower with the other boys who torment them mercilessly with no repercussions.) I shudder to think what would’ve happened to a young woman who ended up in there. If that’s your experience of how young men behave in locker rooms, being skeptical makes some sense.
But the larger point is: locker rooms and restrooms should not be places where harassment or worse are happening anyway. If that’s going on at your school or gym or whatever, you already messed up.
(Another example of how rigid gender segregation is no panacea: frickin’ Jerry Sandusky.)
It’s fair to call me out on those statements. Transgender people need to be able to choose their restroom as much for their safety as for their comfort. Transgender people are routinely threatened or assaulted in restrooms merely for relieving themselves. http://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/Herman-Gendered-Restrooms-and-Minority-Stress-June-2013.pdf This simply isn’t a risk for cisgender people. Plus, transgender people are doing nothing to cause other people’s discomfort in the restroom.
Furthermore, HB2 seems designed to create the greater possibility for confrontation where none needs to exist. Most people would probably assume that the guy with the beard belongs in the men’s room and that’s probably where he wants to be. HB2 means that a transgender man with a beard who hasn’t changed his birth certificate has to go in the ladies’ room. That’s less comfortable for everyone. But trying to institute bathroom police imposes burdens only on transgender people who simply aren’t the molesters and monsters that people make them out to be. It’s easy to beat up on the minorities. It’s been easy to do so for a long time but I like to think we’re becoming better people.
If you are uncomfortable with public restrooms unless you can control everyone who is in them, you are probably not fit to use the public restrooms at all. You can solve your problem by not using public restrooms. That’s effectively what HB2 is trying to impose on transgender people.
Superficially easy to reconcile: comfort of the individual versus (what is alleged to be) comfort of the group. “Tyranny of the majority” and all that.
This is a balancing act, like many/most issues in a free society, but if the trans individual’s options are a) use the “correct” restroom, making everyone uncomfortable and facing harassment, b) quit being trans, or c) disappear from public facilities, there’s a failure to balance individual rights/needs/comfort.
And look: this is not an unsolvable problem. Gender-neutral bathrooms with very private stalls (and, if warranted by population, a separate urinal area) are a thing we are already doing in some new buildings. The communal shower is not the only way to design shower facilities in locker rooms.
We can fix this. It’ll cost money and time (I repeat myself), sure. There will be hiccups. But it can be done, and the results will be better for everyone.
Not sure I understand how this explains the discrepancy in your statements, but I’m pretty sure that transgender people do not get to choose which bathroom they use. If a person is a transgender woman, she uses the women’s restroom. If a person is a transgender man, he uses the men’s restroom. There isn’t any choice involved.
No argument from me there. I don’t care who is in what restroom.
I’m pretty sure the scenario was about a teenage girl in a girl’s locker room. Not sure what young men’s locker room antics has anything to do with that.
If there’s a problem with harassment in locker rooms, then segregating them by sex (no matter how you define sex) won’t solve it. Heck, in 9th grade I was in an all-boys school, and I still got harassed in the locker room. My problems could nonetheless have been solved if the gym coach, and the school administration above him, had given a damn about bullying.
You make a good analogy. But it falls down in a couple areas. Gender and race are not interchangeable in all such arguments.
I’ve worked for a couple MWBE firms that had to be certified as such. We had to go through a very lengthy process to prove that the owners were both female and a minority (black). Would it be appropriate to have such a process to determine if a person is legitimately entitled to use one or other of the locker rooms? I don’t think so and I’m betting you don’t think so either.
But the other option, free access for anyone to all facilities, makes a lot of people quite uncomfortable. I understand this. As I’ve said, I don’t know the solution and I don’t really have a good response to people who might feel the way that I described in my previous post. I would sound kind of simple if I said to a teen daughter, “Sharing a locker room with trans women? That’s no different from sharing one with Chinese women.”
It is my understanding that some women do not like being stared at by men while dressing or undressing. This seems to be especially prevalent among younger women. This is the behavior that is being posited, not overt bullying.
So we’re fine with the overt bullying, but have to upend the entire system to deal with people being stared at? Not that bills like North Carolina’s stop that, either, of course, because like it or not, there’s still such a thing as homosexual people.
Tired and Cranky did you NOT see where I pointed out myself that there was no enforcement mechanism in the law? That I was making my statements on the basis of supposition that some attempt to “enforce” the law was occurring anyway (possibly based upon common law)?
I think you mean a teenage BOY in a girl’s locker room; I don’t see how you miss the point that hypothesizing a boy with a boner insisting on showering with the girls - as something that will happen even occasionally without laws like HB2 - is assuming the worst of our young men.
By the way, you said that “I’m pretty sure the prevalent answer around here is a teenage girl who doesn’t want to shower with somebody who has an erect penis should just get over it in the spirit of acceptance or else she is a bigot.”
I, for one, will raise my hand saying that your generalization does not apply to me. Maybe I’m a prude “around here,” though.
Folks keep pushing this thread out of the factual bounds of GQ and unfortunately, at this point, I think trying to steer the thread back into GQ territory is probably a lost cause.
Moving thread from General Questions to Great Debates.
