That one time that someone brought home a rat and thought it was a chihuahua does not make dogs equal to rats.
There is no fundamental right to be considered something that you are not, just because it would make you feel comfortable to be considered a woman even though you have or had a penis. People with penises are not women. And there is no right to demand that others morph language to make you more comfortable or to cater to a delusion. Edit, actually there is a right to make the demand, and a right on the part of those you are making the demand of to refuse the demand.
Now if you have a penis and want to wear a dress and be sassy as fuck, you go girl, I will be right there with you and will stand with your right to be that way 100%.
As far as I’m concerned, your argument is equivalent to denying that a woman can be a doctor because doctors are men, and that’s the accepted traditional definition of a doctor. And it’s equivalent to saying something like, “If you want to put on a doctor’s outfit and play doctor, you go girl, you can pretend all you like that you’re something you’re not.”
Because the issue here is one of definition. You’re suggesting that, because you refuse to recognize that the concept of gender is changing as we get new scientific information and as our society embraces personal liberty, that people whose gender identity does not match their chromosomal makeup are pretending to be something they’re not.
That’s absurd, just as absurd as it would be to deny, based on a rigid definition, that a woman can be a doctor.
That’s what gets me, for most cases the law won’t really be enforceable. Where it will be enforceable will be for children in schools, where presumably the school knows what’s marked on any given student’s birth certificate.
And I dunno, until now this hasn’t seemed like much of a legal issue, more of a social issue. Proper bathroom etiquette, including which bathroom to use, has almost always been enforced by social cues and feedback, not by police. And whatever eventually shakes out with the current legal debacle, that will continue to be the case. I guess it’s not like this is the first law with small practical effect passed for maximum political outrage, but I’m not happy when that happens.
Except that now, the dense and the bigoted have been given cause to think they have a right to harass people about it.
This is a very idiotic and sexist argument. But of course you are arguing on a fascist, regressive message board that protects stupid arguments with moderation, so it’s no surprise to find it here in all it’s dumb ass glory.
In a time and place where a woman was unable to get the training required to be a doctor, then a woman would only be able to pretend to be a doctor.
But the very essence of what a doctor is does not have anything to do with gender. A doctor is someone who fills a* functional* role in society. There is nothing who’s definition is based on a* functional *role that a woman or a man can not be, as long as he or she can fulfill the functional role. Gender is not so restricted. Nothing a man or a woman does, or no standard that they fail to achieve or live up to, causes them to lose their manhood or womanhood. Just as a woman does not lose her womanhood if she can not or decides not to have children, or decides to be a greasy tire repair technician, no choice that she makes can cause her to be a man.
Gender is not the same as sex. Use of the word “gender” meaning “A class of things or beings distinguished by having certain characteristics in common” has been listed by the OED since 1398.
And the first definition listed in the OED for sex is “Either of the two main categories (male and female) into which humans and many other living things are divided on the basis of their reproductive functions.” This coincidentally has been found as far back as 1382.
The two have not been the same since the Hundred Years’ War. I can’t link to the entries because they’re behind my University paywall. Look it up yourself.
Like most people who want to marginalize people like me, it all comes down to an obsession with male genitalia.
Being transgender has nothing to do with “wear[ing] a dress and be[ing] as sassy as fuck.” You really don’t get it.
That’s enough, Hank. Goodbye.
And early European settlers thought bison were buffalo. That didn’t make it so.
Did anybody ask the bison?
What proof does someone need to show to demonstrate that they are a trans woman, as opposed to a flasher/Peeping Tom who has been given a chance to fulfill their fantasies with no legal penalty? I’m not talking necessarily about a teen in a small town, but someone using a pool or gym in a large city where people can be pretty anonymous and wouldn’t have to even wear women’s clothing in their own neighborhood or social circles.
The key here is “no legal penalty”. You can’t rebut that with crime statistics, because this rule would *legalize *two actions that have traditionally been characterized as sex crimes, as long as they are done in a women’s locker room. And even with the legal penalty and severe social taboo, these have been common enough crimes that we have specific names for the criminals: “Peeping Toms” and “flashers”. As with most crimes and especially sex crimes, one must assume that there is a pyramid here: some number of convictions at the tip, a larger number of arrests below that, a larger number of reports by victims below that, a significantly larger number of unreported cases below that, and who knows what number of men have a secret desire to do these things but restrain themselves out of fear of arrest, having their lives ruined, etc.
“Peeping”, especially, is a desire almost every male has had in adolescence at least. It’s even been portrayed as sort of a laughable, harmless thing in pop culture (Seinfeld and the hit movie Porky’s are two I can think of off the top of my head). But it is a crime, as it should be–and we even saw a case recently where an ESPN reporter won millions because she was secretly photographed undressing. Then there was the Sears case a couple years ago. Presumably that guy’s in prison (let’s hope!).
But now a Peeping Tom or flasher in a big city can just stick a dress in a backpack, take the subway a dozen stops away from his social group, change into the dress in a public restroom, and waltz into the gym locker room of his choice. If any woman in the locker room complains to management about his staring at them and they sic security on him, he gets huffy, blusters about trans rights, and storms out while threatening to sue.
I have a feeling people are going to try to characterize this as some sort of overly complicated Rube Goldberg scheme. But let me preempt that by again pointing out that we live in a world where men engage in practically Ocean’s 11-level planning and subterfuge to hide peepholes and cameras in dressing rooms (not to mention countless cases of men caught taking “up-skirt” photos with their phones). How is the scheme I laid out not remarkably simple and low-risk by contrast?
Is there any evidence this is commonly occurring in the many, many bathrooms around the country (and around the world) in which trans people have been welcome to use the bathroom of their gender identity for years and years? If not, I’m not particularly worried about it.
How would one gather evidence of such a thing?
And if trans people with mature, fully functional penises have been welcome to use women’s locker rooms (not restrooms!) in many places for years and years, this is news to me and I think to a lot of people. Cite?
Furthermore, even if it has been happening, I doubt it’s been publicized to the extent that the Peeping Tom and flasher crowd would have been aware of it. But it’s certainly getting publicity now.
Ultimately, you’re going to have to either shrug and say “we can’t really stop jerks from doing this in big cities” or (as I keep suggesting) start hiring a lot of carpenters to break up locker rooms into stalls (although where I swim, there’s not really room for that, so the room would have to be expanded).
Let’s assume for a moment that SlackerInc’s locker room argument has been empirically proven to a problem of equal or greater magnitude than trans rights.
Even under that assumption, HB2 and other laws like it don’t solve the problem of “pervs in locker rooms,” they just change which gender these hypothetical perverts would use as their cover. Under HB2, men being pervy in the women’s locker room can simply claim that they are transmen who were forced to use the women’s room because of their birth certificate. They still get a cover, right up until they whip out a camera or start leering at the other occupants, and then they get arrested and prosecuted under the existing laws against those actions.
Regardless of which bathroom trans people are allowed to use, it offers perverts the exact same minimal protection.
Surveys, polls, investigations, etc. I’m sure it would take work.
Non-gender-segregated locker rooms have been around for years in spas and the like in many parts of Europe.
I don’t have a cite for the US – just conversations with trans people that they’ve welcome to use ladies’ restrooms and locker rooms in some cities and communities (San Francisco, parts of NYC) for years.
I certainly acknowledge that we can’t stop jerks from being jerks, except to arrest them when they behave lewdly – but this was already true. People could already peep (if they could avoid getting caught), they could disguise themselves and go into the “wrong” locker room, they could set cameras, and the like.
I see no logical reason to believe that this would be any more common or any easier if trans people are no longer discriminated against in bathroom/locker room access. Jerks and pervs were jerks and pervs in the past and they will be in the future.
Further, without trans protection, you could easily have the “opposite” perv problem – men going into ladies’ locker rooms and insisting that, legally, they have to be there because they were born female.
Either way it’s “easy” for pervs to pervs, and it’s not harder in either situation.
My second to last paragraph is the real obvious refutation of the “what about the locker rooms and pervs?” worry that I’ve heard – with trans protection, cis-male deceitful jerks could go into the ladies’ locker room and claim to be transwomen… without trans protection, cis-male deceitful jerks could go into the ladies’ locker room and claim to be transmen (and therefore born female, so “required” to use ladies’ locker rooms).
One way doesn’t make it easier than the other to be a deceitful perv – one way just makes it easier to discriminate against and harm trans people.
What proof do cisgender men need to show before entering a men’s room that they aren’t a raging pedophile given a chance to fulfill their fantasies of seeing young boys at the urinals with no legal penalty? Remember that’s it’s overwhelmingly cisgender men who are the ones raping little boys. Can you link to the thread where you show so much “concern” over them?
As far as the rest of your fantasies over a wave of “peeping Toms” and “flashers” and “Oceans 11 technology” (:rolleyes:), many locales and jurisdictions have been transgender friendly for decades. Nothing has stopped this Mongol horde of miscreants in the past…and yet, you’ve consistently ducked the question of where have they been all this time? As well as ducking the question about the sexual threat of cisgender men towards little boys.
I get it, you’re apparently going to be allowed to post your transphobic shit on here until you finally cross some line, but you’re not fooling anyone as to your real intent. We’re “icky” and you hate and fear us. Sucks to be you.
It looks to me like you are the one crossing a line, repeatedly calling me a lying bigot. Reported.
(1) I’m not supporting HB2. I *oppose *HB2. The same people I’m debating (and the others I’m getting “likes” from) on Facebook are also seeing that I’ve been “liking” posts about various corporate boycotts for weeks now. Not only does HB2 go too far with its “bathroom” portion, it also prohibits localities from passing gay rights laws (like the one I spoke out publicly for!) and prevents people from suing if their rights are violated.
But it didn’t require HB2 or any affirmative law (AFAIU) to keep Peeping Toms and flashers out of women’s locker rooms (again, I have no interest in bathrooms) in previous years and decades. Now, we are entering a period of cultural, legal, and political flux. And I’m planting my flag in the camp of “let’s oppose HB2 and similar bills, but let’s also support legislation that bans functional adult penises in what were traditionally called women’s locker rooms but now can be called the ‘no-penis rooms’ or something that doesn’t go down a semantic rabbit hole lined with landmines”. I am being treated as some sort of radical for taking this stance, but I strongly suspect if it were polled nationally, it would get 80%+ support and a referendum limited to this scope would pass in any of the 50 states.
(2) Although I, again, **oppose **HB2, your argument doesn’t make any sense. How could they make the claim you are describing if they can’t back it up with, you know, an actual birth certificate that says what they are claiming it does? The scenario I described upthread does not require the offenders lie about anything that can be disproven. If push comes to shove, they can simply insist they are closeted transwomen who furtively went out to “stop pretending for a little while”, just as (uh oh, watch out: I’m talking about a TV show, get ready to mock) Maura on *transparent *used to do periodically over the years when she was still known as “Mort” to most of the world.
Let’s just calm down everyone. This is getting heated up all around again and I can always close it and issue warnings if it continues.