Inspiring as those words are, I think (and I hope I’m not just being a clueless “white moderate” by saying this) that there’s a difference between strategic and tactical timing. That is, there’s a difference between saying “hey, black people (or transgendered people), just cool your jets, we’re not ready for this yet, slow down, be happy with incremental change” and “hey, we know you’re about to do a particular specific thing, and that particular specific thing could be done either before or after the upcoming election, which is razor thin and super-pivotal… you might want to delay, not indefinitely, but until Novermber 10…”. Do you think MLK would have just utterly refused to recognize that sort of short term political consideration?
I agree, it is not a great slogan, at least not for a general national context.
The fact is, many people do “care,” at least a little, but mostly not in the backward way that the NC law frames the matter. In actual practice, people care about presentation. That’s why transfolk that look and act more-or-less typical for their identity have not been a problem for others, as a rule.
Everyone’s comfort “matters,” in the sense that the weight of public feeling makes certain courses of action more or less achievable. Certainly comfort should not override justice, in any case where there is real conflict.
In this case, it happens that upholding the ostensible preference for “not being around” people on the basis of genitals and chromosomes, is the course with the distinct practical disadvantage, relative to the traditional approach of not considering strangers’ equipment closely in public places. The majority-comfort practice is the same as that preferred by transfolk who are settled in their “binary” identity and presentation.
It is the bigots, the NC lawmakers and their peckerwood supporters, who are the weird creeps here! The rest of us were mostly using men’s rooms and women’s rooms just fine, before those assholes made a thing of it.
I don’t know. I just know that I can’t set the time table for another person’s rights.
In this case, however, it was not the Transgendered community rising up to DEMAND more rights.
It was a state government ACTIVELY denying them rights that a city had given them. It was the STATE government who made a big freakin’ deal of this. It is the right-wing who is screaming and whining about this. For the obvious reason (as pointed out above) that they are using this issue as a wedge to get votes in an election year.
lance has a very special thread dedicated specifically to this issue, so it doesn’t keep derailing threads about transgender issues. May I suggest that everyone take any further questions for him there, so this thread doesn’t, like so many others, turn into an exploration of an issue that only he seems really to care about?
Yes. Yes it would.
So now we don’t have white restrooms and black restrooms any more.
But we STILL HAVE men-only and women-only restrooms. We reject other forms of discrimination based on preference - except for one, which we still embrace.
Sure. But it’s still weird, because the right that was being denied was the right to discriminate. Saying that transgender people have the right to use a restroom of their gender and not have anyone of the other gender around is fitting them into an existing system of segregation. Imagine if someone, a long time ago, had said that biracial people should have the right to use the whites-only restroom and not be restricted to the blacks-only restroom. You’d see the larger problem.
Yeah, sorry, it happened again. I’ll quit. I do think it’s the issue that nobody is actually talking about but should, but never mind, carry on with the usual stuff that doesn’t get to the point.
But if only I cared about it, nobody else would be discussing it with me, would they?
Because the idea that it has to do with the comfort of trans people is false. Yes, it does make them uncomfortable to use the wrong restroom, but discomfort has never been the actual factor. If it were, then racists could say they were not comfortable going to the same bathroom as a black person.
The issue is bigotry and discrimination. Trans people are being singled out and being told they’re not really the gender that they present as. They aren’t being made uncomfortable–their entire existence is being said to be wrong. They have to go back to their previous gender presentation–the one causing them a mental illness.
Gender segregated restrooms require no discrimination. They are agreed to by both parties. There is not one majority forcing the minority to do what they want.
This false equivalence that you do only serves to make the anti-trans argument stronger. If it is about comfort, then why can’t people made uncomfortable about a penis matter? Because it isn’t, any more than gay marriage was about making gay people happy.
Nothing about the trans argument requires unisex restrooms. That’s not to say they won’t happen–they could. But you can fix the problem without that. In fact, it was the status quo most of the time.
Sure, but the federal government chose to issue the title 9 directive, and chose the precise timing of when to do it, which is the reason I started this thread in the first place. (And the answer may be “the situation was actively so horrible, and the federal directive was going to be so effective and so immediate, that no one could in good conscience delay at all”, but that’s not the impression I have. In particular, this seems like one of those issues where a federal directive doesn’t actually change anything, it just kicks off a very slow process of appeals and meetings and committees and ruling and so forth. But I admit to a fair bit of ignorance on the topic.)
I discuss it because your arguments make it harder for trans people to be able to use the restroom that matches their gender identity. You add an additional burden. Someone who doesn’t want unisex restrooms can use your argument as a way to say that this means they can’t budge on the trans restroom issue.
By conflating two issues, one of which has a long history of support by society, you make it harder to argue the one that only became an issue relatively recently.
I don’t want to discuss it. I want you to get past your ignorance in thinking everyone else is wrong.
I don’t think it’s a wedge issue. My guess is that the Obama admin acted based on 2 considerations:
[ol]
[li]The vast majority of ordinary people are not all that worked up one way or the other about transgender bathroom issues, and[/li][li]Social change is hard to win at the ballot, but when you ram it down people’s throats they learn to accept it and life goes on.[/li][/ol]
I think they’re correct about both of these.
[Personally I’d like to see them get smacked down in court, purely out of antipathy to their overreaching style of dictatorial government. But that’s not what’s relevant to this particular thread, I would think.]
I would think that many or most of these trans people have had reassignment surgery, and can get legally declared to be their current gender and the law would give them no trouble. The people caught in the middle are the ones who haven’t had surgery and my guess is that these don’t tend to be the “burly bearded” type.
It is bizarre to view non-binding guidelines as dictatorial overreaching.
Would conservatives prefer that the DOJ ignore the requests for guidance and simply jump straight into litigation? Or is the only non-dictatorial option to decline to enforce their view of Title IX at all?
What’s really bizarre is for you to stress that something is a “non-binding guideline” when you know good and well that it’s backed by an implicit threat to withhold billions of dollars in federal funding.
I don’t know that good and well. Educate me.
They still have a choice. Just raise taxes.
If you don’t know that good and well then you’re completely ignorant of this issue, because virtually every article on the subject mentions it. Sample:
What about future generations of transgender people? Are they not entitled to be born into a more tolerant society?
Oh, well, if a bunch of people in the media say it, it must be true.
And yet, I can’t help but wonder, how are the North Carolina schools doing with their loss of “billions of dollars” in funding when the Obama Administration declared them to be out of compliance with Title IX?
Thanks. Sorry I’m so completely ignorant. I’m probably misinterpreting your post too!
I’m not sure what you’re doing here.
As you’re probably aware, what NC is doing is going to court about it.
I don’t know if you’re really that ignorant or are playing some weird game here.
North Carolina’s law specifically mandates their criteria by what is recorded on a birth certificate, and several states either prohibit or make difficult changes to birth certificates. Although I have all forms of ID showing “F”, including my US passport, US social security, drivers license, CCW license, engineering license, foreign visas to several different countries, UK identification, etc., Kansas refuses to change birth certificates.
Some other states which claim to allow changes will also demand large amounts of documentation and bona fides, and even then will pull stunts like “losing” the applications and court orders. I have personally interviewed two women who although they’ve had all their surgeries etc. have been fighting to get their birth certificates updated in Louisiana. One was only eventually successful after she sued the state, hardly a cheap nor easy thing to do, especially since she now lives across the country.