Exactly. Kids can be huge jerks. They’ll take any excuse they can to believe that someone is different and worth ridicule. Kids are jerks even when authority figures are telling them to treat everyone fairly. It’s even worse when those authority figures are reinforcing the notion that a transgender kid is different. They already have enough to deal with, piling this on just makes things worse.
Even if that wasn’t true, it’s still “separate but equal” and that’s not acceptable.
If it was the same fountain the white mayor used, I think it would have been seen quite differently. So the analogy doesn’t hold. If there are trans students being forced to go use a port-a-potty in the parking lot, that is another story entirely.
Yes, I do believe you’re right. I also believe it’s not their prerogative to force everyone to believe they are “really” their new gender. I don’t really believe it myself, but I’m not out to “gender police” what people want to call themselves. I am however comfortable with retaining the traditional segregation of tabs and slots into different bathrooms and locker rooms, and I tend to agree it’s common sense not to force that to be changed if there is a workaround or compromise, as there appears to be.
Maybe you ought to read the words written and not imagined? When or where did I write that?
It should be obvious that the federal government’s ability to tax individuals and businesses residing in a state at a far higher level than the state itself could, since we have 50 competing states, and then use withholding that money as a stick for failing to comply with the Feds is what I meant in context with this thread. That’s how the Feds can force compliance where they don’t have constitutional authority to meddle to the degree they do.
You got it 100%. But there is also an ostracism factor too, of “oh, so-and-so is so different and weird they have to use the special bathroom.”
When I transitioned at work my company built a special single-use bathroom with a lock on the door, and as far as I know only myself and the building superintendent have keys to it. Think of it, I get a private bathroom which even the CEO of the company doesn’t have. It’s actually posh, and I thought about putting up some tasteful art on the walls, bringing in some cheap amenities from Pier 1 to spruce it up.
But…I’ve used it exactly twice, because it felt so weird and unpleasant to think I was relegated to a special room.
You’re missing the point, quite badly.
In other words, you do want to gender police.
Why don’t you answer the question so many anti-transgender people refuse to answer. I’m a 5’5" 130-pound feminine transgender person with long hair and a D-cup, who dresses as a professional business woman or typical middle-aged woman with skirt and heels. Which bathroom are you forcing me to use? Male or female; two choices, pick one.
My good friend S is profoundly intersex, and a transgender person. They don’t have a traditional “slot” or “tab” as you put it. They dress androgynously and have a gender-neutral name. They have some legal IDs which say “F” and some which say “M”. Which bathroom do they use? Two choices, pick one.
See, real life doesn’t fit so nicely into your “slot” and “tab” categories. The solution is actually quite simple, and that’s to let people determine their gender identity themselves and determine which part of the gendered world they feel most comfortable in.
I can’t see what all the fuss is about. If the facility has stalls, what difference does it make who’s in the one next to you? If you’re a male to female trans, I think your risk of getting beat up in the men’s room is several trillion times more important than some precious flower getting the vapors if the lady in the next stall has a penis.
Republicans are salivating over the chance to use this as a campaign wedge issue. They shouldn’t. There was a time when all they had to do to gin up their base to turn out and vote was to put an anti-SSM proposal on the ballot. Not anymore. Times have changed. I think the fallout will be to hurt those against restroom choice, not those who are more enlightened.
Sounds very reasonable to me.
(unreasonable person) “But then you’re FORCING me to accept people that I don’t like, and making it hard for me to treat them like shit. That’s not faaaairrr! You have to accept my bigotry!” (optional - “Because God”)
No one can force anyone else to believe anything, but someone can ask that society doesn’t make a statement about them which makes them uncomfortable. Even here, I don’t think it’s their prerogative in the sense of being an absolute right, but their discomfort - for whatever reason - is a consideration. Where I differ from many trans supporters is that I don’t think it’s the only consideration, but it’s a consideration, like the discomfort of any other person is.
I really don’t think anyone cares where someone goes if they do not possess a working penis that could be used to rape a girl. People who do possess such penises should, if forced to choose, use a men’s room IMO. But I would prefer to see compromises made as described upthread. And I have yet to hear on NPR or other news outlets about trans students being forced to use group bathrooms they don’t feel comfortable in. If that is happening, then my position is different.
One point I’ve heard proponents of these laws raise repeatedly and which no one on the liberal side ever seems to answer is what about locker rooms? That is a different kettle of fish entirely from bathrooms with stalls.
This makes me sad on many levels.
So if a person possesses a working penis that could be used to rape a girl, then you care where they use a bathroom. Because you think this person will get all rapey? Because there is greater risk of rapy-ness? Because fear of rape gives cover to discriminate? Because women are the only rape victims?
Just no.
“God made 'em that way.”
And, again, along comes the round peg in the square hole.
That statement could apply - in fact, it applies even better - to gender-segregated restrooms in their own right. If separate is not equal, then we should get rid of gender-segregated restrooms, just as we got rid of racially segregated facilities. Or else it’s not that simple.
And AGAIN.
If nobody should care who is in the stall next to them, why do transgender people care in the first place? Why not simply tell people to accept transgender people in the opposite-gender restroom instead of caring who is next to them, along with giving transgender people access to the one corresponding to their gender? Why not just declare that we shouldn’t care who is in the stall next to us and have unisex restrooms?
This debate is full of sweeping declarations that are self-negating. On a practical level and in today’s world, that doesn’t really matter - people just want to go to the bathroom. But it may matter a great deal in the future, in courtrooms and in bathrooms and locker rooms.
Try getting in drag and going to the men’s room in a biker bar and see how that works out for you. We care because trans people should be able to choose the room that gives them the best chance of not being physically assaulted or harassed.
Given that penises are used commonly in the rape of little boys, are you in favor of allowing men with these penises in the same room as little boys? If it saves one little boy from being raped, isn’t it just common sense to ban men from the men’s rooms?
And why are you in favor of having men, with penises that can rape, in the same room as transgender girls? Don’t transgender girls count enough that you care about their rape?
And women rape girls, and women too. Without the Mighty Penis.
So far the population which is about one of the least likely to rape children is the transgender population.
Now answer my question, second try. Which bathroom are you going to force me via the law to use?
You want me to go into the men’s room at 2:00am in Vegas looking like this? What bathroom do I use after I walk my cat? What about when I’m out at a bar? What do you think will happen to me in the men’s room? Something good? I’m a rape survivor (from cisgender men, whodathunkit) twice over.
I’m putting myself out here and violating my own privacy because this is an important issue, and it doesn’t just impact abstract people somewhere. It impacts people you are communicating with right here and now.
Are you serious? Right now MOST transgender students across the nation are being forced to use group bathrooms they don’t feel comfortable in. In fact, until a few years ago, I could have said 99%. That’s why this is an issue in the first place!
Then these news organizations are doing an extraordinarily poor job of finding sympathetic victims to illustrate the issue. Every time, I hear them saying that they have been told to use single unit unisex bathrooms but they chafe against this.
Indeed it is not so simple. I also think it is interesting that the same logic is not being applied to boys’ and girls’ sports. I guess because the trans civil rights groups know that this could potentially destroy girls’ sports (or certainly collegiate and professional women’s sports, where there is a financial incentive) and then they will have pissed off too large a group to get by with.
Or could it be that it’s because trans organizations are most interested in protecting trans people, and trans sports access is not causing trans people to be assaulted and threatened like a lack of bathroom access is?
And could it also be because trans people are not of one mind on sports access?
Isn’t it possible that trans people and trans organizations really just wanted to be treated decently, not have special privileges, and have no interest in harming anyone or taking away anyone’s rights in any way?
I definitely believe they want to force the rest of society to accept and acknowledge that what many of us consider a delusion is in fact every bit as real as the definition of gender we have all been working with up until recently.
If someone walking down the street wants to think they are an airplane pilot, I don’t care. If they take it to the point of getting behind the controls of a plane I am in, I start caring. Same goes for people with working penises being in the bathrooms or locker rooms my young daughter uses. Do not want.
Here’s one of those ‘dangerous’ transgender people.