Puzzled by transgender bathroom laws.

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
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Hey Everyone!

So I’m brand spankin’ new here. I’m Mona Lisa Simpson’s roomate and Soul Sister, I’m 40 years old, I’m Canadian, I’m a Transgender woman, and I’m intersectional in a few other ways. One of those ways, is that I’m a blind woman. My eyes do not work. I touch type about 80 words per minute, and I use a screen reader to verbalize everything on the screen. I’m also a rape survivor as an adult, a childhood survivor of physical, sexual, emotional, and Spiritual abuse, I’m South Asian ethnically, but I’m Canadian born. I’m a mother of three bio kids, and several children of my Soul. I’m a lesbian, a former survival sexworker, a poor person, a recovering addict, a good cook, an artist, a writer, and about a billion or so other things.

Anyway, I have THIS to add: The biggest problem facing people, (especially trans women), in my transgender community, is NOT bathrooms. The biggest problem is suicide and homicide. Ignorant and fearful men KILL us. Especially those of us who are women, those of us who are poor, those of us of colour, and those of us most marginalized.

We ARE coming into the bathrooms that we damn well please to go into. This is not the hill any of us are willing to die on. We’re already dying in staggeringly tragic numbers. Some of us, like I said, are being killed. Almost all of those being murdered, are being murdered by cisgender men. Others are growing so despondant and feel so alone, that they are killing themselves in numbers not seen in ANY other demographic. Truth.

One last thing: The pervs are laying next to you in bed. The pervs are the men that contributed the sperm to your children. The pervs might BE your children. In my case, one of the pervs was the woman that contributed the EGG. Look out for THEM. They are the pervs you and your children need to worry about all of the time. I promise. I know a thing or two. I’ve been victimized by them far too many times, NOT to know.

Any questions, Ace? Didn’t thinks so.

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That’s fine, given that transwomen ARE NOT GUYS. THEY ARE NOT DUDES IN A DRESS. THEY ARE WOMEN.

Feigning ignorance doesn’t make any of us take you more seriously, or convince us of the legitimacy of your argument. The more you double down on this intentional slur, the more a bigot you appear.

Many of them probably have, they just never realized it.

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If you’re not comfortable with guys in the woman’s bathroom, shouldn’t you be against these transgender bathroom laws? Because they force transgender men, who not only look like men but are men, to use the woman’s bathroom.

Some people go around claiming women won’t feel comfortable or safe in bathrooms if men can openly use them, and therefore they claim that these laws will prevent women from feeling safe, but as the OP pointed out, they actually have the completely opposite effect.

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For the purposes of this discussion, it will help if we can agree on what you mean when you say “guy”. Is it:

-a person who is broad-shouldered, well-muscled, deep-voiced, and sporting a notable amount of facial hair? For example, Buck Angel, who still has the same female genitalia he was born with?

or

-someone who was born with a penis? For example, Jenny Boylan, who had her congenital genitalia surgically replaced with female bits?

Because so far it sounds like you think Buck ought to frequent the ladies’ room, and Jenny ought to be using the men’s room. Am I understanding your position correctly? If so, don’t you think that state of affairs is far more likely to raise eyebrows than the alternative?

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A lot of people share the same concerns as I do. Maybe not on this board but certainly in the real world tens of millions are concerned for the safety of their families.

Somehow a way needs to be found to separate out the sexual predators from the legitimate trans people who only want to use the restroom. I don’t know the solution. It’s going to take time for our laws and culture to catch up with this fast moving issue. It used to be simple. No men in the women’s restroom. It’s a confusing mess right now. But there are sexual predators out there that will take advantage of this situation.

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What are people doing about sexual predator men that go to the bathroom with little boys? You know, in the bathroom with the penis wagging going on.

Why has this never been a concern before?

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The American Family Association?

Never a bigger crock of shit has been spoken.

Sexual predators aren’t going into bathrooms (restrooms for you, I guess) to prey on girls or women. Why would a cisgendered man dress as a woman just to gain access to a place where people pee and defecate, AND typically only has one exit door? It doesn’t happen.

We are talking about people born with male genitalia who are honestly really female in their own identity. This has been explained over, and over, and over and yet you refuse to intellectualize it.

It’s all emotional, knee-jerk, misunderstanding at a colossal level.

More American Family Association bullshit:

Yeah, fuck every other religion: we’re right, and you’re wrong. Assholes. What century is it in America?

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How did we separate out the sexual predators from the legitimate bathroom needing people before trans people were an issue?
(The 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, etc. I don’t recall anything special being done during my youth in the 70s other than vague warnings.)

CMC fnord!

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What exactly is it that you think sexual predators will “take advantage of”? A person committing a sex crime in a bathroom is a criminal regardless of which bathroom they’re in, what their biological sex is, what their victim’s sex is, and whether they identify as cisgender or transgender. And if someone wants to enter a bathroom for the purpose of committing a sex crime, they’re not going to be stopped by a law that says they’re not allowed in that particular bathroom.

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There have been many times in which “a lot of people” have expressed concerns about social changes that have turned out to have no basis. Why should the actual hardships being faced by a discriminated-against minority be subsumed by illusory concerns?

Why? Do we insist on having a way to separate out the sexual predators from cisgender heterosexual people, who as a group present far more danger to the safety of people’s families than a tiny minority of transgender people?

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Can anyone find any hard statistics on how many people are actually sexually assaulted in public bathrooms? I can’t. This report from 2010 http://bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/fvsv9410.pdf
claims that only 10% of rapes occur in commercial places/parking garages, which MAY include public bathrooms. Most attacks seem to occur at home. The fact that no one seems to have bothered to make a record of how many attacks occur in public bathrooms seems to suggest it really isn’t a problem.
The vast majority of boys who are raped are raped by people they know well (I think the number is over 90%, even higher than the number of women who are raped by people they know well), so I doubt rapes in the public men’s bathroom are really a problem either.

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Just a note 744,800 online signatures is not tens of millions of people.

Feel free to sign on to whatever hate groups newsletter you feel like. I don’t recommend the American Family Association, they are pretty shitty at getting facts right.

I can probably find an online KKK petition to purge America of black people with more signatures. Do you think that makes their position any more valuable?

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A lot of people think Sikhs are Islamic extremist terrorists. A lot of people seem to think that Mexican immigrants are rapists. A lot of people seem to think that people speaking Arabic are dangerous. A lot of people are morons. We don’t need laws supporting their stupidity and bigotry.

It is not a new issue. Over 20 years ago at work there was a short announcement that a transgender man would use the men’s bathroom. No one batted an eye. (This was NJ, part of civilization.) If he had used the woman’s bathroom he’d stir up quite a fuss.
I would feel uncomfortable if a member of the AFA wanted to use a bathroom with me. He’d probably start spouting off his crap and I’d have to stuff his head down the toilet. Let’s make a rule about that, shall we?

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Aceplace, you have now been asked three times if you think Buck Angel should use the women’s or men’s room.

Quit ignoring the main question which is the whole point of this thread.

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And if you look at a safe-for-work pic of him and think “there’s no way he’s transgender!”, there’s plenty of documentary evidence on Google with SafeSearch off that he was born with a vagina, some of which sell quite well.

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That and he hasn’t commented on what happens to little boys using the bathroom.

And you know, it really shouldn’t matter if HE’S uncomfortable with transwomen using the ladies room. How patronizing is that? Like, “oh, those poor, helpless damsels! I must protect them!”

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Several people have pointed out these laws can’t and won’t be applied at the door. I’m not aware of anyone suggesting bathroom monitors to check gender.

These laws simply give the police a tool to use if and when a complaint is made of lewd or inappropriate behavior in a restroom. It’s similar to add on charges applied to drugs. Paraphernalia, cash, etc. The main and most important charge would be for lewd behavior or some sexual act. The bathroom law is just an additional charge. The sexual predators need to be jailed for as long as possible. imho These bathroom laws shouldn’t effect a typical trans person who simply uses the restroom.

I have no idea how to sort this issue out. Who should use which bathroom. There’s too many different circumstances.

I posted the earlier link to show the level of public concern. If people want to dismiss those numbers of petitions then fine. But I think support for these laws will grow steadily in every state.

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You still didn’t answer the question. Ace, tell us which restroom Buck Angel should use?

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He won’t answer, because he can’t. He knows damned well he’s wrong but won’t admit it.

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Since you acknowledge that we already have laws against the actual problem behavior – lewd behavior, assault, sexual assault – what exactly is the purpose of a law specifically targeting transgender people instead of predatory behavior? Why not just enforce existing laws?

Actually, I can answer that, since I know you won’t – the laws are meant to cement in the public consciousness the narrative that transgender people ARE de facto predators. Never mind that it is not true, why let facts get in the way of a good fear-mongering?

I wish I could find it now, but there’s been a tweet shared around recently that basically says that men are REALLY CONCERNED with women’s safety in bathrooms – until she reports a crime, and then she was asking for it. Truth, that.

Except that they do, because they’re designed to specifically target them.

I have no stats, but anecdotally (I am a woman, I talk to women about this stuff) predatory behavior in bathrooms is more likely to be peep holes and the like. (Regarding the linked story, the township actually had to be pressured into making a law that made peeping-tom mirrors in bathrooms illegal – after it had been reported to police intermittently for 15 years. This shows you the level of actual concern for women. Real existing problem with video evidence? Meh. Fictional problem not supported by facts? OMG EVERYBODY PANIC!!)

Are women sometimes followed around the bar, into the bathroom and attacked? Occasionally, it probably happens. But not by guys who stop to don a dress first. Thing is, these frontal-assault guys aren’t interested in stealth, they’ll just smash their way in.