You’ve said they don’t have the right to force others to assure that they don’t have to face those feelings though.
They can’t exclude transgender people from restrooms even if they feel weird about it.
So why are you still willing to support a system where people can still exclude people they feel weird about being around? All you did was shift the weirdness legitimacy slightly. You didn’t abolish it. Stop pretending that allowing transgender people in restrooms is a big, courageous act of civil rights. It simply slightly altered existing social rules that remain arbitrary, yet rigid. If you want to impress me with your standing up to people who say they feel weird about being around other kinds of people in the bathroom, let them all in the bathroom and just have one big bathroom.
I have to say, I’ve long been bewildered at your persistence, given your complete failure to persuade another person that you’re remotely correct in your understanding of this issue or any other. But now I see that you have a remarkable ability to win arguments against fantasy people in your head. Kudos, lance! Your imaginary debate opponent sure won her imaginary debate against another imaginary debate opponent! Full marks!
The differentiation is for sinks vs toilets, and mens rooms vs ladies rooms. That some people misuse sinks, or misuse ladies rooms, doesn’t mean that the distinction is no longer useful or valid.
But that’s being deceitful (or otherwise misusing the bathroom) – it’s misuse (of the sinks, or of bathrooms – meaning pooping in the sink, or deceitfully using the bathroom that doesn’t correspond to your gender identity) that sucks.
I’m comparing misuse to misuse. Misuse of the sink vs misuse of the ladies room. That these possibilities exist doesn’t invalidate the existence of sinks vs toilets or ladies rooms vs mens rooms.
Allowing transgender people in restrooms is a big (I don’t know about courageous) act of civil rights – trans people were being threatened and harmed before, and with new practices this will be less accepted and less likely. That’s a great advancement in civil rights for trans people.
I didn’t abolish (or support abolishing) weird and arbitrary social practices, because I don’t care about those. That something is weird and arbitrary doesn’t matter to me unless it harms people – and past bathroom practices regarding trans people harmed trans people.
I tolerate gendered bathrooms because I see no likelihood in the near future of changing them, and because I don’t really care about changing them because they don’t harm people.
I don’t care about standing up to people who feel weird about being around certain kinds of other people unless people are being harmed. This is about harm. Maybe some people make bad arguments, but I’m pretty sure that I haven’t made the bad arguments that you’ve criticized, and as far as I can tell, my arguments for supporting trans access to bathrooms while tolerating the continued existence of gendered bathrooms are perfectly reasonable, rational, logical, and valid.
But some would say that transgender use of bathrooms is “misuse.” Who are you to say it’s not, but then turn around and say your idea of “misuse” is correct?
That’s a circular argument. Why is it misuse?
But why is it misuse in the first place? Says who? Your analogy sucks because you know most people agree that shitting in a sink is just wrong. Should I compare transgender use of restrooms by gender to pissing in sinks? It was once considered “misuse” but now it’s just a milder, less off-putting form of misuse?
I agree. I shouldnt’ say it that way. It’s a first step in civil rights.
You were not appointed to decide which kinds of feeling weird is harm and which isn’t.
They harm people like the woman who dresses and looks like a man that I cited. Just as our social norms about dress and appearance harm her - she was kicked out of a school prom for not wearing a dress.
So you’re saying that when a man uses a women’s room, the women in the restroom are harmed?
You’re standing up for segregated restrooms, after all.
I’m giving my opinions here, on what’s misuse and what’s not. That’s what we’re arguing about – opinions.
Do you disagree with my opinion that trans use of gender-identity-matching bathroom is not misuse, but deceitful entry into bathrooms is misuse? If not, then I don’t see a point in arguing about whether or not it’s misuse, since we agree.
Whether appointed or not, I’ll still feel free to offer my opinion.
She wasn’t harmed by gendered bathrooms – she was harmed by intolerant people. Gendered bathrooms, at least tolerant gendered bathrooms, go by gender identity and not appearance. Appearance doesn’t (or shouldn’t) matter for gendered bathrooms – people could always deceive with their appearance, and always will. That doesn’t mean that gendered bathrooms are useless or invalid, since most people prefer them and use them without enforcement because they have no desire not to.
Where did I say this? As far as I’m concerned, gendered bathrooms are neutral when it comes to harm. Gendered bathrooms (that don’t discriminate against trans people) cause no harm, and unisex bathrooms cause no harm. I’m fine with either one. I don’t favor either one. Gendered bathrooms are fine for now because society seems to favor them, they don’t cause harm, and changing them would cause problems and expense and have significant resistance while leaving them alone does not. This may change in the future – either way I’m fine with unisex bathrooms, and I’m fine with gendered bathrooms. I won’t put up a fight either way.
Hey, that’s MY post. And I’m not sure what you think I am saying in it.
Also, I think it’s cool that this same exact conversation is going on in the Elections forum. 3 or 4 different forums for the same exact topic? What’s the record?
FTR, this semi-reductio ad absurdum argument has been used by anti-transgender folks for some time. “If you are going to allow transgender women in the women’s bathrooms, then you may as well remove gendered bathrooms” is an “argument” made as far back as 2nd-wave feminism in the 1970’s, to try to persuade the audience that “well, of course we need gendered bathrooms, therefore we shouldn’t allow transgender people to use bathrooms that correspond to their gender identity.”
That, or Lance is the Caped Unisex Bathroom Avenger (a/k/a “CUBA”).
I don’t think this is it at all. I thought it pretty clear that the argument is “We don’t need gendered bathrooms anymore, since nobody will know what gender someone is anyway. Nobody should care what someone else is doing in the bathroom anyway, and that includes caring what gender they are.”
No, it’s not. Because that argument would not involve attacking everyone who says they support trans rights because they don’t also say that gendered restrooms are bad. That would not involve acting like the discomfort of bigots matters.
He keeps on trying to argue that you have to treat the two situations as equivalent. If trans people are harmed, then so are people using gendered restrooms. Even though neither side sees is as harm, he’s the arbitrator of it, and says they must be equivalent.
It’s not about “they don’t need to exist.” It’s about “it’s wrong that they exist.” That’s a different argument.
Seeing as I would not be in there, my assumption would be that she saw a trans woman and is calling her a man.
If I somehow magically knew it was a man, I guess my response would be the same as a cisgender man. I don’t really see why I’d need to treat men differently.
I guess if I could somehow tell the difference, I’d be more likely to think that a trans man was doing it as a protest I support, while a cis man was doing it for the exact opposite reason. But I don’t see what I could actually do other than call someone else to handle it.
I guess I could shout through through the door: “Ma’am, what is the ‘man’ doing? Is it something inappropriate?” But, like I said, I would assume that the “man” was a woman.
TBH, I don’t remember why I posted that, or to what response it was supposed to be and I don’t feel like going through the thread to look for it. So, thanks for the response, but you can just ignore my statement if you want
They want to safely use the bathroom. If bathrooms are gendered, then that means they want to use the one that matches their identity.
Show me any trans people that you’ve argued with that specifically have argued that gendered bathrooms should be preserved.
What? What does this have to do with what I said?
I don’t believe that this is accurate. Further, publicly outing themselves by using a separate bathroom for trans people seems far more likely to attract violence and threats than using the one that matches their identity. The safest option seems clearly to me to be allowing them to use the bathroom matching their identity, which doesn’t require them to publicly out themselves every time they pee.
Maybe, or maybe not, but I don’t care. Considering that people could always be deceptive, and there was never verification, and people used the bathroom for their gender identity because they preferred to as opposed to because they were required to, then I think it’s likely to stick around for quite a while.
This changes nothing with regards to deception, or appearances, or enforcement. All of this was possible before and will continue to be possible.
