The loophole in transgender bathroom rights

[CookingWithGas]

I am 100% in favor of allowing anyone to use the bathroom that most closely aligns with how they identify their gender. I believe that transgender people pose virtually no risk to members of the sex with which they identify. That is, you are not going to have transgender men who identify as women exposing themselves to or assaulting young girls in the bathroom (which seems to be the nightmare scenario that opponents are worried about).

This leaves a loophole that could be exploited by those with nefarious purpose. It seems that this could allow a man to simply claim he identifies as a woman (maybe he even dresses like a woman) and enters the women’s bathroom. He may then assault someone, gawk at women, or just get some sort of satisfaction knowing that there’s a woman in the next stall.

My mother has a friend who was with a female friend in a restaurant or bar (this was maybe 30-35 years ago, so I don’t remember the details). There was a very tall woman who looked pretty masculine who went into the ladies’ room. These two, with insatiable curiosity, followed this person in. The person went into a stall, and a couple of minutes later, one of these woman got into the next stall and stepped up onto the toilet to look over the partition. This was unspeakably rude but what she saw was a man with a “men’s magazine” in one hand (your assumption is correct about what was in the other). I do not know what followed, whether police were called, etc., etc. I do not know if this person was transgender, transvestite, or simply trying to sneak into the ladies’ room, but if the latter this scenario could be repeated under more permissive bathroom policies.

I am not saying this loophole should prevent bathroom rights, but it is a problem.

If you support transgender bathroom rights, how do you respond to this scenario?

[Smapti]

@CookingWithGas

This leaves a loophole that could be exploited by those with nefarious purpose. It seems that this could allow a man to simply claim he identifies as a woman (maybe he even dresses like a woman) and enters the women’s bathroom. He may then assault someone, gawk at women, or just get some sort of satisfaction knowing that there’s a woman in the next stall…

If you support transgender bathroom rights, how do you respond to this scenario?

I say that someone who wants to commit sex crimes in a public restroom isn’t going to be stopped by a sign on the door, that creeping on people in bathrooms is illegal whether you’re “allowed” in that bathroom or not, and that this has completely and utterly failed to become an issue anywhere that trans bathroom rights have been acknowledged.

[Kimstu]

@CookingWithGas

transgender men who identify as women

I don’t understand this phrase. A transgender man, AFAIK, is a man who was female-assigned at birth but now identifies as a man. So what is meant by “transgender men who identify as women”?

[QUOTE=CookingWithGas]
This leaves a loophole that could be exploited by those with nefarious purpose. It seems that this could allow a man to simply claim he identifies as a woman (maybe he even dresses like a woman) and enters the women’s bathroom. He may then assault someone, gawk at women, or just get some sort of satisfaction knowing that there’s a woman in the next stall.
[/quote]

Assaulting or harassing people in a restroom is illegal now and will remain illegal no matter what legislation is passed to defend transgender people’s rights to bathroom use, so I’m not really seeing what the problem is here.

(Notice, by the way, that the absence of any transgender-rights legislation at the time in question didn’t do jack shit to prevent this person-with-a-penis from dressing in women’s clothing and using the women’s room, as I’m sure hundreds of persons with penises have been doing every day ever since, completely unsuspected by their fellow women’s-room users.)

[QUOTE=CookingWithGas]
My mother has a friend who was with a female friend in a restaurant or bar (this was maybe 30-35 years ago, so I don’t remember the details). There was a very tall woman who looked pretty masculine who went into the ladies’ room. These two, with insatiable curiosity, followed this person in. The person went into a stall, and a couple of minutes later, one of these woman got into the next stall and stepped up onto the toilet to look over the partition. This was unspeakably rude but what she saw was a man with a “men’s magazine” in one hand (your assumption is correct about what was in the other). I do not know what followed, whether police were called, etc., etc. I do not know if this person was transgender, transvestite, or simply trying to sneak into the ladies’ room, but if the latter this scenario could be repeated under more permissive bathroom policies.
[/quote]

Maybe I’m just having a Stupid Day, but once again I don’t really understand you. How is this in any way an example of “nefarious purpose” in bathroom use? At least on the part of the tall woman occupying the stall? Admittedly it was pretty nefarious of your mom’s friends to stalk her into the bathroom and even gawk at her in the stall.

Now, I agree that public restroom stalls should generally not be used for masturbation or other sexual activity, mostly because it tends to tie up the toilets for too long. And I agree that people who don’t genuinely identify as a particular gender should not pretend to be a member of that gender just so they can go into that gender’s restroom for a sexual thrill. Again, that’s a selfish monopolization of toilet facilities that other people are entitled to for more urgent needs.

However, as the example of your mother’s friends shows, attempts at vigilante “policing” of bathroom use generally end up producing far worse behavior than the behavior they’re trying to monitor. In this case, the person whose privacy your mother’s friends invaded may have been:

a) a lesbian transgender woman having a refreshing wank in the restroom corresponding to her gender identity; or

b) a cisgender man with a women’s-restroom fetish so strong that he was willing to dress in drag to sneak into those hallowed precincts for wank purposes of his own.

Either way, the person was apparently minding his/her own business in reasonable privacy and not bothering anybody else, which certainly can’t be said of the women spying on her/him.

Nonetheless, that doesn’t make the type b) behavior right. If a person doesn’t sincerely identify as a woman, then he should not try to pass as a woman in order to use the women’s restroom, especially not for sexual-gratification purposes. (Especially not if somebody else is waiting for the toilet and being delayed by the wanker’s selfish self-indulgence.)

However, IMO there’s no kind of pre-emptive policing of such behavior that wouldn’t end up being far worse than the behavior itself, as long as the man isn’t actually committing any illegal acts. Speaking as a lifelong user of women’s bathrooms, I would far rather run the minuscule risk of someday having a male women’s-restroom fetishist wanking in the next stall than tolerate a policy of subjecting women in general, including transgender women, to intrusive and humiliating screening about their “qualifications” to use the women’s room.
A final caveat: Everybody should bear in mind that there’s not a thing wrong with banging on the restroom door and loudly asking “Is anybody in there?” or “Are you okay?” if the current occupant is tying up the facilities for a long time. The prospect of irate women with full bladders pounding on the door and attracting the attention of fellow diners would probably do a lot to deter this kind of thrill-seeking behavior on the part of male women’s-restroom fetishists, if such indeed exist.

[Miller]

@CookingWithGas

My mother has a friend who was with a female friend in a restaurant or bar (this was maybe 30-35 years ago, so I don’t remember the details). There was a very tall woman who looked pretty masculine who went into the ladies’ room. These two, with insatiable curiosity, followed this person in. The person went into a stall, and a couple of minutes later, one of these woman got into the next stall and stepped up onto the toilet to look over the partition. This was unspeakably rude but what she saw was a man with a “men’s magazine” in one hand (your assumption is correct about what was in the other). I do not know what followed, whether police were called, etc., etc. I do not know if this person was transgender, transvestite, or simply trying to sneak into the ladies’ room, but if the latter this scenario could be repeated under more permissive bathroom policies.

Wow, your mom knows some shitty people.

Anyway, while I generally feel that masturbation is something that should stay at home, I’m not really seeing the crisis here. Who (other than the janitorial staff and anyone waiting for an open stall) cares if someone is masturbating in a closed stall in a public bathroom? How is this something that presents a danger or any sort of harm to anyone else? In particular, who cares what sort of genitals they’re rubbing? Would your story have been more acceptable if it turned out the person in the stall was fingering her vagina, instead of stroking her cock?

[Joey_P]

@CookingWithGas

I am 100% in favor of allowing anyone to use the bathroom that most closely aligns with how they identify their gender. I believe that transgender people pose virtually no risk to members of the sex with which they identify. That is, you are not going to have transgender men who identify as women exposing themselves to or assaulting young girls in the bathroom (which seems to be the nightmare scenario that opponents are worried about).

This leaves a loophole that could be exploited by those with nefarious purpose. It seems that this could allow a man to simply claim he identifies as a woman (maybe he even dresses like a woman) and enters the women’s bathroom. He may then assault someone, gawk at women, or just get some sort of satisfaction knowing that there’s a woman in the next stall.

My mother has a friend who was with a female friend in a restaurant or bar (this was maybe 30-35 years ago, so I don’t remember the details). There was a very tall woman who looked pretty masculine who went into the ladies’ room. These two, with insatiable curiosity, followed this person in. The person went into a stall, and a couple of minutes later, one of these woman got into the next stall and stepped up onto the toilet to look over the partition. This was unspeakably rude but what she saw was a man with a “men’s magazine” in one hand (your assumption is correct about what was in the other). I do not know what followed, whether police were called, etc., etc. I do not know if this person was transgender, transvestite, or simply trying to sneak into the ladies’ room, but if the latter this scenario could be repeated under more permissive bathroom policies.

I am not saying this loophole should prevent bathroom rights, but it is a problem.

If you support transgender bathroom rights, how do you respond to this scenario?

After checking the date on this thread…you didn’t come up with this, it’s literally the only argument the people who are opposed to all of this have.
People that have no problem about where anyone one else uses the bathroom have plenty of arguments for it, both opinion and fact based. People that don’t like it use this one, over and over and over again. Do a google image search for ‘target bathroom meme’ and you’ll find no shortage of pictures of your ‘loophole’.

Anyways, my stupid answer to that stupid loophole is that if you don’t want this person sharing a bathroom with your daughter, that means that you have no problem with this person sharing a bathroom with your daughter, right?
(FTR, the second picture, Buck Angel, is a transgender man, he was born a woman and would be forced to use the ladies room)
IOW, you can’t have it both ways…unless (as I assume the real motivator is) you’d rather all these people just used the bathroom at home and stayed out of sight and out of mind.

And, for the record, it’s always been and always will be illegal to go into the bathroom and do something nefarious and if someone really wanted to, there was never anything stopping them from doing it 20 years ago that changed now.

I don’t think there’s going to be any real problems going forward other than maybe a few people trying to make a point, such as the people that make those memes.

And @CWG, all the ‘you’ statements in this post aren’t directed at you, just the people that use this loophole as a reason for supporting bathroom bills.

[Fubaya]

@CookingWithGas

This leaves a loophole that could be exploited by those with nefarious purpose. It seems that this could allow a man to simply claim he identifies as a woman (maybe he even dresses like a woman) and enters the women’s bathroom. He may then assault someone, gawk at women, or just get some sort of satisfaction knowing that there’s a woman in the next stall.

Your loophole has always existed. I’m a man and during my whole life there has been nothing to stop me from dressing like a woman and going into the ladies room if I wanted. I don’t recall seeing anyone checking birth certificates at the door of any restroom I’ve ever been in.

I’d like to know what’s going on in these women’s restrooms that’s so sexy. Are women showering together and lathering each other up in there or something? I’ve always just assumed they’re taking a shit.

[running_coach]

@Fubaya

Y

I’d like to know what’s going on in these women’s restrooms that’s so sexy. Are women showering together and lathering each other up in there or something? I’ve always just assumed they’re taking a shit.

There are a number of documentary films about this practice available at certain websites.

[naita]

How is that a loophole in transgender bathroom rights? It’s a loophole in the current bathroom customs that lack a bathroom agent and video surveilance of every stall, but has zero to do with transgender rights.

How would you close this loophole in bathroom policing?

[Mangetout]

@CookingWithGas

I am not saying this loophole should prevent bathroom rights, but it is a problem.

If you support transgender bathroom rights, how do you respond to this scenario?

The whole scenario seems to me similar to: “If we allow people to have sharp knives for use in the kitchen, surely a bad person is going to use a knife to kill someone - and that’s, like, murder. Therefore the availability of knives for use in the kitchen causes a problem”

It’s classic misdirection. Murder with a knife is already illegal.

Indecent exposure, sexual assault and rape are already illegal. We don’t need to invent new laws to say something that is already illegal should definitely be illegal.

There’s usually not very much enforcement in place to prevent a man, identifying as a man, dressed as a man, entering a womens’ restroom and exposing himself to little girls, if he is motivated to do so, regardless of the rules or the sign on the door.

The enactment of draconian toilet laws just causes inconvenience to good, law-abiding people, at the same time as doing nothing to stop bad people.

[clairobscur]

@CookingWithGas

If you support transgender bathroom rights, how do you respond to this scenario?

Difficult to think of a solution to the scenario of people checking on strangers using bathrooms. I say : report them to the police if you notice this behaviour, what else? Maybe that after a couple stays in jail, your mom’s friends would have stopped doing so. You can’t prevent every crime, sometimes you just have have to punish people who completely lack any decency after the fact.

I do not know what followed, whether police were called, etc

Since you don’t mention that your mom’s friend is on the sex offender register, police probably wasn’t called.

I’m not even joking. The only really disturbing thing in your scenario is your mom’s friend actions. The “loophole” and “problem” is seemingly that a woman can enter the women bathroom and spy on unsuspecting women doing their business in the stalls. No, I don’t know how you can prevent that from happening, apart from having individual fully closed stalls (which, incidentally, is the norm here. I would feel uncomfortable using public not fully closed stalls, and I’m not sure why you tend to have those, so maybe that’s your solution).

[clairobscur]

these woman got into the next stall and stepped up onto the toilet to look over the partition. This was unspeakably rude

No, that was criminal behaviour.

but what she saw was a man with a “men’s magazine” in one hand (your assumption is correct about what was in the other)

This, on the other hand, was very rude.

You got it backwards.

[Left_Hand_of_Dorkness]

@CookingWithGas

My mother has a friend who was with a female friend in a restaurant or bar (this was maybe 30-35 years ago, so I don’t remember the details). There was a very tall woman who looked pretty masculine who went into the ladies’ room. These two, with insatiable curiosity, followed this person in. The person went into a stall, and a couple of minutes later, one of these woman got into the next stall and stepped up onto the toilet to look over the partition. This was unspeakably rude but what she saw was a man with a “men’s magazine” in one hand (your assumption is correct about what was in the other). I do not know what followed, whether police were called, etc., etc. I do not know if this person was transgender, transvestite, or simply trying to sneak into the ladies’ room, but if the latter this scenario could be repeated under more permissive bathroom policies.

Friend of a friend story, huh? This is one of the key markers of an urban legend. I’m not saying it’s impossible, but the key detail–where the righteous lady commits a sex crime (peeping) in order to bust the terrible dude-in-a-dress–is so implausible that I just don’t believe it happened.

If it did–well, others have addressed that as well. Hopefully the peeping woman was arrested and banned from using the lady’s room. I don’t want sexual predators like her in any restroom that my own daughters might use. But it’d be silly to say that, just because one lady is a predator who peeps on other people in the stall, we ought to ban all women from restrooms.

So I’m not sure what the moral of this urban legend is.

[PatrickLondon]

I don’t understand why you’re all getting in such a legalistic tiswas about it all. Why does the law have to used to micromanage a situation that’s likely to occur relatively infrequently in most people’s lifetimes?

[kanicbird]

I think more of a problem may be bullying, stalking, unwanted advances. Sometimes the restroom is used to get away from a uncomfortable situation that is not related to a elimination need. Someone aggressive enough may just go in and claim they identify with the opposite gender to continue their harassment.

[wonky]

@CookingWithGas

My mother has a friend who was with a female friend in a restaurant or bar (this was maybe 30-35 years ago, so I don’t remember the details).

You were told this 30-35 years ago? So this all allegedly happened when?

[Shodan]

I don’t understand this phrase. A transgender man, AFAIK, is a man who was female-assigned at birth but now identifies as a man.

I don’t understand this phrase. What is meant by “man”, “female”, or “transgender”?

Regards,
Shodan

[Fubaya]

@kanicbird

I think more of a problem may be bullying, stalking, unwanted advances. Sometimes the restroom is used to get away from a uncomfortable situation that is not related to a elimination need. Someone aggressive enough may just go in and claim they identify with the opposite gender to continue their harassment.

To fix this one in a million chance that someone is being bullied and escapes to what is essentially a dead end room with no exits or locks, we should force trans people to go into a dead end room with no exits or locks and face bullying?

This whole subject is nuts. There are no victims of trans people or straight people posing as the other gender who went into a restroom to misbehave. This is a problem that simply doesn’t exist. The only victims of anything are trans people being forced to use a restroom that doesn’t fit them. They’re the person posted upthread that looks 100% like a 50 year old man being forced to go into the ladies room by some busybody who thinks it’s their business to dictate how people shit. The only victims of this whole subject are created by those busybodies who pretend to be helping victims that don’t exist.

[ZPG_Zealot]

@Fubaya

To fix this one in a million chance that someone is being bullied and escapes to what is essentially a dead end room with no exits or locks, we should force trans people to go into a dead end room with no exits or locks and face bullying?

This whole subject is nuts. There are no victims of trans people or straight people posing as the other gender who went into a restroom to misbehave. This is a problem that simply doesn’t exist. The only victims of anything are trans people being forced to use a restroom that doesn’t fit them. They’re the person posted upthread that looks 100% like a 50 year old man being forced to go into the ladies room by some busybody who thinks it’s their business to dictate how people shit. The only victims of this whole subject are created by those busybodies who pretend to be helping victims that don’t exist.

It’s far from a one in a million chance. It’s happened to me several times and I am certain had the stalkers in question been able to claim transgendered as an excuse they would have used it. (One tried to claim he was legally blind and was therefore unable to to see the women’s restroom sign.) I favor the common sense approach based on a plain sight test that someone who is truly transgendered is probably going to put enough effort into their appearance to reasonably pass for a woman unless intrusively observed and watching people through the restroom stalls should be considered a privacy violation.

[Falchion]

@Mangetout

The whole scenario seems to me similar to: “If we allow people to have sharp knives for use in the kitchen, surely a bad person is going to use a knife to kill someone - and that’s, like, murder. Therefore the availability of knives for use in the kitchen causes a problem”

It’s classic misdirection. Murder with a knife is already illegal.

Indecent exposure, sexual assault and rape are already illegal. We don’t need to invent new laws to say something that is already illegal should definitely be illegal.

There’s usually not very much enforcement in place to prevent a man, identifying as a man, dressed as a man, entering a womens’ restroom and exposing himself to little girls, if he is motivated to do so, regardless of the rules or the sign on the door.

The enactment of draconian toilet laws just causes inconvenience to good, law-abiding people, at the same time as doing nothing to stop bad people.

I hesitate to wade into this because I don’t have any real interest in people’s bathroom habits, but isn’t this exactly the same debate as comes up in the gun rights context?

A pro gun control advocate suggests banning carrying firearms some place to protect against mass shootings.

And the gun rights proponent responds that mass shootings are illegal, that someone who wants to commit a mass shooting will ignore the law, and that it just inconveniences “good, law-abiding people.”

And the response is: waiting until the mass shooter starts shooting before we arrest him (the first time he commits a crime is when he pulls out his weapon and brandishes it) is too late because people get shot. If we ban the possession of the firearm, we can get him before he causes damage (at the expense of inconveniencing law-abiding people).

I tend to be pretty supportive of gun rights, but I think that’s a pretty good point. It’s certainly not a “misdirection.” There are a several variables: likelihood that you’re going to commit a crime; severity of the potential crime; severity of the inconvenience to non-criminals. I would wager that in balancing those in the bathroom context it would come up in favor of allowing people to use whatever bathroom they’re most comfortable with (because I think that the risk factor is very low and the inconvenience is very high). It might come out differently in the firearms context.

[Ann_Hedonia]

The real target of these laws isn’t random transsexuals who find themselves needing to pee while shopping at Target. There are a lot of variations in phenotypes, a lot of men who look very feminine and a lot of masculine appearing women and today’s fashions are often decidedly unisex. And despite right-wing male fantasies, women’s restrooms are very private places - women do their business inside a stall or fully enclosed cubicle. Despite the rather suspect story told in the OP, most people don’t notice or care. Probably it would need to be a really obvious transgression to be noticed- such as a transgender using the bathroom of the gender that they were born into.

The laws were designed to harass transgenders in environments such as schools and universities where a lot of people are aware of the transgender status of a particular person. The idea is that the other students will “keep an eye on” transgender John or Jane Doe and make a lot of noise whenever he or she uses the “wrong” bathroom, therefore forcing transgender John or Jane into an embarrassing an/or dangerous situation whenever they have to pee. I believe one such proposed regulation even included a cash bounty - a reward for turning in students for using the “wrong” bathroom-as a way of incentivizing this harassment.