Once again: How many people do you drag into that bathroom stall with you when you take a dump?
Don’t ask me. Ask everyone else. See what they think when you suggest that their desire for gender privacy in bathrooms is akin to hatred and bigotry. See how many people laugh at you. See how they react when you suggest that we end gendered bathrooms and you tell them your standards of privacy should prevail over theirs.
As for me, I don’t want to share a bathroom with anyone, male or female. But that’s just me.
P.S.
This was you agreeing that your logic fit my statement, was it not?
Thinking about it, I believe I would prefer to use the women’s room simply because women are less likely to try to rob me while my trousers are around my ankles.
Wait, what? How is it reasonable that people should not be forced to see naked people in a bath or changing room, but they should be forced to see naked people on any/every public beach?
You’re obviously not married. 
So you oppose all laws against nudity in public?
Maybe I misunderstood your question, or you mis-stated it – you said "What about the objections of those who, when they know that a transgender person is transgender, are uncomfortable with that? Is that not a “need?”
I took that to mean “What about those with a need to be separated from transgender people?”. Did you intend the question to mean something else? If so, please try to restate it.
Wrong again. 29 years to the same woman. She has the patience of a saint.
I guess I’ll see things like that when I say things like that and they respond for themselves. :rolleyes:
I’m not sure this supposed “devil’s advocate” position you’re putting forth is really necessary. If this was as big a problem as you’ve been projecting, I’m sure that those that actually had the concerns you’ve brought up would post in this thread.
For those who support self-identified transwomen using the women’s room, imagine this. You’re a man traveling with your 12-year-old daughter at night. You stop so she can use the ladies’ room at a rest stop. A large, unkempt man follows her into the bathroom. If questioned he will say he’s a butch transwoman. You can’t go in there because you’re an honest self-identified man. Are you okay with that? Is it wrong for anyone to be concerned in that scenario? Does it mean they’re a hateful bigot? Same goes for the locker room at the pool or gym.
Do you really think there aren’t perverts who would take advantage of being allowed into women’s restrooms? Transgendered people are rare; there are more perverts in the world than transwomen. There are guys who get off on women urinating. Do you want a man in the stall next to you masturbating while he listens to you piss?
You don’t think there are safety issues with letting men into bathrooms with women? How are you going to stop women from being assaulted? You can’t put security cameras in the bathroom.
I don’t think people should be forced to look at naked people against their will at all, and thank goodness there are laws against it. For that matter, thank goodness we have necks that turn.
But there are, and always will be, private and individual restrooms and changing rooms. No one, to the best of my knowledge, is advocating *forcing *anyone to share a stall with anyone else when they pee, or even when they change clothes. That’s why I think comparing bathroom access to mandating all-nude beaches to be a silly and specious analogy.
Now, I personally think that being concerned about what other bodies look like–and particularly what their genitals look like–is ridiculous, and I personally believe that our societal hangups about nudity are corrosive, and I personally think that the difference between a banana hammock or two-pasties-and-a-g-string and nudity is essentially nil. So I personally think that there should not be any restrictions on clothing at public beaches. I also personally believe that anti-nudity laws in general are wrongheaded, not to mention disproportionately and oppressively directed at women.
But that’s all beside the point, I think, which is simply this: we should not bar woman from using facilities intended for women, and we should not bar men from using facilities intended for men. Regardless of what their plumbing happens to be.
Also,
Yeah, that’s a cute game. Have fun with it.
If I was concerned about some suspicious person like that, I would bring my daughter into the men’s room with me, or wait until the ladies room was empty before sending in my daughter. If the suspicious person followed my daughter in, I’d go in there with them, whatever the rules were with regards to transgender people. It’s not wrong to be concerned in such a situation, but it is wrong to require transgender people to suffer indignities just because there’s a miniscule chance at some point that someone might lie. Hell, even without transgender “rights” to using the bathroom, your scenario could occur. Transgender rights don’t enable bad people to do bad things that they couldn’t already do.
This can occur with or without any transgender rights issues, and it would be against public indecency and assault laws with or without transgender rights issues.
Minimize assault risks the same ways we do now – with good lighting, criminal prosecution, law enforcement, etc. Women have been assaulted in bathrooms in the past, and transgender rights won’t change this. If someone is determined to hurt women, this doesn’t make it any easier, and restricting transgender people from using the bathrooms they correspond with doesn’t make it any harder to hurt women.
It’s not illegal for a man to enter a woman’s restroom now. But they’ll probably attract a lot of attention and security will come and drag them away.
Making it so that people born with vaginas must use the women’s restroom no matter what their gender now makes it even easier for the perverts. They go in with their beards and chest hair and, if questioned, say they were born with vaginas. They’re following the law. No ruckus, no security. It’s an all you can wank buffet.
THAT’S the really illogical thing here. These proposed laws make it easier, not harder, for perverts to get in the “wrong” bathroom than our current convention, while simultaneously sending women ( who were born with penises) who look better in a bikini than I do into the men’s room to be raped there. It’s stupid on every level.
Face it, no one cares if a man who looks like this uses a men’s room. We’d prefer he did, actually. No one cares if a women who looks like this uses a women’s room.
The only people that even my bigoted grandmother cares about using the women’s room are people that don’t pass well. No one gives a shit about the genitals, not really. They’re freaked out by a woman with an Adam’s apple and 5 o’clock shadow. Which are really shitty reasons to be shitty to people who are already having a tough time, and more likely than any of us to be attacked, beaten, raped, and/or killed, no matter which bathroom they go into.
Bad people have been going into bathrooms for decades (and probably much longer) to do bad things. That’s always happened and will always happen. I don’t see how transgender rights changes this.
The OP is right that we are taking the constructs of a two-gender-strictly-by-plumbing world and trying to adapt it to a much more complicated understanding of gender, and the fixes are not always neat or elegant.
But we are also looking at one real problem (transgender people need to pee somewhere) and one fake problem.
The real problem is a pretty big one-- using the “wrong” bathroom is at best embarrassing and at worse exposes you to life-threatening violence. It’s a problem that transgender people have to navigate every time they go out. I’ve known at least one person who usually chose to stay in because of the hassle.
It’s a real and immediate impediment to living an ordinary life. This isn’t coming up because transgender people are just being stubborn and want to inflict themselves on every mundane aspect of the world. This is something that affects people significantly on a daily basis, and would alleviate a lot of needless suffering to fix. They aren’t just trying to make a point on this one. It’s a real problem.
The other problem is, well, fake.
So yes, the current solution isn’t really a perfectly consistent one, and it doesn’t solve the fake problem. But that’s fine because we live in reality, where we implement imperfect-but-good-enough policies all the time, and we don’t worry to much about solving fake problems.
Your daughter goes into a public restroom. This guy tries to follow her in. You’re okay with that? Because your position here is for that guy to be required by law to use the women’s bathroom.
You think there aren’t people out there who will beat a woman to death if they learn she’s got the wrong parts between her legs? What’s your solution for protecting them?
Small, well-dressed men have been known to be rapists you know.
There’s actually an iPhone app called (I think) Safe To Pee. It’s basically an app that locates gender neutral and family restrooms near you because, surprise, some trans, non-binary, and gender non-conforming people are either afraid because of others’ experiences or tired of confrontation.
There’s something called a transgender carry letter that some trans-people elect to have in case they’re hassled by the police or TSA. It’s usually signed by a psychologist or psychiatrist. It, of course, has no real legal value, but some people find it helps.
Requiring such a thing is dumb, though.
“Genetically male” is way, way more complicated than high school biology would lead you to believe. For instance, some XY people have what’s called “complete androgen insensitivity syndrome” (CAIS) in which case despite their chromosomes they produce hormones and develop almost entirely like XX women. Including having female genitalia.
I’d also like to point out that for transwomen, “just holding it” can be problematic because a common androgen blocker, spironolactone, is a diuretic. You don’t need spiro if you’ve had an orchiectomy or full-on SRS, but transwomen who elect to not have bottom surgery, and transwomen who are just coming out (and thus the least likely to pass) are even more likely to have to use the restroom out in public because of that.