This Bathroom Law Confusion

Apologies for the cut-n-paste but this is a powerful statement of the American ideal in human rights and dignity. It deserves to be left on its own.

quote:

---

This action is about a great deal more than just bathrooms. This is about the dignity and respect we accord our fellow citizens and the laws that we, as a people and as a country, have enacted to protect them — indeed, to protect all of us. And it’s about the founding ideals that have led this country — haltingly but inexorably — in the direction of fairness, inclusion and equality for all Americans.

​

This is not the first time that we have seen discriminatory responses to historic moments of progress for our nation. We saw it in the Jim Crow laws that followed the Emancipation Proclamation. We saw it in fierce and widespread resistance to Brown v. Board of Education. And we saw it in the proliferation of state bans on same-sex unions intended to stifle any hope that gay and lesbian Americans might one day be afforded the right to marry. That right, of course, is now recognized as a guarantee embedded in our Constitution, and in the wake of that historic triumph, we have seen bill after bill in state after state taking aim at the LGBT community. Some of these responses reflect a recognizably human fear of the unknown, and a discomfort with the uncertainty of change. But this is not a time to act out of fear. This is a time to summon our national virtues of inclusivity, diversity, compassion and open-mindedness. What we must not do — what we must never do — is turn on our neighbors, our family members, our fellow Americans, for something they cannot control, and deny what makes them human. This is why none of us can stand by when a state enters the business of legislating identity and insists that a person pretend to be something they are not, or invents a problem that doesn’t exist as a pretext for discrimination and harassment

​

Let me also speak directly to the transgender community itself. Some of you have lived freely for decades. Others of you are still wondering how you can possibly live the lives you were born to lead. But no matter how isolated or scared you may feel today, the Department of Justice and the entire Obama Administration wants you to know that we see you; we stand with you; and we will do everything we can to protect you going forward. Please know that history is on your side. This country was founded on a promise of equal rights for all, and we have always managed to move closer to that promise, little by little, one day at a time. It may not be easy — but we’ll get there together.

---

--Loretta Lynch, Attorney General of the United States Full text of her statement.Edited by AZPaul3, : source

Now, the above is female to male transgender, and self identifies as male. So he uses the male room. Fine.-----But what if s/he is male to female transgender, and self identifies as female. Should he be using the female room?The liberal view seems to say "Use the room of your identity". What is his/her "identity"?Moose

I'm not sure I'd call it a liberal view but rather a practical view. In real life who could really determine the answer to that question but the person involved?If I was using a public bathroom and some other guy walked in and went into a stall would I even notice? If it was a person dressed as a man why would I even notice?Would not the same hold true if it was a person dressed as a woman walking to a Female bathroom and using a stall?

Why not just make unisex bathrooms, wtih stalls containing a toilet and a pissuar (no idea on how its spelled)

An update on NC law HB2. The NBA indicated that it was unwilling to host next years All-Star game in Charlotte unless the law was changed. NC modified the law to provide a path for transgenders who have undergone surgery to have their sexual identity changed from that on the birth certificate. Essentially nobody who was opposed to the original bill considers this change to be an adequate remedy, and the NBA did decide to remove the All-Star game from Charlotte.And of course their is a gubernatorial election this year, and current Governor Pat McCrory is doubling down on HB2. Republicans are attempting to blame democrats for the loss of the All-Star game and other business that has been lost so far in response to the passing of HB2.

Do you mean make all of the bathrooms that way or are you suggesting just adding a couple of colored only bathrooms so that folks can out themselves by going there.

Make all the bathrooms that way. Problem solved. If some guy is acting inappropriate the other guys will take care of it. And you get your privacy by closing the stall door.

Minnemooseus responds to me:

quote:

---

But what if s/he is male to female transgender, and self identifies as female. Should he be using the female room?

​

The liberal view seems to say "Use the room of your identity". What is his/her "identity"?

---

Here's a thought: Why don't you ask him? Because you do know that such a person understands that he is presenting as male, yes?It's like you don't understand what being transgender means. You're dangerously close to the stupid claim that a person just wakes up one day and decides to be trans. You're denying the agency of the trans people, as if they don't understand what gender means and that a person who looks like that would somehow not understand that they are presenting as male and would go looking for trouble out of some sense of pique.That image is my argument to you, after all: That person is required by the bathroom laws to go to the women's room. So since the bathroom laws require people who present as male to use the women's bathroom as well as people who present as female to use the men's bathroom, exactly how are we going to determine if the female-appearing person in the men's room is biologically male? Are you going to do a genitalia check at the door? Have to go through a full body scanner to make sure you're packing the appropriate genitalia?Heaven forbid you're one of the people born intersex and have ambiguous genitalia.What's so difficult about trusting people to understand who they are and to behave accordingly? To not assume that people are going to cause trouble just because you're too scared to keep your mind out of other people's pants? To just mind your own business and let people pee in peace?"But what if..." Yeah, but what if monkeys fly out of your butt when you're in the bathroom. Harassment and assault are always illegal. After all, we have video of women harassing other women in the women's bathroom because they didn't think the other woman was womanly enough. Have a butch haircut? Prepare to be assaulted in the bathroom.These laws don't solve any problem. The only thing they do is force trans people into the bathroom that is opposite of the gender they are presenting which necessarily increases their risk of assault. Rather than making this safer, they are specifically, deliberately, and consciously making things worse. It guarantees that assault will increase. You've been sharing the bathroom with trans people forever and never knew. After all, it never occurred to you to ask. So why are you so scared now?

frako writes:

quote:

---

Make all the bathrooms that way. Problem solved.

---

Well, no. That would require a massive retrofit of most buildings that have multi-person bathrooms. There are requirements for the number of bathrooms that are available given the number of people in a public room (and my place of work was in violation of that) and other regulations regarding the size of the bathroom. That's why you can get away with a multi-person bathroom in a certain amount of space: It provides the ability to have enough bathrooms for the people who need them while minimizing the amount of space you have to set aside for bathrooms (and thus, you can use the other space for rent-generating space.)To insist upon single-occupancy bathrooms would require major remodels.We could, you know, just get over it. Let men use the men's room.

Not single ocupancy, unisex bathrooms, just remove te women and men sign on the door, and install some pisuars, in the women stall's, wall in the men pissuars turning them in to stalls and add toilets to the stalls. Give everyone a few years to get up to code, and watch the religious nuts screem how immoral it all is, and how a woman should not take a dump next to a man taking a dump while in fact women would love it because the line of women infront of the bathroom's would be cut in half do to the extra pissing space. Well i think the whole controversy stems from religion, where adam and eve where ashamed to be naked. I really dont get it but i visit our saunas and spas regulary and everyone is naked there women men, and apart from some old geezers getting a hart attack's from sitting in saunas too long looking at naked women there are no problems. No man would start any problems for women there because there are enough sane men around to kick him in the balls if he does, it would be the same in unisex bathrooms(appart from the nakedness, and having your privacy in a stall).

That's actually way more expensive that what is needed. Men are perfectly capable of properly using the facilities in a woman's room without modification, and all men's rooms already have stalls that women and anyone else can use.

ok, so lets make it happen.

They tried that in Charlotte, but the state legislature stepped in to say that you could not do that in any government building in the entire state. I think the most serious places that are impacted are public schools, universities and technical collegesHowever, the bathroom stuff is only one part of the problem. Additionally, the bill makes discrimination against transgender and gay folks legal under state law, and prevents any local government or municipality from passing their own anti-discrimination laws/ordinances. If people are really in doubt about the intent of HB2 being to hurt folks, I recommend reading the entire bill.

Read it and weep. The bill is beyond offensive.
This bill was presented and passed by people claiming that they want to have less government and that local people should have control over local issues. Al they want to really do is legislate hate.http://www.ncleg.net/...ions/2015E2/Bills/House/PDF/H2v4.pdf

Well the right always needs people to point the finger at so, the redneck nutjobs are happy about their lives being shitty and vote for the people that make other lives shittyer.I think the best chance to overturn this law would be to get some cop to very slowly check everyone's birth certificate before letting people use the bathroom in congress. Edited by frako, : No reason given.