I love this cartoon by my friend Kevin Moore:
From the Washington Post reports on what the Arizona GOP has been up to:
The original bill would have made it a crime for a transgendered person to use a bathroom other than his or her birth sex. The new bill instead seeks to shield businesses from civil or criminal liability if they ban people from restrooms that don’t match their birth sex.
It was prompted by the recent passage of a Phoenix anti-discrimination ordinance that social conservatives said prevented businesses from keeping transgendered people out of locker rooms, showers and bathrooms. Kavanagh said it would subject businesses to criminal charges and expose little children to “naked men in women’s locker rooms and showers,”
But the parade of witnesses Wednesday, many transgendered, said that was not only fear-based but just flat-out wrong.
“Search as you might there is not enough evidence that there is any risk in allowing a person with gender identity to use a restroom of their choice,” said Claire Swinford, a Tucson resident who was born a man but identifies and dresses as a woman.
In fact, she said, being dressed as a woman actually puts her at physical risk from being attacked by a man while trying to use a men’s restroom.
“What your bill attempts to do is sacrifice my personal safety for somebody else’s sense of discomfort.”
From Colorlines:
“This law not only gives business owners the right to profile and discriminate against transgender people, but encourages harmful ‘gender-policing’ of anyone who doesn’t look masculine or feminine enough,” said M. Dru Levasseur, a transgender rights attorney for Lambda Legal, in an email to Colorlines.com.
“Transgender people are targets for hatred and violence. To pass a law that carves out a license to discriminate is extremely dangerous,” Levasseur went on to say.
I think that the TG activists may be missing the unstated point of the opponents. You can’t distinguish a cisgender and transgender person at first glance. that’s good–we’re all people–but it means that it can be used as a loophole.
The unstated fear is probably that NON-transgender men will use this law to access women’s facilities (I suppose the opposite may also be an issue, but I doubt it’s as much of a fear.)
I don’t know how we can avoid policing of some kind so long as we have any attempt at segregated spaces.
G&W – I don’t think that that logic applies. Note that according to this law, you can be made to go by your birth gender, not the gender that matches your current body. So, if a transsexual man has had hormone treatment and gender reassignment surgery, he would still have to go to the female bathroom.
So the law actually makes it possible to require people who look indistinguishable from cis males to use the female bathroom. That’s just as exploitable by cis perverts as the situation without the law.
Oh, I see; I was misreading it. But the point remains: Trans activists are seeking rules that would allow a pre-surgical-transition person to use a facility which doesn’t match their sexyparts.
In a lot of these discussions, the transfolk say that it’s all about them. I think they’re missing it, a bit: it’s about the ability to generally deal with a social issue. If you can have a male body and be in a women’s area… it seems pretty clear that “just say you’re trans and it’s legal” is going to happen, no?
It’s collective punishment: they say they want to protect women and children from predators disguised as their “opposite” gender – and don’t care that these laws will affect substantially more transgendered people. It’s like frisking every young black male in a neighborhood looking for that one criminal who “matched the profile.”
Meanwhile, the laws further promote negative stereotypes of transgendered and transexual people as perverts; allow the bigoted to humiliate them in public; and do nothing to protect children from predators dressed in their “correct” gender costume.
Glad ya like the cartoon, Barry! Danke.
Is that true? I don’t think so.
Transitioned people are a small fraction of the population. (My quick google search suggests it’s under 1%. here’s one example link. http://thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/study-shows-how-many-americans-are-gay-lesbian-bisexual-transgender/news/2011/04/07/18551 )
Creepy transitioned people are even more rare because they are also a small fraction of the already-small trans population.
Creepy CIS people, on the other hand, are (relatively speaking) fairly common in a numerical sense, because upwards of 90% of the population is cis. In fact, I’d be willing to bet that there are more creepy cis people than there are NON-creepy trans people: transfolk are 1% of the population and there are more than 1% creepy people.
The problem is that almost NONE of the arrestees are, in fact, guilty. Because if there was a credible report of an armed black male mugger in a subway station wearing pick Justin beiber tshirts and you found two black males in that particular subway station wearing pink Justin beiber t-shirts, many folks would think it reasonable to frisk both.
It’s largely an issue of statistics. The problem is that it’s very difficult to make an exception for transpeople while allowing for segregation based on sex. Transfolks are an unusually small minority, so it is unusually hard for them to meet the normal standards of social tradeoffs w/r/t cost/benefit.
Kevin, this cartoon is BRILLIANT. Thank you.
Grace
But that’s been the status quo in public bathrooms in many areas for quite a while. Has it happened? How often?
I can think of ONE case where I think a self-identified trans person with male genitalia was being inconsiderate – and that case involved a locker room, not a public bathroom.
In contrast, there are TENS OF THOUSANDS of instances of trans people being harassed over using the allegedly “wrong” bathroom.
I was actually surprised it was as low as “over half,” since nearly every trans person I know has a bathroom harassment story.
Some of the harassment goes all the way to violence. Here’s one story, but it’s by no means unique:
I don’t believe the problem this law supposedly addresses – men claiming to be trans women getting away with harassing women and children in bathrooms, because trans women are allowed to use bathrooms – actually exists. This is a fake problem. Furthermore, any predator cis man who wants to go into a women’s bathroom now has an already widely-accepted excuse – “whoops, sorry, I went in the wrong door. Pardon me.” So it’s not like the fake problem this law is allegedly trying to solve (which I’d shorthand as, “predatory cis men can make an excuse if they’re caught in women’s bathrooms”), would be in any way solved by this law.
In contrast, the problem of trans people being harassed when trying to use public bathrooms, and the danger of violence to trans people, is without a doubt real. And obviously, a law that empowers people to question trans people (whichever bathroom they use) is likely to make that problem worse.
So I think Kevin is absolutely correct when he says ” these laws will affect substantially more transgendered people.” And he’s also right to say ” the laws further promote negative stereotypes of transgendered and transexual people as perverts; allow the bigoted to humiliate them in public; and do nothing to protect children from predators dressed in their “correct” gender costume.”
Yes, good point. Clearly, the problem here is that “TG activists” are “missing the point” in this very interesting jousting event with their “opponents”. (/sarcasm, for anyone who missed it.)
I am an “activist” only in the sense that I would like to have the same rights accorded to me which you take for granted, and I speak up about it. I am “activist” only in the sense that no one will ask me about my politics before they decide to stomp a mudhole in me and then stomp [me] dry when I am shopping for clothes.
The fear is not unstated. It has been stated many, many times, including every time any kind of employment protections for trans people are proposed. It’s what gets such employment protections dubbed “the bathroom bill”. It’s the reason I don’t have explicit employment protections in my state, because bigots went to the barricades to keep trans women out of women’s bathrooms, and trans people are such a minority that the NH Senate Judiciary Committee voted unanimously that the proposal was “inexpedient to legislate”. It’s part of the reason I didn’t transition earlier than I did. It’s the reason trans people don’t have employment protections in some states where LGB people have them, including New York.
It’s the reason I choose to write this, instead of catching up on much-needed sleep, because someday I’d like to be able to wake up in a world where I don’t have to hold my bladder while I avoid a public restroom. The last time I did that, in this northeastern bastion of liberal softheadedness was yesterday.
It’s why a Federal Air Marshal I know was ordered by her supervisor to leave her workplace when she needed to go to the bathroom and go to the McDonald’s a quarter-mile down the road to use the bathrooms there. Yes, a sworn officer who is trusted by our society to carry and use a firearm in a crowded airplane at 30,000 feet could not be trusted in the women’s room.
And clearly the cost of that policing should fall upon trans people, who are, as you point out, a tiny minority. Clearly, we should police them, because they’re the ones bringing their weird, trans genitals into bathrooms and then nefariously going to the bathroom in stalls where no one WHO BEHAVES APPROPRIATELY can see their genitals as Kevin’s cartoon brilliantly illustrates.
Wait! Behavior! Brilliant! We could regulate behavior! We could pass pass laws which punish people if they show their genitals to other people in public places like public restrooms, or assault other people, or threaten them! Then we could all just pee in peace.
We could do what “gun activists” all want us to do when it comes to basic rights: regulate problematic behavior and let people not engaging in that behavior go about their business.
Oh, how fun and lighthearted you make this topic! “Sexyparts”! Whee! This is all so academic and delightful!
Yes, trans people want a simple rule: use the bathroom appropriate for how you’re presenting. Since I transitioned socially, I use the women’s room. Before then, I used the men’s room. Simple.
The Arizona proposal would require this man to use the women’s room.
THAT won’t cause any consternation, especially once he whips out his birth certificate, right?
Some trans people can’t get the surgery Kavanagh wants them to get. Many of them don’t have the money, in part because people like Kavanagh fear them so much that they won’t hire them. Many of them have medical contraindications which prevent ALL surgery.
Some trans people have obtained surgery and can’t get their birth certificates changed, because their birth states refuse to do it. So Kavanagh would require a socially-transitioned woman with a vagina who was born in Ohio to use the men’s room, in perpetuity.
Some of us never received the packet of fairy dust which would enable us to transition instantly and flawlessly, the way everyone wants us to. 99% of transitions take YEARS, and if it happens at all, genital surgery is among the last steps. What does Kavanagh want trans people to do in the meantime? Hold it for a few years? In many places, a year of social presentation in the target gender is a precondition for surgery, and that includes using the right bathroom. Kavanagh would require trans people in that position to choose between three alternatives: breaking the law, lying to their doctors, or crossing state lines in order to pee.
Right, it’s about “a social issue”. It’s totally not about getting urinary tract infections because you couldn’t pee, or getting assaulted.
Is it? Mathematically, as time goes by, probability approaches 1, sure, but in actual reality it appears to be so rare that there are no reported cases of it. Can you find us an instance? Because the bathroom bigots have been looking for one, and so far they must not be able to find one, because the poor dears have had to resort to making stuff up.
Mathematically, the numbers might work out that way. (Though I don’t think that sort of analysis is what Kevin had in mind; perhaps he can clarify.) But so what if the numbers work out that way or not? It’s not relevant. There used to be a lot of people who had anxieties about sharing bathrooms with black people, too. Nowadays we do not even pity such people; we scorn them.
No, the problem is that some people think that it’s rationally okay to impose physical discomfort and danger on people like me so that they can feel comfy about the real world matching their conception of it. Who those people might be, in this comment thread, is left as an exercise for the reader.
Grace
We have a trans man at work. We’ve moved to a new facility recently. While I was at the new facility, but before the majority of employees had moved over I was in the bathroom and an employee says to me, “What are we going to do about X and the bathroom situation?”
“What situation?” I asked.
“Well, at the old building it was a single occupancy so nobody minded but here there’s multiple stalls,” he replied.
The new bathroom has two stalls and one urinal. The urinal is situated between a stall and the sink with a partition between it and the sink. When I walked into the bathroom all I could see of the employee was his back as he stood at the urinal. You cannot see genitalia in the new bathroom unless somebody is swinging them at you.
“Well as long as he identifies as male he will be using the men’s room,” I told co-worker.
Co-worker said, “A lot of people aren’t comfortable with that. You can change the plumbing but you can’t change what you are.”
“According to state law, X will be using the men’s room,” I told him.
Then I had to go find X and tell him to let me know if anybody gives him a hard time about him being in the men’s room.
Co-worker had said this to a manager earlier and that manager, thankfully, told him he’d have to speak to me.
I don’t get it. You can’t see anybody’s genitalia in the men’s room unless you grab them in the act and spin them around (in which case you get peed on). How is this uncomfortable?
I think it’s time to implement some sort of ‘upvote’ or ‘favorite’ system, so that I can show Grace’s comment the love it deserves.
Seriously.
This isn’t a fucking game. This is people’s lives.
—Myca
Jake Squid:
But, Jake, you know they’re there! Right on the other side of that partition, the part of that person’s body which you visualize! It’s right there, and heaven only knows what could happen if it got loose somehow. You think those things can’t crawl? I heard once, from a friend of a friend, about this disembodied hand? It totally freaked me out. Now every time I go into a bathroom I have to check and make sure that everyone seems to have two. Hands, I mean. Then I’m okay, and I can take a deep breath, and I can pee. But sometimes I think I hear the patter of little fingers, and I totally lock up! Sometimes I’m in there for hours, and, here’swheretheygetyou,man, here’s where they get you: while you’re in the stall, you can’t see people’s hands! I hear the patter, I’m locked up, I’m in there for hours, and, why, anyone could just leave one behind, and then, when you step out, it would be waiting for you! EVERYONE could leave one behind! EVERY TIME YOU HEAR THAT DOOR, IT COULD BE AN ADDED HAND!
OH, GOD, WON’T SOMEONE THINK OF THE HANDS?!
MYCA, … oops. Myca:
Aw, thanks, Myca. The warm fuzzies, I have them.
Grace
Grace – I don’t think you fully understand the seriousness of the situation. I mean, what if someone were to own a pair of X-ray glasses? Such a person may be unwilling to wear them out in general society, as they may accidentally get a glimpse of opposite sex genitalia. This considerate gentleman or lady would find bathrooms to be one of the few safe spaces where they can wear their X-ray specs while safely assured that they can only get glimpses of the same type of genitalia that they themselves possess, as is socially acceptable. Imagine the consternation such a person would face if a transsexual walked in. I mean, the transsexual wouldn’t be trying to creepy, but still, they might have the wrong type of genitalia under their clothes!
Now, I know X-ray glasses don’t actually exist, but who knows, one day they might be invented. I think it’s only reasonable to protect their hypothetical future owners. Come to think about it, I think this scenario justifies some more minor precautions – after all, no-one important would be inconvenienced if we just require all transsexuals to wear lead underwear at all times, right?
Grace, I don’t care if a MTF transperson uses the women’s locker room while my daughters are in there changing. That isn’t an inherent threat.
I *do*, however, care if a cisgendered male creepy person enters the women’s locker room. That IS an inherent threat. And it is something that is, in my view, well within the realm of possibility if we eliminate the most obvious way (external gender) to filter cis men out of that space. (I’m not especially concerned with the opposite. Women sneaking into men’s locker rooms seems pretty unlikely.)
Does that mean I’m ranking my daughters’ potential safety against the potential benefits to the transperson who might want to use the women’s locker room? Yes. I don’t think that’s inappropriate, though; this isn’t about fee-fees unless you also happen to hold the belief that sex segregated spaces are GENERALLY inappropriate.
If there were a way to know who was trans and who was a cis creeper, then that would be much less of an issue. In the work context or the non-public context, where you know someone well, it’s not an issue. But in the broadly accessible public context that isn’t true.
Rare commenter, frequent lurker – but I feel the need to post on this because we’re having the same debates up in Canada.
gin-and-whiskey: The problem with your argument that the creepy cisgendered male claiming to be transgender (CCMCTBTG) is indistinguishable from the non-creepy transgender female is that the two are distinguishable, regardless of appearance, by their behaviour. If the CCMCTBTG enters a women’s washroom and engages in creepy behaviour (peering over the stall walls, for instance?), that’s harassment regardless of gender identity. Surely it can be addressed without making the non-creepy transgender female who just wants to go into a stall, pee, wash her hands and leave bear the costs.
Also, since most public washrooms don’t seem to come equip with barriers that are impervious to people of the non-permitted biological sex, what on earth is stopping the creepy cisgendered guys from walking into women’s washrooms to harass people right now?
What do intersexed people do now?
(I know that’s not the same thing as being transgendered, but I wonder if there might be parallel strategies.)
I understand that many intersexed people choose (or have chosen for them) a gender presentation, and live lives that are, if not closeted, discretely inaccessible to those not sexually involved with them.
I would think – but it’s speculation, not direct knowledge – that those folks would use the bathroom that matches their presentation, and – bathroom spaces being private – nobody is ever confronted with any genitals that confound their expectations and so no direct issues arise. I don’t know how comfortable that is for the intersexed person; I imagine it is very comfortable for all the people who don’t even think about these issues, and who just assume that Frank and/or Jane are phenotypical.
It seems to me that the worries of the aiieeeee-a-transperson-in-MY-potty-aieeeee group are hugely overstated. There is a legitimate (and pre-existing) concern about people maliciously and/or intentionally violating a space that they know is not accepting of their physical gender, but such behavior is fairly rare for the very reason that its legitimacy causes other folks to take it seriously. I tell the corner cop that a big burly guy just busted into the ladies’ room and hassled my daughter, big burly guy is getting a ride in the special car. Everyody knows that.
I would tentatively suggest, therefore, the following rules:
1) Everybody uses the bathroom that they think is appropriate to them.
2) Everybody accepts that it is EXTREMELY RUDE to show anyone else your genitalia in a public bathroom situation, and agrees to not ever do that.
3) Everybody agrees that it is EXTREMELY RUDE to grab people and whip them around to check their genitalia, or to jump up and look over the dividers, etc. If it isn’t yours and you are taking measures to attempt to look at it, YOU ARE BAD.
4) People whose gender presentation does not match up positively with the bathroom that they are going to choose to use, agree to understand that strangers are likely to look at them a little bit funny and wonder what’s going on, and agree to assume the burden of having to explain, more often than would happen in a just world, why they’re going into the ladies or the gents, if they are actually asked or challenged.
5) People who are disturbed by seeing someone whose gender presentation does not match the bathroom they are in, agree to understand that their discomfort, while real, does not control the universe and that they might have to put on their big boy or big girl pants and cowboy the hell up. If their concerns reach a severe enough level, they agree to politely and in an adult manner inquire of the person whose presence troubles them, to ensure that a mistake has not been made.
6) People building or configuring bathrooms will increase the level of individual bathrooms (which are so much more comfortable anyway) whenever that is practical, and will attempt to put individual facilities in conjunction with group facilities so as to increase the variety of actually available choice.
7) People who are simply incapable of dealing with (5) and/or (6) agree that it will be their own responsibility to plan potty time that does not end up escalating into social division, and will seek out individual bathrooms where possible.
8 ) Everybody will agree to try to be nicer to one another because potty time is supposed to be a time of quiet reflection and deep inner beauty, not a political infight or culture war battlefield.
9) Everybody will agree to attempt to not hassle anyone else in the Porcelain Temple, and that the default setting for all discussions and/or arguments over the Porcelain Temple’s admittance policies will be outside the Temple, preferably over beer, the beverage of social-distance-bridging and interpersonal bonding.
@tariqata Nothing whatsoever.
I’ve never heard of a man dressing as a woman in order to harass women in the restroom (and as has been said, if it had happened, we’d have heard about it), but there have definitely been stories of cis men undisguised being creepy in the ladies room. (I don’t remember where I read one just in the last few weeks.) There’s no guard at the door, with or without genital checks.
So yeah, harassing trans* people is a nasty non-solution to a non-problem.
(Also, hear hear, Grace!)
How do you read something about harassment, assault, people not being allowed to use the bathroom at their job, and people being legally required to use the bathroom that’s going to make assault and harassment *more* likely and get “fee-fees”?
Also, before attempting to solve a problem, when you know the solution hurts people, it’s worth verifying that the problem actually exists. Does it? Anywhere, ever? Because never, in any time it’s been discussed, have I seen any mention of an actual incident where a man disguised himself as a woman to go be creepy in the ladies’ room.
Kelly – I don’t think trans-people are being legally required to use any bathroom. Business are just being protected from legal consequences if the impose a ban on them using the one that isn’t their birth sex.
Jake/Grace/Etyan – are you saying there would be a problem if the toilet facilities were more open? That seems to be the implication of your mockery, though it doesn’t strike me as actually a position you’d support.
I think your comments are incredibly crass. If people feel uncomfortable using toilet facilities with a transexual I think employers should respect that and work to accommodate this – so they can work in a comfortable environment. I don’t see how you get to decide what’s appropriate for other people. I’d remind you one of feminism main contributions to workplace law has been to place emphasis on peoples subjective comfort, rather that having third parties judge whether they’re sufficiently discomforted.
Thanks, Grace!
A trans person using the bathroom is a significantly different order of discomfort for someone else than sexual harrassment or a hostile workplace. Those are actions against a person – one sexually harrases another, one is hostile to another; but going to the bathroom in and of itself is not that kind of activity. (Of course, one can use the bathroom on another, but we are not talking about that here.) The discomfort someone feels by the presence of a trans person concerns the presence itself, the mere fact of the trans person’s being; in that, there is no difference than a white person feeling discomfort at having to share a bathroom with a black person.
If it is a public bathroom, how would one know that this rule was violated without being a peeping pervert? If it is a work bathroom AND someone is out as transgendered (like Jake’s coworker) AND a fellow employee doesn’t want to be in the bathroom with a transgendered coworker, they can wait until the transgendered colleague has done their business and left. There are tons of people with shy bladders who wait to be alone. If you can’t bear the thought of being in the same restroom as a transgendered person, just wait until you are alone. Problem solved without a law. Bonus–the person who is inconvenienced is NOT the minority member just because the majority can.
Alex,
I haven’t gotten to mockery, yet, but it may not be a long time coming. To answer your question, I wouldn’t use a bathroom that was more open. For example, at clubs/bars with toilet stalls with no doors – I don’t use those. As to whether it would be a problem if I walked into a bathroom with toilets scattered across the floor willy-nilly w/ no privacy enclosures and urinals placed in spotlighted positions not against the wall… well, I wouldn’t be peeing or pooping there but it wouldn’t upset me if I walked in and others were doing their business. I might be a tad embarrassed for them, but it’s nothing that would keep me awake at night. But, in the end, no, I’m not suggesting it would be a problem if bathrooms were more open. I’m suggesting that worrying about undefinable notmysex cooties is silly and people should just grow the fuck up. Considering all the skin I see on the front pages of National Enquirer type rags at the supermarket checkout, the mere idea of somebody with different genitals exposing them to the air in a privacy enclosure in a public restroom doesn’t seem all that horrifying. But, as always, YMMV.
No matter who is in the bathroom with me, I tend to keep my eyes averted. Occasionally someone whips out something noteworthy, but by and large I mind my own business (as it is usually quite urgent.)
Okay, so change “being legally required to” to “being required by their employers or by businesses they patronize.” That still doesn’t make “non-existent threat” trump “harassment and possible violence.”
the two are distinguishable, regardless of appearance, by their behaviour. If the CCMCTBTG enters a women’s washroom and engages in creepy behaviour (peering over the stall walls, for instance?), that’s harassment regardless of gender identity.
@tariquata: Exactly.
Jane Doh:
You don’t, which is why you have to go by other aspects of the person’s appearance. In other words, if that woman looks too masculine for your taste, you challenge her.
Once you challenge her, the process varies. In some places, she has to pinkie-swear that she has a vagina, and then everyone is good to go. In other places, you just “stomp a mudhole” in her (the Tennessee State House), or drag her away from the bathroom by her hair until you can knock her unconscious (McDonald’s in Baltimore, Maryland).
This process is imperfect, so sometimes you’ll end up throwing a cisgender woman out of the women’s room (Khadijah Farmer at the Caliente Cab Co.), but hey, you can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs. If she’d just act a little bit more feminine she wouldn’t have the problems. (Oops. Here comes Price Waterhouse. Ciao.)
Ah, but no, because they might come in after you, and then you’d be trapped in there with them. And when they leave, they might leave organs behind.
alex:
The original bill specified that it was a misdemeanor not to use the bathroom of the sex specified on your birth certificate. See my comments upthread for why that’s a problem. Kavanagh has now changed the bill to hold businesses legally harmless if they choose to police the bathrooms. In other words, he is proposing to provide legal cover to business owners who enact his bigotry for him.
Our comments were lacking sensitivity, refinement or intelligence? As I talk about how people want to bar me from using a public toilet, which leaves me with no alternative but to soil myself in public or go to the bathroom in public, I should avoid having a potty mouth?
No. Hygienic excretion is about as fundamentally basic as rights get, and a public good, to boot. It is intimately bound to human dignity. It is an issue of sanitation, of equal protection, of equal access, of public health (remember the urinary tract infections)… I could go on. The only thing more fundamental than not being able to pee is not being able to breathe.
It is ridiculous that I even have to try to express these points, and now you tell me that I’m expressing them crudely. It’s a bathroom, for heaven’s sake. We’re in there for the same reason you are.
Alex, compare that statement above to this: “If people feel uncomfortable using toilet facilities with a Mexican I think employers should respect that and work to accommodate this…”
What makes Statement #1 (yours) okay, but makes Statement #2 (hypothetical) impermissible?
So instead, they get to decide what’s appropriate for me? Because, alex, in this scenario I’m not the one seeking to control other people. I’m happy to let you pee where you want to pee, as long as I don’t have to interact with the results. You, on the other hand, are arguing that it’s okay to bar me from the women’s bathroom, proactively, because someone who vaguely resembles me by having some male-ish physical characteristics might, on some future occasion, claim to be transsexual in order to get cover for his inappropriate conduct, which is something which has never happened.
You know why it hasn’t happened? Because in the modern social hierarchy, transsexual people are lower than whale shit. Cis people claiming to be trans people are rarer than seven-legged horses. Which is also what makes us easy to scapegoat as sexual predators, or as providing cover for sexual predators when we perform basic human bodily functions, because enough people don’t give a damn what happens to us as long as they can tell themselves that their daughters are safe in the bathroom if we’re not allowed in there.
One of? You know feminism that well? What are some of feminism’s other “main contributions to workplace law”?
At my workplace, I’m a supervisor, so I’m on the hook for not only my own conduct with regard to harassment, but also that of my subordinates. So the last time we trained about harassment, I paid attention and took notes. Subjective offense is a significant factor in harassment, but it’s not controlling.
Harassment has to do with actions. Entering a bathroom is only an action in that sense if the actor does it for some other reason than using it for its intended purpose. Since EVERYONE has to use the bathroom sometimes, to say that a person cannot use the bathroom is, as Kevin pointed out, essentially an objection to that person existing in the bathroom. A woman of trans history entering the bathroom, using it the same way everyone else does, washing up, and leaving – that is not harassment, any more than it is harassment when an aging white woman does it, or an Indian paraplegic woman does it, or etc. If someone else is uncomfortable sharing the bathroom with an Indian paraplegic woman, that is not the Indian paraplegic woman’s problem; that is the phobic person’s problem.
Robert:
Same thing as everyone else – they use the bathroom appropriate to their gender presentation.
gin-and-whiskey:
If only there were a way to tell the difference between a law-abiding gun owner and a criminal with a gun.
There is a way. Watch how they behave.
Grace
(edited to correct a typo)
Exactly why I tend to use a such public restroom called “Unisex” restroom since I came out as a transgendered woman 10 years ago.
Here’s my thought about this… To say the least there’s a double standard and thankfully I don’t live in Arizona.
As a transgender woman from Indiana, I usually tend to use the unisex restroom (if one’s available), and usually use the women’s (when no one’s looking) to reflect my gender identity. However, on a more technical standpoint–until the day my Indiana ID or license says “F” for female, then and only then will I use the ladies room outright.
So my suggestion if I were a transgender woman living in Arizona I would suggest a real resolution favouring transgender individuals:
1) They can use a unisex restroom (if there is one available) without living in fear
2) FORCING businesses in Arizona to make the third UNISEX restroom in addition to MEN and WOMEN.
3) If it is absolutely necessary, be prepared to pack of tissue and two 44 ounce cups just to use the restroom behind a dumpter or where no one can see the M2F or F2M.
That is what I would do if I lived in Arizona, and currently do the same in Indiana.
As a Trans woman who is yet to begin my transition in earnest, I still use the men’s rooms or gender nuetral ones (often this means the disabled loos which get me funny looks as much as the men’s). I do this as I don’t act in “woman” mode* all the time (my dad is not too fond of me being Emily). How ever what I do feel is once I do it permantly, I likely will.
That is of course if the women’s space I enter has cubicles or something of that ilk. I don’t want women seeing the unfortunate reminder of my Sex anymore than they would. Its gross! For example, I don’t think I could use a steam room without undue attention, so I’ll avoid that possibility. Perhaps once I had a vaginolplasty (did I spell that right?) but even then I think I might worry something would go wrong.
Of course I don’t think a Law like this will protect people any better. As has already been pointed out men could always just enter a womans bathroom dress up really well anyway if the where that malicious (sounds a little Dick Dastardly to me). Next they’ll suggest Chromosone scanners just to make sure!
Also I’d like to say this is an awsome blog. I was really low today after getting Trannybashed at another Feminist blog (I think it was a Radical) and this blog cheered me right up!
Oops, sorry. I was going to add a we bit explaing the I put woman in quotes because woman mode is nothing more than me changing from men’s clothes to women’s and asking people to call me Emily. I still like cars, guns, steampunk, mecha (giant robots), video games involving the above and hate the colour pink, green is better. I don’t think that sounds like what most people would assume is “womanly.”
” I was going to add a we bit”
I believe that your expressed plan is, in fact, to subtract a wee bit.
(That’s what she said!)
I apologize for these jokes. Unless you laughed, in which case I high-five you, unless that isn’t girly enough. ;)
Oh, for fuck’s sake, Robert.
If you absolutely must attempt humor, especially at the expense of members of a group which does not contain you, kindly avoid making it about their genitals in a thread which SHOWCASES DISCRIMINATION AGAINST THAT GROUP ON THE BASIS OF THEIR ASSUMED GENITAL CONFIGURATION.
And make it a joke which we have not heard a thousand times already. Then as you beat on us you might at least come across as slightly clever.
Did you really just directly address a trans woman who is barely beginning transition in a public forum and make a joke about her penis?
NOW this comment thread contains something incredibly crass.
Removing your comment and banning you would be more generous than you deserve. If Emily doesn’t express an opinion otherwise, I’m inclined to just leave it there.
Grace
Actually, its two wee bits that get removed Robert. Its a commen misconception that the vanolplasty involves the removal of the penis, all that really gets removed is the testicles. Everything else is then reshaped into a pseudo-vagina. If the penis was removed, skin would need to be tacken from the arms or the legs leaving horrific scars. Some Trans woman who cut off thier penis in a fit of depression hence don’t have vaginolplasty surgery because of this.
Grace, thanks for leaping in, but you may have been a bit harsh. It is very easy for someone to make an unfortunate slur while trying to be witty if they are not face to face with the person. I feel really we should try to show them why the joke is harmful, and if they learn from it, good, we have another ally. Of course if (Like Suzanne Moore) they then go on a defensive and continue with such behaviour, thats when we should consider such options as you suggest.
So Robert, your move.
Emily, thank you for the information and the temperate response. I must apologize deeply for the offense I caused; my intention was a bit of wordplay, not a slur on anyone, but clearly I failed to transmit that intention along with the joke and offense was given. The error was mine and I apologize.
Grace, in the other thread which you did redact, the joke (which I won’t repeat) was intended to be the thing which you most obviously in the entire world could not be projecting. The massive cluelessness of the statement, in other words, was itself the intended punchline. Obviously, that too failed to connect.
In my own personal life I often use humor (or attempts thereat) to defuse emotional trauma or tension, even on subjects where a jocular approach is not always appropriate or appreciated by others. I have low standards for when/how I’ll find something funny, in other words, and in this case I very mistakenly applied those low standards to others who had not volunteered to adapt my approach. In my mind there was no hostile intent, in my self-centeredness I forgot that the contents of my mind are not publicly accessible, and as a result I insulted people with whom I was trying (clumsily) to bond with using humor. I don’t have the right to use your pain for that purpose, and I apologize again for both the presumption and for the emotional consequences to both of you and to anyone else who read it and was hurt.
I am very sorry.
Also, I am aware that there could be many other ways in which my comments were hurtful. I recognize that this is a topic where I do not have the answers, and am indeed still struggling to formulate basic questions. It is not Grace or Emily or anyone’s job to teach but rather my own to learn, but if anyone does desire to teach, or finds it worthwhile for their own reasons, I will respectfully listen to them.
Thank you Robert, I will admit I did snigger a little at the joke, and I do tend to have a little bit of humour around my Transsexuality and peoples views of it. The reason I think is a little out of place was because I was just saying in that post about my woman mode still being quite boyish. If I had been making jokes about my genitalia, trust me, I probably wouldn’t have cared, I’d have probably laughed more!