watch this, let us know how you feel after
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/60-minutes-harvard-transgender-swimmer-schuyler-bailar/
I was looking for a rock video performed by a F->M transgender performer that would make your jaw drop if you knew they were born female.
I couldn’t find it, but here is a video of a F->M person who started taking testosterone. Although if you know he was born female, you can sorta see it, I don’t think anyone of us would have guessed there was anything unusual about this guy.
Safe for work, nothing that should make people squeamish.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpW6euOoud8
Also, it’s worth noting that women who start taking testosterone as F->M transitions pretty much all report turning into cads and frat-boy like assh*les (including those who were staunch feminists before taking testosterone). After about a year or two, they seem to calm down.
Testosterone is powerful stuff. Just look at the beards!
EDIT: Looks like igor also posted something on a similar vein.
Igor, so I read the transcript, it was really interesting. I don’t think it would cause me to override the concept of bathrooms by sex not gender, though.
this may be the only time i side with bs over bchad though i sense that bchad isn’t entirely committed on this issue.
since it’s much easier for a man in drag to justify why he is in the men’s washroom than it is for a man in drag to justify why he is in the women’s washroom, this tells us that the easiest solution is washrooms based on whether you’re packing or not.
another crucial point. potential sexual misconduct aside. the last thing i want to hear in life is a girl crapping her pants. on the flipside, i’m sure no female wants to hear what goes on in a men’s washroom. and i’m positive no female wants to go into the stall after most dudes do their business. men’s washrooms are gross. women’s washrooms are not so gross.
Maybe we should just have private individual unisex bathrooms/change rooms and be done with all of this nonsense. Then people can do whatever they want in peace.
I get it, but again, not everyone that is transgender alters their appearance and I don’t see these cases as justifying overriding the bathrooms by sex rather than gender rule. If anything people should just learn to understand the distinction and be comfortable understanding that the bathroom reflects sex not gender.
Doesn’t work in large venues.
Women’s restrooms are often worse because if a few try to hover it just ruins it for everyone.
You’re forgetting that I argued for “clearing up frowned upon behavior” AND “more draconian punishments for abuse”. I also said that maybe people need to go through some kind of licensing/approval process to establish that they are not abusing the rules.
Plus I agreed that I hadn’t thought about this angle enough and that there may be other ways to try to address it. All I’m really saying is that there may be other ways to address it. After all, what about all the gay and bisexual people who are perving on us when we do our business? Or the gay and bisexual women who are perving in the ladies room? Or pre-op M->F who have a bunch of testosterone in them but no outdoor plumbing?
At the end of the day, I find myself wondering “who is going to sit there and check everyone’s equipment.” It’s behavior that is the problem, not equipment. Therefore address behavior, not equipment.
I don’t think most people have thought about it like that, even if you have. People like greenman don’t want to be standing next to a drag queen in the bathroom either. And I think there are a lot more people like greenman than like you on this issue.
why is it such a big deal and why does it draw out such strong opinions? Why focus on the risk that a creep that thinks (s)he’s being clever will abuse a system rather than the people that it’s designed to help, like the situation bchad outlined. But I suppose men don’t do empathy as it’s feminine…
I don’t get why people are always so ready to comment on what is and isn’t valid about others. Like the people who insist that all gay people are wrong for saying they’ve always been gay, clearly an unrelated heterosexual person is better informed than the person themselves. So people say that they’re pyschologically a different gender than they are physically, are you really such an expert on the human brain and its response to hormones during pre and post natal development to not take that at face value?
Given that we all start out in the womb with female genitalia which then becomes male depending on the release of hormones, is it really that infeasible that over the course of human evolution things don’t end up totally binary? Even before you consider the % of the population that are born of ambigious gender, look within the ‘normal’ heterosexual population, there is clearly a huge range of masculine vs feminine hormones displayed. And I’m not talking about the culturally affected behaviours, look at things like jawline, muscle mass, bone structure etc.
tl;dr, who really gives a fuck and how can people be so certain about things they don’t have direct experience in?
Bchad, for the first point, that would have to be addressed prior to even considering approving that law in my mind. If you can create a sound mechanism to prevent abuse (which I doubt) then my concerns would be addressed.
For the second point, I don’t think it’s fair to put statements in people’s mouths that are not reflected by what they’re campaigning for. The fact remains that the people you’re refering to are campainging to keep cross dressers in their bathrooms rather than force them out. So while they may feel discomfort (we’re guessing here) then they are clearly prioritizing the practical risks I’m referring to about abuse and may be less prejudiced than you think.
Greenman has never mentioned having an issue with cross dressers in his bathroom as long as they’re the same sex so I don’t think it’s fair to put those words in his mouth.
The bolded sentence sums it up nicely. The common theme from people in favor for the most part want tunnel vision cost / benefit analysis that ignores the costs. That’s just bad social and legal policy that should have never left a freshman year sociology class.
You’re clearly not reading the responses. Nobody has an issue with anything after the first paragraph. What people do have an issue with is the risk from pervs and abuse of the law. Our city has a map where it overlays registered sex offenders on your neighborhood. That thing lights up like a Christmas tree. Sexual offenses are a HUGE problem which is why it’s getting most of the attention. Google the statistics.
The reason people are focusing on the downside is because it is VERY risky and equivalently robs people concerned over pervs of their own upside in terms of having comfort. Perfectly enforced I don’t think most have an issue with it, I just think people are getting tunnel vision when weighing the benefits.
Ok, perhaps Greenman doesn’t have an issue with drag queens peeing next to him. I agree that he didn’t specifically say that: I was guessing based on other things that he said, but admit I can be wrong on that.
However, I do think there are a lot of people who would feel that way, and that was my main point.
Also, if there are cross dressers in your bathroom, how do you know if they are using the right room, particularly if they are in a stall. This gets down to the “how the heck are you going to enforce this, without opening up a free for all for people to bash transsexuals.”
That’s why I think the room that fits your presentation should be the appropriate room. When you choose a presentation, you understand the sets of expectations for bathroom behavior that go along with it. As long as your presentation and behavior in the bathroom are coherent, there is no problem. Bathrooms are for peeing, pooping, and washing up. Most of that can be done pretty privately. We’re not saying you have to conform to gender norms of your presentation in all of society, but in a public restroom, I think you should pee, poo, and wash up in ways that conform to the expectations of your presentation. If you do anything else, well, then that’s actionable (just like it already is).
Because right now in the case where someone was lingering (based on sex), you could call a police officer who could show up and ask for ID (states sex). Problem solved. That’s how it’s enforced. Remember police enforce the laws, not people. That is why the current system works.
Again, regarding the bolded sentence I just don’t think that’s fair or valid to make that point. The fact remains that people who you’re putting in that camp are campaigining to keep crossdressers in their bathrooms by sex. So you may be super imposing your own views for lack of action based evidence.
in my mind, it comes down to the judicial system establishing reliable culpability. it’s not so much about someone sitting there checking someone’s equipment as it is, the she-dude can whip his thing out in court and say, “i was supposed to be there” whereas the she-dude creeping out women in either the “hoo-ha” or “unisex” washroom cannot definitively prove his or her sexual preference or gender identity. until there is a litmus test for sexual preference or gender identity, offering anything but sex specific washrooms is a nightmare.
it’s like a speed limit. you don’t need someone checking your speed constantly. the limit is there as a deterrant and only rarely there to actually enforce the law when resources are available and when the limit is clearly being broken. these days, it’s pretty clear cut when a dude is in the women’s washroom. do we want to make it less clear cut? and why? do i want my 6-16 year old kids going into a unisex washroom? no. do i want my 10 year old daughter going into a washroom with dudes in it? no.
It’s just so damn complex. As for me, I don’t really feel strongly so much as I’m dumbfounded on a proper solution…so I’m intrigued.
I think it’s interesting that men have been sharing locker rooms with gay guys forever and no one seems to care. But, a transgender F->M that’s attracted to women would cause an uproar in the men’s locker room (with some people).
Maybe it has nothing to do with gender or what sex you identify with. Maybe it should be by what sex you’re attracted to. Everyone that likes women uses the “men’s” restroom. Bisexuals get to use the one with the shortest line.
For the licensing question. One of the things that pre-op transexuals need to do is spend about a year or two living a life as their idenitified (i.e. new) gender, before an operation can be performed. This involves presenting themselves as their new gender, using public restrooms and such. I believe it also means taking the appropriate hormones.
Although this stage can be canceled if a person decides not to go through with it (and I don’t know how often these things get canceled), it’s not the sort of thing one can do on Sunday afternoon when you’re feeling horny and then go back to normal life afterwards. So it’s fairly involved and requires doctors, perscriptions, psychologists, etc.
It seems to me that this is enough of an investment that one could link a legal document to it that would allow people undergoing this to use bathrooms of their new gender and prohibit people who want to abuse the law. It’s not a perfect solution, since some people would presumably try to falsify a document (but face harsh charges if discovered), and it would be a bit like asking transsexual people to have to carry “their papers” with them all the time. But I think it’s something that would work.
As I said, we’ve probably shared bathrooms with more transsexual people than we are aware of already, so I’m not really sure what the big issue is.
Anyway, I’m just trying to deepen the rationale behind my thinking. I get that we are not likely to agree on this issue.
So google tells me that in the US there are apparently about 750,000 sex offenders and about 700,000 transgendered people. I don’t know what the takeaway is but figured maybe someone could think of a useful way to frame this in the debate since I already googled.
Also, apparently about 30% of internet traffic goes to adult sites based on another factoid I encountered. That was surprising.
bchad. i just looked it up. being bigender is a thing. these people can idenfity as male or female based on the given circumstance. the fact that this exists and is recognized finalizes that you cannot separate washrooms based on gender. you cannot choose to have a penis one day and a vagina the next. you’d basically have an army of sex offenders saying “i’m a man most of the time, but when i enter a women’s washroom, i’m a woman”.
This is why I think it’s how you present your gender identity that is more important than what equipment you have. Maybe the rule should be if you have male equipment, you should not display it in the women’s room (inside a stall with the door closed is ok though you should sit down on the toilet), and if you present as male, you shouln’t be in the women’s room at all.
If you present as a man but are anatomically female, you are going to use a stall in the men’s room anyway (most likely), so what is the issue there?
As I said earlier. Bathrooms are for peeing, pooping, and washing up. Keep behavior appropriate to that and the expectations of the gender for which you present, and all is good. Inappropriate behavior gets sanctioned. No one needs to know about what equipment one is using.
ADDED: Like STL, I’m more interested in this because it is complex and confusing and is a test for understanding what you are concerned about or afraid of.