6 ms·

What I haven't seen discussed is the real objection going on is that NC insists you use the bathroom as defined by your birth certificate, and you can change th

What I haven't seen discussed is the real objection going on is that NC insists you use the bathroom as defined by your birth certificate, and you can change that post-op. So people think that's too onerous, so what _should_ the standard be? Should you simply file something stating you are whatever gender? Do you have to present as the gender to some degree? Who decides if you are doing it enough? Etc.

ceejayoz 11y ago
The standard should be "who gives a fuck what's in the pants of the person in the next stall?"
- juraj24 11y ago
  Most people do. Bsic decency should be maintained in human society.
  - ceejayoz 11y ago
    If you're seeing enough of a transgender person in the bathroom to be able to determine if they're pre-op or post-op, chances are you're the one violating "basic decency" by being a creeper.
- venomsnake 11y ago
  Then lets create unigender bathrooms and be done with it.
- eveningcoffee 11y ago
  I would also like to think like this but it is more complex issue. I see that there are at least 3 aspects: physiological comfort, hygiene and security. I think that your proposal falls into physiological comfort category but I am afraid that changing personal attitude does not change the other two aspects. So I would assume that women are a little better off with separate toilets in the given state of the society. Would be interesting to see any research that tries to answer these questions.
  - ceejayoz 11y ago
    Let's break that down, then. What's the hygiene threat here? Transgender people know how to use the toilet just like cisgender people do. What's the security threat here? As the now popular meme notes, at least three Republican Congressmen have been arrested for lewd conduct in bathrooms. There don't seem to be any verifiable incidents of transgender folks doing nasty stuff in bathrooms warranting these laws.
    - eveningcoffee 10y ago
      Ok, so let me try this again: "who gives a fuck what's in the pants of the person in the next stall?" The person in the next stall can be man, woman or whoever. But it actually does not matter who is in the next stall. What matters is who was before you in the stall or who wants to (forcefully) get along with you into the stall. If unisex toilets would increase the risks for people with woman physiology then I would be wary about forcing them into unisex toilets. The question of the feelings of the transgender people would be a secondary mater in this case. Now if there would be no risks then I am all for the unisex toilets as combined floor area would make them more practical.
      - ceejayoz 10y ago
        > What matters is who was before you in the stall or who wants to (forcefully) get along with you into the stall. This is already a crime, and one the new anti-trans laws do nothing to combat (unless you intend to require a birth certificate or a pat-down to enter the bathroom). > If unisex toilets would increase the risks for people with woman physiology then I would be wary about forcing them into unisex toilets. Then demonstrate that they increase the risks. As I noted, there appears to be a larger risk of lewdness in bathrooms from Republican Congressmen than transgender individuals. There's certainly no epidemic of transgender folks assaulting people in bathrooms. If anything, transgender folks are generally the ones at risk of assault.
        eveningcoffee 10y ago
        All right, just to get things straight. First of, I am not a US resident nor a citizen. Therefore I really do not care about the remarks about Republican Congressmen. Well, mostly. Second, in my comment I mostly focused on the group who are physiologically women and also address themselves as women, i.e. women. If this was not clear enough, I am sorry. I did also not mean or write that there is in my opinion an increased risk from transgender people in the case of unisex toilets or that it would increase the risk for the transgender people. I hoped that the meaning was clear enough, I am sorry again. I am also not arguing against the opinions voiced here like "transgender folks are generally the ones at risk of assault". I am not physician and I do not have any court statistics handy, but my hypothesis was that a) hygiene in the men occupied toilets in general might be worse than in women only occupied toilets and sharing a public toilet with men might raise the risk of infections for women (it is a less problem for men because they mostly use urinal in the public toilets, if this was not clear enough), b) women may be at higher risk to be sexually assaulted in the toilets shared with men (and please note, I know that this is already a crime).
coldpie 11y ago
We already have laws against harassment. What are you trying to prevent from happening? Why are those laws insufficient?
- wehadfun 11y ago
  There are laws against speeding, running red lights, drinking while driving, doing drugs, and all types of things that are done every day. Laws are not sufficient.
  - coldpie 11y ago
    Then clearly we should live in an anarchy. Like, what's your point?
    - wehadfun 10y ago
      We could outlaw using meth. But if is legal to sell, import, produce, and store meth. Then it is too easy to break the using meth law. We could outlaw getting in car accidents. But if it is legal speed, drive drunk, and run red lights. Then it is too easy to break the car accident law. My point is sure we outlaw harrasement but for those that may want to do that, allowing them to go into a room where women are alone and disrobed would make it too easy to break that law.
      - abiox 10y ago
        we should legislate that all men must be under constant video surveillance. not being on camera makes it too easy to break the law.
      - pdabbadabba 10y ago
        This prophylactic argument might be a reasonable one if there were an epidemic of transgender women (or, for that matter, cisgender men) harassing cisgender women in the bathroom. But, instead, it is virtually unheard of. The empirical evidence is that, today, the combination of informal social norms and retrospective laws against, e.g., lewd conduct and sexual assault are more than enough to discipline' people's bathroom behavior.
jwn 11y ago
The problem with that approach is that not all transgender people elect to have operations, so making that the minimum bar is unreasonable. A much more reasonable (non-fear mongering) approach is to use the gender the person identifies with. I don't know how you set that bar, maybe it's obvious, maybe it requires a note from a physician or similar. I think it would be fairly obvious to discern someone who's actually identifying with a given gender versus some guy who wishes to get into the women's restroom.
- mc32 11y ago
  It's easy, make all stalls unisex; add a separator so the urinals are not clearly visible. Or more expensively, just have individual bathrooms. As an aside, if you are ever in other parts of the world, the East, many bathrooms are open to the world -no doors, and people do alright.
  - mbarrett 11y ago
    A company I have worked for tried this, changing a few single bathrooms from M and W to unisex. The women protested because cleanliness went way down. They went back to M and W after 2 weeks.
    - mc32 11y ago
      That's because habits are hard to change. But give it time (or turnover) and it'd be fine. Have the cleaners come in more often and make sure everyone is responsible for keeping the stalls clean. Education.
- Cthulhu_ 11y ago
  > A much more reasonable (non-fear mongering) approach is to use the gender the person identifies with. The problem with /that/ would be that non-transgenders would possibly feel uncomfortable with that - which I believe, but correct me if I'm wrong, is why there's gender-segregated bathrooms in the first place. The only solution would be, as the other commenter says, to only have unisex bathrooms and to tell anyone that complains about that to fuck off.
pdabbadabba 11y ago
The answer is that there is no need for any legal standard at all. I think the problem (illustrated nicely by your comment) is that, in reality, gender is too complex and varied to be adequately addressed by this sort of legislation. While its easy enough to this sort of law to work properly 95% of the time, its hard to come up with a real legal test that doesn't leave some percentage of people marginalized and legally required to use the wrong bathroom (either because its not the one they would feel comfortable using, or also in many cases because it would make the other users of that bathroom uncomfortable). This being the case, and given a complete lack of any real problem with bathroom use today, one would think that this counsels strongly in favor of having no specific law on the subject at all, and relying instead on the usual social convention. (Bearing in mind, of course, that in the extremely rare event that someone really does stroll into the wrong bathroom for voyeuristic purposes, or to sexually assault someone, we already have laws to punish those people.) It never ceases to amaze me that people who are normally so quick to declaim against any purported intrusion into individual liberties (note that I'm not necessarily talking about you here) are happy to uncritically accept the proposition that the government should have a role in telling you which bathroom you can and cannot use.
- revicon 10y ago
  >(Bearing in mind, of course, that in the extremely >rare event that someone really does stroll into >the wrong bathroom for voyeuristic purposes, >or to sexually assault someone, we already have >laws to punish those people.) How would this work in your example? What could prevent me from saying I'm gender fluid and walk into the women's showers at the gym? If we're ready to take the step to say that there is no gender binary then we kind of have to go the whole way and flip to communal showers/bathrooms/dressing rooms etc. Reading your comment reminds me of the obscenity law debates in 1964 when Justice Potter Stewart said... "I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description ["hard-core pornography"], and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it," If we aren't ready to make the big leap to no recognized genders (which I would argue society at large is not ready for), then standards need to exist from a legal point of view in the mean time.
jmcgough 11y ago
SRS costs $20k+ and often isn't covered by insurance. Most young mtf can't afford it (assuming they even want it), so this isn't a real option. So the law basically means that a subset of the people in NC can no longer use public bathrooms, which is insane.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
return0 11y ago
I wonder what is the legal basis for having separate bathrooms at all. The separation seems to be a cultural one. Most of us have shared bathrooms with our family. What practical needs does the segregation solve ? For example, if "penis sighting in the urinal" is a "problem" that the segregation solves, then self-identified gender is irrelevant.
- ElComradio 10y ago
  This is true for bathrooms but what about locker rooms?
  - return0 10y ago
    until the day we'll all be comfortable with nudity i don't see them changing.

ceejayoz 11y ago

The standard should be "who gives a fuck what's in the pants of the person in the next stall?"

juraj24 11y ago
Most people do. Bsic decency should be maintained in human society.
- ceejayoz 11y ago
  If you're seeing enough of a transgender person in the bathroom to be able to determine if they're pre-op or post-op, chances are you're the one violating "basic decency" by being a creeper.
venomsnake 11y ago
Then lets create unigender bathrooms and be done with it.
eveningcoffee 11y ago
I would also like to think like this but it is more complex issue. I see that there are at least 3 aspects: physiological comfort, hygiene and security. I think that your proposal falls into physiological comfort category but I am afraid that changing personal attitude does not change the other two aspects. So I would assume that women are a little better off with separate toilets in the given state of the society. Would be interesting to see any research that tries to answer these questions.
- ceejayoz 11y ago
  Let's break that down, then. What's the hygiene threat here? Transgender people know how to use the toilet just like cisgender people do. What's the security threat here? As the now popular meme notes, at least three Republican Congressmen have been arrested for lewd conduct in bathrooms. There don't seem to be any verifiable incidents of transgender folks doing nasty stuff in bathrooms warranting these laws.
  - eveningcoffee 10y ago
    Ok, so let me try this again: "who gives a fuck what's in the pants of the person in the next stall?" The person in the next stall can be man, woman or whoever. But it actually does not matter who is in the next stall. What matters is who was before you in the stall or who wants to (forcefully) get along with you into the stall. If unisex toilets would increase the risks for people with woman physiology then I would be wary about forcing them into unisex toilets. The question of the feelings of the transgender people would be a secondary mater in this case. Now if there would be no risks then I am all for the unisex toilets as combined floor area would make them more practical.
    - ceejayoz 10y ago
      > What matters is who was before you in the stall or who wants to (forcefully) get along with you into the stall. This is already a crime, and one the new anti-trans laws do nothing to combat (unless you intend to require a birth certificate or a pat-down to enter the bathroom). > If unisex toilets would increase the risks for people with woman physiology then I would be wary about forcing them into unisex toilets. Then demonstrate that they increase the risks. As I noted, there appears to be a larger risk of lewdness in bathrooms from Republican Congressmen than transgender individuals. There's certainly no epidemic of transgender folks assaulting people in bathrooms. If anything, transgender folks are generally the ones at risk of assault.
      - eveningcoffee 10y ago
        All right, just to get things straight. First of, I am not a US resident nor a citizen. Therefore I really do not care about the remarks about Republican Congressmen. Well, mostly. Second, in my comment I mostly focused on the group who are physiologically women and also address themselves as women, i.e. women. If this was not clear enough, I am sorry. I did also not mean or write that there is in my opinion an increased risk from transgender people in the case of unisex toilets or that it would increase the risk for the transgender people. I hoped that the meaning was clear enough, I am sorry again. I am also not arguing against the opinions voiced here like "transgender folks are generally the ones at risk of assault". I am not physician and I do not have any court statistics handy, but my hypothesis was that a) hygiene in the men occupied toilets in general might be worse than in women only occupied toilets and sharing a public toilet with men might raise the risk of infections for women (it is a less problem for men because they mostly use urinal in the public toilets, if this was not clear enough), b) women may be at higher risk to be sexually assaulted in the toilets shared with men (and please note, I know that this is already a crime).

coldpie 11y ago

We already have laws against harassment. What are you trying to prevent from happening? Why are those laws insufficient?

wehadfun 11y ago
There are laws against speeding, running red lights, drinking while driving, doing drugs, and all types of things that are done every day. Laws are not sufficient.
- coldpie 11y ago
  Then clearly we should live in an anarchy. Like, what's your point?
  - wehadfun 10y ago
    We could outlaw using meth. But if is legal to sell, import, produce, and store meth. Then it is too easy to break the using meth law. We could outlaw getting in car accidents. But if it is legal speed, drive drunk, and run red lights. Then it is too easy to break the car accident law. My point is sure we outlaw harrasement but for those that may want to do that, allowing them to go into a room where women are alone and disrobed would make it too easy to break that law.
    - abiox 10y ago
      we should legislate that all men must be under constant video surveillance. not being on camera makes it too easy to break the law.
    - pdabbadabba 10y ago
      This prophylactic argument might be a reasonable one if there were an epidemic of transgender women (or, for that matter, cisgender men) harassing cisgender women in the bathroom. But, instead, it is virtually unheard of. The empirical evidence is that, today, the combination of informal social norms and retrospective laws against, e.g., lewd conduct and sexual assault are more than enough to discipline' people's bathroom behavior.

jwn 11y ago

The problem with that approach is that not all transgender people elect to have operations, so making that the minimum bar is unreasonable. A much more reasonable (non-fear mongering) approach is to use the gender the person identifies with. I don't know how you set that bar, maybe it's obvious, maybe it requires a note from a physician or similar. I think it would be fairly obvious to discern someone who's actually identifying with a given gender versus some guy who wishes to get into the women's restroom.

mc32 11y ago
It's easy, make all stalls unisex; add a separator so the urinals are not clearly visible. Or more expensively, just have individual bathrooms. As an aside, if you are ever in other parts of the world, the East, many bathrooms are open to the world -no doors, and people do alright.
- mbarrett 11y ago
  A company I have worked for tried this, changing a few single bathrooms from M and W to unisex. The women protested because cleanliness went way down. They went back to M and W after 2 weeks.
  - mc32 11y ago
    That's because habits are hard to change. But give it time (or turnover) and it'd be fine. Have the cleaners come in more often and make sure everyone is responsible for keeping the stalls clean. Education.
Cthulhu_ 11y ago
> A much more reasonable (non-fear mongering) approach is to use the gender the person identifies with. The problem with /that/ would be that non-transgenders would possibly feel uncomfortable with that - which I believe, but correct me if I'm wrong, is why there's gender-segregated bathrooms in the first place. The only solution would be, as the other commenter says, to only have unisex bathrooms and to tell anyone that complains about that to fuck off.

pdabbadabba 11y ago

The answer is that there is no need for any legal standard at all. I think the problem (illustrated nicely by your comment) is that, in reality, gender is too complex and varied to be adequately addressed by this sort of legislation. While its easy enough to this sort of law to work properly 95% of the time, its hard to come up with a real legal test that doesn't leave some percentage of people marginalized and legally required to use the wrong bathroom (either because its not the one they would feel comfortable using, or also in many cases because it would make the other users of that bathroom uncomfortable). This being the case, and given a complete lack of any real problem with bathroom use today, one would think that this counsels strongly in favor of having no specific law on the subject at all, and relying instead on the usual social convention. (Bearing in mind, of course, that in the extremely rare event that someone really does stroll into the wrong bathroom for voyeuristic purposes, or to sexually assault someone, we already have laws to punish those people.) It never ceases to amaze me that people who are normally so quick to declaim against any purported intrusion into individual liberties (note that I'm not necessarily talking about you here) are happy to uncritically accept the proposition that the government should have a role in telling you which bathroom you can and cannot use.

revicon 10y ago
>(Bearing in mind, of course, that in the extremely >rare event that someone really does stroll into >the wrong bathroom for voyeuristic purposes, >or to sexually assault someone, we already have >laws to punish those people.) How would this work in your example? What could prevent me from saying I'm gender fluid and walk into the women's showers at the gym? If we're ready to take the step to say that there is no gender binary then we kind of have to go the whole way and flip to communal showers/bathrooms/dressing rooms etc. Reading your comment reminds me of the obscenity law debates in 1964 when Justice Potter Stewart said... "I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description ["hard-core pornography"], and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it," If we aren't ready to make the big leap to no recognized genders (which I would argue society at large is not ready for), then standards need to exist from a legal point of view in the mean time.

jmcgough 11y ago

SRS costs $20k+ and often isn't covered by insurance. Most young mtf can't afford it (assuming they even want it), so this isn't a real option. So the law basically means that a subset of the people in NC can no longer use public bathrooms, which is insane.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

return0 11y ago

I wonder what is the legal basis for having separate bathrooms at all. The separation seems to be a cultural one. Most of us have shared bathrooms with our family. What practical needs does the segregation solve ? For example, if "penis sighting in the urinal" is a "problem" that the segregation solves, then self-identified gender is irrelevant.

ElComradio 10y ago
This is true for bathrooms but what about locker rooms?
- return0 10y ago
  until the day we'll all be comfortable with nudity i don't see them changing.