The Battle for the Bathrooms

 

gender-neutral-bathroomShould you conform to the world’s reality, or should the world conform to yours?

That’s the question at the heart of the debate over transgender rights and the spate of “bathroom bills” it has spawned in cities and states around the country. Citing privacy and safety concerns, supporters of these bills want to enshrine in law something that in any other moment in human history would have been viewed as elemental common sense—boys must use the little boy’s room, girls must use the little girl’s room.

Not so fast, Bigoty McBigotface.

To the radicals behind the push to let transgender individuals use any bathrooms they like, the issue has become the latest in a long-string of valiant last stands against the intolerance and hatred of the traditionally minded. Like same-sex marriage—always less a core conviction than an effective cudgel to use against conservatives—this business of having the tiny minority of gender-confused people dictate to the rest of us how we should order society is likely to become the Civil Rights Issue of Our Time™.

Actually, it already has. In North Carolina, Governor Pat McCrory, state Attorney General Roy Cooper III, and a host of officials at the University of North Carolina have been sued in federal court over their support of a law, signed by McCrory late last week, blocking North Carolina cities from allowing transgender individuals to use public bathrooms according to their gender identities, not their biological sexes.

McCrory just elected himself Public Enemy Number One among the segment of the population that regularly uses the prefix “cis” in conversation. Huffington Post senior editor Chloe Angyal called the law’s passage “a real win … for people who would pit cisgender women against transgender women in the name of women’s safety, the people who are saying by protecting the safety and dignity of transgender people we are opening the door for sexual violence against other women.”

Here’s the thing: people are saying that because it’s true. Women and children get attacked in public bathrooms by sexual predators with alarming frequency.

Radical LGBT advocates are deliberately twisting the issue to make it seem as if politicians like McCrory view transgendered individuals as a menace. In fact, laws being passed in cities like Charlotte and New York constitute an open bathroom invitation to legions of scumbag rapists, molesters, and peeping toms.

Gotham mayor Bill de Blasio—the Stringbean Sandinista—has issued an executive order allowing transgendered people to use any bathrooms they like “without being required to show identification, medical documentation, or any other form of proof or verification of gender.” This stands in stark contrast to the NYPD’s “if you see something, say something” policy on terrorism.

Fair warning: If you come to New York and you see a dodgy looking dude hanging around the little girl’s room, you’re better off keeping it to yourself. His reality is all that counts.

Published in Culture, Law
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  1. Midget Faded Rattlesnake Member
    Midget Faded Rattlesnake
    @Midge

    Hoyacon: I’m all for a meritocracy on this. If you “look the part,” use the bathroom that you’re comfortable with… If I can’t tell, I don’t care.

    Same here.

    • #31
  2. Hypatia Member
    Hypatia
    @

    I don’t mean to say there’s some sinister “THEM” who’s orchestrating all this, but here’s what’s happening, for whatever reason: any and all gender-based customs, and any relics of them in language, are being eliminated. Famously, already using he and she can get you fined in NYC. The terms husband and wife won’t be in use in 20 years, they’ll go the way of quaint locutions like executrix, aviatrix, workman –we’ll all be “partners”. (Of course we already have a gender-neutral term, “spouse”, but in my experience nobody likes the sound of that word, it reminds ’em of wills and divorce complaints.) And, I predict that both, or all, parties being joined in marriage will be called brides.
    It seems so quaint now, but when I was in law school , what used to be called the “potty” issue was a big boner of contention in connection with the debate over a federal Equal Rights Amendmenr., and was routinely pooh-poohed (sorry, I just can’t hold it in..) by all– yeah, what the heck: sitting feminists–not cuz it didn’t matter, but cuz it DID–the penumbral constitutional right to privacy, and even the fundamental right to freedom of association, would ALWAYS protect us from being subjected to the sight of urinals and urinators on our way to the toilet stalls. That, after all, was just “common sense”.

    • #32
  3. Giaccomo Member
    Giaccomo
    @Giaccomo

    Find an appropriate jurisdiction and arrest and charge the next biologically male transgressor for voyeurism.  The subsequent court case should give the issue a lot of airing.

    • #33
  4. Basil Fawlty Member
    Basil Fawlty
    @BasilFawlty

    When is comes to this issue, I’m a movement conservative.

    • #34
  5. The Whether Man Inactive
    The Whether Man
    @TheWhetherMan

    I encountered my first unisex public bathroom at a soulless conference center for a work event this year, and other than the obnoxiously self-righteous sign about how it was unisex for “inclusion,” it was a non issue. Nice bathroom, large, all individual stalls with floor length doors, and sinks.  I’d accept that universally without any qualms at all.

    (And people who are going to pretend to be transgender to attack women in bathrooms are going to attack women in bathrooms regardless.  A unisex bathroom if anything provides a deterrent, because who knows who is in there?)

    • #35
  6. KiminWI Member
    KiminWI
    @KiminWI

    Locally, a kindergartener has insisted on being allowed to use the girls’ bathroom in a charter school and since it is a “classical” charter school, our private classical school has had lots of inquiries from parents wanting to move their kids. Lots and lots of conversation happening here.

    1. Of course safety is a potential issue. But comfort is an immediate issue. A lot of kids don’t even like using public bathrooms with their own gender. They are not entirely sure they are comfortable with the way their bodies are looking and working because they are kids with a lot of figuring out to do.
    2. There is an opinion held by some number of parents that the parents of the gender dysphoria’s kid are potentially guilty of child abuse for not guiding their child into normative gender behavior. How do you explain to your elementary aged children that some parents make choices for their kids that we believe are destructive but we have to support?
    3. The administration has completely caved to the activism and seems fearful to acknowledge the concerns of the cis-gendered families.  I HATE that prefix. Hate it hate it hate it.   I would prefer to say that the public school bureaucrats are lying cowards who are concerned about their own funding and surviving for the next job, the next rung on the pay ladder, and normal families are damned to take care of themselves. But of course I wouldn’t really say that out loud.
    • #36
  7. Mate De Inactive
    Mate De
    @MateDe

    KiminWI:The administration has completely caved to the activism and seems fearful to acknowledge the concerns of the cis-gendered families. I HATE that prefix. Hate it hate it hate it. I would prefer to say that the public school bureaucrats are lying cowards who are concerned about their own funding and surviving for the next job, the next rung on the pay ladder, and normal families are damned to take care of themselves. But of course I wouldn’t really say that out loud.

    This is the most destructive thing about all of this, that administers, the people in charge are enabling this behavior. What they should say to the parents of that child is, that although we sympathize with you and your child for having this unfortunate condition and we will try to accomodate you as much as we can but we have a responsibility to the rest of the students (the vast majority) to provide a productive and safe learning environment and we believe change the bathroom policy will be a unnecessary distraction.

    which would be great if the school didn’t run the risk of the parents calling in the ACLU to sue them for a violation of their child’s “civil rights”

    Could a lot of these problems be resolved by tort reform?

    • #37
  8. Sabrdance Member
    Sabrdance
    @Sabrdance

    Basil Fawlty:When is comes to this issue, I’m a movement conservative.

    You should eat more fiber, then.

    • #38
  9. Basil Fawlty Member
    Basil Fawlty
    @BasilFawlty

    Sabrdance:

    Basil Fawlty:When is comes to this issue, I’m a movement conservative.

    You should eat more fiber, then.

    Retention is nine points of the law.

    • #39
  10. Sabrdance Member
    Sabrdance
    @Sabrdance

    Basil Fawlty:

    Sabrdance:

    Basil Fawlty:When is comes to this issue, I’m a movement conservative.

    You should eat more fiber, then.

    Retention is nine points of the law.

    I think what you mean is that the law is full of it.

    • #40
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