Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Hands Off the Ladies’ Rooms
If it concerns sex in any way, you can be sure that our culture will fixate on it and manage to defy common sense with hyperventilating indignation. Same sex marriage roiled the waters for decades, but now that the Supreme Court has big-footed that question, culture warriors are prowling for new realms of transgression to embrace. So, coming to a bathroom near you – transgenderism.
I’m just back from a weekend at Harvard University where unisex bathrooms are the norm. On behalf of womankind, I say: To the Bathroom Barricades!
Bathroom injustice has been a feature of the world for a very long time. Ask any woman. Most buildings feature equal-sized bathrooms for the two sexes – an automatic disadvantage for women who cannot use urinals (at least as of this writing). At every concert, stadium, lecture hall, or large meeting room, the line for the ladies’ room will usually curl out the door and around corners while the men breeze through their facility with assembly line efficiency. The only building in Washington, DC I know of where this is not the case is Constitution Hall, built by and for the Daughters of the American Revolution. Constitution Hall has twice the number of women’s bathrooms as men’s. Revolutionary indeed.
Some opponents of permitting “transgender” individuals to use the bathroom of their subjective feelings rather than their biology point to the risk of sexual assault. That seems a negligible risk. Hard to imagine rapists donning skirts the better to grab women in a ladies’ room surrounded by female witnesses. But the trans bathroom movement offends in other ways.
Gender-neutral bathrooms are nothing new. We use them on airplanes and trains all the time. At the risk of offending some men, there are two things that should be said about this. First, we women hate using unisex public bathrooms. Men are messy. They leave the seat up most of the time, and sometimes fail to raise it in the first place if you get my drift. Sure, some women are also unsanitary – but fewer. One survey found that 62 percent of men, but only 40 percent of women failed to wash their hands after using the toilet.
Second, airplane bathrooms are single use and thus don’t raise privacy/modesty concerns (I know, I’ve heard those urban legends too, but leave that aside). A locker room, dressing room, or larger public bathroom is a different matter. Outside of stalls, women in public restrooms change their clothes, adjust their undergarments, purchase supplies from vending machines geared toward women, and otherwise engage in activities they would be uncomfortable conducting under the eyes of a male (even one who feels himself to be female, or aspires to be female after years of surgery, depilatories, and hormonal dousings).
People with gender dysphoria, like those with other psychological ailments, doubtless feel miserable much of the time, and competent professionals should treat them. The former chief of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University, Dr. Paul McHugh, has studied the matter for decades and opposes “gender reassignment surgery.”
In most areas of life, when someone holds a view of himself that is at odds with reality – McHugh offers the example of people with “body dysmorphic disorder” who falsely believe themselves to be horribly ugly – psychiatry offers therapy to cure them of their mistaken perception. Only in the area of sex does the profession, and the larger society, lose its grip on reason completely and declare that any and all delusions, wishes, hopes, and behaviors are to be ratified and even celebrated in the name of non-discrimination.
We’ve become so discombobulated that perfectly intelligent people will say, without noticing the contradiction, that homosexual behavior is an inborn trait, but the “male/female binary” is a socially constructed fiction.
The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals has now ruled that a “transgender” 17-year-old must be permitted to use the bathroom of her imagined “gender identity” rather than her sex. “It’s easy to forget that these debates are about personal dignity,” scolded The New York Times.
There is nothing dignified about ratifying an unhappy person’s tragic misperception. What if the young person considered herself African-American like Rachel Dolezal? Should she get preferences in college admission? Or what about Danny Almonte, who was 14 when he starred in the 2001 Little League tournament? If he felt 12, does that make it okay?
When you figure that out, culture warriors, let us know. In the meanwhile, hands off the ladies rooms.
Published in General
I think the answer is “Cuz you’re a bigot and a hater for even asking the question. Do you ask why the n***er wants to eat at the lunch counter?”
To Mona’s column: The larger problem isn’t assault/rape, is just dudes who want to hang out and leer. I am thinking more about locker rooms than bathrooms.
Also, do these new rules include shower facilities in the locker rooms?
Now this is a real #WarOnWomen.
Too bad the GOP lacks the stones to throw that back in the face of Democrats.
I think it is a non-issue filling time on 24 hours news. I could not care less what the laws were about restrooms, we have bigger fish to fry y’all. Apparently the social justice warriors disagree, which is pretty predictable.
Wow it’s like you were there, listening! That’s exactly what I’ve been getting.
I can’t wait for the first lawsuit where a man doesn’t get hired as an attendant in the ladies room.
I hope that person comes to me for representation!
The solution we are headed for is all single seat, all comers bathrooms. The aggrieved won’t accept anything less then complete surrender on this, and the 99% of the sane won’t be comfortable with anything else. So far fewer bathrooms, much longer lines. Kind of like Europe.
Oh that will be next. Trust me.
I don’t suppose I’ll be seeing you at the urinal Amy.
A friend who owns a small company in Michigan has wanted for years to remodel the bathrooms, but he hasn’t because of the A.D.A. requirements.
Define “man”. If thats possible anymore…
There are people who make funnels for women for that purpose, but no, I’ll pass and stick to the stalls.
Ha! You are right! I didn’t think of that. That will be a good defense by the employer. Or a great way for the applicant to commit fraud. Show up for the interview with all outward signs of one sex and sue with all outward signs of the other.
Good grief.
7 years of Obama and Americans can’t tell the difference between men and women anymore.
This idea of using signs that read “Penis” or “No Penis” made me laugh out loud. I love it so much I just read your post to my wife and she loved it too. Thanks for sharing.
Exactly! Theirs is the real rape-culture!
You are supposed to think of them as normal.
Works for me. I love handicap restrooms, etc. The extra room is great.
My wife has one. She says it is useful at times. I believe she mainly got it for use in the port-a-pots at public events since they are so dirty.
That could be interesting. Many men’s rooms do not have door on their stalls. You could put on a show.
Between the thunder thighs and the belly fat, not really.
bs for short.
Correction: same-sex marriage roiled the waters for one decade, max.
Enough is enough, lock up all indoor toilets and put Porta-Potties in the parking lots. They are Unisex and people use them all the time ! Not a soul will tarry in one of those either – Get Er Done !
One other thought–is this as much of a one-way street as it appears?
Are there nearly as many trans women wanting access to men’s rooms as vice versa? And, if this is such a compelling social issue, why does it appear to only (mostly) affect women’s rest rooms?
Now Susan, privacy as a right only extends to abortions.
This is all just so…gross. I resent the left for insisting that we have to talk about such things.
Because there is a natural tradeoff between the width of bathroom stalls and the number of bathroom stalls, and under almost every circumstance any rational person opts for more stalls.
Here’s my guess: you’re asking the wrong question. The transgender man doesn’t identify as a transgender. He identifies as a woman. He dresses like a woman, he tries to act like a woman, he attempts to pass as a woman, and he wants everyone to treat him like a woman. It’s tough to pass as a woman if you’re seen using the men’s room.
Once we grant the premise that someone can identify as something that he is not, and that this self-identification is presumed sufficient cause for granting the privileges of that identity, it all follows logically. But that first premise is asking quite a lot.
Objection to this madness is not necessarily to imply that all trans are perverts, but are they telling us that they don’t see how this opens the door to actual perverts? There are guys who put holes in walls, others install camera systems or use binoculars or telescopes, this is a godsend (or leftysend) to them, now they don’t even have to do the work or worry about getting caught and THEY are the ones the law protects.
If I have to pick up my grandchildren at school I always make sure the teachers know who I am and why I’m there, it’s common sense, otherwise I’m an old man hanging around the playground, I want them to challenge me!