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. Nick Stuart Inactive
    Nick Stuart
    @NickStuart

    Male parts use the men’s facilities, female parts use the female facilities.

    • #1
  2. Casey Inactive
    Casey
    @Casey

    Why are they so timid?  The very idea of bathrooms restricts our right to pee freely.

    Tear down those walls!

    • #2
  3. Tommy De Seno Member
    Tommy De Seno
    @TommyDeSeno

    Here’s my main beef:

    Anyone who has ever been to a nightclub or professional sporting event knows the line to the ladies room is 6x longer than the line to the men’s room.

    Nothing now will stop them from declaring a male gender identification at that very moment and switching to our more efficient, shorter line.

    This will cause many men to wet our pants, since we wait until our back teeth are floating in beer before we go.   We count on those short lines.

    • #3
  4. Basil Fawlty Member
    Basil Fawlty
    @BasilFawlty

    Tommy De Seno:Here’s my main beef:

    Anyone who has ever been to a nightclub or professional sporting event knows the line to the ladies room is 6x longer than the line to the men’s room.

    Nothing now will stop them from declaring a male gender identification at that very moment and switching to our more efficient, shorter line.

    This will cause many men to wet our pants, since we wait until our back teeth are floating in beer before we go. We count on those short lines.

    Watching the activity at the urinals should be interesting, though.

    • #4
  5. Tommy De Seno Member
    Tommy De Seno
    @TommyDeSeno

    Basil Fawlty:

    Tommy De Seno:Here’s my main beef:

    Anyone who has ever been to a nightclub or professional sporting event knows the line to the ladies room is 6x longer than the line to the men’s room.

    Nothing now will stop them from declaring a male gender identification at that very moment and switching to our more efficient, shorter line.

    This will cause many men to wet our pants, since we wait until our back teeth are floating in beer before we go. We count on those short lines.

    Watching the activity at the urinals should be interesting, though.

    You always find a silver lining…

    • #5
  6. Basil Fawlty Member
    Basil Fawlty
    @BasilFawlty

    Tommy De Seno:

    Basil Fawlty:

    Tommy De Seno:Here’s my main beef:

    Anyone who has ever been to a nightclub or professional sporting event knows the line to the ladies room is 6x longer than the line to the men’s room.

    Nothing now will stop them from declaring a male gender identification at that very moment and switching to our more efficient, shorter line.

    This will cause many men to wet our pants, since we wait until our back teeth are floating in beer before we go. We count on those short lines.

    Watching the activity at the urinals should be interesting, though.

    You always find a silver lining…

    These boots are made for wading . . .

    • #6
  7. Charles Mark Member
    Charles Mark
    @CharlesMark

    Urinals are a relic of the patriarchy. Rip them out I say! Sit for equality!!

    • #7
  8. Roberto Inactive
    Roberto
    @Roberto

    Actual purported adults are having this conversation.

    Let us all reflect on that for a moment.

    • #8
  9. Basil Fawlty Member
    Basil Fawlty
    @BasilFawlty

    Charles Mark:Urinals are a relic of the patriarchy. Rip them out I say! Sit for equality!!

    Urinal is cis!

    • #9
  10. Kate Braestrup Member
    Kate Braestrup
    @GrannyDude

    Transgendered persons are pretty convincing. How are you going to know who is using the “wrong” bathroom short of personally checking the relevant body parts?

    This, incidentally, would be my argument against actively legislating who uses which bathroom; if you look like a man, act like a man, and think of yourself as a man but have to pee sitting down,  use the stalls in the men’s room. The chances are excellent no one will ever known.

    On the other hand, sexual predators assault women in ladies rooms because they know they can find vulnerable people there—that is “cisgendered” women. If the word got out that the lady fixing her lipstick at the mirror might be a guy who used to play fullback for Notre Dame, the sexual predators might have second thoughts.

    Women’s rooms aren’t dangerous because trannies are in there, but because the cisgendered male perverts are in there.

    • #10
  11. Lily Bart Inactive
    Lily Bart
    @LilyBart

    An unidentified man wearing board shorts walked into the women’s bathroom of Evans Pool, in the heart of Seattle, on Monday evening.

    The women inside the locker room at the time attempted to kick him out, but the guy refused and said “the law has changed and I have the right to be here.”

    He returned to the restroom for a second time later that evening, when young girls were changing for swim practice.

    http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/wa-man-women-bathroom-test-transgender-ruling-article-1.2535150

    • #11
  12. Kate Braestrup Member
    Kate Braestrup
    @GrannyDude

    Lily Bart:

    An unidentified man wearing board shorts walked into the women’s bathroom of Evans Pool, in the heart of Seattle, on Monday evening.

    The women inside the locker room at the time attempted to kick him out, but the guy refused and said “the law has changed and I have the right to be here.”

    He returned to the restroom for a second time later that evening, when young girls were changing for swim practice.

    http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/wa-man-women-bathroom-test-transgender-ruling-article-1.2535150

    This would be the reason NOT to make laws about it, and let “elemental common sense” reign. Incidentally, is it against the law now for a man to use a women’s room or vice versa? I ask because, despite being a generally law-abiding person,  I’ve used men’s rooms from time to time, usually because of the short line/long line problem cited above. (Incidentally, one of the many nice things about my job  is that, at a cop conference or event,  there’s no line in the women’s room.)

    • #12
  13. Hoyacon Member
    Hoyacon
    @Hoyacon

    I’m all for a meritocracy on this.  If you “look the part,” use the bathroom that you’re comfortable with (stalls only, please).  If not, back to hair and makeup for an improved look.  If I can’t tell, I don’t care.

    • #13
  14. Lily Bart Inactive
    Lily Bart
    @LilyBart

    Kate Braestrup:

    Lily Bart:

    An unidentified man wearing board shorts walked into the women’s bathroom of Evans Pool, in the heart of Seattle, on Monday evening.

    The women inside the locker room at the time attempted to kick him out, but the guy refused and said “the law has changed and I have the right to be here.”

    He returned to the restroom for a second time later that evening, when young girls were changing for swim practice.

    http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/wa-man-women-bathroom-test-transgender-ruling-article-1.2535150

    This would be the reason NOT to make laws about it, and let “elemental common sense” reign. Incidentally, is it against the law now for a man to use a women’s room or vice versa? I ask because, despite being a generally law-abiding person, I’ve used men’s rooms from time to time, usually because of the short line/long line problem cited above. (Incidentally, one of the many nice things about my job is that, at a cop conference or event, there’s no line in the women’s room.)

    I’ve used the men’s room once myself – but I didn’t go in and join the guys in their bathroom.   The girls room had a line, but no one was in the boy’s room.  I stationed my husband outside and went into the boys room and quickly took care of my business and then got the heck out.

    • #14
  15. Metalheaddoc Member
    Metalheaddoc
    @Metalheaddoc

    Hasn’t the rule always been to make reasonable accommodation? Reasonable means a separate private bathroom just like those family ones. Reasonable does not mean making everyone else change their thoughts and mores and customs to accommodate the trans-american. That would be like requiring wheelchair ramps and elevators, but ripping out all the stairs and forcing the bipeds to use the ramp/elevator.

    • #15
  16. Lily Bart Inactive
    Lily Bart
    @LilyBart

    If some trans-guy wants to continue his life as a girl by using the girl’s room, then, no, you don’t have the right to make others uncomfortable or put others at risk (see original poster’s warning) just to indulge your life’s preference.

    However, if some guy want to dress/live as a girl and is realistically afraid he’ll be bodily harmed in the boys’ room – then that’s different.

    But how to you police this?  We may need to completely rethink public bathrooms.

    • #16
  17. Basil Fawlty Member
    Basil Fawlty
    @BasilFawlty

    Lily Bart:If some trans-guy wants to continue his life as a girl by using the girl’s room, then, no, you don’t have the right to make others uncomfortable or put others at risk (see original poster’s warning) just to indulge your life’s preference.

    However, if some guy want to dress/live as a girl and is realistically afraid he’ll be bodily harmed in the boys’ room – then that’s different.

    But how to you police this? We may need to completely rethink public bathrooms.

    I wonder if calling them public toilets would have a salutary effect.

    • #17
  18. Kate Braestrup Member
    Kate Braestrup
    @GrannyDude

    Lily Bart:If some trans-guy wants to continue his life as a girl by using the girl’s room, then, no, you don’t have the right to make others uncomfortable or put others at risk (see original poster’s warning) just to indulge your life’s preference.

    However, if some guy want to dress/live as a girl and is realistically afraid he’ll be bodily harmed in the boys’ room – then that’s different.

    But how to you police this? We may need to completely rethink public bathrooms.

    Exactly.

    One solution—and probably the one we’ll go with— would be to have european-style, everyone-gets-a-secure-stall-with-a-real-door.  Several men of my acquaintance have told me (for some reason?) stories about how awful it was to be a teenaged boy forced to piddle into a urinal (or sometimes a sort of porcelain gutter) beside grown male strangers.

    Incidentally, I’ve been thinking about how I’d handle the young man in the board shorts who has decided he gets to be a girl. The short version of my solution? Treat him like a girl.

    • #18
  19. Front Seat Cat Member
    Front Seat Cat
    @FrontSeatCat

    The comments are better than the story! I am trying to figure out what they did before it was an “issue” – we’ve had transgenders for some time – where did they “go”?

    On another note, it just seems to keep opening another hole in Pandora’s Box – there are so many new definitions of gender nowadays, it will be hard to know what’s going on in any bathroom – that’s really weird.

    • #19
  20. Mate De Inactive
    Mate De
    @MateDe

    Urgggg this is why I hate the left and this idiocy, all this bathroom accommodation is insane. Camille Paglia is right we are in a decadence or late phase of civilization and are in the verge of collapse. Obviously we are out of problems if we have to pass laws regarding this, our education is in great shape, our infrustruture is sound and our ecomony is chugging along just fine. (Being sarcastic here)
    You know a business has to spend a good amount of money to create a none gender specific bathroom in a building that already had two gender specific bathrooms, for what? .05% of the population?. If a trans woman has come into the bathroom when I was using it, and entirely possible as I used to go clubbing in NYC in my younger years, I never knew and was never an issue. can we just keep it the old way and focus on bigger problems ?

    • #20
  21. Bob W Member
    Bob W
    @WBob

    It just goes to show, the radical agenda is never satisfied. There always has to be a new frontier to conquer. First gay marriage, now transgender, what’s next? A new way always has to be found to classify large segments of the population as bigots. It will never be accepted that bigotry has actually been defeated. ( In the same way that Eastasia and Eurasia were always out there in 1984).

    So what’s next? More than two adults being able to claim parental rights to a given child at the same time? The buying and selling of children? Children with three biological parents? Pedophile rights? Already children are being talked to in schools about how it’s ok to identify with the opposite gender. What would happen to you if you started talking like that to a little child in your neighborhood? Hey little Michael, have you ever thought about changing your name to Michelle? You’d be in jail or beaten up by Michael’s dad. But that’s what schools are allowed to do.

    • #21
  22. Fake John/Jane Galt Coolidge
    Fake John/Jane Galt
    @FakeJohnJaneGalt

    Charles Mark:Urinals are a relic of the patriarchy. Rip them out I say! Sit for equality!!

    I believe there was an effort in Sweden to require all men to sit while urinating, thus creating sitting only bathrooms.

    • #22
  23. Fake John/Jane Galt Coolidge
    Fake John/Jane Galt
    @FakeJohnJaneGalt

    Front Seat Cat:The comments are better than the story! I am trying to figure out what they did before it was an “issue” – we’ve had transgenders for some time – where did they “go”?

    On another note, it just seems to keep opening another hole in Pandora’s Box – there are so many new definitions of gender nowadays, it will be hard to know what’s going on in any bathroom – that’s really weird.

    It is not about transgenders.  It is about the rest of the world.

    • #23
  24. CuriousKevmo Inactive
    CuriousKevmo
    @CuriousKevmo

    Basil Fawlty:

    Tommy De Seno:Here’s my main beef:

    Anyone who has ever been to a nightclub or professional sporting event knows the line to the ladies room is 6x longer than the line to the men’s room.

    Nothing now will stop them from declaring a male gender identification at that very moment and switching to our more efficient, shorter line.

    This will cause many men to wet our pants, since we wait until our back teeth are floating in beer before we go. We count on those short lines.

    Watching the activity at the urinals should be interesting, though.

    Was using a urinal in the men’s room of a nightclub in Sydney Australia once when two woman came in apparently looking to avoid the line in the ladies room.  They were drunk.  One turns her back to the urinal, drops trou and asks the other one to hold her hands to keep her from falling into the urinal.  She began to pee.  And then fell anyway, planting her butt onto the urinal.

    So yeah, should be amusing.

    • #24
  25. CuriousKevmo Inactive
    CuriousKevmo
    @CuriousKevmo

    Charles Mark:Urinals are a relic of the patriarchy. Rip them out I say! Sit for equality!!

    I got no problem sitting….why stand when you can sit?

    • #25
  26. CuriousKevmo Inactive
    CuriousKevmo
    @CuriousKevmo

    Bob W: It just goes to show, the radical agenda is never satisfied. There always has to be a new frontier to conquer.

    Progressives are the car salesmen of the State, and there’s always more undercoating to sell.   –Jonah Goldberg

    • #26
  27. MarciN Member
    MarciN
    @MarciN

    A couple of hospitals I’ve visited had a bathroom that served many purposes–it was for one person at a time, with a lock, so that a mom could take her son to the bathroom or a father take his daughter.

    It just seems to me that we need a third and possibly fourth type of bathroom.

    It would be a smart business move:

    On London’s world famous Oxford Street, Selfridges department store stands out as a neoclassical landmark. A fact most of its customers don’t realize is this iconic British institution was built by American–and until he built it, the street was an undesirable back-water. . . .

    Founder and inspiration Harry Gordon Selfridge rose from poor rural America and personal tragedy to take old London by storm. Opened in 1909, his department store revolutionized shopping in the capital and had a lasting impact on British society. Now almost forgotten in time, London was once a very formal place with strict divisions. Women weren’t allowed to go out alone, different classes were discriminated against, and shopping was a restricted affair.

    For London’s women it was particularly liberating. For the first time they could go out alone and still be respectable and comfortable. Incredibly, Selfridges was the first ever store in Britain to provide women’s toilets. Soon the suffragettes, campaigning for the female vote, found a key ally in Selfridge and his store.

    • #27
  28. Fake John/Jane Galt Coolidge
    Fake John/Jane Galt
    @FakeJohnJaneGalt

    We have a few more open minded bars in our town.  The bathrooms have always been unmarked and either sex can go into either one.  Never really bothered me much.  Bothered some of my friends though.  They always went outside and watered a car tire.   So whatever.

    • #28
  29. Mister D Inactive
    Mister D
    @MisterD

    I have sympathy for those with gender identity issues, but I also have a fundamental understanding of biology. The bathroom is not a place for identity confirmation. It is a place for necessary biological functions.

    What irritates me is the outrage they show when you suggest letting men in ladies rooms (or vice versa) could lead to sexual assault, as though we are saying transsexuals are rapists (surely some are, but that’s beside the point). It is that it provides an opportunity for the perverts to enter enemy territory, or conversely to let the prey into theirs.

    • #29
  30. E. Kent Golding Moderator
    E. Kent Golding
    @EKentGolding

    Building codes should call for 3 bathrooms: men’s, women’s, and other. The other bathroom should draw a humorous crowd.

    • #30
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