No. Why would that logically follow? Two Advil is good, ten must be better?
Rather, I am prepared to RISK that someone will get their jollies or behave criminally in order to accommodate a small percentage of people who otherwise appear to be in the wrong restroom, calling unnecessary attention and potentially danger to themselves. I am not prepared to encourage a circumstance that will push people on the edge of self-control into criminal behavior, i.e. someone who will not go into a women’s room dressed as a male but who once there may not be able to resist enacting something harmful.
People prepared to make an effort to enact criminal behavior will do so regardless of restroom laws. So IMO the guy who gets all excited because he’s been given a golden ticket to get into the bathroom to rape someone will probably also be alert to a dark corner where no one would hear a victim struggle, or maybe he’ll go into the Hobby Lobby bathroom first thing in the morning, before customers arrive and while staffing is low, and drop off a camera for upshots.
Ha, well, I don’t think that’s the place for me. Remember, I’m for private places to change at the beach. Otherwise I keep my suit on until I get somewhere private. However, I do believe it’s my inalienable, natural right to take my clothes off. In fact I do it each day - sometimes more than once.
That the central issue for Push has nothing to do with safety and/or truth (in the scientific, rational sense of the word) is well-established by this point. Which, I suppose, is why he has reverted to boorish, bigoted, non-responsive responses (with regard to me at least).
I’m not sure what you mean when you say that clothes will serve as an acceptable deterrent. Which clothes and deterrent to what?
I’ve seen two clients this week who are somewhere on the gender-fluid spectrum, one of each original gender, one adult and one teen. They’re about the same size (think Prince’s size) and both are gentle, sensitive people struggling to figure out what to do with themselves. They are vulnerable in every possible way. I realize that not everyone fits that description, but many TG people do, and maybe the majority of them. Is Janae a danger to anyone? By all accounts no.
to be safe. It is up to you to advance your own values. Interestingly enough, I really have no idea what those are because you have been focused on tearing apart others’ arguments.
(Image downloaded from google results for “mtf before and after.”)
I am almost certain that the number of people uncomfortable with a man using the women’s restroom far exceeds the number of people uncomfortable with using the restroom of their biological sex. (I don’t have data, but I would be shocked if less than 1% of Americans were uncomfortable with men in the women’s restroom, which is greater than the number of transgender people in the US). So what is the real justification for allowing these people to use the other bathroom? Any concerns about their comfort or safety can easily be symmetrically applied to the significantly larger number of people made uncomfortable and endangered by allowing anyone to use whatever bathroom they feel like. Unless you argue that gender segregated bathrooms are archaic as a whole, then they have to be enforced to have any meaning.
An interesting aside is that in practice a man who dresses and looks like a woman could easily choose to enter the women’s restroom and use a stall to take care of his business and no one would be the wiser. Practically speaking, a law allowing anyone to use any bathroom is really only meaningful when you have someone who is obviously of one gender using the other bathroom. So why does the law exist at all? Only to allow men who look like men to enter the women’s bathroom. Men who look like women didn’t really need the law.
Yeah, I don’t know, and it is a good point. I suppose this is why I A) don’t see it all as a big deal, i.e. “already happening,” and B) don’t feel motivated to do more than argue on the internet with a handful of people.
Thanks for making this so clear, here is the minor difference though. With or without a law everything will probably continue the way you described. The only difference is the occasional troublemaker who spots a man who looks like a woman in the ladies room will try to get the police involved causing a completely unnecessary situation.
Kind of off topic, but relevant since Push implied that I’m too intellectually “flexible” or that some of us are “going through mental gymnastics.” This looks really good. It would be fun to read this and then talk about this issue again afterward. Book addresses how humans make decisions, how we often first have an emotional reaction and then look for examples that strengthen that first impression. Also about why intelligent people may skew to the right or to the left of the political spectrum. I haven’t read this yet, but I’m going to download it today.
Not related to the politics of restrooms directly, but if you’re trying to be up to speed with the current gender identity shift on college campuses.
If you’re interested in the history of the TG movement. This has some interesting stuff about how gay and lesbian activists were often resistant to accepting the T in the LGBT movement. I don’t know Phyllis Frye personally, but she works with a friend of mine who is a lawyer in Houston.
You can’t have your cake and eat it, too. If transgender people’s concerns about being forced to share a bathroom with people who they feel uncomfortable sharing a bathroom with are valid, the same concerns are valid when expressed by women concerned that men are being allowed to use the women’s room.
Either bathrooms are mostly safe, private, and it’s no big deal who goes in where or they are potentially dangerous and we need to be concerned with who is using the same bathroom as someone else.
If you believe that bathrooms are mostly safe and private and it’s no big deal who goes in where, then the whole idea of gendered bathrooms is unnecessary.
If they are potentially dangerous and privacy needs to be enforced, then it’s necessary to create a system that is best for the largest number of people. That is the system we have today. Compromising it at the expense of the many for the comfort of the few is unwise.
