November 17, 2011

Massachusetts legislature passes a transgender civil rights bill.

But "it was not a total victory for advocates."
The bill does not include language to protect transgender people in public accommodations, which advocates had sought. They will continue to fight to expand transgender protections to include public accommodations, such as hotels, restaurants, and clubs, she said. Opponents had decried those proposals as “the bathroom bill,’’ arguing that they would enable biological men to demand access to women’s restrooms and locker rooms.

64 comments:

ndspinelli said...

When my bride was a caseworker @ the Federal MCC[jail] in Chicago she had an inmate on her caseload who was in the midst of a sex change. He had developed breasts via hormones but still had a dick. What floor, males or female, do you think she placed him?

DADvocate said...

What about biological women demanding access to men's restrooms, etc?? HUH!!!

We need to start requiring transgender bathrooms, lockerooms, eating areas in restaurants and more!! This is a critical issue in the quest for human rights!

Shouting Thomas said...

Hilarious!

Everything that can be regulated will be regulated!

Palladian said...

Yay! Genital mutilation gets the green light in Massachusetts! Alert the Islamists!

Scott M said...

What about biological women demanding access to men's restrooms, etc?? HUH!!!

You've never been in a nightclub on around 11pm or so on a Friday or Saturday night? It always irked me that women felt like they had the freedom to walk into the mens room whenever they wanted, line or not, because "the women's bathroom is just packed". I was a bouncer for years and this happened ALL the time. If you challenged them on it, purely on the basis of fairness, nine times out of ten they would tell you to grow up.

The reverse, obviously, was not true. A man trying to Rosa Parks into the women's bathroom was subsequently Road Housed.

Chip S. said...

Looks like the members of the Massachusetts legislature can all go home now. There can't be anything left for them to do.

Pianoman said...

The conventional wisdom is that homosexuals are "born that way".

What is the conventional wisdom regarding the transgendered? "Born that way"?

If not, then how do they gain additional "rights"?

I'm confused.

DADvocate said...

You've never been in a nightclub on around 11pm or so on a Friday or Saturday night? It always irked me that women felt like they had the freedom to walk into the mens room whenever they wanted, line or not, because "the women's bathroom is just packed".

Not ia a long, long time, but women had the same attitude back then. Liberating, I guess.

Franklin said...

The stupidity of Democrats sometimes makes me actually hope for societal collapse so this nonsense just stops.

Simon said...

Things get worse and worse, faster and faster.

Bruce Hayden said...

Sorry if I offend any trannies here, but it would have been a bathroom bill.

A couple of years ago, there was a to-do in Scottsdale, AZ, about just this. Several pre-reassignment males would try to hang out in the women's bathrooms at clubs there. They hadn't progressed very far, because they still had beard lines. In other words, they appeared to the women in the restrooms as males in dresses. The women were all freaked out, and the guys in dresses were asked not to come back. They made a big thing about it, but last I knew, it hadn't gone anywhere.

The clubs had to react that way - those sorts of clubs rely on the women to bring in the guys, and if it got around that a club was allowing this, the women would go elsewhere.

Maybe not as enlightened as NYC or San Francisco, but likely a lot closer to reality around this country.

ricpic said...

Up with abnormals!

Defecate on normals!!

Long Live The Revolution!!!

Geoff Matthews said...

How many (or what proportion of the population) can be defined as transgendered? What proportion of the population go through sex-reassignment therapies?

edutcher said...

If I were Mitt Romney, I'd start downplaying the state of which I'd been Governor.

Shanna said...

I have a lot of sympathy for people who are gay and want to get married, or put partners on their insurance and what have you.

I have almost no sympathy for this whole 'trangender' movement. I am so sick of hearing about 'trangender rights' and the movement has really just started.

Pianoman said...

Another question that I can't seem to get an answer to:

Why is it that the people who support transgenderism are the same people who are against "reparative therapy" for homosexuals?

Seems like a major contradiction to me, but maybe I missed something.

Anonymous said...

If you challenged them on it, purely on the basis of fairness, nine times out of ten they would tell you to grow up.

True equality is when everyone pees in the same amount of time. Why should women have to wait ten times as long just because someone did a bad job designing the restrooms?

edutcher said...

Pianoman said...

Another question that I can't seem to get an answer to:

Why is it that the people who support transgenderism are the same people who are against "reparative therapy" for homosexuals?

Seems like a major contradiction to me, but maybe I missed something.


No, you're on it.

Going under the knife creates more members of a Lefty-approved oppressed minority and, thus, more Democrat voters.

"Reparative therapy" for homosexuals doesn't and, in fact, removes members from a Lefty-approved oppressed minority and may create more well-adjusted people who might become Republican voters.

garage mahal said...

Going under the knife creates more members of a Lefty-approved oppressed minority and, thus, more Democrat voters.

Devious those Democrats!

Are Democrats sending some sort of brain wave signals out to straights to go under the knife to become transgender?

Pastafarian said...

Brain wave signals, garage? They're inundating us with propaganda to accept this slide into the abyss as enlightened progress.

And I guess that propaganda does propagate out there as waves, electromagnetic, for the most part.

So, yeah, I guess they are.

traditionalguy said...

Unisex bathrooms is the only answer.

But they don't want an answers do they. They want power to referee rules no one needs and no one understands. And they will need a huge salary and a hefty pension for doing that job.

garage mahal said...

@Pasta
It takes nothing from you, if it makes them happy why shouldn't they do it? I would think that should be a conservative proposition.

madAsHell said...

Coloreds only!

Pastafarian said...

It takes nothing from me, garage, if my 12 year old daughter gets to share a crapper at the mall with some lunatic that's lopped off his junk and changed his name to Shirley Sprinkles?

Seriously, garage?

edutcher said...

garage mahal said...

Going under the knife creates more members of a Lefty-approved oppressed minority and, thus, more Democrat voters.

Devious those Democrats!

Are Democrats sending some sort of brain wave signals out to straights to go under the knife to become transgender?


No, but you have to be more than a little ill mentally to do something like that.

The Demos are good at pandering to the mentally-challenged, however.

Wince said...

If I'm not mistaken, "gender identification" has been the bathroom rule for a while now at least in Boston. I've watched a linebacker-sized dude in a dress, heels and long hair wig repeatedly use a public women's restroom to the dismay of the women emerging therefrom. Very Norman Bates.

Meanwhile, I have my haircut by a former male who had a sex change operation after he came to this country and opened his shop across the street from my office.

In a new twist on an old story, he literally came to this country and "worked his balls off".

Sofa King said...

This is all about creating litigation leverage for extortion to be used against employers and business owners.

Anonymous said...

My impression is that generally "transgender" is a purely political designation. Advocates of such legislation generally pay little or no attention to the biologically intersexed and to XXY individuals (about 1 in 1000 people). Rest assured the "the Lesbian, Gay, Transgender movement" are elitist bigots or they would acknowledge the unique concerns of and accept the legitimacy of the biologically intersexed rather than ignore them to protect the sacred dogma of "biological sexual orientation."

raf said...

True equality is when everyone pees in the same amount of time.

Straddle trench urinals and quick release underwear.

Renee said...

Being in Massachusetts I did write to my representative on this issue, I suggested the unisex/family bathroom in large venues should suffice. For smaller places have two individual bathrooms without designating them by sex, for example in an airplane.

Anonymous said...

@Bruce Hayden,

You should tell the rest of the story.

Scott M said...

For smaller places have two individual bathrooms without designating them by sex, for example in an airplane.

I got all excited and was going to demand the name of the airline before I realized you wrote by sex, not for sex.

Renee said...

Shanna, Why support gay rights but not transgendered?

Due to the fatherless in so many homes, I still hold onto marriage as a man and a woman. Not out of bigotry. Still I get accused of hate, and will until the day I die.

I support a lot of the transgendered concerns, just as I may understand someone isn't straight. It seems to be, that's what they are.

I tend to come to the conclusion, that truly they see sex-change as a corrective surgery.

Crunchy Frog said...

True equality is when everyone pees in the same amount of time. Why should women have to wait ten times as long just because someone did a bad job designing the restrooms?

It ain't the restroom, it's the clothes. A truly motivated guy can drop trou in 2 seconds, and be done with his business in 2 minutes (including the washing of hands).

Takes some broads a half hour even if the restroom is empty.

Renee said...

BTW Not to be confused with drag, a lot of transgendered actually look like the gender they believe to be.

Michelle Dulak Thomson said...

garage mahal,

It takes nothing from you, if it makes them happy why shouldn't they do it? I would think that should be a conservative proposition.

Well, whether "it takes nothing from me" rather depends on the fine print in PPACA, doesn't it? Sex-reassignment surgery is not cheap; nor are the associated (and lifetime) hormonal treatments.

wv: juitylla. That sounds like a pharmaceutical company's idea for the name of a new hormonal treatment.

Crunchy Frog said...

I tend to come to the conclusion, that truly they see sex-change as a corrective surgery.

And there are people who have elective amputation for the exact same reason.

Here's a hint: it's not the body parts that need correcting.

Scott M said...

I suppose the burning question, Micheal, is whether or not GM or those of his likemind would assume that "corrective" sex-change operations should be covered by government mandated health care insurance.

If health care is a human right (I don't believe it is) and people can be clinically unable to identify with the body they were born with, doesn't it follow that it is their human right to get, nay, DEMAND that they be made healthy, mentally and physically?

What about eye sight while we're at it? If I'm not 20/20, am I unhealthy? By who's definition are we going by? If I'm not 20/20, do I have the right to be?

Renee said...

@Crunchy

It's not amputation, they're replacing one gender for the other.

Michelle Dulak Thomson said...

Renee,

Yes, the transgendered do generally look like their "believed" gender. I had one acquaintance who looked very feminine, if you could get past her 6-foot-plus height; it was weeks before I learned that she was a pre-op MTF tranny.

wv: catoring. I suppose that's what I do daily for my voracious cats.

garage mahal said...

It takes nothing from me, garage, if my 12 year old daughter gets to share a crapper at the mall with some lunatic that's lopped off his junk and changed his name to Shirley Sprinkles?

I'd be more worried straight men outside of bathroom stalls in malls. I know I do.

Scott M said...

It's not amputation

Amputation is the removal of a body extremity by trauma, prolonged constriction, or surgery. If you're going from Jack to Jane, it's amputation.

Michelle Dulak Thomson said...

Renee,

No, Crunchy Frog is talking about a real phenomenon — people who actually want to be amputees. Google "apotemnophilia."

Anonymous said...

Shanna, Why support gay rights but not transgendered?
Due to the fatherless in so many homes, I still hold onto marriage as a man and a woman. Not out of bigotry. Still I get accused of hate, and will until the day I die.
I support a lot of the transgendered concerns, just as I may understand someone isn't straight. It seems to be, that's what they are.
I tend to come to the conclusion, that truly they see sex-change as a corrective surgery.


Not Shanna, but I completely agreed with her comment, so I'll bite.

If someone wants to have surgery to change their appearance, I don't really object, as long as they're not expecting me to pay for it. I think it's kind of silly, I'm not going to feel sorry for them the way that I would a person recovering from, say, an appendectomy (more like from a breast augmentation), but whatever.

But I'm not going to pretend that they're not the sex they were born with. There's no such thing as a biological "mistake" whatever that even means. Intersex issues, which are incredibly rare, aside, there isn't a "mental" female or male- you simply are one or the other. I resent being asked to pretend that something is the case which clearly is not. I resent children who are just learning about things like this being told that some sense of "feelings" means that they have to deny obvious reality, because if you deny reality there, why would you feel like you have to constrained to it in other places? (i.e., you would fall for all sorts of policies because they "should" work or "feel good.")

If you want to act in a way that is typically associated with the opposite sex, have at it. I'm in a profession that was once limited to not my sex; I think it's great to change things and reverse stereotypes and limitations. In fact, I find it offensive that the person who believes that he/she is the "wrong" sex is seeing such a limited definition of what they as the sex they are can do. But that doesn't mean that we deny reality, and it doesn't mean that we do away with rules that are in place for good reasons in ways that compromise safety and privacy, such as separate bathrooms.

I don't doubt that people who feel that way do believe that. As do people who feel like they should be amputees feel like the limb in question is offensive and the cause of their problems. That doesn't make it so, and I don't think that we should play into their delusions.

- Lyssa

(That was really long. Please read it as polite discussion; I'm not as ranty as I sound, and it's not even an issue I really care or even think about except when it comes up and I have time to comment like this.)

Anonymous said...

What about eye sight while we're at it? If I'm not 20/20, am I unhealthy? By who's definition are we going by? If I'm not 20/20, do I have the right to be?

I'm not 20/20 (by a LONG shot), but I see myself as 20/20; why does that not mean that I have a right to be, if it would make me feel whole?

I also see myself as a voluptuous, curvy sex bomb, with big breasts. But, alas, biology gifted me only with A-cups. Right to an augmentation?

If not, but if a person who sees him/herself as the opposite gender has that right, why are the different? (Heck, my wants are a lot cheaper, faster, and safer!)

Scott M said...

See...Lyssa gets it...

Pianoman said...

@Garage:

It takes nothing from you, if it makes them happy why shouldn't they do it?

So you have no problem with reparative therapy for homosexuals?

I would think that should be a conservative proposition.

I think it's more of a libertarian thing. If you want to chop your balls off and get a boob job -- hell, go ahead. Just don't act so wounded when there turn out to be severe consequences.

GulfofMexico said...

We're fucked.

damikesc said...

It takes nothing from you, if it makes them happy why shouldn't they do it?

Nobody CARES if they do it.

Why should they be REWARDED for doing it? That's the question.

I tend to come to the conclusion, that truly they see sex-change as a corrective surgery.

And cutters think self mutilation will relieve the pain.

Doesn't mean we should humor that.

Peter said...

Perhaps we could just do away with the "gender" crap and get back to plain old physical sex differences?

Somehow, you'd think women would be peeved at the idea that a man who's cuto off his genitals and shot himself full of hormones had thereby become a woman.

Does a woman become a man if she straps on a dildo? Would it make a difference if the dildo was fashioned from her own flesh? If she also put on a Santa beard?

Scott M said...

Does a woman become a man if she straps on a dildo?

Some niche German filmmakers seem to think so.

Anonymous said...

WTF are inmates in a federal jail getting a sex change operation?

I'm Full of Soup said...

I think if you are blind, it is OK to use whichever rest room you want.

madAsHell said...

A man was lying in bed with his new girlfriend. After having great sex, she spent the next hour just rubbing his testicles.

Something she just loved to do!

As he was enjoying it, he asked her "Why do you love doing that?"

"Because" she replied, "I really miss mine."

KCFleming said...

Of course, businesses will never be required to make accommodations for them or hire them, nor will public schools be forced to accommodate, hire, and teach about transgenders. Churches, too, won't be affected.

Just like gay marriage will have no such repercussions.

Am I right?

KCFleming said...

Because there is no slippery slope, just h8ers, right?

KCFleming said...

Who says a guy has to wear a dress for him to consider himself transgender for, say, purposes of applying to law school?

A MTF wearing a lumberjack shirt and jeans.

You gotta problem with that?

Renee said...

Pogo, I see gay marriage and protection for transgender individuals as two different ideas.

Marriage is about relationships. Why the state has an interest in marriage? My conclusion isn't rights, but obligations to the child. Just live in a area with high rates of children not living with both their mother and father. The results are evident in risk factors in their social well-being in fatherless homes.

As for transgender rights, it is focused on the individual and not necessarily a relationship to others. The idea of reassignment is scary for people, who have their sex organs match what is how they see themselves. I can't imagine it myself. Yet, my personal feelings aside, there can be some logical reasons on a hormonal/physiological level, that reassignment could be argued as corrective surgery.

KCFleming said...

Who says they would need/require/ever get sex reassignment?

That is, why couldn't they just be transgender, without doing anything at all to their appearance to be able to so self-identify?

I can see the rare person getting sex-raessignment surgery, which takes place currently. That's not what's being argued.

The very definition of sex is being reshaped by the legislature. And transgender will come to encompass far more than those seeking surgery.

More, transgender is far more than just about the individual. Any laws on their behalf necessarily a impose a relationship to others.

Scott M said...

Yet, my personal feelings aside, there can be some logical reasons on a hormonal/physiological level, that reassignment could be argued as corrective surgery.

Should taxpayers have to pay for "reassignment" in order to make that person healthy and whole?

The very term, "reassignment" is loaded with what sounds like a conscious decision of gender in the first place. Much like the rest of the issue, it's ridiculous enough that it shouldn't be smacking the citizenry in the face via the legislature.

Obviously they have unemployment, debt, homelessness, and the Kennedy's all figured out, so there's nothing else to take care of in MA.

Pianoman said...

I'm a pre-reassignment pre-breast augmentation candidate for surgery. I demand full access to my local "women's only" health club.

Fr Martin Fox said...

Agree with those raising the point: why does someone have to change ones body or appearance in order to assert a new gender-identity?

This is all about breaking down conventional boundaries--so the argument goes--for the sake of liberation and self-actualization.

So...who says a "woman" can't have the exact same parts and features of a man? Can't dress exactly like a man?

For that matter, why do we insist on "man" and "woman"? Who's to say there aren't several more "genders" yet to be explicated? And accommodated?

By the way, I have a lot of concern for folks facing these issues; but we're dealing with it the wrong way.

I'm Full of Soup said...

Pogo said:

"The very definition of sex is being reshaped by the legislature."

Like they have done with the word marriage and most of these new bills also include cross dressers who are pre-op transsexuals or transvestites or whatever they are called today.

Pianoman said...

I've decided that I want to be a woman on all days of the week that start with "T". I'll be a man the other five days. Oh, except for Thanksgiving, I think I want to be a man on that day so that I can eat a turkey leg with my bare hands.

"It's every man's right to be a woman if he wants to." - Stan, 'Life Of Brian'