[City Councilor David] Kelly said one of the biggest things looming over the heads of those involved in writing the actual ordinance is the common fear that allowing transgender people and people with differing gender identities equal access to bathrooms will be seen by sexual predators as an invitation to start hanging out in bathrooms looking for victims....Get the message, ladies? You're already completely vulnerable. So stop standing in the way of progress.
Kelly said such fears are typically the result of severe misunderstandings about what the ordinance intends to do. He said allowing transgender people access to the bathroom of their choice does nothing to make bathrooms more accessible to sexual predators.
"There's no physical bar at the entrance of bathrooms," Kelly said, referring to the current lack of laws or ordinances that prohibit members of the opposite sex from entering any bathroom they choose.
UPDATE: Here are my older posts on this topic:
"De-gendering" restrooms."
The single-sex bathroom issue again.
Is this sex discrimination?
"They encircled me in a very menacing and hostile stance."
In search of the right bathroom.
Posts
23 comments:
I am all for "don't ask-don't tell" when it comes to this issue.
However, at least in this case, you have a quasi-legislative body passing the law instead of some lefty judge.
If this was imposed by some judge it would be an outrage!
Well, I think the legislative body is going to have difficulty passing this, because there are a lot of women who worry about violence, even in Eugene, where I assume people are inclined to be sympathetic to the transgendered.
Check out Goins vs. West Group (Minn Ct. of Appeals 2000). http://www.ntac.org/law/goinsvwestgroup.html
Apparently the judge in that case did not think violence was a good enough reason to deny a transgendered person their civil rights to use their bathroom of choice.
I respectfully disagree. I say cheers to Councilor Kelly for disarming the common pretextual argument about "safety" of women in the women's room. If anyone has a safety concern, it's the MTF who has to, by default use the men's room.
I also think that the whole idea is sex segregated bathrooms is insultingly paternalistic, out-dated, puritanical, and heteronormative.
Unenforced? What about Lawsuits. The next step is mandating the rule to private business. What is a private business supposed to do. Will business be forced to have three bathrooms, one for men, one for women, and one for "other persons." In the end all the woman will use the bathroom for "other persons" and the transgendered person will use the bathroom for women. But, then there will be another lawsuit forcing the woman to go back into the woman's bathroom under a "de facto" descrimination argument.
What a joke.
Will this PC movement lead to the end of quasi-public restrooms. What business would want to risk a lawsuit, just tell people to go to the bathroom elsewhere. Going to public restrooms sucks in Europe. Why do we want to be like them....
Until this issue gets works out legally and/or culturally, I'll continue to remind my daughter that, wherever she goes, if she finds herself in a situation in which she's being threatened (unless it's a crowded theater) her proper response is to yell "FIRE" at the top of her lungs. Almost always, help will arrive.
You know, I like my privacy - perhaps we should force all restrooms to become "one person" rooms...
At my workplace they just created a handicapped bathroom to comply with the rules. Its a one stall, with a lock and its quite popular with men and women er male and female (without regard to their heteronormativity) So I see a future where there's just a bunch of single user restrooms in every place, just like outdoor events with rows or portapotties
I also think that the whole idea is sex segregated bathrooms is insultingly paternalistic, out-dated, puritanical, and heteronormative.
While we're at it why don't we just force every man to have transgender surgery and undergo hormone therapy just to make sure the playing field is truly level.
Stever's idea is easily the most sensible. There need be no stigma attached to a third bathroom choice because frankly there are many reasons why one might seek an extra dose of privacy.
Rafinlay: Let me guess. You're not a woman.
This is crazy. The bathroom segregation is based on sex organs not gender identity. I don't care what laws they pass, if I am in a women's restroom and see a person who is obviously a man in there, I am leaving that restroom immediately (running not walking).
severe misunderstandings about what the ordinance intends to do.
Is this how you legislate intention?
Dirtcrashr: Yes, see my other post today about Madison drafting something that would have outlawed the Wienermobile.
Leeontheroad: See the links in my update to my earlier posts on the subject, where I've discussed this problem at length.
Let's remember there is serious risk of both battery and rape in going into a men's room in a skirt and makeup, even when it's the physiologically apporpriate bathroom. So, does allowing transgendered individuals into women's bathrooms actually increase the risk of violence to women?
Well, if it does, then sure, keep the transgendered out; there are more women than transgendered.
But if (and it's clearly a quite debatable if) all it does is provoke fear, with no actual corresponding increase in risk, then the answer is to let the transgendered in. Which is admittedly harsh to women who have that fear, but not as harsh as leaving others at a genuinely higher risk of rape and battery.
Steven: The risk is REAL. Read my old posts that I've linked, which include commentary from people with law enforcement experience. And picture sending your young daughter into a public restroom and then seeing a male enter after her.
personally, I have no problems with people who want to act female, but I do have problems with people who try and deny reality.
A man with penis and testicles is a MAN, however the hell he feels about it.
It may feel better to him to go into a women's bathroom, but it's not worth A) the apprehension on the part of the women and B) possibility of abuse.
Rafinlay: What concerns me is that once a law like this gets passed, people who need to protect themselves and others will have to hold back and accept situations that their instincts tell them are dangerous.
And let me emphasize that I have no interest in making life harder for people who see themselves as transgendered. The problem is that they procure legislation that makes it easier for bad people to do harm.
Madness.
If one is born with a Y chromosome, that person is a male. This is true whether he possesses a penis or testicles or some other type of naughty bits or none at all, and still true whether he chooses to wear a leather mini-skirt instead of a Homburg hat.
Sex change operations are merely superficial and do not change the sex of a person at the chromosomal level. Persons with a Y chromosome are male and therefore should use the men's bathroom, regardless of any other notions they may have about themselves.
That this issue has become a bone of contention says a lot, I think. None of it good.
This is another instance that proves there is so little wrong with life in this country that people have to go to absurd lengths to make it up.
Worrying about the vulnerabilty of women is paternalistic? I don't go jogging in Central Park at midnight, either.
Ann, one can prove quite nearly anything through statments by "people with law enforcement experience". Remember the hysteria over ritual Satanic abuse of children? Or the claim that Dungeons & Dragons caused suicide? Or the tales of poison and razor blades in Halloween candy? Law enforcement officers were major vectors for those myths, which didn't make them one whit less phony.
Now, I favor retaining the status quo, because the threat is plausible. But no, I don't think that the threat is established as real; I reserve my "if"s.
(As far as a daughter, I'd have a hard time being more apprehensive about her fate in that scenario than if I were a woman watching a man go into the men's bathroom after my son. I certainly remember that as a boy, I personally was scared enough of men that I had a very hard time using public bathrooms.)
Most telling is the statement:
"Kelly said such fears are typically the result of severe misunderstandings about what the ordinance intends to do."
It reminds me of something Justice Louis Brandeis said:
"Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficial. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding."
Lee: the problem is that if the law is in place, people become obligated not to react according to their natural instincts about what is dangerous. You'd have no way to know whether a given man in the ladies room had transgendered feelings giving him a right to be there. So what are you supposed to do? You can't act where before you could. It's not fair to women and girls. Violence against women is a serious matter that is not taken seriously by these cities.
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