[Funny] xHamster blocks all porn in North Carolina.

[strawman]

An man forces one girl to undress in front of a boy, that man goes to jail.

Obama forces a generation of girls to undress in front of boys and it's widely hailed as a civil rights victory.

The boy may in fact feel he is female, but denying the girls their right to feel whatever they might feel and denying them privacy they desire may not actually be a reasonable trade.

Reasonable accommodation should be considered rather than total accommodation.[DOUBLEPOST=1463188176,1463187985][/DOUBLEPOST]And lest I single out one sex, I believe boys would have a similar problem undressing in front of a girl, and it would still be considered sexual abuse if it didn't occur in our schools.

 

[blotsfan]

Well if you'd stop intentionally misgendering it'd make more sense.

 

[Sara_2814]

An man forces one girl to undress in front of a boy, that man goes to jail.

Obama forces a generation of girls to undress in front of boys and it's widely hailed as a civil rights victory.

The boy may in fact feel he is female, but denying the girls their right to feel whatever they might feel and denying them privacy they desire may not actually be a reasonable trade.

Reasonable accommodation should be considered rather than total accommodation.[DOUBLEPOST=1463188176,1463187985][/DOUBLEPOST]And lest I single out one sex, I believe boys would have a similar problem undressing in front of a girl, and it would still be considered sexual abuse if it didn't occur in our schools.

By that same token: what about kids who don't want to get undressed in front of anyone, no matter their gender?

Kids that age are cruel little fuckers. From my experiences as a teenaged girl, you get judged for being too fat, too skinny, boobs developing too fast/too much, boobs not developing fast enough/too small, having pubic hair, not having pubic hair, not being allowed to shave legs/underarms yet, facial acne, body acne, blemishes, birthmarks, weird toes, the list goes on and on and on. I think ALL children should have a right to privacy and control over their bodies, especially at that age when body image judgement can be quite embarrassing and traumatic. We should no longer require kids to get shoved into communal showers like they're prisoners in a POW camp. They should be able to have separate shower stalls for washing/changing (like the showers at campgrounds) so they can decide for themselves who they reveal their body to. And as a bonus, trans students would have the same privacy.

 

[GasBandit]

Obama has threatened the education budget of any school district that doesn't fall in line with the restroom edict.

Texas' Lt. Gov has told him to go fuck himself.

He also then pointed out that the majority of the federal money Texas gets is earmarked for the free breakfast/lunch program, so Obama is essentially taking food out of the mouths of America's poorest children.

The white house started walking back their threat shortly therafter:

This afternoon the White House clarified that the guidance is a list of 'best practices,' and the administration intended it to 'frame a very straightforward challenge.'
'Why this guidance is being issued quite clear,' Earnest said, shooting down a suggestion that the funding threat was implied.

The guidance does not mandate additional requirements and it does not require students to use shared facilities when schools make other arrangements, Earnest said.

'This is not an enforcement action,' he stressed.

 

[Sara_2814]

Obama has threatened the education budget of any school district that doesn't fall in line with the restroom edict.

Texas' Lt. Gov has told him to go fuck himself.

He also then pointed out that the majority of the federal money Texas gets is earmarked for the free breakfast/lunch program, so Obama is essentially taking food out of the mouths of America's poorest children.

The white house started walking back their threat shortly therafter:

But doesn't that fall under the situation mentioned in the previous article? (To be clear, I don't agree with moves like this, threatening school funding for whatever reason just harms children in the end, they pull this same bullshit with No Child Left Behind, too. It's not kids' fault adults can't get their shit together.)

Even more libertarians would endorse antidiscrimination laws applied to monopolies that were created or sustained by government edict. For example, if the government grants labor unions the exclusive power to represent workers, there is nothing “unlibertarian” about insisting that unions represent all employees without discrimination.

Public schools essentially have a monopoly on education (due to, for example, geographical and economic factors), and students are compelled by law to attend school, so public schools have to accommodate all students. If a school does not want to accommodate all students, then they could become private and not take government money anyway.

 

[GasBandit]

Public schools essentially have a monopoly on education (due to, for example, geographical and economic factors), and students are compelled by law to attend school, so public schools have to accommodate all students. If a school does not want to accommodate all students, then they could become private and not take government money anyway.

The current opinion of the Texas state government is that students are accommodated by the gendered facilities according to their biological sex, though some administrators have indicated they are willing to discuss special circumstances on a case by case basis - but object to a system-wide redefinition of who-goes-where.

And believe you me, there's no bureaucrat like a Texas bureaucrat.

 

[Sara_2814]

The current opinion of the texas state government is that students are accomodated by the gendered facilities according to their biological sex.

Which...completely dismisses the problems faced by trans students.

So, what is an intersex child supposed to do? Hold it until they get home?

(oops, I guess you edited while I was typing. So it's a good thing at least some Admins are willing to work with students in that environment. The change may be slow, but attitudes are changing.)

 

[GasBandit]

Which...completely dismisses the problems faced by trans students.

So, what is an intersex child supposed to do? Hold it until they get home?

I think the middle ground places are using for the time being is the "South Park" solution... IE, as often as not there's a third, single occupant disabled/special needs restroom that fits the bill. Luckily, schools are large and can redesignate facilities without as much effort and expense as, say, a restaurant or store that only has 2 restrooms.

But yeah, the thing is, the nation is more than just New York and California, and a very-non-trivial number of americans believe transgenderism is a fanciful affectation of libertine whimsy at best and a dire mental illness that is harmful to coddle at worst. A lot of those people futher feel like they're being coerced into silence by the PC thought police, and so they don't broadcast their beliefs. But they are out there, and they vote. And half of them remember what it felt like to be a 14 year old boy gripped in the throes of testosterone poisoning, and know exactly to what lengths a teen boy will go for the possibility of watching coeds shower. If Porky's had been filmed today instead, they wouldn't have even had to drill holes in the girl's locker room wall. They could have just claimed they identified as female.[DOUBLEPOST=1463193783,1463193680][/DOUBLEPOST]

(oops, I guess you edited while I was typing. So it's a good thing at least some Admins are willing to work with students in that environment. The change may be slow, but attitudes are changing.)

Yeah, I thought I'd better clarify that there wasn't a line drawn in the sand, and individual accomodations happen. After all, we are talking about a percentage of a percentage of the population here.

 

[Dei]

Once again, look at the nomination of Donald Trump. The amount of people who support him should give you a pretty good idea of the state of that segment of the population.

 

[Hailey Knight]

Women use the men's room all the time. This has nothing to do with the transgender stuff; just a fact I feel is being overlooked. Culturally the women's room has been seen as a place away from men, because men dominate everywhere else, but men just shrug and look the other way when women use the men's room.

If they needed to pass a law, it should've been to stop talking in the men's room. I'm here to piss, not here to dis...cuss things.

Unfortunately this NC law encourages men to be in the women's room. I know that's opposite its intent, but it means trans men without surgery have to go in the women's room, so women are being around men that way, and it also means male security officers having to go into the women's room to enforce these laws typically because there are fewer female security officers, but probably in some cases because the officers don't care.

On schools, I think administrative accommodation (this word's spelling is bullshit BTW) is a reasonable way of handling it. Public school bathrooms can be a trap for any kid, regardless of sex and gender stuff, and I'd like to believe that those concerned about who's going into which bathrooms on this forum are also concerned for the safety of transgender kids as opposed to expecting them to twist in the wind. I know to others it feels like segregation, but the fact as said earlier--kids can be monsters. And unlike school administration, there isn't a simple way to direct them under new rules. They don't have jobs to lose. They don't adhere to policy with a mindset of the consequences like adults. Tumblr goes "sounds like cis people making trouble," but the fact remains it would then be trans kids suffering for it. I think it's great that there are kids who want to help their peers, but that isn't every kid.

In the long run, I have no idea what will be the outcome of all this. We unfortunately can't just put this extra legislation back in the bottle; the seal's been broken. So on the one hand we have the kind of crap steinman and others have been worried about, that every douchebag with a Vine account wants to put on a dress and test the limits of any bathroom in a state that doesn't have NC's laws. On the other hand, we have trans people left to wonder where the hell to go to the bathroom safely because it's really bullshit to decide who's passing more or less. There are trans women who look more feminine than many cis women. There are trans men who look more masculine than many cis men. The genitals don't answer the issue either because you're still then sharing a restroom with people who look one way or another and that may not conform to expectations.

Ideally we could get rid of all Vine accounts all mind our own business while we piss and shit in public, but unfortunately a good chunk of the population isn't build that way.

On an aside from the transgender stuff:

Twice I've almost walked into the women's room by accident. Both times someone saw and called to me that it was the wrong one. Neither case was there an assumption I was trying to be a pervert--I wasn't paying attention and they reacted as such. I thanked those people both times. One time no one saw me first and I walked in (it was AMC theater, so no door). Saw women at the mirror, said "oops" and immediately turned around. All three incidents were innocent accidents. Under NC law ... what happens then? Would I have been arrested? Fined? Or would me escorting myself out have been enough?

 

[Sara_2814]

The NC law actually affects more than trans people. My autistic son became an adult just today (OMG, how did that happen?) and he still needs supervision in restrooms (to check the cleanliness of the seat, to make sure he's not sitting there for an hour, to make sure he flushes and washes his hands), but according to NC's law, opposite-sex children are only allowed in a restroom up to age 12. If I'm on my own with him and he has to pee, one of us would get fined, so matter which restroom we choose.

There are plenty of legit reasons for a cisgender man to be in a women's restroom:
- assisting an elderly woman
- assisting a disabled woman
- accompanying a small child (if a young girl is school age, she may be pretty insistent on using the girls bathroom)
- the women's restroom may have the only diaper change table
- accompanying a female friend who drank waaaay too much at the bar on her 21st birthday and now she's puking it all back up and he's there to keep her company/make sure she doesn't pass out in the bowl. Hypothetically, of course.
- the men's restroom may be a disaster area/public health hazard
- he may have just accidentally walked into the women's restroom

And the same for cisgender women being in men's restrooms.

The scare tactics bother me. Rape/assault/harassment/voyeurism are already covered by other laws, no matter the location, and bathroom laws are not going to stop a criminal. The way men talk about it is also disturbing, it's never "my wife/daughter will be uncomfortable" it's always "I don't want a man in the bathroom with my wife/daughter", making it all about them and their property rights rather than actually caring about women's feelings on the subject. (Side note: I have yet to see anything from a woman panicking about her husband/son sharing a bathroom with trans men). And what do they think anyone walking into a women's restroom is going to see? We go to a stall, close the door, do our business, go to the sink and wash hands/brush hair/fix make-up, and then leave. There's nothing to see! Do they think women use urinals? Do they think that upon entering a women's restroom, we all strip down and have naked pillow fights? The moral panic hysteria is pretty bizarre.

 

[Gruebeard]

There are plenty of legit reasons for a cisgender man to be in a women's restroom:
- assisting an elderly woman
- assisting a disabled woman

I've seen an elderly, disabled man balk at being wheeled into the ladies room by his elderly wife. And I had to put some effort into convincing her that it was fine for her to help him in the mens room. It seemed ridiculous to me that they hesitated at either option, since it was the sort of situation that anyone walking in on them would understand in an instant that it was a reasonable, even necessary transgression.

Just as I think would be the case with you and your son once they saw you supervising him.

(and damn right I made sure I was convincing, otherwise I might have volunteered - damn my Canadian politeness - to nurse the old man, and that's not something I want to do)

 

[Dei]

My son wouldn't go into a women's room even if I told him to because it's labeled women so it would be breaking rules. So as I've said before, if he takes too long because he got distracted, I go in there after him regardless.

 

[DarkAudit]

The Left says, "use the restroom you identify with."

The Right says, "use the restroom we tell you you identify with."

The Libertarian says, "dig your own goddamned latrine."

I'm more prone to dig and see what other more pressing issues are getting swept under the rug in NC. What's this particular moral panic really a smokescreen for? Someone in government in legal trouble? Economy in the crapper?

 

[Hailey Knight]

Well, those things are a problem, but I don't know if it's a smokescreen so much as they're not capable of addressing their real issues, but they figured they could pass blanket legislation with ease. Economics is hard; fucking around with bathrooms is easy.

 

[GasBandit]

Ask the Charlotte city council, they're the ones passing easy-to-abuse feelgood legislation instead of whatever the heck else Charlotte probably needs.

 

[DarkAudit]

Ask the Charlotte city council, they're the ones passing easy-to-abuse feelgood legislation instead of whatever the heck else Charlotte probably needs.

Wrong answer. It took the right to blow the whole thing up into a nationwide shitshow.

 

[Tinwhistler]

All this bathroom debate is already starting to have some pretty amazing results

http://www.newstimes.com/local/arti...gender-harassed-in-7471666.php#photo-10075104
http://www.wfaa.com/news/local/coll...troom-after-mistaking-her-for-a-man/160568442
http://myfox8.com/2016/04/26/transgender-teen-fights-back-after-suspension-for-using-wrong-bathroom/
http://www.newnownext.com/aggressiv...of-womens-bathroom-for-not-having-id/04/2016/

(and by "amazing," I mean horrifying)

All sarcasm aside, a quick news search easily shows that public restrooms have always been dangerous places for vulnerable people. A google search on "bathroom assault" leads me to believe that the most dangerous group to encounter in a bathroom are straight males. Neither laws barring entry or social pressure/embarrassment have stopped anyone from entering a restroom to commit a sex crime, if they have been so inclined. Neither have the laws against rape, assault, and battery--which, you know, are already on the books.

What I don't get is that the most transphobic bathroom hysteria is in super-republican southern states. It's like these people have some kind of cognitive bias. I mean, if you're going to claim gun restriction laws won't stop gun crimes, how can you make the claim that restroom restriction laws are going to stop restroom crime?

I mean, who's really at risk here, anyway?
NPR (the media plugin wouldn't let me post a straight link. Heh)

"About 70 percent of the sample reported experiencing being denied access to restrooms, being harassed while using restrooms and even experiencing some forms of physical assault," says Herman.
Eight of the 93 respondents in her survey said they had been physically attacked in a restroom.

 

[GasBandit]

if you're going to claim gun restriction laws won't stop gun crimes, how can you make the claim that restroom restriction laws are going to stop restroom crime?

That's a false syllogism. A penis isn't a gun (no matter how much we might like to pretend), and it doesn't grant a tactical advantage over a group of those who don't have one, and it is logistically difficult and expensive to give functioning ones to those who don't have them.

 

[Dave]

This is your weapon, this is your gun...

 

[Tinwhistler]

That's a false syllogism. A penis isn't a gun (no matter how much we might like to pretend), and it doesn't grant a tactical advantage over a group of those who don't have one, and it is logistically difficult and expensive to give functioning ones to those who don't have them.

Of course a penis isn't a gun. But the argument against gun control usually goes something like this:
"criminals don't follow the law. If you restrict gun ownership to prevent gun crime, criminals will still have them."

Which, by changing a few words, sounds a lot like:
"criminals don't follow the law. If you tell men they can't go into women's restrooms to prevent sex crime, criminals will do it anyway." Because they already do.

Bathroom restriction law won't do anything to prevent the crime that already happens in restrooms, and there's no indication that bathroom inclusion law will increase crime, except perhaps an increase in assaults by homophobes on trans individuals or even those merely perceived as trans.

 

[GasBandit]

Of course a penis isn't a gun. But the argument against gun control usually goes something like this:
"criminals don't follow the law. If you restrict gun ownership to prevent gun crime, criminals will still have them."

Which, by changing a few words, sounds a lot like:
"criminals don't follow the law. If you tell men they can't go into women's restrooms to prevent sex crime, criminals will do it anyway." Because they already do.

Bathroom restriction law won't do anything to prevent the crime that already happens in restrooms, and there's no indication that bathroom inclusion law will increase crime, except perhaps an increase in assaults by homophobes on trans individuals or even those merely perceived as trans.

The two situations are incomparable. The gun control example starts from an assumption that both the criminal and law abiding have guns - a situation of parity and equivalence, and then the law would take them from the law abiding. The transgender bathroom example does not start from a point of situational parity - it starts from a situation where gender-based segregation is the societal norm and is expected. It's a completely incompatible comparison. It'd be more like saying you can only bring a gun into a political convention if you tell the secret service guards at the door you identify as a pacifist. Yes, the actual pacifists aren't the problem - it's the would-be assassins that now have a legal loophole.

 

[Tinwhistler]

The two situations are incomparable. The gun control example starts from an assumption that both the criminal and law abiding have guns - a situation of parity and equivalence, and then the law would take them from the law abiding. The transgender bathroom example does not start from a point of situational parity - it starts from a situation where gender-based segregation is the societal norm and is expected.

Which is weird of you to say, since Texas has never had any laws against people entering the restroom of the opposite gender to void their bladder/bowels. As I've mentioned previously, I've used the women's restroom several times in my life when the men's room was full and I really needed to go. It's never been a crime.

I remember a news story 8 or 9 years ago where a woman was arrested for disorderly conduct for using the men's room at a baseball game because the line for the women's room was really long. But the case was dismissed, since the Texas law says that it's only disorderly conduct if you enter/view a place set aside for the opposite gender for a "lewd or unlawful purpose." Which is pretty much exactly as it should be.

 

[GasBandit]

Which is weird of you to say, since Texas has never had any laws against people entering the restroom of the opposite gender to void their bladder/bowels. As I've mentioned previously, I've used the women's restroom several times in my life when the men's room was full and I really needed to go. It's never been a crime.

And then gubmint got involved in NC, and then MORE gubmint countermanded it and went futher, then the federal gubmint tried to put its foot down, and here we are in a big gubmint pissing contest. We'd all have been better off if no law had been made in the first place.

 

[Dave]

Brofist = agree.

 

[strawman]

We'd all have been better off if no law had been made in the first place.

Except for those transgender students who transition after they start going to school and are not satisfied with separate facilities. They are the entire basis for the current push for transgender rights in terms of bathroom/locker room access.

 

[Tinwhistler]

Except for those transgender students who transition after they start going to school and are not satisfied with separate facilities. They are the entire basis for the current push for transgender rights in terms of bathroom/locker room access.

And except for those 70% of trans folks who are regularly assaulted and sometimes beaten for using the restroom. I doubt that they've felt "better off" at any time before or during this entire mess.

But I guess that's just an acceptable price to pay.

 

[Dei]

Plus, places of business will find a way to not hire trans people because it's just easier to accommodate cis people. I mean, it goes beyond simple bathroom things. I feel like this is a problem that will work itself out as the younger generation ages, but that takes time.

But this is also a thing plaguing a lot of areas as far as employment goes. You aren't allowed to discriminate against a pregnant woman while hiring, but ask 20-30ish year old women how hard it is to find a job, whether they plan to have children or not.

 

[strawman]

And except for those 70% of trans folks who are regularly assaulted and sometimes beaten for using the restroom. I doubt that they've felt "better off" at any time before or during this entire mess.

But I guess that's just an acceptable price to pay.

I looked it up and intended to make a long post about the deaths and beatings of transgender people but dropped it because the only person putting that forth as an actual argument was Charlie, and I knew he wouldn't be interested at the time.

I'm not going to go through it all again, but what I found was that the majority of transgender deaths were not for using the wrong restroom. Most were people they knew, many were people they were dating or attempting to date. There were several out of the last five years where it could have been a stranger assaulting them merely for going to the bathroom, but there was no evidence that this was the cause - the bathroom was more often than not simply an out of the way place to carry out the assault away from the public eye (no cameras, attendants, guards, etc). "Using the wrong bathroom" could be the single cause for some deaths, but if so it's a very small percentage of deaths, and the bathroom looked more like opportunity than a cause.

Take what I've said with a very large grain of salt, this was in the early days of this thread and enough time has passed that if you're really going to argue it either way you should probably look into it further. This was some 70 deaths over 5 years, IIRC, out of a 700,000 transgender adult population in the US (estimated - its hard to get numbers on this), so that's a 1 in 50,000 chance of death just for presenting as a transgender person per year, and that's ignoring/including all the possible but not verifiable external factors such as drug use and other risky behavior.

At any rate, any deaths of transgender people, just like any deaths of homosexual and other marginalized groups, are unacceptable. But the evidence as I interpreted it (surely in a biased manner) doesn't suggest that bathroom laws are going to change that, or could possibly change that.

At best the bathroom laws are a vehicle to raise public awareness - which, as we've seen, has both positive and negative effects.

 

[GasBandit]

It seems to me there's a simple precedent for addressing the issue, which I've mentioned piece by piece previously.

There is an analogue to the 60s civil rights movement here - making "special accommodations" for trans students separate from the cis students starts to sound a little too close to "separate but equal," which the Supreme Court has ruled by definition to not be equal. So, even the current "best fit" solution is constitutionally problematic.

But when you think about it, in the 60s, did they address the problem of separate race bathrooms by saying "black people can use white restrooms if they identify as/can pass for white?" No, they did not. What they did was they said "separate bathrooms for races is no longer a thing."

So, as I've said before, the best long-term solution here (which will probably be met with equal acrimony by some sectors) is to simply make bathrooms unisex. No men's room, no women's room. Just bathrooms. As has been previously corroborated by halforumites, there are areas of Europe that already do this and they don't have the issue.

As a consideration to those with young children, we have a "family" bathroom in addition to the standard unisex bathroom, to placate those who fear who may be around their kids in sensitive situations.

The only real reason why we think men go in the men's room and women go in the women's room is that somebody indoctrinated us to that standard when we were in kindergarten, if not earlier. If you don't stigmatize the natural human form, if you don't create a taboo about the form opposite yours, a lot of problems seem to vanish as if by miracle.

This ties in to what I and others have said, also, in that it will be a generational change. The fact of the matter is that people don't change their minds. You won't convince a 40 year old today who doesn't think transgenderism is valid, and that men and women should segregate for bathrooms and locker rooms, to really, fundamentally change his point of view. At best, you can only get him to tolerate a situation with which he does not agree. But if we stop teaching our kids from the ground up to have taboos and stigmas about the differences in human bodies, they will grow up free of the desire to break and fetishize those taboos. And the whole thing becomes a non-issue.

I expect resistance on the right, because it does away with 200+ years of American puritan cultural tradition.
I expect resistance on the left, because it removes a vehicle by which a leftist sacred cow is used as a spearhead to attack traditionalism - IE, for some people it's not really about equal accommodation, it's about forcing a conservative to "admit" that a trans-woman is a woman in fact, and demonstrating that admission by granting them access to the women's room.

 

[Shakey]

I'm all for the unisex bathroom. Mainly because I would no longer have to fear the dreaded "trough".

 

[GasBandit]

I'm all for the unisex bathroom. Mainly because I would no longer have to fear the dreaded "trough".

As a Texan, I learned to love the efficiency of the trough.

Really, though, fearing the trough is kind of counter to my whole "no body taboos" assertion about unisex bathrooms unless you're objecting to it on cleanliness/smell issues.

 

[Frank]

As a Texan, I learned to love the efficiency of the trough.

Really, though, fearing the trough is kind of counter to my whole "no body taboos" assertion about unisex bathrooms unless you're objecting to it on cleanliness/smell issues.

Not really, unisex bathrooms would probably be Euro style stalls where there aren't spaces large enough in the doors where you can stare someone in the eye from across the room.

 

[GasBandit]

Not really, unisex bathrooms would probably be Euro style stalls where there aren't spaces large enough in the doors where you can stare someone in the eye from across the room.

Yes, that was what I envisioned, too. What you quoted was tongue-in-cheek.

 

[Bubble181]

Euro style

I assure you, I've seen plenty of troughs around here too, even in unisex bathrooms (though the combination is fairly rare). It's a bit weird to be standing there looking at the women doing their make up.