South Dakota and transgender

[knapplc]

 

BUT, for some people using the restroom is a very personal thing, so I don't think those people should have to feel uncomfortable just to accommodate someone else's situation.

 

 

Trouble is, there is no way for this to be reality. No matter what, either which way the law goes, some people end up uncomfortable.

 

 

I agree with both of you. This is a no-win situation for society.

 

As Moiraine said a few posts above, as open-minded as I am, I just can't get on board with transgender people. You've either got two X's or an X/Y chromosome set. Whatever you have, that's what you are. Yes, there's the .00003% of people with XXY and I don't have an answer for that. But while I respect their situation, I don't have an answer for that.

 

So you're either born, genetically, a man or a woman. You may think you're a woman when you were born a man, or vice versa, but what's society supposed to do about that? What's society supposed to do if you're born a woman but think you're a Buick? Create new laws? Create separate bathrooms, separate classifications, separate everything? Not only is that not logical, it's not feasible. Everyone could believe they're different, but society isn't equipped to accommodate everyone's separateness.

[teachercd]

Have you ever seen the lines that happen at girls restrooms?

 

I would not want to have to deal with that...A 3rd restroom fixes that

[Saunders]

 

 

BUT, for some people using the restroom is a very personal thing, so I don't think those people should have to feel uncomfortable just to accommodate someone else's situation.

 

 

Trouble is, there is no way for this to be reality. No matter what, either which way the law goes, some people end up uncomfortable.

 

 

I agree with both of you. This is a no-win situation for society.

 

As Moiraine said a few posts above, as open-minded as I am, I just can't get on board with transgender people. You've either got two X's or an X/Y chromosome set. Whatever you have, that's what you are. Yes, there's the .00003% of people with XXY and I don't have an answer for that. But while I respect their situation, I don't have an answer for that.

 

So you're either born, genetically, a man or a woman. You may think you're a woman when you were born a man, or vice versa, but what's society supposed to do about that? What's society supposed to do if you're born a woman but think you're a Buick? Create new laws? Create separate bathrooms, separate classifications, separate everything? Not only is that not logical, it's not feasible. Everyone could believe they're different, but society isn't equipped to accommodate everyone's separateness.

 

Yup, you can't make everyone happy, and trying to do so is lunacy.

 

I'm blame parent for telling their kids that they're each special snowflakes.

[zoogs]

I can understand the weirdness factor here, but I really don't know how to feel about dismissing the legitimacy of a trans person's experience.

 

Society doesn't create bathrooms. Society can create laws that say "Hey, go ahead and use this bathroom." Or it can create laws that say, "We'll charge you if you do." I think the fears are largely overblown. We're just going to get a little more used to something that is *not* that big a deal. If they're pre-op and anybody needs to wonder, the answer is "Oh, they're transgender." Use the bathroom and be on your merry ways.

 

If someone is committing sex offenses, that's a crime with or without anti-discrimination laws, if I'm not mistaken (can a man not commit sex offenses in a men's bathroom, for example?) And there's good reason to believe these fears are overblown.

 

The South Dakota governor vetoed the bill today. Broadly speaking, anti-discrimination laws have their place and they protect margins of people that may not have been recognized before but are people nonetheless. I'm puzzled by the slippery slope arguments; they're awfully reminiscent of the line of thinking that goes "Well, if you let the gays marry, people will be marrying their toasters next."

[Scratchtown]

 

 

 

 

 

According to a Williams Institute study from 2011, there were about 700,000 transgender persons in the US, or roughly 0.22% of the population.

 

I'm not sure we need a law to correct this problem. Or maybe it's better to say that a State government should have bigger things on its plate than a law like this.

I honestly can not figure out why people waist so much time on issues like this. OK....does it really matter where they go take a piss? If a woman becomes a man and they go into use a men's bathroom....WHO GIVES A FLYING RATS ASS!!!!!

 

Same the other direction.

 

It continues to baffle me how some people get caught up in this crap. (Haha...punn totally unintended but funny anyway)

 

 

I dunno. I imagine my eight year old niece would be sort of creeped out if some hairy, middle aged "woman" with a wanker and two low hanging balls followed her into the restroom.

 

And frankly, I think the whole transgender fad is some sort of silly attention-getting thing. I mean, if a dude is born with XY chromosomes, a wanker and testes, he's a man. He can pretend all he wants that he's a woman. But he's still a man.

 

 

(Okay, I know there are freak medical conditions like XXY people. But those are very rare.)

 

Soooo....your 8 year old nephew would be less creeped out if a middle aged 'woman" wearing a dress followed him into the bathroom and whipped out a wanker and two low hanging balls to use the restroom?

 

 

No. It would be an equally creepy situation, I'd say.

 

So....the transgender is in a no win situation. Remind me again why it matters where they go to the bathroom?

 

Just go to a porta-potty system kind of thing. Have businesses make them all single bathrooms. Have a hallway of bathrooms and put a sink in each one...

 

Problem solved. Having people all peeing together and showering together (cuz lets be honest, locker rooms in school are the next thing coming) is an odd concept itself anyway.

 

I mean, ever since the thing that happened at Cambridge high school with the hazing of freshman boys, makes me really uneasy about my future children.

[Scratchtown]

 

BUT, for some people using the restroom is a very personal thing, so I don't think those people should have to feel uncomfortable just to accommodate someone else's situation.

 

 

Trouble is, there is no way for this to be reality. No matter what, either which way the law goes, some people end up uncomfortable.

 

Right, so why do we need to change anything.

[zoogs]

Fwiw, my experiences with people outside the gender norms have been really limited. There was one in a fairly large high school that I heard about from sniggering friends (we all agreed that it was really weird. I think everyone simply called him a crossdresser). There was one in college I have better recollections of, but still very limited -- he was much, much more accepted by everyone, and those were basically the cues I took. At the times, in each case, I personally just felt it was weird without spending too much time on it.

 

*(I admit I'm not at all sure what pronouns are appropriate)

 

I've never shared a restroom with either although the ones in our dorm were coed. That was a little weird, too, but really not very. I'm sure I've encountered pretty weird people in bathrooms before Anyway, I guess the general theme here is these are people who are quite outside our normal range of experiences, but they're still just people at the end of the day. And like other people, they need to use the restroom. Big whoop.

[knapplc]

Society does create bathrooms. Before society, there was a bush, or a tree, or a private spot somewhere away from the tribe. Society said, "Put your waste HERE, not THERE." Over time, we created walls & plumbing and flush toilets, and we designated places for girls & for boys. We did that because we felt the need to offer privacy for the elimination of waste.

 

This is entirely a societal construct.

 

The issue becomes, if we make too many divisions, does society have the means to accommodate them? I don't think so. There has to be a limit to that, and unfortunate as it may be, someone's always going to fall outside that limit, or feel constrained by it.

[onlyHskrfaninIL]

People are so messed up they dont know what bathroom to take a leak in? the end is near

[zoogs]

I don't see how this is about making divisions. This is about breaking down divisions -- saying, "Hey, these people? They're people too." To the honest extent this is likely to affect anybody's lives, there's nothing more to it than a recognition that well, hey, some people have a different experience with gender identity than the rest of us. Those people would really be no more comfortable in the other bathroom than you would. That recognition will be easier to come by, with time.

[VA Husker Fan]

I've mentioned before here, I have a family member who is trans. Believe me, this is not something someone would choose to do, or do to feel like a "special snowflake". FU for suggesting that, btw.

 

He (transitioned gender) now has a beard, are you saying he should still use the ladies' room? You don't think that might freak anyone out?

 

I have another MTF friend. She uses the ladies' room. She says (in her sister's book) that she absolutely will not talk in the ladies' room, especially in a stall, for fear that her voice will betray her and someone will call the cops. But seeing her at a glance, you would have a hard time telling, and she would draw a lot more attention using the men's room.

 

This is not the same thing as cross-dressing.

 

I don't know what to do about creeps that will use this as a loophole to peep in the opposite gender's restroom. I also don't know what to do about creep's that peep in the same gender's restroom. I think that is a different issue that would be good to be solved. Separately. I feel very certain that nearly all trans people dread public restrooms and want to get in and out with as little attention as possible.

[Landlord]

I don't see how this is about making divisions. This is about breaking down divisions -- saying, "Hey, these people? They're people too." To the honest extent this is likely to affect anybody's lives, there's nothing more to it than a recognition that well, hey, some people have a different experience with gender identity than the rest of us.

 

As long as society has bathrooms that are meant to house more than one person at a time, this will be an issue that can't have a perfect solution, and while I have empathy and compassion to transgendered people for what is likely a more difficult every day life than I have, forming policy on the side of "which group has a higher amount of utilitarian dismissal as individual people" seems really odd.

 

A transgender person (let's say male to female, pre-op, since that seems to be primarily what this issue is centered around) doesn't feel comfortable in a men's bathroom anymore. Well, a heterosexual cis woman doesn't feel comfortable with that transgender person using the women's bathroom while she's using it. Who's side should the law come down on? Both people have just as much of an argument towards their privacy and just as much of a chance of feeling genuinely uncomfortable with the situation.

 

 

 

 

I can understand the weirdness factor here, but I really don't know how to feel about dismissing the legitimacy of a trans person's experience.

 

 

I don't think anyone is really trying to do that in here. Maybe a bit of a lack of understanding, but I don't see anyone being dismissive. However, I would submit that the carte blanche support of impressionable youth to embrace and love and pursue whatever makes them feel "right" is....maybe dismissive isn't the right word, but it certainly isn't loving. The point that knapp and moiraine are getting at, I believe, and that I agree with, is that a lot of transgender people end up where they are as adults because of unresolved confusion that they were either encouraged or influenced into coming to the conclusion that they are the wrong gender.

 

I don't think that is true. I think there either is a Creator, in which case you were created the way you were supposed to be, or there isn't, in which case you were created the way you are and there is no right or wrong way for it to be. Either way, we all go through odd, bizarre, nonsensical seasons in life, brain activity, physical developments, and so on. I had periods in elementary school where I thought it was fun to dress up in dresses at daycare, as one meaningless anecdotal example of many. These can range from being utterly meaningless, or being symptomatic of some real gender confusion, but I would submit that only in astronomically rare situations should someone be encouraged to change their gender based on these feelings or confusion. Instead, as a society we should expand 'gender roles' to be more fluid and inclusive, and as individuals we should encourage the people we love to embrace who they are and can be in the sense of teasing out the best qualities of their foundation, not who they "should be" in a fragile, emotional, pleasure-seeking journey trying to actually reconstruct themselves.

 

I probably didn't do a good job of explaining that but tl;dr my heart goes out to transgender people, but I think we do them a disservice by adopting a no-matter-what "I support your decision" posture, instead of a, "Hey, okay, your experience is valid and I'm sorry you're going through this confusion and hurt, but let's just....hold on a second. You are good. You're not a mistake and you're not worthless and you're not meaningless and you can find where you fit in this world the way you are."

[Saunders]

I've mentioned before here, I have a family member who is trans. Believe me, this is not something someone would choose to do, or do to feel like a "special snowflake". FU for suggesting that, btw.

 

He (transitioned gender) now has a beard, are you saying he should still use the ladies' room? You don't think that might freak anyone out?

 

I have another MTF friend. She uses the ladies' room. She says (in her sister's book) that she absolutely will not talk in the ladies' room, especially in a stall, for fear that her voice will betray her and someone will call the cops. But seeing her at a glance, you would have a hard time telling, and she would draw a lot more attention using the men's room.

 

This is not the same thing as cross-dressing.

 

I don't know what to do about creeps that will use this as a loophole to peep in the opposite gender's restroom. I also don't know what to do about creep's that peep in the same gender's restroom. I think that is a different issue that would be good to be solved. Separately. I feel very certain that nearly all trans people dread public restrooms and want to get in and out with as little attention as possible.

Your personal insults aside, it's reality. Basing societal/political policy around the wants of an extreme minority just seems crazy. You can't accommodate everyone.

 

And for the record, my point on the bathrooms was specifically about pre-op people. That's where it gets tricky. If people wanna freak out about gender based bathrooms, then base it on biological traits.

[StPaulHusker]

Remodel all public restrooms to uni-sex, single person rooms so that no one needs to feel unsafe or have hurt feelings.

[Creighton Duke]

Remodel all public restrooms to uni-sex, single person rooms so that no one needs to feel unsafe or have hurt feelings.

What are the numbers on that? I'm thinking it could easily run into tens of billions.