Porn site xHamster blocks North Carolina users to protest anti-LGBT law
theverge.com
theverge.com
Stop building multi-occupant public restrooms with a gender designation, and instead build several single-occupant public restrooms with no gender designation.
Added bonus: Not only do we disarm these attempts to discriminate against transgendered people, we also avoid all the social awkwardness that comes from multi-occupant restrooms. Like the loud person talking on their cell phone. Or the smells of other people doing their thing.
(Retrofitting would be expensive, but don't make that part mandatory.)
In one building they were gender neutral. As far as I can see, everyone was fine with it. Then we moved to another building where the bathrooms had gender pictograms on them although they were identical in every other respect. Some males eventually went to the female-stamped bathroom when the other was occupied. And someone attached a note in the female bathroom to remind everyone that this was a female-only bathroom…
Then the whole thing will burn itself out from outrage fatigue and be dropped.
I see that there are at least 3 aspects: physiological comfort, hygiene and security.
I think that your proposal falls into physiological comfort category but I am afraid that changing personal attitude does not change the other two aspects.
So I would assume that women are a little better off with separate toilets in the given state of the society.
Would be interesting to see any research that tries to answer these questions.
What's the hygiene threat here? Transgender people know how to use the toilet just like cisgender people do.
What's the security threat here? As the now popular meme notes, at least three Republican Congressmen have been arrested for lewd conduct in bathrooms. There don't seem to be any verifiable incidents of transgender folks doing nasty stuff in bathrooms warranting these laws.
The person in the next stall can be man, woman or whoever. But it actually does not matter who is in the next stall.
What matters is who was before you in the stall or who wants to (forcefully) get along with you into the stall.
If unisex toilets would increase the risks for people with woman physiology then I would be wary about forcing them into unisex toilets. The question of the feelings of the transgender people would be a secondary mater in this case.
Now if there would be no risks then I am all for the unisex toilets as combined floor area would make them more practical.
This is already a crime, and one the new anti-trans laws do nothing to combat (unless you intend to require a birth certificate or a pat-down to enter the bathroom).
> If unisex toilets would increase the risks for people with woman physiology then I would be wary about forcing them into unisex toilets.
Then demonstrate that they increase the risks. As I noted, there appears to be a larger risk of lewdness in bathrooms from Republican Congressmen than transgender individuals. There's certainly no epidemic of transgender folks assaulting people in bathrooms. If anything, transgender folks are generally the ones at risk of assault.
First of, I am not a US resident nor a citizen. Therefore I really do not care about the remarks about Republican Congressmen. Well, mostly.
Second, in my comment I mostly focused on the group who are physiologically women and also address themselves as women, i.e. women. If this was not clear enough, I am sorry.
I did also not mean or write that there is in my opinion an increased risk from transgender people in the case of unisex toilets or that it would increase the risk for the transgender people. I hoped that the meaning was clear enough, I am sorry again.
I am also not arguing against the opinions voiced here like "transgender folks are generally the ones at risk of assault".
I am not physician and I do not have any court statistics handy, but my hypothesis was that
a) hygiene in the men occupied toilets in general might be worse than in women only occupied toilets and sharing a public toilet with men might raise the risk of infections for women (it is a less problem for men because they mostly use urinal in the public toilets, if this was not clear enough),
b) women may be at higher risk to be sexually assaulted in the toilets shared with men (and please note, I know that this is already a crime).
We could outlaw getting in car accidents. But if it is legal speed, drive drunk, and run red lights. Then it is too easy to break the car accident law.
My point is sure we outlaw harrasement but for those that may want to do that, allowing them to go into a room where women are alone and disrobed would make it too easy to break that law.
I think it would be fairly obvious to discern someone who's actually identifying with a given gender versus some guy who wishes to get into the women's restroom.
As an aside, if you are ever in other parts of the world, the East, many bathrooms are open to the world -no doors, and people do alright.
The problem with /that/ would be that non-transgenders would possibly feel uncomfortable with that - which I believe, but correct me if I'm wrong, is why there's gender-segregated bathrooms in the first place.
The only solution would be, as the other commenter says, to only have unisex bathrooms and to tell anyone that complains about that to fuck off.
And some simply can't afford it. It requires a number regular sessions with a psychiatrist, and is difficult to get covered by health insurance. One friend quoted me their estimate of nearly $25,000, just for the surgery alone.
Ultimately what makes someone comfortable or uncomfortable in a bathroom is the gender that they perceive others to be. They will usually not know what another person has between their legs, or what gender is written on a person's birth certificate. They just know what they look like and how they behave. And I'd bet that these criteria will better track a person's subjective gender identity than anything else. This is especially likely when one considers the fact that transgender people, like anyone else, will not want to make other people in the bathroom uncomfortable--or to be made uncomfortable themselves.
Edit: Here's another thing to think about. If we're really just worried about who is more uncomfortable, remember that for most third parties in the bathroom, this discomfort will be mild and fleeting. "That was weird, that women kinda looked like a man." But for the transgender person, the discomfort will be deeply felt and repeated daily for the rest of their lives. (Until, that is, they move to a better state.)
Or, more realistically, if your presented gender doesn't match your birth sex, or if you're "weird" and someone feels like challenging you under this law, you now don't have the right to use a public restroom. Just be honest and admit this is your goal instead of cherry-picking a single scenario.
Example: https://twitter.com/JayShef/status/712845760287494144/photo/...
Frankly, while I like being comfortable, one should always think twice before passing laws purely for the purpose of increasing comfort. (Particularly in this case, where the discomfort appears to be far more theoretical than common). When I think of the society my grandparents, or even, heck, my PARENTS found "comfortable", I would feel very sad to live there.
Perhaps you feel it's obvious to you, but do you trust the arbitrary judgement of some company's random employee? What if the employee or establishment decides that this is a case of "some guy who wishes to get into the women's restroom" but the patron disagrees? Should we always implicitly trust the word of the patron? Should a line be drawn? If so, where? Who can we trust as the arbiter of "genuine" gender identity? Is there any criteria that a reasonable person could use to ascertain if someone is using the "wrong" bathroom? Should we even care in any capacity who uses which bathroom?
What about situations where someone with a political agenda intends to deliberately make things difficult by doing their best to straddle the gray area between honest expression of gender identity and calculated abuse of our good faith? What about a scenario where someone's gender genuinely feels fluid and they find that they can identify as both genders at different times?
As an anecdote, I have a trans-woman friend who normally uses the woman's bathroom (without issue as far as I am aware), but who sometimes (when drunk at a bar) has deigned to use the men's room at times when the line to the woman's room was really long. In her own words "why should I make the line longer for women who can't use the urinal when I can be in and out of the men's room in a minute?". We have jokingly accused her of just not wanting to wait in line, and none of us care at all what bathroom she uses, but I could envision a scenario where this behavior becomes very controversial (if she can use a man's bathroom, why should she ever encumber the already heavily trafficked woman's room, some might argue)?
IMO, the best way to go about this would be to just have unisex bathrooms or urinal & stall bathrooms and allow people to use whichever they prefer. I don't see how any system that is contingent on someone's gender can work in this political climate since that requires determining gender in the first place.
I think the problem (illustrated nicely by your comment) is that, in reality, gender is too complex and varied to be adequately addressed by this sort of legislation. While its easy enough to this sort of law to work properly 95% of the time, its hard to come up with a real legal test that doesn't leave some percentage of people marginalized and legally required to use the wrong bathroom (either because its not the one they would feel comfortable using, or also in many cases because it would make the other users of that bathroom uncomfortable).
This being the case, and given a complete lack of any real problem with bathroom use today, one would think that this counsels strongly in favor of having no specific law on the subject at all, and relying instead on the usual social convention. (Bearing in mind, of course, that in the extremely rare event that someone really does stroll into the wrong bathroom for voyeuristic purposes, or to sexually assault someone, we already have laws to punish those people.)
It never ceases to amaze me that people who are normally so quick to declaim against any purported intrusion into individual liberties (note that I'm not necessarily talking about you here) are happy to uncritically accept the proposition that the government should have a role in telling you which bathroom you can and cannot use.
How would this work in your example? What could prevent me from saying I'm gender fluid and walk into the women's showers at the gym?
If we're ready to take the step to say that there is no gender binary then we kind of have to go the whole way and flip to communal showers/bathrooms/dressing rooms etc. Reading your comment reminds me of the obscenity law debates in 1964 when Justice Potter Stewart said...
"I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description ["hard-core pornography"], and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it,"
If we aren't ready to make the big leap to no recognized genders (which I would argue society at large is not ready for), then standards need to exist from a legal point of view in the mean time.
How does this law prevent anyone from doing that already?
But given direction these new laws are taking, I'm further guessing that the Police should refuse to remove the man and instead arrest the proprietor for discriminating against this man based on his protected status of identifying as a woman?
A person's perceived gender (which will be a function of that's person's subjective gender identity, among other things) will play a major role in determining whether a person's conduct is perceived in this way. A woman in a women's bathroom would likely have to do something pretty overt to get herself in trouble. A person who appears to be a man will, presumably, be on much thinner ice. It seems to me that a combination of this and the prevailing social pressure not to wander into the wrong bathroom should be all we need. And, after all, nobody to my knowledge has ever presented a shred of evidence that there is actually a problem with people using the "wrong" bathroom to warrant the sort of legislation we're talking about--especially when that legislation will indisputably harm an already marginalized segment of the population.
As evinced by the fact that unisex bathrooms were the norm until the late 19th-early 20th century, and that rest stops and other establishments operate unisex bathrooms without any issue.
So the law basically means that a subset of the people in NC can no longer use public bathrooms, which is insane.
For example, if "penis sighting in the urinal" is a "problem" that the segregation solves, then self-identified gender is irrelevant.
My question got downvoted a lot, but I was quite serious. Why would the US be upheld to "higher standards" (whatever it means)? Are we supposed to believe in some form of American exceptionalism? And are we just talking about Africa or should the US have higher standards than, say, India, Australia, Italy and Argentina?
I just wanted to understand the parent comment.
here's an example: i think most people would agree that every country should have a strong, maintained infrastructure to support their country's operations. but it is clearly a different situation for an economically challenged country to have bridges in disrepair, than for a rich country to have the same issue despite it having the resources available to it. "higher standards" doesn't necessarily mean "superior".
that said, i'm not completely clear on what the post you replied to was expressing.
if i were to guess, it was about so-called "social progress". north america/europe generally provides a better opportunity for LGBT peoples to live their lives as they see fit than other regions. MENA (such as Saudi[1] and Qatar[2]) have traditionally been seen as decidedly unwelcoming to LGBT, perhaps even supporting violence against LGBT, but this isn't exactly unique to MENA.
MENA's disinterest/lack of "progress" in this area is rooted in cultural, historical and religious norms. as such, it's perhaps "unfair" to hold them to the same standards (achieving "higher progress") of how they treat LGBT people.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_Saudi_Arabia [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_Qatar
Besides, you're naive if you think the Republican lawmakers who push this type of legislation are actually so wholesome that this is totally irrelevant.
While I don't agree, I also think this is a reasonable stance for someone to take. I would encourage others who disagree with this comment to avoid downvoting it simply because you disagree with it.
I agree with you, but porn is a small part of the larger problem that modernity presents us with hypernormal stimuli absolutely everywhere. Television, movies, calorie-dense foods, even things like HVAC. Decrying porn without decrying all forms of hypernormal stimuli seems odd.
There's also plenty of amateur porn on xHamster.
It's a complex issue. On the one hand sex is natural, on the other hand the way it's portrayed can have major influence on how young adults (and even mature adults) view sex which can be loving and consensual to violent and unrealistic. And it can lead some to objectifying people.
But to act like none of those can equivalently be used for good is pretty unfair.
Porn is likely something they publicly are against, but i would be honestly impressed if it's something they (in their private homes) are against.
Hell, most of these people can't even stomach "Love thy neighbor". Let alone sins of the flesh.
Do explain. Are you saying the porn industry pushes a certain ideology (e.g. only anonymous-male-on-model sex!1)? I'm pretty sure the porn industry is purely a capitalistic endeavour, as in, whatever sells - and non-traditional (if that's the right term to use) porn happens to sell.
The local gang said they'd stop robbing and murdering people to boycott my safe streets policy.
What do they expect me to say? "Oh.. no, don't, uh, stop trying to sell drugs to my kids..."
"You can't fire me, I quit!"
Setting aside moral judgements, consider: a state passes a law based on traditional religious morality, and a company that violates traditional religious morality then refuses to do business in it as "punishment".
At some level, I guess it's good. The Big Sort continues apace.
So really, it's more just xHamster trying to cut down on hypocrisy.
[0]: https://timedotcom.files.wordpress.com/2016/02/rolfkdrqf5pg2...
As i disclaimed, it's a big if, an impossible if. As much as i'd love to see these people suffer in this uniquely funny way, prohibition never works.
Those lawmakers will now hope people who run prostitution rings join the protest. Maybe even the bootleggers and...
On the other hand the hamster gets nice publicity out of it, so on balance its probably a net positive for them.
Then they came for the pornography, and there was a mass uprising.
My concern is two fold. One, for transgender persons, who will fear the reaction they will get every time they enter the restroom. And second, basically any person can claim to be of the opposite gender, and walk in to fulfill a sexual fantasy, even a mild one.
I simply don't understand what is the huge effort in using the restroom appropriate to your physical gender, and simply avoid the psychological conflict with the rest of the population. Especially considering the high rates of mental illness and suicidal thoughts and attempts among transgender persons. This, for now, will only add to that. Do they really need to be subjects in a future study that will show the impact of such laws? Or used as ammunition for 'transphobia' accusations in the media or elsewhere? Will the victims of the first line in the war of imposing a policy in the society be really worth it, especially if that increases their chances of committing suicide?
I suspect you haven't really been paying attention and are just submitting your gut feeling here. For example, in attempting to prevent your hypothetical "sexual fantasy" scenario, here's one real consequence of this law:
https://twitter.com/JayShef/status/712845760287494144
The simple fact is any real problems caused in bathrooms are already covered by harassment laws. These new laws take away a freedom people already had, and I'm not really aware of any real problems caused by people having those freedoms. Are you? What problems have these laws solved? Hypothetical situations don't count.
By the same logic, mixed restrooms are dangerous.
The whole "men identifying as women in the washroom with little girls" thing is a big red herring rally cry for a very vocal group (based on a single case of a male pedophile who did not id as a woman). So raising headlines against this, regardless if it's judged appropriate, is good as far as I'm concerned.
How can such a person "simply avoid the psychological conflict" when a law mandates their choice of bathroom based on their genes? The bathroom of least conflict is illegal for them to enter!
As gender reassignment doesn't affect genetics, I think the fairest interpretation is to consider that we just aren't there yet in terms of the biology of gender reassignment. But even stating this is unacceptable to some.
The bigger problem here is things like so-called TERF (trans-exclusionary radical feminism) in which high profile feminists who display contempt for transgender people are unfairly lumped in with innocent people who are merely aware of the limitations of current medicine. That discussion (the TERF discussion) is a painful one to engage with. But maybe bringing that problem up is a non-sequitur.
Seems to me that the bigger problem is bigoted legislators who think it's OK to force their religious values on other people, not some group of radical feminists I've never even heard of before and who I'm guessing have very little power.
If you aren't near the front line, in whatever way, I agree that it may seem less important than protesting intolerant legislation.
http://www.feministcurrent.com/2015/11/10/why-i-no-longer-ha...
Your 'concern' for trans* people is transparently false, or at least misguided. I don't see how allowing someone to live with their gender identity is 'adding stress' to them: outing someone's trans status by forcing them legally to use the wrong restroom is... itself insane, and in no way 'protects' trans people.
But if you're arguing in bad faith, and are not merely confused... well, please don't try to wrap this up as an issue of concern for trans people; the law compels, it takes away liberty. Claiming it's somehow in trans* people's interests is about 50-100 years out of date: you don't protect people by taking away their rights! That's paternalistic and wrong. And somehow suggesting that the freedom to choose the bathroom of your gender is making people commit suicide... that's your argument, right? Well, I just hope you're being facetious and I'm missing the irony.
In the end, you're leaving it up to the person's "feelings" as to where to use the restroom.
Hell, I belong to a gym that has a separate section for women only. How would most women feel if a trans* walked in and started 'working out'?
While I have to agree with individual liberty - live however you want, the question remains how to effectively force other people to accept it, because thats what is going on.
This is all based on the theory that men are sex-crazed pigs anyway. What's wrong with uni-sex restrooms anyway?
No.
I don't understand the type of restrooms you use. When I use the restroom I do not inspect the genitalia of my fellow men. I'm pretty sure women don't do that either. If this is happening in the restroom you utilize you need to find other restrooms.
Under your rules someone who looks, acts, and dresses like a man will be forced (by law!) to use the women's restroom. This actually causes all of the problems you mention. I do not understand your reasoning.
Fun story time: I went to the Santa Cruz boardwalk a few months back with some friends. It was packed and the line for the woman's restroom was massive, so I figured I looked androgynous enough in jeans and a black tshirt that I could get away with using the men's room.
The whispers started immediately after I made it to a stall. "Whoah, did you see that? There's a girl in here!"
Now, by your definition I was using the restroom appropriate to my physical gender (since you seem fixated on genitals or genes or something). I'm also a tiny 5'5" thing and transitioned a decade ago in my teens (https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cfx0a8fUAAAfsoW.jpg). These men were twice my size, and I was mortified and a little scared.
I did my business and got the hell out. It was a lovely day at the beach other than that.
Anyways, if I lived in NC, I have no idea where I would actually use a restroom if I was out in public. Is that not insane? Why should a bunch of conservative men be able to pass a law and restrict a basic bodily function that we all need to deal with? I'd be stuck having to find gender neutral bathrooms where I could.
I'd wager that most transgender people who use the bathroom they wish to use are already dressing, acting, and mostly passing for their gender. It's not a tall woman in a skirt walking into the men's room, nor someone with a full beard walking into a women's room.
And I'd also wager that the reaction they get when walking into the wrong bathroom is probably much, much worse to deal with on a daily basis.
i find this phrasing to be curious. perhaps you're only suggesting that it "objectifies women". well, sure - but it also objectifies men. rarely are the chaps more than grunting and thrusting animalistic instruments of sex, are they? i think it's a valuable thing to be aware of objectification and whether we're treating any givern person with consideration, but at the same time, "objectification" isn't some objectively (!) negative abstract bogeyman.
> But I do see women feeling uncomfortable with a man entering woman's room.
should a female-to-male transgendered person, dressed and groomed and to most people's eye a seeming "biological man" - potentially with facial hair, even - be forced to use the women's room? would this not cause the same discomfort you describe?
> And second, basically any person can claim to be of the opposite gender, and walk in to fulfill a sexual fantasy, even a mild one.
i think fear mongering using unclear, disembodied "sexual fantasy" isn't all that productive of a conversation. it's about on par with "won't someone think of the children?"
> I simply don't understand what is the huge effort in using the restroom appropriate to your physical gender, and simply avoid the psychological conflict with the rest of the population.
not sure i follow - you're saying that someone like Buck Angel[1] would be more comfortable using the women's restroom? that any women in said restroom wouldn't be wondering why a man was in there?