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Comment by jwn | Hacker News Reader

The problem with that approach is that not all transgender people elect to have operations, so making that the minimum bar is unreasonable. A much more reasonable (non-fear mongering) approach is to use the gender the person identifies with. I don't know how you set that bar, maybe it's obvious, maybe it requires a note from a physician or similar.

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.

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It's easy, make all stalls unisex; add a separator so the urinals are not clearly visible. Or more expensively, just have individual bathrooms.

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.

A company I have worked for tried this, changing a few single bathrooms from M and W to unisex. The women protested because cleanliness went way down. They went back to M and W after 2 weeks.

That's because habits are hard to change. But give it time (or turnover) and it'd be fine. Have the cleaners come in more often and make sure everyone is responsible for keeping the stalls clean. Education.

> A much more reasonable (non-fear mongering) approach is to use the gender the person identifies with.

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.

> The problem with that approach is that not all transgender people elect to have operations

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.

> I don't know how you set that bar, maybe it's obvious.

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.

The problem with that approach is women don't feel comfortable using the bathroom with a man, regardless of what he claims to be. So who's rights are more important? The born women's or the born man's?

So then you introduce someone that has female genitalia, but looks from all outward respects to be male (possibly including facial hair if they're on hormone therapy). By law in NC this person is required to use the women's restroom. Does that increase comfort for either of them?

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.

I agree its an imperfect standard -- how could one ever possibly determine what gender a person identifies with for legal purposes? But, if one must come up with some legal standard or other (which we shouldn't), I think GP's suggestion is better than focusing on genitalia or the gender assigned at birth.

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.)

What about the trans man who's now stuck in the women's room? Now everyone's uncomfortable. Oops.

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.

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