was reading an interesting story here, and one of the issues the main character went through was struggling with bathrooms - they looked female, but identified male, and didnt feel comfortable using the girl's facilities, especially for gym class.
I guess I'm one of the lucky ones, in that right from practically the start of my transition I was able to use the women's washrooms without any issues (a fact you can either attribute to how well I pass or how polite people here are, take your pick) but for some reason, some conservative types really worry about people like me using the girls facilities.
Honestly, I dont get it. Dont they realize that in the women's, its all stalls, so unless some idiot doesnt close their door, you cant see anything anyway? Do they think trans women have nothing better to do than listen for the sounds of the women next stall peeing? Or is the answer that they havent really thought it through, and their reaction is either fear of the unknown, or, most likely of all, that they want to exploit the fears of others for political gain?
Comments
It goes clear back to Freud.
I mean all this facetiously. People and their Bathrooms, as if!
I just get in there, do my business and get out.
G
It really DOES though!
Go back to Freud, that is.
It's all VERY Freudian, and by that I mean that it's people LIKE Freud, but in a more modern context. Even these people would have called Freud nuts, but they fail to see the parallels in their own fears and misogynist and bigoted ideas.
Abigail Drew.
The argument
usually revolves around the fact that transwomen are sex maniacs and will attack any woman they see, or that women sometimes change their clothes in loos and don't like the idea of being watched by strangers - or is that just strange people?
Angharad
IIRC ...
... Julie Bindel wrote an article in the Guardian a few years ago which claimed that the only reason men opted to be MtF transsexuals was to ogle women in changing rooms and toilets. But then, Bindel is as mad as a box of frogs and I'm sure would have male children put down at birth if it were possible to continue our existence without them.
Robi
Yeah, what Angharad said,
It's all about sex. You know there's only two possible explanations for a "man" dressing in women's clothes: 1) "He" want's to attract men for sex. 2) "He" wants to catch women unawares in the restroom or changing room and rape them.
OUCH!!! I just bit my tongue. It's hard not to when you're talking tongue in cheek.
I get so tired of hearing, "It's a sex thing." I was confronted by a person in ministry at my church after seeing me out and about en femme. As I tried to explain transgender to him, he decided that line of talking wasn't getting me to the point he wanted me and right in the middle of our discussion he asked, "What about porn?"
I blinked and paused to reset my thinking and said, "You know you should really hold up your hand when you're going to change subjects." I went on to say that while I wouldn't deny that I'd viewed porn in the past, that the porn I had looked at had nothing to do with trans anything or "men" in women's clothes but that it was the same kind of porn that straight men might have looked at.
Hugs
Patricia
Happiness is being all dressed up and HAVING some place to go.
Semper in femineo gerunt
Ich bin eine Mann
*smirk* I was in a men's room
*smirk*
I was in a men's room at a urinal when a woman came out of one of the stalls, blushing, with her hand over her face. (I suspect she hit the wrong door when she was in a rush). I don't know why she was that frazzled - all she could see is the back of my pants, and I didn't give a crap. (well, if I _did_, I would have been in a stall as well, but you know what I mean)
I'll get a life when it's proven and substantiated to be better than what I'm currently experiencing.
Or it could have been deliberate
Not for a malicious reason of course. One time I went ahead and stormed into one (very unlikely there was anybody in there, it was the weekend) as the nearest ladies was over 100 feet away as they did not believe in putting the ladies next to the mens room but kept them separated that far apart(!)
So it was a choice of either wetting myself in the middle of a school building or ...
Thankfully there was no one in there but it felt really strange.
Kim
my mother may not be big on lbgt rights but she is smart?
She is a business owner and she is glad that Texas has not basses the bathroom Law yet because if Texas does the businesses will rebel, because if someone who has transitioned or is transitioning trys to use the correct bathroom for them and cant because of a law she said then federal law would dictate that there had to be a 3rd bathroom for them. Hence raising construction costs on businesses and she said once uncle sam gets involved it is no pick nick. I mean heck just because of our fire code occupancy we are required to have 2 bathrooms in the warehouse we just built really a warehouse with 2 bathrooms. But once uncle sam gets rolling she goes on about no exemptions she said if you were required to have 2 then you would be required to have 3. So from her business point of view she thinks that those laws should be thrown out with all the other bad trash before there influence spreads.
"Cortana is watching you!"
The federal laws already make
The federal laws already make no sense on bathrooms - they require handicapped accessible bathrooms, and handicapped parking - even for businesses such as construction companies or active loading warehouses, where people in wheelchairs have _zero_ business even coming close, let alone being in the facilities.
I've worked a number of places where you had to be able-bodied (able to climb ladders and stairs) to work there - but they still had to be 'handicapped accessible'.
Zero common sense allowed. One size fits all solutions for people who could wear thimbles for hats.
Now, mind you, building three bathrooms in a row doesn't significantly increase initial construction costs over two. If you had to _rebuild_, then it's much higher. (they all share common plumbing, so stubbing out isn't that much extra, and basic fixtures aren't that pricey)
I'll get a life when it's proven and substantiated to be better than what I'm currently experiencing.
Supervisors, City Inspectors, and many others...
...don't necessarily have to be able to do the jobs they're supervising or inspecting. Life is filled with a rich tapestry of people who don't fit any of our preconceptions,
-
Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style