Brilliant. And disgusting. That’s the only way to describe the latest, last-minute ad from the group Kalamazoo Citizens Voting NO to Special Rights Discrimination.
Positioning a “no” vote on Kalamazoo, Michigan’s Ordinance 1856 — known as “the bathroom bill,” which would grant protections to gay, bi, and transgender residents — as a vote against discrimination, the transphobic camp behind ResponsibleVoters.org is sneakily trying to reframe the debate about “privacy.”
Ordinance 1836 — which gives voters a chance to affirm or reverse the City Commission’s unanimous vote to ban LGBT discrimination in housing, employment, and public accommodations — will be voted on tomorrow. While Maine and Washington battle for partnership protections, this city of 75,000 will decide whether sexual orientation and gender identity are classes worth protecting.
And to those who don’t want it, it’s back to the same scare tactics: keep scary men out of pristine women’s bathrooms. It’s a policy that, in fact, we support, if only because we know our biologically male sisters often have some of the best tits in town. (C’mon folks, that’s sarcasm.)
How about we take this to the next level?
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Andrew
The funny thing is, not letting transpeople into their chosen restrooms (male for transmen, female for transwomen) will probably result in MORE men in women’s bathrooms. I’m transgendered (female to male) and have been on testosterone for years. I’m five feet ten with a baritone voice and a hairy face. Yet if I hadn’t legally changed my gender to male (which I wasn’t legally required to do), I would be compelled by law to use the women’s bathrooms.
Anyone who knows me would know that this is a terrible idea. There would be screams and calls to security if I tried this. Yet this is what transmen who haven’t yet changed their legal gender are often required to do. Is this what conservatives really want? I doubt it!
Thomas C. Waters
So, Mary Ann Stark is a Nursing Professor at Western Michigan University. Her email is easily found. My big question is about the photos of the trans women shown briefly in this ad. I know they are also pictured on print pieces. Did they have permissions to use these pics? Did anyone look into that? And did anyone file a complaint about the ad for the lies and misinformation?
naghanenu
Hi Andrew,
As a transman, its easier for u as women tend to pass for guys easier than a 6ft 1 guy with a square jaw and deep voice trying to pass for a chick.
Lets be honest some people cross dress but that does not make them transsexuals thus they cannot use any toiler they like. But how will one know if you see a trnswoman who still resembles a guy using one…i will freak! and think he is a perv
Valerie Keefe
Goddessdamn the cissexism here is really tiresome… It’s like… Huffpo isn’t this bad.
@naghanenu
1. Most trans women can ‘blend’ for want of a better term if they are properly dosed… it’s incompetent and cissexist doctors who tend to undermine trans presentation. My girlfriend has a face that people would have written off as being unable to ‘pass’ a few years ago… once she finally got an adequate level of blockers and estrogen though, she looks great. (Someone, trying to be rude, said she looked like a young Barbara Streisand if she’d eaten nothing but cake for six months.)
2. Quit with the degendering of trans women. If you find an individual woman who wants male pronouns used, then you can refer to that woman with ‘he’ but until then, rightly fuck off.
3. You have a keyboard which allows you to spell and capitalize… this will help you seem less like an illiterate twat.