The “bathroom scare” has to be the worst argument ever devised against transgender people using the facility they feel most comfortable in.
Related: A Woman Threw A Fit At Planet Fitness Over A Trans Guest. Here’s The Gym’s A+ Response.
Related: Selfie Campaign Shows How Absurd It Is To Force Trans People To Use The Wrong Bathroom
And yet, it was a major factor that lead to the citizens of Houston voting to legalize discrimination by doing away with the city’s non-discrimination ordinance earlier this month.
How about we take this to the next level?
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Here to comment is Pete Davidson of SNL:
James Gutting
They are still men. They still have a penis. They will pee on the toilet seat and leave it in the upright position. Can’t cisgender women have a clean place to themselves?
Joey Capetillo
ð???Ignorant much?
Merv
@James Gutting: Gay men are still attracted to men, and they’ll still be admiring some of the men in the restroom. Can’t heterosexual men have a private place to themselves?
notevenwrong
@James Gutting, so are you the guy making a mess in our men’s rooms? Why can’t clean men like me have a clean place to ourselves?
Masc Pride
My sister told me they have a transgender bathroom at her university, which I thought was pretty interesting. It’s really the most logical way to satisfy all sides. Naturally, I was curious as to how transgender would be illustrated, but she said it just says “Transgender”.
Juanjo
@ James Gutting Trans women have been using the women’s bathroom for decades. And James, they do not pee standing up. If you knew a trans woman you might learn something about that issue. Before doing anything irrevocable, most doctors [in fact everyone I have ever heard of] instruct their clients to live entirely as a woman for at least a year. They dress like a woman, arrange their hair and makeup as a woman would do, use a woman’s name, and use the bathroom as a woman does. Most women do not pee standing up, at least voluntarily.
I have known several trans women both pre and post op and it was an amazingly eye opening experience for me to speak with them about their lives and the changes they went through and the motivation for that effort.
Joseph
It isn’t just about bathrooms; it’s about women’s locker rooms (Google Lila Perry), it’s about saunas for woman (Google Colleen Francis), it’s about women’s shelters (Google Jessica Hambrook). These are real and genuine concerns that women have. And men, too: do you honestly think fathers, husbands, brothers, sons and gay uncles want men in dresses invading spaces reserved for women? No, they don’t.
If this is the hill that HRC, Lambda Legal, and Queerty want to stake LGBT rights on, you’re going to lose. There will be a blowback and the face that we supported and enabled these delusional men and woman will hurts us badly.
GayEGO
@Merv: Why don’t you ask Larry Craig, a politician who was caught using a peep hole in the men’s room at the Minneapolis Airport? Europe has had mixed bathrooms for centuries.
GayEGO
@Masc Pride: Now do they have both transgenders go to this bathroom? I mean transgender could be a man changing to a woman or a woman changing to a man couldn’t it? Of course there are more genders coming out of the woodwork now e.g. pangender, crossgender, cisgender, etc. Soon there will be a gender name starting with every letter of the alphabet! Maybe there should be an All-Gender restroom that will have stalls with toilets, urinals, bidets, this will give everyone a choice! :>)
GayEGO
@Juanjo: I wonder if Trans men are surprised when they see urinals and think the urinals are very uncomfortable to sit on! :>)
tricky ricky
@James Gutting: there is no such thing as cisgender! it is a word transsexuals made up to demean people comfortable with their own bodies!
tricky ricky
@Joseph: they never should have let them tack on the T all those years ago.
onthemark
I was invited to a Unitarian church once that had a “gender-neutral” restroom which I guess is the proper P.C. way to put it.
I laughed when Pete Davidson on SNL said how the ladies’ room was so dirty. I’ll have to take his word for it.
Of course, in GAY bars, the “ladies room” is only used for snorting cocaine and giving bj’s. Well, that was the ’90s – I haven’t been recently so maybe that’s changed. (Yeah right!)
money718
Trans again…ugh
Bauhaus
The only thing going on is the extreme right using the “bathroom” as a scare tactic to continue denying us protections.
@onthemark:
Yep, about the ladies’. Seems like more women go to gay bars now, so maybe things have changed.
Chris
“Temporary” toilets (the kind we all use when we go see Cirque du Soleil’s traveling shows) have solved this problem. A place to stand is right next to the place where you can sit — and do your business. Why not design a whole bunch of bathrooms that have these kinds of multi-purpose toilets in a single room? Just make the doorway floor to near ceiling; and if the place is questionable, put human security nearby in the lobby/foyer.
If the place requires individual changing rooms that are attached to toilets, just make the rooms bigger.
This may not solve issues involving saunas, showers, hot tubs and the like. But at least, it’s a step in the right direction.
Michael Feather
I don’t know if you’ve ever had to clean a public women’s restroom but.. LOL!
Masc Pride
@GayEGO: Yes, I think it’s for all transgenders (both MtF and FtM). Buildings can only fit so many bathrooms. lol
aliengod
Women don’t belong in men’s restrooms/locker rooms and vice versa. Surgery and drugs don’t change one’s gender. It’s a biological fact. Maybe the answer is to have a separate area for those that choose to be “transgender”. Regardless, it isn’t an LGB issue. Cross dressing has nothing to do with LGB!
Glücklich
@Bauhaus:
Or the ladies are using the ladies’ to do their blow.
Mr. Glücklich and I do our blow at home and *then* go out.
Marky
@Glücklich: You took the words right out of my… straw.
msfrost
http://www.nimbios.org/press/FS_homosexuality
http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/33773/title/Can-Epigenetics-Explain-Homosexuality-/
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/more-evidence-sexuality-is-innate-gay-men-respond-to-male-sex-pheromones
blackhook
The biggest bathroom scare is from closeted Republicans with “wide stances” …and why is it always Republicans? The latest freak to be outed is Dennis Hastert, who diddled high school wrestlers, then tried to cover it up with $3-million in hush money. These guys are shameless.
Joe Edwards
James Gutting – how ignorant can you be?
stranded
that announcer is SOOO CUTE!!!!
Ginger Marshall
James Gutting – I’m transgender. I’ve been using the ladies for a couple of years. I sit to pee, like all the other women in there. Never had a problem.
gaym50ish
@Joseph: Do you honestly think fathers, brothers, sons and uncles want feminine men on female hormones, who look for all the world like biological women, using the MEN’S ROOM?
This is the quandary for trans people, and it’s why they should be allowed to choose. I have guarded the door for a trans woman more than once, because someone would have a problem with it not matter WHICH bathroom she used.
Sansacro
@James Gutting: cute. You’re clearly testing out your comedy routine!
WEBOne
One company out here solved the problem by ripping all of the signs down and putting a new one on each door that says “TOILET” Haven’t heard any screaming fits yet…
notevenwrong
Why do Americans have these stalls that are open at the bottom anyway? It’s probably based in Puritan attitudes but it is thoroughly disgusting.
In more civilized countries the partitions at least go all the way to the floor.
onthemark
@notevenwrong: That was a running gag on “Seinfeld” where George Costanza was always wanting the Yankees to install toilet stalls like you describe.
onthemark
@notevenwrong: And I must add, you have an awfully low threshold for “disgusting”! The stalls are designed like to discourage people from, for instance, shooting heroin in there, or engaging in semi-public sexual activity. Both of which are pretty disgusting, no?
In Amsterdam I’ve seen public urinals which are right on the sidewalk, barely hidden from view! – which to Americans look very weird indeed.
notevenwrong
@onthemark, it is disgusting when you are using it and have someone right next to you using it. The smells and sounds, and lack of privacy, are rather unpleasant to someone like me from a country where privacy while pooping is more valued. I literally cannot use them if someone comes into the one next to me.
The reasons you cite for them come down to the Puritanism I mentioned. Do American public bathrooms really have monitors peering under the stalls to check if people are doing drugs or having sex? If not, how does the design discourage these activities exactly? As for the sex, the Larry Craig scandal rather disproves your point. Not to mention “understall,” which is a whole category of fetish amateur porn (which I happen to find kind of hot, but that’s besides the point).
onthemark
@notevenwrong: You have it exactly backwards. Obviously the “puritanical” one is the neurotic weenie like you who’s freaked out by ordinary toilet stalls.
“As for the sex, the Larry Craig scandal rather disproves your point.”
No it doesn’t – he was caught!
Ron Jackson
The answer is very simple. Individual toilets. Walk in, do your thing (whatever you need to do), leave. We have had them for ages. This idea of a large room with “stalls” is outdated and needs to go away.
Individual bathrooms complete with sink and mirror and appropriate receptacles.
It ain’t rocket science, it might just cost a few more bucks.
onthemark
@notevenwrong: “Not to mention “understall,” which is a whole category of fetish amateur porn (which I happen to find kind of hot….” Yikes – I’ve never even HEARD of that, but it sounds horribly uncomfortable for backache, never mind disgusting.
Anyway, you complain about the smell, but the smell is going to be inevitable no matter what. A few inches of space at your SHOES isn’t going to affect that. No offense, but frankly you sound like a bit of a wacko, and it’s not a matter of nationality!
@Ron Jackson: For most establishments that would be tremendously expensive and involve incredible amounts of space. Impractical at best.
Ron Jackson
@onthemark: nonsense. Many places already have the system in place. Even large public venues like stadiums could remodel for something similar. Try thinking outside the box.
onthemark
@Ron Jackson: Of course in a larger venue it would be fairly simple to create one or a few small, gender-neutral restrooms, and that will probably continue to become more common.
But a stadium, really? Retrofit the entire place that way? There’s no great public clamor for such a system (except perhaps in whatever neurotic weenie country “notevenwrong” is from, lol).
notevenwrong
@onthemark, I am not particularly neurotic, it’s just that in few other places in Western civilization do they make you poop in semi-public like they do in the U.S.
It is a particularly American puritanical obsession that god forbid anybody should have anything to hide. Yet on the other hand someone pees in the bushes somewhere and he gets branded for life as a sex offender. Schizophrenic culture.