This Bathroom Law Confusion

Faith responds to NoNukes:

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I think many of us recognize your position on this issue. Where the departure comes is when you place the responsibility for not recognizing the actuality solely on the people bearing the brunt of the law that works against them.

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You can prove I did this, right? Please do so.

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Forgot your own argument again, didn't you? Message 28: And you doubled down on it in Message 36: You're making the victims of bullying responsible for convincing bullies to stop."Please, sir, could you take your boot off my neck," never works.

Minnemooseus responds to me:

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But what if s/he is male to female transgender, and self identifies as female. Should he be using the female room?

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The liberal view seems to say "Use the room of your identity". What is his/her "identity"?

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Here's a thought: Why don't you ask him? Because you do know that such a person understands that he is presenting as male, yes?It's like you don't understand what being transgender means. You're dangerously close to the stupid claim that a person just wakes up one day and decides to be trans. You're denying the agency of the trans people, as if they don't understand what gender means and that a person who looks like that would somehow not understand that they are presenting as male and would go looking for trouble out of some sense of pique.That image is my argument to you, after all: That person is required by the bathroom laws to go to the women's room. So since the bathroom laws require people who present as male to use the women's bathroom as well as people who present as female to use the men's bathroom, exactly how are we going to determine if the female-appearing person in the men's room is biologically male? Are you going to do a genitalia check at the door? Have to go through a full body scanner to make sure you're packing the appropriate genitalia?Heaven forbid you're one of the people born intersex and have ambiguous genitalia.What's so difficult about trusting people to understand who they are and to behave accordingly? To not assume that people are going to cause trouble just because you're too scared to keep your mind out of other people's pants? To just mind your own business and let people pee in peace?"But what if..." Yeah, but what if monkeys fly out of your butt when you're in the bathroom. Harassment and assault are always illegal. After all, we have video of women harassing other women in the women's bathroom because they didn't think the other woman was womanly enough. Have a butch haircut? Prepare to be assaulted in the bathroom.These laws don't solve any problem. The only thing they do is force trans people into the bathroom that is opposite of the gender they are presenting which necessarily increases their risk of assault. Rather than making this safer, they are specifically, deliberately, and consciously making things worse. It guarantees that assault will increase. You've been sharing the bathroom with trans people forever and never knew. After all, it never occurred to you to ask. So why are you so scared now?

frako writes:

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Make all the bathrooms that way. Problem solved.

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Well, no. That would require a massive retrofit of most buildings that have multi-person bathrooms. There are requirements for the number of bathrooms that are available given the number of people in a public room (and my place of work was in violation of that) and other regulations regarding the size of the bathroom. That's why you can get away with a multi-person bathroom in a certain amount of space: It provides the ability to have enough bathrooms for the people who need them while minimizing the amount of space you have to set aside for bathrooms (and thus, you can use the other space for rent-generating space.)To insist upon single-occupancy bathrooms would require major remodels.We could, you know, just get over it. Let men use the men's room.

Minnemooseus responds to me:

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Don't know him, so I can't ask him.

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Then as the Great Dread Pirate Roberts put it:Get used to disappointment.Since you don't know him and can't ask, why are you so concerned? Why does the choice of bathroom of someone you don't know and will never encounter bother you so much that you want to go out of your way to make sure that he stands a good chance of getting assaulted?

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It seems that "presenting as" overrides "self-identifying"

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No, try again. Think about what you said, consider the assumptions that you're making, and try again.Hint: Trans people aren't in it for the thrill.

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And it seemed that there was a broad feeling that a person should be able to choose the room based on "self-identity".

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And they do. Once again, you're making a tremendous assumption that you need to get over. Think about the implications of what you're saying and try again.

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Which seems to say that a woman to man transsexual who is at a "presenting as" a woman stage should be free to use the "self-identity" male room.

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And why would they do that? You've fallen for the same bone-headed, transphobic assumption. Why do you think you know more about what's going on inside a trans person's head than they do?

You realize that that article isn't helping you, yes? 10th paragraph gives the lie to your argument.Trans people are highly aware of the trappings of gender and work to manage their way through the world. Why do you seek to substitute your understanding of their lives?

frako responds to me:

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Not single ocupancy, unisex bathrooms, just remove te women and men sign on the door, and install some pisuars, in the women stall's, wall in the men pissuars turning them in to stalls and add toilets to the stalls.

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You'd still need a massive retrofit. Again, there are regulations regarding how many facilities must be available given the number of people who are going to be using them (Title 29,  1910.141, Table J-1). That's part of the reason why there is a line for the women's room but not the men's room: The existence of a urinal means you can have more toilet facilities for men in the same space as you can for women. You can have a toilet and two urinals in the place of two toilets. To do what you're suggesting would reduce the number of points per room which means you need more space in order to have enough.I'm not complaining about the idea. I'm saying it's going to be a tough sell given that current buildings wouldn't be able to meet regulations without major redesigns.

Minnemooseus responds to me:

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Find anywhere where I advocate that a male appearing person should use a woman's restroom.

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Oh, god.Please, let us not play dumb. It's hard to describe just how off you are in this. The reason you're complaining about "the argument [you] never made" is that nobody accused of making the argument you are whining about. It's like a strawman squared.Are you really about to require me to repeat every single damned post you've made in this thread to remind you of what you've been saying? You are, aren't you?Here's you in Message 151So when you then make reference to an article that completely denies that attitude, that tells the tale of a person who understands that their internal feelings and their external presentation are not exactly in sync, for all sorts of reasons, and then directly talks about how they wouldn't do what so many are complaining about (and that you are desperately tap dancing around suggesting they would do) out of a very real understanding and concern about how the other people in the room would react to their presence, you don't get to complain about the "argument [you] didn't make."You were trying to find some reason to second-guess a person who just wants to pee in peace.PLEASE, let us not play dumb.

Minnemooseus writes:

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So a transgender person who physically appears to be male but is psychologically female should be free to use the ladies room.

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And this would be where you explode in a shower of irony.Nobody made that argument.Instead, you are denying the agency of the person who needs to pee, ascribing to them an attitude that they are somehow completely unaware of how they look, how other people react to them, and are oblivious to the world in which they live.Do you not see how insulting that is?

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Define "gender identity".

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Why don't you ask the person involved? Or better yet, why don't you consider the possibility that it's none of your business? Trust the other person to understand the world they live in and that they will behave accordingly?Why do you think you have the right to second-guess them?

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So a very male appearing but psychological female person should use the ladies room?

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Nobody made that argument.

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Rrhain, rather than a long message saying I'm an ignorant transphobe, how about a simple yes or no answer to that question.

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Because that question makes assumptions that I do not accept.It assumes that there is such a person. It assumes that someone just wakes up one day and decides, "Hey, I'm trans!" and walks out the door exactly as they did the day before without any sort of comprehension as to what being trans means, how gender is managed in our society, and completely oblivious to the consequences of their actions.It is precisely the transphobic argument made by the people who came up with these stupid laws in the first place: That a man will go into the women's room and claim, "But I'm trans!" as some sort of justification.Have you stopped beating your wife yet? Yes or no.Do you see the problem? That question makes an assumption you do not accept.I do not accept that such a person exists. The article you quoted shows precisely the point: Someone who identifies as female but presents as male and knows that because of that, will never go into the women's room.