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Added By: Jeremy
Added on: 02/11/2009 @ 1:36:42 PM
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Politics
Transgender Bathrooms
I meant to post this a while back, I'm not a reader of the Huffington Post, so I don't know where I heard about it, or if I even "heard" about a specific case.Here's the thing I don't understand about it: how did this become a gay/anti-gay thing? Seems to me that aspect should be one of the last discussions that should be going on here. Certainly the far left's insistence that even having a conversation about this is "anti-transgendered" is preposterous. It's a thorny issue, to be sure, but it seems to me that there are tons of practical issues at hand that would need to get solved before politics and whatnot even come into play.
One of the biggest practical obstacles I see to this is that what it means to be "transgendered" is woefully ill-defined. Every guy in a wig gets a free pass into the ladies room? Is the wig even needed? What if he just "feels in his heart that he's really a woman?" I mean, lets face it, if you can't tell the person walking into the ladies room is a man, this is a non issue. If no one could tell things weren't what they seemed, we wouldn't be having this conversation. So, let's assume most of the people we're talking about are men with 5 O'Clock shadows and a cheezy wig.
Now on the flip side, forcing a man in a dress to pee in the men's room will make everyone involved uncomfortable, not just the transgendered person.
The only realistic option is to start moving toward unisex bathrooms, but then urinals aren't an option anymore, and we run into many of the same uncomfortable/unsafe type options. Unless the bathrooms are single toilet/sink/lockable-door style, but those would be woefully inefficient as a means to provide facilities to thousands of people.
I don't have an answer, I'm not sure there is an answer, but I do know that there can be legitimate debate over the issue that has nothing to do with being "anti" anything, and that it's not automatically some sort of prejudice if a woman feels uncomfortable being followed into the bathroom by someone who's obviously a man.
I guess if I had to make a ruling I would say that only people born a woman get to use the ladies room, everyone else should head to the men's room. (Someone has to be uncomfortable, it may as well be the just guys, and then that would eliminate the "safety issue," though I think that is being a little overblown.)
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Wendy - 163 Posts 02/11/2009 @ 01:44:58 PM |
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I was sure you were going to be talking about the switch on UWEC's campus to more "unisex" bathrooms My mom's been b****ing about that for months, mostly because girls are cleaner than guys when it comes to public restrooms if you know what I mean. |
Jeremy - Always thinking of, but never about, the children. 02/11/2009 @ 01:58:13 PM |
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I've read lots of "Customers Suck" type things and it's pretty unanimous that that's an assumption that generally isn't true. Women destroy public bathrooms*, they are just cleaned 10 times as often. (Though I could easily see why this isn't the case on a college campus, as opposed to a Walmart, or something.) Maybe that's what I did hear about. For now it seems like they are just "un-designating" the single stall with a door to the outside style bathrooms, which seems like a reasonable approach. If there are a decent amount of those kinds of bathrooms I would say that should solve the problem. If you have to walk an extra 3 minutes to get to the unisex bathroom than that's just one of the things you have to deal with as someone who differs from the other 99% of the students. I generally dislike the ultra-PC "everyone has to make sure no one who's 'different' can ever be even slightly inconvenienced over their difference, no matter the expense, and even if it means adding artificial inconvenience to the 'normal people' so at least we're all the same level of inconvenienced" movement, and it's especially prevalent on campuses. *Edit: Just to clarify, I meant that women's rooms are much much worse than guys, and not just that women are not as neat as you'd think. |
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Jeremy edited this 8 times, last at 02/11/2009 2:39:31 pm |
Wendy 02/11/2009 @ 02:33:37 PM |
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That's because at least 60% of the people working on campuses are beyond-liberal hippies who don't shower often and like to encourage free-thinking home schooling. Pretty much exactly like the old Will Ferrell professor character on SNL Not to stereotype ... |
Jeremy - Robots don't say 'ye' 02/11/2009 @ 02:45:15 PM |
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I also generally dislike it when issues are discussed as if the status quo makes life unlivable for 40% of the population, when it is almost always the case that the issue at hand is really trying to "correct" something minor for less than 1% of the people. I have no data to go off of, as even general population stats are pretty crummy, but how many transgendered people do you think there really are on campus? 2? 3? I'd be pretty shocked if it was much over 10. |
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Jeremy messed with this at 02/11/2009 2:45:28 pm |
Wendy 02/11/2009 @ 02:47:27 PM |
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It's one guy/girl. Like literally one person, they sent a news release about it to staff. He/she is in the middle of the transformation process. |
Jeremy - Cube Phenomenoligist 02/11/2009 @ 02:49:35 PM |
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Well there was another girl when were were in school, assuming it isn't the same person there have been at least 2. Clearly we need to take a wrecking ball to every building on campus and start over. Edit: Also, "he/she"??!? How DARE you! They are the sex they SAY they are, end of story. Don't you follow the news? A MAN gave birth recently!! Scientists are baffled! |
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Jeremy perfected this at 02/11/2009 2:51:48 pm |
Matt - 3949 Posts 02/11/2009 @ 03:10:12 PM |
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Wendy Wrote - Today @ 01:44:58 PM mostly because girls are cleaner than guys when it comes to public restrooms if you know what I mean. Jeremy Wrote - Today @ 01:58:13 PM I've read lots of "Customers Suck" type things and it's pretty unanimous that that's an assumption that generally isn't true. Women destroy public bathrooms*, they are just cleaned 10 times as often. (Though I could easily see why this isn't the case on a college campus, as opposed to a Walmart, or something.) For part of the time that I worked at Kohl's, I was responsible for some minor maintainace tasks in the bathrooms (empty the garbage, fill the paper towel dispenser, etc). The womens' bathroom was always in far worse shape than the mens'. Granted, the womens' room was used much more often, but even so if women were so much more "clean" then men, the two bathrooms would have been much closer in condition than they were. |
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Matt edited this at 02/11/2009 3:11:02 pm |
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