This is the situation I encountered at one of my local businesses. It was an open female gym locker area with communal showers etc. Therefore, some already trying to expand it to such and, in this case, a clear biological male entered and started to disrobe in front of kids and adult females. The business’ policy now is no biological males or females in the opposite sex locker rooms. And they are directed to use the two family bathrooms and change areas.
Really? Do you have data on that? Because it seems that there are non-Christian religions that are very, very anti LGBT and even kill LGBT people.
Really? where is that data because I’ve looked. There is data, but none which supports your previous contention. Maybe you found data and are extrapolating?
What do you, personally mean by “conservative” Christian? Because that’s a pretty subjective term.
You do know that’s not the actual definition of phobia, right?
Where did Cat say that?
I’ve been posting her for a long time. As Donna can tell you, I know personally several trans people and have always believed that trans people are the only ones who get to decide and communicate their gender, and the rest of us need to listen and act upon the information provided to us. I don’t support this law for several reasons, which I won’t hash out here. I supported and marched for gay marriage for decades, so I support that. But after having posted here for so long, it’s become obvious to me that many people really do bash Christians because it makes them feel good about themselves, and it is also obvious to me that there is a strong strain of “I saw the M&M Christmas commercial” so I know all about Christianity and I hate it" here at CC. There was recently a poster, who doesn’t seem to be here anymore, more’s the pity, who was as far on the other side of the political spectrum from me as it’s possible to be, but read my posts correcting misinformation and introducing people to Christian denominations and practices which they were not familiar. This poster sought further information and, though an atheist, found a (gasp!) evangelical Christian organization which did great work toward something she is passionate about. When researching this organization, she found that they didn’t care about her religion and weren’t going to try to convert her, so she decided to volunteer. This actually shocked me because I haven’t known many liberals to be open minded, but I was incredibly impressed by her.
Hi Catahoula!!
That something is true doesn’t make it crap. If you agree with the premise (and you answered affirmatively) then you believe, unwillingly it seems, that orientation is not necessarily exclusively biological.
That they’ll try both is irrelevant, if they settle with the first. (We agree that conversion therapy is idiotic - sounds so much like psychiatry that a child could predict it would fail.)
That abuse of children doesn’t result in a 100% indicator of future preference is no surprise. Societal pressure to conform and preferred biological orientation would account for as much of the discrepancy as you might want to discard.
Wasn’t me, though I bet those throwing it around prefer the updated definition of it.
…
Hello yourself, zoose!!
Maybe you’ve been around and I just didn’t see it but…what did you say to me one time?.. “look what the cat drug in.”?
Literally true! I saw you as the last poster and wanted to see what was up. I hope you are doing well!
My mini-rant-- I’m for providing privacy for everybody across the board. I’d eliminate communal showers in schools, gyms. I don’t think middle-school angst needs to be worse than it already is.
I think bathroom doors should have locks and doors that actually are doors and not peep shows with cracks–put a dial on them that says vacant or occupied so you don’t have to guess or look under the stall. End rant.
Watching as this thread seems to segue into a why are conservative Christians being bashed thread
Perhaps conservative Christians are being bashed over the bathrooms fights because cC’s are among the most vocal defenders of the sex organs at birth rules. Watch the videos of people proclaiming their opinions at Target stores and invoking the name of God. Read the letters of opinion sent to newspapers and notice that most quote scripture.
We discussed this issue while making candy last night at my church. I have a trans colleague who leads worship for me when I am away. One of the women said that the first time she preached she took her to the women’s bathroom (4 stalls) because she did not want her to use the private bathroom near the choir room since the organists husband tends to stink that one up on Sunday mornings.
Serious question: What is a business supposed to do in the following situation. A hotel spa or a gym changing room. A person walks into the women’s area and disrobes in front of the women. He has male genitalia. He looks at the naked women. Women complain to management. Person says “I am transgender. I identify as a woman. It is my right to be here”.
Can the hotel or gym management contest his statement? Can they say “we think you are just a peeping tom” or is that a violation of his civil rights? Let’s assume that the person is unknown, a stranger to management who has no idea how this person lives, whether as a man or a woman.
“Really? Do you have data on that? Because it seems that there are non-Christian religions that are very, very anti LGBT and even kill LGBT people.”
True, but they are not the movers of legislation like this in the US and are not who the supporters of NC law are.
I can’t do anything about laws passed in other countries or beliefs held by those in other countries, but as a citizen of the US, I can affect what happens here and I will speak out against the bigots in this country and against laws passed which codify discrimination.
Also, when people use scripture/religion to support or oppose legislation they open themselves up to criticism because we are not a Cristian/Jewish/Muslim/Flying Spaghetti Monster nation. We are a secular nation and our laws cannot be based on any religion’s beliefs.
There are several states ( including NC) whose representatives are introducing bills to make Christianity the official state religion. When they do stuff like that is it any wonder those particular Christians get bashed?
Most of us know that it isn’t the majority of Christians (just like it isn’t the majority of Muslims who support terrorism) who support these types of laws, but there is a minority that do and they use their bible and religion to defend these types of laws.
@zoosermom:
“Really? Do you have data on that? Because it seems that there are non-Christian religions that are very, very anti LGBT and even kill LGBT people.”
I get a little tired of this kind of response, I am not talking the world here, I am talking the US, since that is where most of us on here seem to live. Being homophobic is not exactly limited to Christianity, Islam is not exactly gay friendly and Orthodox Judaism is not friendly either…but the fact that in Iran or Saudi a person can be put to death (interestingly, in Iran, the Mullah’s apparently have nothing against people being transgender, I don’t know why, but there have been articles written about that).
We are talking the US, and as the religious right loves to crow about in wanting the US to be a theocracy, “The US is a Christian nation”, other religions are small minorities, I think Jews are around 10 million, Muslims around 6-7 million, pagans and the like are probably less than a million, Buddhists are relatively small, in the millions.
60 million people in the US alone are identified as Catholic,and as I just wrote, a large majority of people identify as Christian, either in culture or being actively religious, so they are the predominant religious group in the country.
Does that mean all Christians are homophobic? Of course not, mainstream protestant groups for example tend to be up there in support of LGBT people, and Catholics as individuals by a majority are strongly supportive of LGBT rights and of same sex marriage, for example, while the people leading them are on the opposite ends of things. Even among people who otherwise would consider themselves conservative Catholics, there is support for LGBT people. Groups like the Quakers, UCC, more than a few independent churches like Riverside Church in NYC or Marble Collegiate, are very supportive, so Christians as a whole are not homophobic, and to claim “Christian Bashing” is specious, because I was careful to lay out who the problem groups are. It wasn’t Muslims who were behind the effort to ban same sex marriage in the constitution, it was the religous right/conservatives along with the GOP allies pushing for that, the religious right has been behind concerted efforts to deny LGBT people protections (look up the Romer decision in front of Scotus, evangelical/fundamentalist Christians were behind that), and the people behind the NC bathroom bill, the legistlators and such, a bill that basically banned any kind of local protections for LGBT people, was passed by a legislature and signed by a governor who are mostly conservative Christians, mostly evangelicals and other conservative groups.
http://www.people-press.org/2013/06/06/section-3-religious-belief-and-views-of-homosexuality/
n no major religious group does a majority express favorable views of gay men or lesbians. By comparison, six-in-ten seculars those who say they have no religious affiliation and rarely, if ever, attend religious services hold positive views of homosexuals. (The survey contained too few Jews for a reliable estimate).
In the survey, the most conservative churches, white evangelicals, black churches, had the strongest unfavorable ratings. What is interesting is in the Catholic church, the 20% who say they strongly disfavor LGBT people mirrors the 20% of Catholics assumed to be orthodox Catholics (as opposed to ‘cafeteria’ catholics).
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/assault/roots/overview.html
- are less likely to have had personal contact with lesbians or gay;
- are less likely to report having engaged in homosexual behaviors, or to identify themselves as lesbian or gay;
- are more likely to perceive their peers as manifesting negative attitudes, especially if the respondents are males;
- are more likely to have resided in areas where negative attitudes are the norm (e.g., the midwestern and southern United States, the Canadian prairies, and in rural areas or small towns), especially during adolescence;
- are likely to be older and less well educated;
- are more likely to be religious, to attend church frequently, and to subscribe to a conservative religious ideology;
- are more likely to express traditional, restrictive attitudes about sex roles;
- are less permissive sexually or manifest more guilt or negativity about sexuality, although some researchers have not observed this pattern and others have reported a substantially reduced correlation with the effects of sex-role attitudes partialled out;
- are more likely to manifest high levels of authoritarianism and related personality characteristics.
6 above is a direct correlation, and #4, #5,#7 are all strongly tied to conservative religious beliefs (evangelical Christians or whatever you want to call them, are located mostly in rural areas and the midwest; and there is a strong correlation between religiousity and education and age, and #7 is a hallmark of conservative Christians.
This has also been an evolution, 60 years ago almost all religious groups had huge majorities that thought being gay was a mental illness or a sin, and it is the very conservative who have held unto these beliefs. Put it this way, @zoosermom, when Prop 8 hit the Supreme Court, the proponents of the ban admitted that the reason for the ban all boiled down to religious belief, and the groups supporting that ban were overwhelmingly Christian, Catholic Groups and the Mormons sunk about 30 million dollars between them in passing the law, evangelical Christian groups sent money and people to pass it, and the legal and other groups supporting prop 8 were all conservative Chrisitans…
There are evangelical Christians (in the common context) who don’t share those beliefs, if you poll younger evangelicals many of them have favorable attitudes towards gay people, 60% of Catholics supported same sex marriage before Scotus ruled on it, and something like 80% of Catholics support protections for LGBT people (which again, is no surprise, that 20% is the estimate number of people who are die hard, non cafeteria, Catholics in the US). And a lot of Christians have come around, or did a long time ago, so a blanket condemnation of Christianity is not in order. However, to ignore the fact that traditional Christian teaching was behind a lot of homophobia is not truthful either, the same churches that are supportive today 60 years ago strongly taught that being gay was a sickness or a sin, the fact that so many Catholics support LGBT people is amazing, when their church as a church is still so homophobic and lgbt phobic, they still say gays are objectively disordered (whatever that means, objective by what standard? Not science) and that transgender people are mentally ill and as such shouldn’t be allowed around Children, I give most Catholics a lot of respect for that, that they have personal conscience and basically laughed at them. And it is no coincidence that as people’s mindset about religion has changed, where so many reject orthodoxy and use their own experience to decide things, that attitudes changed, people started seeing that lGBT people were no more abnormal than they were (in a sense of being sick, not in terms of statistical norms), no more sinners than they were, saw them as people and see the demonization by religious teaching for what it was, words written by people in a time long ago that like multicolored clothing or not eating shellfish or putting kids to death for hitting their parent, make no sense to them and their vision of God.
386 scenario–1) probably never be a common occurrence so until it does it would be a case by case solution
2) if privacy was provided it wouldn’t occur–or at least a ton less likely
3) I’d probably tell the exhibitionist to go identify elsewhere.
A person walks into the women’s area and disrobes in front of the women. He has male genitalia. He looks at the naked women. Women complain to management. Person says “I am transgender. I identify as a woman. It is my right to be here”.
Can the hotel or gym management contest his statement? Can they say “we think you are just a peeping tom” or is that a violation of his civil rights?
@TatinG
They do the same thing that they would do to someone with a vagina who behaves like that in a woman’s dressing room!!! Tell her to stop annoying people and leave or ban her from returning. To determine if someone is pretending to be trans - did this person present as female before entering the dressing room? AND WHY DONT PEOPLE GET IT THAT ANY MAN WHO WANTS TO DRESS AS A WOMAN AND TRAUMATIZE WOMEN IN A BATHROOM CAN TO THAT WITH OR WITHOUT THESE LAWS??? Focus on behavior, not body parts with or without surgical intervention.
@musicprnt The United Church of Christ has ordained gay pastors openly since the 70’s and embraced gay marriage since the 80’s.
Thanks, @catahoula .
If you’re referring to childhood abuse, I’m sure there is research, which I don’t have time to investigate since I’m at work. (Though even if it’s a fact that childhood abuse affects later orientation, is that really a choice?) But I know that many many children, both boys and girls, do a little pre-pubescent experimenting with other children of their sex. I know I did. In 3rd grade, it was easier to access my BFF than it would have been to find a boy, though children also experiment with children of the opposite sex. I don’t think that has any bearing on adult gayness/straightness. It’s just curiosity.
What I can tell you for sure is what gay friends have told me: That they knew they were different from a very young age, like early elementary school age. They knew they were gay before they knew there was a word for it. They did not make a decision at any point. It was simply who they were.
As a straight person, that makes sense, because I also did not make a decision. If orientation is something people choose, then that means that straight people choose to be straight, yes? And I did not choose. There was no point at which I decided, “I think I’ll be attracted to men.” Straight is just who I’ve always been. Isn’t that your experience?
@tating:
As a hyphothetical question, let’s answer that (since it has not happened, and again, keep in mind that in many places transgender women have been using facilities like that for years, and this has not happened).
The answer to your question is if someone tries that, the facility will likely ask them to leave, because if it is obvious the person in no way, shape or form is attempting to present as a woman,that even if they identity as being transgender they have no reason to use the women’s room. The reason transgender women want to use women’s facilities is that they already look very feminine, no matter what they are wearing, and won’t fit in in the men’s room, when bathroom bills talk about using the facilities that make them feel comfortable, they are intented for those who don’t feel comfortable in men’s rooms, and that is going to be people who already have a hard time passing there, I can almost guarantee that, so some clown in a suit and tie and as hairy as a wildebeast would belie that, and if that person genuinely thinks they are transgender, I think that they would get some advice about the value of going under the radar and not being an idiot, both from lgbt people and a judge if it even got that far (I suspect if a complaint is filed against the facility in this example, it would be dropped in 5 seconds by anyone with half a brain).
The reason that this hasn’t happened is very simply that those intending to do it, soon figure out that they likely would get in trouble for doing it (some guy who never got over beeing a teenager), the reality of these laws allowing trans women in women’s facilities is for those who already are well along, who won’t pass in a men’s locker room and face violence there, people early in transition are not very likely to use women’s locker rooms, because they likely don’t go to the gym presenting as women, the only thing people in early transition might use is a restroom appropriate to the way they are presenting, someone wearing women’s clothing, wig and makeup is not going to be comfortable in a men’s room, it is a sure way to get beaten up or worse, likely the only people using women’s facilities will be those far enough along they are too feminine in appearance to not be looked at askance in the men’s room, and if they use women’s facilities also are likely to be discrete as hell because they are likely scared.
@LasMa Exactly. I didn’t accept myself as bisexual until I was halfway through high school. If I could have chosen to be straight before that I would have and I actually tried as hard as I could to not like girls 
I’m very very glad that didn’t work out as now I’m proudly part of the LGBTIAQ+ community, am out to my friends and will be involved in the awesome LGBTIAQ+ community at my college.
Btw one of the reasons that many gay people don’t realize they’re gay until later is because our society is largely heteronormative. The movies and books children most commonly watch/read have straight couples, adults frequently ask little boys if they have any girlfriends (I’ve worked in various childcare settings and this is a real phenomenon), etc. If you’re straight you don’t have to make any kind of proclamation, straight is the default setting for sexual orientation.
This statement is ethnocentrically biased only to the US. Fits the stated narrative, even if wrong.
To put proper context, it is better said that the largest non-Christian religion in the world does not acknowledge LGBT. According to Saudi Arabia, Iran etc., LGBT people do not even exist. Thus, arresting and killing them is not even seen as hurting a human.
It will be interesting to see how this is issue is handled for non-Western religions because in many of those religions the females are the one’s who are blamed if they are around males not their relatives, even if it is not their fault and just an issue of proximity. I cannot imagine what would be the result if said females were found to be around a nude biological male in a locker room, even if by accident. I suspect there will need to be a totally separate bathroom to accommodate these females, many of who will have males watching what they do and where they go.
@Snowybuny I’m glad it’s so different for your generation now. My D who is a few years older than you are, found the same. Though she’s straight, she’s had numerous gay friends in both HS and college, and had a trans woman friend in college. It’s not a big thing any more for you guys (in most places).
Compare to when I was in college in the late 70s. I had never even heard of transgender, and didn’t know anyone who was gay – that I knew of. I found out years later that two of the guys in our big group were actually gay, and had a covert affair for several years. But they didn’t feel they could breathe a word of it even to us, their good friends. One of them even had a fake girlfriend for a while. It’s sad to think how much better their experience could have been a generation later.
Yes, the company can contest.
What civil right is being violated? I cannot think of any. People are talking like some civil right is being violated, but talk is not reality. Is there a civil right to be nude with opposite private biological organs in front of people who do not consent to see such parts or who did not consent for you to see their private parts? No such civil right exists.
However, if the sign on the locker room says females, there is an argument that females choosing to enter expect to change, shower, etc, in the privacy of other biological females, not biological males. There is an implicit consent to expose oneself to the same sex. The sign itself is a biological indication, not what someone thinks they are. There is an effort trying to change that definition now, but I do see this being decided in on the issue of privacy and one’s expectation of who sees your body and who does not. And the right to privacy is a real, time-tested civil right that could be seen as being violated here. (Same goes for male locker room)
I agree @LasMa – things are SO different than when we were growing up. At my children’s high school at least half the kids in the GLBT club were straight kids who were working on behalf of civil rights - the same way that white kids joined the civil rights movement in the 60s to help register black voters. My 27 year old daughter has been to 2 gay weddings, one of the couples is now expecting a baby. I suppose the trans movement will eventually become mainstream - and threads such as this one as relatively rare as those discussing inter-racial marriage, for example.
@awcntdb:
If you replaced the sign with “whites only”, you could make the same case you just made for allowing Jim Crow laws then. To those who espouse racism, race is biological/genetic/inate, so someone who is presumably biologically white could claim the right to privacy, too, based on biologically. The opponents of integration argued (and some still continue to argue, Rand Paul was one of them), that there was an inimical right to free association so there was no civil rights notion behind banning Jim Crow. Rand Paul basically argued that the civil rights laws and court rulings that dismantled jim crow was done without the consent of whites who felt that race was immutable and overriding and yes, biological.
One of the things about society is that we are often confronted by things that make us uncomfortable, that we find objectionable, yet it is the price of being in society. The Orthodox Jewish man who claims the right not to sit next to a woman, because he believes women tempt him, has no right to claim that for example, if in a government office waiting room, that men and women be seperated. I don’t feel comfortable around someone sitting on a street corner yelling everyone is condemned to hell, I would rather not listen to it, but they have the right to do so.Once upon a time, the Hudson tubes aka today’s PATH trains, had seperate “women’s cars”, you tried that today and there would be hell to pay because we would find that notion ludicrous. There have been all kinds of notions of defining a woman that have fallen that once were thought to be based in biology, and the idea that somehow someone with a penis is really a man is another one of those notions, ideas that women because of their biology couldn’t do engineering, couldn’t be a soldier, couldn’t be a leader, were blown out of the water, yet people argued that was biological, until they were proven wrong…
The idea of sex itself is changing, and more and more what science has found is it is not that simple. There are women who were born with XY chromosomes yet who have the sex organs and secondary characteristics of an XX woman, are they women? According to the biological purists, if you are xy, you are male, yet they identify and developed as women. It is why people use gender, because gender and sex are not always the same thing, and this is not speculation, this is based in science. Gender identity develops on a different path than the physical stuff, there is a body of evidence to indicate this. For most people, the two dovetail, but they aren’t the same thing necessarily, so the idea that penis=man and vagina=woman is basically not backed by science. Are we going to deny what science has said, the way fundamentalist deny evolution, and cater to old prejudices, the way that same sex marriage opponents wanted us to base law on religious belief disguised as protecting society?
My question was serious. A person with male genitalia may not ‘dress as a woman’. Maybe he’s wearing sweats to the gym… Women and men both wear sweats. The spa or gym may have no idea how he identifies himself. How would they know whether the individual is transgender, a male cross dresser or a male peeping tom? Being a peeping tom is still illegal isn’t it? Should the spa ask for ID on all people entering the locker room to be sure they at least have ID that identifies them as female?