NC's transgender law violates Civil Rights Act, Justice says

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481

I didn’t say that the experience of transgender people is the same as African Americans (though I could argue in some way it is, when transgender people transition, there is a point at which physically and emotionally, they can’t go back into ‘male mode’ or ‘female mode’, they wouldn’t pass… Not to mention that there were African Americans who could and did pass as white, would it be appropriate to tell those particular African Americans, if they struggled with racism, especially in the Jim Crow era, to simply pass as white?). My point was that the discrimination against African americans was based on the same kind of thing that discrimination against trans people is based on, it was based on the whites who created Jim Crow being uncomfortable around blacks.A lot of it was the same fear that gripped slaveholders, of a slave revolt that would end up with them dead, and that kept on post slavery in the fear of retaliation or violence, or something in common with transgender women, for sexual reasons (that black men wanted to rape white women which is analagous to the idea that transgender women are really men in a dress and want to gape at other women, etc). The fact that women can be uncomfortable around transgender women is no different, it is based on conceptions of what the other person is, that causing fear, and then claiming they have the right to be seperate from that. It doesn’t help that in our society there is a lot of baggage, that anything to do with genitals is immediately about sex (and rape), we have a society where people object to a mom breastfeeding a child in public because the female breast is of course sexually titilating, when there is nothing lurid about a child feeding, but the puritan jerkwads managed to make it so.

The real issue with all this, as I and others have written about, is the assumption that a transgender woman is a man in a dress, that if they are pre op (or non op, for a variety of reasons), they have male genitals and therefore must all be lusting and women and such, and that is pathetic, in some ways our society is just as backwards as the Islamic conservatives who insist women should be bundled up in Burkkas because men lust after them, or the Orthodox Jews who won’t sit next to a woman on a plane because “they might be tempted”). If anyone wants to see how fouled up our attitudes are, just look back to the early 20th century and well into the 20th century, when people like Anthony Comstock were calling for the end of civilization because women were exposing their ankles gasp, and churches thundered that women were perverting society by wearing OMG pants…

A lot of this is that those making these claims have never met a transgender women, never talked to one, never even tried to watch a documentary or read something on them. Transgender women can be attracted to men or women or both, like any woman can be, and their headspace is not a man in a dress (god help people if they look at porn portraying transgender women as sex crazed ‘women with a penis’ and so forth gag). The irony is that a transgender woman going into a bathroom or going into a locker room is likely even more self conscious then cis women are, it can be one of the scariest things for a transgender woman to do (and I assume a transgender male), one of the loneliest experiences someone can have…and believe me, the last thing in the world they want to do is stand out, they want to be another face in the crowd. The reality is that when women call out transgender women, it isn’t for behavior, it is because they appear ‘mannish’ or don’t pass. And yeah, I know a woman, who is taller than I am, probably stronger than I am, who because of her size (she is a very striking, beautiful woman), who has gotten called out by some twit sayhing “that’s a man” or similar, and I think that is telling, she didn’t show her genitals, she didn’t do anything untoward, she simply made someone uncomfortable because she was taller and bigger than most women.

As far as the law giving access to men to restrooms, that is very similar to an argument that the trash that gave us Jim Crowe claimed, that if you made blacks and whites live together, it would increase crime, because then while that black family that moved into the neighborhood might be good people, what about their kin? (and yes, virginia, I have heard that said time and again, it wasn’t just the Jim Crow south, it happened in the town I lived in growing up), it is the idea that if blacks are ‘allowed’ to live with white people, it will give access to all the ills people see in the black community, because then how do you know who the ‘good ones’ are and the ‘bad ones’…in this case, ti is saying protecting transgender women will allow men to go into women’s rooms, it is no different (especially that given the track record of transgender bathroom laws, ie that before the religious wrong and GOP faithful started sending men into women’s rooms and locker rooms to make a point, it never happened).

BTW, facilities can still throw people out of restrooms and facilitiesif they feel they are there for no good reason. If some jackhole thinks it would be fun to invade the woman’s room, they can throw him out, and if that idiot pressed charges he would be laughed out of court. I can tell you right now that a transgender woman who is early enough in their exploration phase that they are presenting as male would go to a men’s room, not the women’s room, and if a transgender woman at any state goes into a women’s restroom, it is because they are presenting as one and going to a men’s room would be dangerous, the idea of someone deciding one day they are a woman and using the restroom is the fantasy of the morons supporting the NC law, it doesn’t happen, if they are presenting as a man they will use the men’s room, if they are fully presenting they will use the women’s room. As far as locker rooms and such go, A transgender woman who is living as a woman part time likely will not use those facilities, she likely will use a woman’s locker room only if they are so far along, or full time, they can’t ‘pass’ as male in the men’s locker room.

482

One of the battles of the 20th century is getting around this idea that if someone doesn’t like something, whether on religious grounds or fear or whatnot, that cannot be the basis of law. Keeping transgender women out of the restrooms is a classic example, women feel uncomfortable seeing male genitals on someone who otherwise looks female (if they would, which is doubtful), unless you can show a harm, there is no right in law or society that we regulate things because someone else is uncomfortable. The church trotting crowd was successful for many years keeping stores and especially liquor stores closed on Sunday, because they didn’t like the idea that people were shopping or drinking when they were at church (and later on, shop owners didn’t want people shopping on Sunday, including liquor stores, because they didn’t want to be open on Sundays, they wanted the law to give them a day off, how nice). We regulated blacks and their role in society because of fears and other things, we made gays second class citizens, women second class citizens, because religion told us that gays were immoral and women were meant to be at home and having babies and men feared the competition from women, and all of those have fallen. Even if being transgender or gay was truly a choice, being uncomfortable around that is no basis to discriminate. Once upon a time women could be arrested for wearing a short skirt or heels that were too high, a woman could be raped and the defendent win because she was dressed ‘too provocatively’ (in a sense, the law was telling her she shouldn’t dress the way she wants, walk where she wants to, and if she was raped, well, she ‘stimulated’ the man). We go around crowing about a free country, do we really have a free country if people can pass laws because someone doesn’t like what someone else is doing, how they live their lives, with no proof it harms anything but a belief or triggers a fear?

483

We as a society outlaw a lot of things because they make other people uncomfortable. We don’t allow public nudity, public masturbation or sexual activity because it makes other people uncomfortable. We have noise regulations because loud noise makes people uncomfortable. NYC regulates words that make people uncomfortable (not a good law, IMO).

The point of laws in society is so that everyone can function together without discord. So many things that make people uncomfortable are not allowed.

484

One of the battles of the 20th century is getting around this idea that if someone doesn’t like something, whether on religious grounds or fear or whatnot, that cannot be the basis of law. Keeping transgender women out of the restrooms is a classic example, women feel uncomfortable seeing male genitals on someone who otherwise looks female (if they would, which is doubtful), unless you can show a harm, there is no right in law or society that we regulate things because someone else is uncomfortable. The church trotting crowd was successful for many years keeping stores and especially liquor stores closed on Sunday, because they didn’t like the idea that people were shopping or drinking when they were at church (and later on, shop owners didn’t want people shopping on Sunday, including liquor stores, because they didn’t want to be open on Sundays, they wanted the law to give them a day off, how nice). We regulated blacks and their role in society because of fears and other things, we made gays second class citizens, women second class citizens, because religion told us that gays were immoral and women were meant to be at home and having babies and men feared the competition from women, and all of those have fallen. Even if being transgender or gay was truly a choice, being uncomfortable around that is no basis to discriminate. Once upon a time women could be arrested for wearing a short skirt or heels that were too high, a woman could be raped and the defendent win because she was dressed ‘too provocatively’ (in a sense, the law was telling her she shouldn’t dress the way she wants, walk where she wants to, and if she was raped, well, she ‘stimulated’ the man). We go around crowing about a free country, do we really have a free country if people can pass laws because someone doesn’t like what someone else is doing, how they live their lives, with no proof it harms anything but a belief or triggers a fear?

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So you’re OK with harassment in general then. Personally, I’m glad my employer is not allowed to call me “baby” if I don’t want him to, but it sounds like you believe that prohibition impinges on his “freedom.”

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There is truth to what you say, @tating, but the general line with laws is that for such a law to be in effect, it has to have proof of public good. For example, courts in NY and other states have ruled that laws that don’t allow women to go topless are illegal, because it discriminates against women since men can go topless, and that the argument that breasts were ‘sexually stimulating’ was in the mind of the beholder. What you leave out with public nudity is that not all that long ago, a lot of what people wear would be considered 'lewd and lascivous" or whatnot. Public masturbation and public sex are forbidden, not because it makes people uncomfortable, but because there is a reason to do so, it creates a public disorder and also there is clear evidence that children seeing sexual activity is harmful to them before a certain age, those bans, along with masturbation, are in place because there are clearly discernible reasons to do so. On the other hand, the religious right claimed for years that kids in schools should not be exposed to gay teachers, because it would ‘pervert them’, and outside of evangelican churches and the Catholic Bishops, no one would claim that has any basis in fact. A young girl, if she happened to see a woman with a penis, might be confused, might ask questions, but again there is no proof that a young girl or boy inadvertently seeing the genitals of the opposite sex hurts them (I am not talking porn here), I hate to tell you but there are naturist societies, there are nudist resorts and even housing developments, and kids freely see the genitals of other people and those kids have no problems…heck, there was an article recently about this Island in France where everyone traditionally went nude.

Again, the reason we don’t allow sex or masturbation in public is because it creates a public nuisance and would cause problems with gawkers and such and more importantly, because seeing sexual activity is harmful to children. On the other hand, women being uncomfortable because a woman walks in they think is transgender is in the restroom, there isn’t one shred of evidence of any harm there, it is simply “I don’t like it”. Put it this way, the idiotic argument about the guy in a suit with 5 oclock shadow came about because the proponents of the NC law knew that they would have a hard time showing how a grown woman would be harmed by being in the same locker room with a transgender woman, any more than bible thumpers could prove that liquor stores or stores being open hurt them in some way or society. Individual biases and prejudices and misconceptions and beliefs cannot and should not be the basis for law, and the evidence of that is pretty easy to see, just read history.

BTW, just because the law in the past has been based on people being uncomfortable, doesn’t mean that it ever was right, any more than laws regulating morality based on biblical belief or whatnot were ever wrong, the law is not perfect, and has been used in very untoward ways, like Connecticut banning the sale of condoms or birth control of any kind in the state, because the state was heavily Catholic when this was passed…what right do Catholics have to tell others who don’t share their beliefs what they can or cannot buy? What right does someone who is squeamish about someone being black or transgender have to tell them where they may go, because they are uncomfortable?

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TatinG, when you’re prosecuted by the heavy hand of the government for criminal harassment for – let’s say – telephoning a black person and calling them the “n” word 10 days in a row, please raise a First Amendment defense. I’ll be very interested to see how that goes.

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@musicprnt wrote

So does the US govt just let people say “ok, I’m not registering because I’m transgender?”

Or is a bit of documentation required?

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I mean both.

People are making distinctions, which, frankly, do not exist in many places. I am part of several clubs (gym, ski lodge, golf, social) and the bathroom facilities are part of either the locker room or spa or even shower area, and one must walk through either the locker room or spa or shower areas to get to get to just the bathrooms. Therefore, there are disrobed and nude people on the journey to the restrooms. Things are not always as separate like people are pretending here.

What I find interesting on this thread is that so many posters think their life experience represents others’ lives and take conclusions based only on their experience and cannot believe others. This is a wanting limitation because your life only represents your reality.

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I am going to guess that this requires medical documentation from either a psychologist or a long-term family doctor. The concept that one just says it and government accepts it seems to easy a bit too easy to get out of such a legal commitment.

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I would assume if someone said they were transgender when they went to register for the draft, the government would investigate. However, there also is a bit of a difference between registering for the draft, which in turn could lead to military service, and using a restroom, the analogy is bogus, it is comparing apples and oranges. This whole “they must be certified” to use the woman’s room fails on many counts, for one thing, how will you tell if someone is certified? Are you gonna want them to get a tattoo on their forehead that says “aok”, or are you going to require them to carry documentation to prove they are okay to use the restroom…and if so, does that mean you also have to ask every women going into a locker room or bathroom to show they are a woman? Or would you only check those who don’t ‘look right’?

This whole argument that someone will use the rest room on a whim is a canard, it is a cat’s paw for the real issue, and that is to make transgender women feel uncomfortable about using the women’s rest room. Requiring them to get a certification from a therapist, or have some sort of ‘bathroom license’ is invasive, and it isn’t all that much different then the poll tests they used to give down south to disenfranchise voters, or more recently, the voting laws that mysteriously require blacks and hispanics to prove they have the right to vote, while rarely if ever bothering to check the documents of clem and Bealuh caddidlehopper, it is a form of harassment that will be aimed tah dah at transgender women who appear “odd”. Tell me, would you require women to carry documents certifying that they are law abiding people, never been convicted of a sex crime, never been convicted of assault or manslaughter or other forms of violence? How do you know that woman sitting next to your daughter in the locker room isn’t a pedophile? That is why the whole argument about men in the restroom, or transgender women ‘not being real’ is absolute BS, if we can’t force women to carry documents showing they aren’t a murderer or a sex criminal, why should we force transgender women to carry them?

And the answer is we allow women into the women’s room without documentation, besides the obvious fact that it is unenforceable, because if we made every woman who went into the women’s room or locker room prove they should be there ie they hadn’t committed a crime, especially a sex crime or whatnot, it would make decent people pay the price for the crimes of others. What if you go into a locker room and some woman decided you looked like a lesbian and must be eying her, would you be happy if someone asked you to leave, and you would have to prove you were straight? The point being that with women in general, we don’t have a test for purity and we certainly don’t try and screen out potential criminal activity by make women prove they have a right to be there, the answer on that would be that if a woman with a trouble past went into the locker room or bathroom, they only would be questioned if they did something wrong…so why should someone who goes into the women’s room, who is presenting as a woman, who likely is living full time or nearly full time as a woman, be assumed to be a problem, why is it assumed that she is in there for something other than getting changed? Basically, what people who support this law are saying, all this "oh, anybody can do this on a whim’ is saying, is that they feel more comfortable going into a gym knowing that there is no way of knowing if the other woman in that space may be a violent criminal or sex offender, that they are perfectly happy their ‘little girls’ could be around a pedophile (remember, we don’t make women prove they aren’t troubled to go into the women’s room or locker room), but they are uncomfortable because someone going into the women’s room may not look feminine enough for them…and that is the crux of those wanting laws like this, they want to be able to keep transgender women out that they know are transgender, since without these laws they can complain and get the transgender person kicked out of the locker room simply for being that.

And folks, based on statistics, given that there have been no reported cases of transgender women attacking women in restrooms or locker rooms, or committing rape, or otherwise misbehaving, whereas crimes have happened in locker rooms done by non trans women almost certainly, why do we single out transgender women, if the odds are statistically high that women have committed crimes in there whereas trans women have not one incident

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I tried to access the US Selective Service System’s website, but it won’t open. Maybe the SSS site is down because they need to update it for this issue.

493

The military is actively looking at whether they will allow transgender soldiers to serve, as Barry Goldwater said (about gays serving), they can take a bullet as well as anyone…

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Apparently there are already a number of trams persons serving. The question is the same as the question on gays. Do you let them serve openly or drum them out intentionally?

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@GMTplus7 @musicprnt

The US Selective Service website says: “Individuals who are born female and have a gender change are not required to register. U.S. citizens or immigrants who are born male and have a gender change are still required to register.”

https://www.sss.gov/Registration-Info/Who-Registration

The National Center for Transgender Equality says that there are approximately 134,000 transgender veterans and 15,000 trans people are currently serving.

http://www.transequality.org/issues/military-veterans

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYU6z0d_erY

I can’t think of any other way to enforce this ridiculous law.

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@lasma:
What will likely happen if the NC law stands is that trransgender women who are less able to fly under the radar will be harassed as likely will some women who are bigger or masculine appearing,which is the whole point of the law, it is to allow some women who doesn’t like transgender women to be able to make a stink and if there are criminal penalties for ‘a man in a restroom’, have them arrested and shames and so forth. It is interesting that those defending the legislature have not commented about the rest of the law, which tells the story about it, the NC legislation bans among other things all local laws protecting LGBT rights, but of course the bathroom chorus doesn’t talk about that, they make this all about men being able to use women’s rooms because the law is supposedly ambiguous, because if you read the entire law and then take the bathroom issue in context of that, it is nothing more than the work of bigots, pure and simple. I am sure back in the day many of those squawking about transgender women in restrooms now in the day also probably support gay and lesbians being kept out of the classroom because they would ‘convert the kids’ or would (sound familiar), use their position to seduce kids (and like the bathroom issue, totally ignoring the fact that with teachers seducing children, it is mostly straight teachers who do it). It is using their own discomfort as the basis to discriminate, and then they concoct a reason to make themselves appear non bigoted, much the same way that homophobes claimed that keeping gays and lesbians out of the classroom kept kids from being seduced and the like.

This has little to do with men in restrooms, or whether transgender women present a threat, it is just another example of those who have lost the other battles to have society and law reflect their biases (and fears), they lost with racial discrimination, they have lost the battle with ‘keeping women in their place’, they have lost the battle with gay and lesbian rights, and using the bathroom issue and coming up with the idiotic claim that ‘men will use the restroom’ as a reason, which would actually get some people who otherwise are not necessarily antediluvian bible thumpers and the like to support it, is just another attempt to turn back the clock and have someone they can legally bully and discriminate against (among other things, when you are pretty much the bottom of the barrel socially and especially economically these days, having someone you can bully or push around or call names helps make them feel better, much as it did during the Jim Crow days with blacks). I suspect that like with same sex marriage, that what is going to happen is that over time, people will look back and realize this was nothing more than what it was,a tempest in a teapot. One of the things the NC legislature didn’t think about is with all the coverage over this, with all that is written, that like with same sex marriage, when people realize such laws have existed for years, when people realize they likely have been in the same changing room with women who very well might be pre operative and that they are being uncomfortable over the thought of a woman with a penis because they might see a woman they can identify as transgender, it likely will blow over.

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I had someone raise an interesting question this morning. Everybody is so darned concerned that some perverted man is going to sneak into a woman’s bathroom and molest a little girl. Aren’t they concerned that those same perverts can openly walk into a mans bathroom amongst little boys???

Tell me again this is about safety and not
prejudice and hatred.

499

It is also becoming increasingly likely that people will discover that someone they know is transgender. We know a guy we went to college with, a high school student, and I’ve met several students at the college where I teach. 30 years ago, I would have said that there certainly couldn’t be anyone I knew who was transgender. It seemed like an extremely rare situation. Now we are learning that it’s more common than we knew. It’s harder to reject someone you have met and maybe connected with, except, of course for the extremists out there. :frowning:

500

^^
A number of years ago our denomination held an open forum to discuss the UCC stance supporting gay marriage. We then divided into randomly selected small groups to discuss the topic. Many of the anti crowd threw fits when they became aware that there was an openly gay person or two in their small group, claiming that they had somehow been set up - by this random grouping. They stated that they did not feel comfortable expressing their disgust over homosexuals when there was one sitting across the table. It’s easy to hate “them”, much harder to hate “you”.