“Under DOJ’s standard, she should have said she identified as a man that day and everything would have been fined.”
It’s stupid arguments like this that make those who are for this law look even dumber then most of us already think they are.
I didn’t find it particularly funny, actually. If she were a transwoman in NC, she would also have been escorted out or would have had to undergo an “examination” or produce a birth certificate.
@sylvan8798 Ah, but would she? The law makes no provisions for enforcement or penalties. Which, oh gosh, kind of makes me think that the purpose of the law was something other than addressing a problem which exists.
I believe the US Government needs to issue a travel advisory so that overseas visitors aren’t caught unprepared. They need to be advised to bring their birth certificates in case they need to use the bathroom in NC and someone thinks they look a bit too masculine or feminine.
Similarly, I have often attended concerts and seen women dash into the men’s room because the line is too long at the women’s toilets. No one seemed bothered. Next time, I’m going to yell for the police.
Foreign governments are already doing just that for NC and MS. I expect lawmakers in NC and MS are probably quite happy about it.
http://www.cnn.com/2016/04/21/travel/uk-lgbt-travel-advice-north-carolina-mississippi/
“At some point you all night figure out that it is not transgender people that are of concern; it is people who pretend to be and have different motives that is the issue. Specifically, people who would have been stopped from entering and questioned before, but who will not be stopped now.”
The problem with this is it is a law in search of an issue. Charlotte had that books on the law for a bit before the legislature acted and as far as anyone can tell, no man in Charlotte entered a women’s room claiming to be transgendered and molested anyone. The idea that male predators would even know about this law (if the religious right morons hadn’t made such a case out of it) is suspect. More importantly, the idea that allowing transgender women will allow male predators access to women’s room fails one of the biggest tests of the law, and that is proof. Many cities and towns already have laws like that, have had for years, and yet there isn’t one documented case of some guy going into a women’s room claiming to be transgendered, and doing something to the women in there, not one. It was the same basic argument the religious right made about same sex marriage, they made all these claims it would harm marriage, that kids lives would be destroyed, arguing “of course it is going to hurt children, children need a father and a mother, and it will hurt marriage because it changes the nature of it and will lead to problems”…and the reality was they were things the people supporting banning same sex marriage pulled out of their butts to try and defend their bigotry.
Again, the legislatures talked about the potential problem with proximity, that men would use this to molest women and girls but they didn’t have one shred of proof that this would cause harm, cause what they claimed, and the proof is in the pudding, @awcntdb , laws like Charlottes have been on the books in many places, many places have open bathroom policies, and in the at least 10 years that I am aware of such laws, there hasn’t been one instance, and several of these laws are in large cities, so if is likely to happen it would be there…so to quote the old lady in the Wendy
's commercial “Where is the Beef?”. The ignoramouses in NC legislature and the people supporting it cited not one documented case of this happening, they made it seem like it had never been done before, and all they did was make it evident it was about bias.
“Or maybe you will not figure it out because the deflection away from the above scenario and the focus solely on transgenders is the easiest way to ignore that possibility and to simultaneously call people transphobic, when they are really criminal-phobic.”
The Charlotte Law was aimed at Transgender people, so how the NC legislation was not aimed at them I don’t know. Criminal Phobic? Again what? Against a crime that hasn’t happened after similar laws were passed elsewhere? And how do you know really what was in their mind, @awcntdb ? You think they are going to tell the truth, that they are freaked out, not that a man in a suit will use the restroom, but rather that they see a transgender woman as ‘a man in a dress’? They might claim it is about access to men, but I can tell you that all you have to do is read the comments on articles about this law, to see what people really are worried about. Again, if this was about protecting the public interest, given there is a track record for such laws, where is the proof?
And let me give you some analogies, and you tell me what you think of them. The Islamic fundamentalists who wrap women in Burkkhas, and for example in Saudi Arabi punishes a woman who dares walk alone or with a man not a relative, claims that they do so to protect the women…and given that rape exists, that women are raped in large numbers in the US, does that mean a law forbidding women to walk alone or that they always must be with a male member of their family, or where Burkkhas, should legally be passed? After all, rape really goes on, and in most cases it is a man raping a women, so shouldn’t a law keeping women away from men like that, keeping them from “tempting them”, be good law? Try arguing such laws protect women, and you would at best be laughed at and would likely be called an ignorant, misognystic buffoon, even though a very strong case can be made that that kind of thing might help prevent rapes.
And let me give you another one, when the civil rights era happened, those supporting segregation used words like “it isn’t time, people have to get used to each other, we can’t force people to live together, work together, it won 't work”…but when interviewed privately, want to know what the justifications were? “You know that black men can’t wait to get their hands on our women, we allow blacks in restaurants and hotels and our neighborhoods, they are gonna go after our women” and "I don’t have a problem if a black family buys a house in my neighborhood, if they can afford it they likely won’t be a problem…but then, what about their relatives? And how do I know if I see a black guy walking down the street, if they ‘belong here’. They, too, will tell you it is about crime, about if you allow blacks to live in an area they lived in, it would allow other blacks the ability to come into the neigborhood without being questioned, and so forth…how is that any different? Outwardly, they talked about culture, shock, long held traditions, you name it, but the racists fear of cime was based in how they viewed blacks.
With the transgender issue, given that in the more than a few years such laws have existed, that there hasn’t been one case of a man claiming to be transgendered and doing something untoward, the only logical conclusion is those passing the law see transgendered women as the threat, that the claim of a guy in a suit going into the women’s room is bogus, what they are afraid of is transgendered women themselves, that they are men and thus ‘sexual predators’.
The language of the bill itself is ambiguous, because to get a BC amended generally requires SRS (and in some states you cannot amend a birth certificate, period), so a transgender woman could be challenged in a restroom, who hasn’t been able t modify her BC, and they will fall under the penalties of the law, the very least being they can’t use the bathroom. This is a bill that was designed to harass transgendered women, the fact that they mention the birth certificate at all is part of the problem, for the reasons I stated, it is meaningless. Worse, the sex stated on their birth certificate at birth has another big problem (maybe Donna can comment on this), that could be taken to mean that even if a transgendered woman had a modified BC, it would’t matter, because the sex on her BC would not be the sex on her bc when she was born (if the law had said “on her BC”, I wouldn’t argue, but I believe it specificalyl states “The sex on their BC when they were born”).
And oh, yeah, one other little interesting fact I see you don’t mention, @awcntdb . The law the legislature passed was not narrow, it overturned any local rights laws that covered LGBT people and interestingly, Veterans, if it was specifically the bathroom issue, why didn’t they just invalidate bathroom laws, why did they ban any LGBT and veterans protections bills? That because veterans and LGBT people are automatically criminals?
Actually, I double checked the law, it says “bioligical sex on their birth certificate”, it doesn’t say at birth. However, biological sex could be used to harass even a transgeder woman who has had SRS, and that is bioligical sex is often assumed in the law to be your sex chromosomes, and nothing could change that.
There are other problems with this law, it is likely that the only transgender women who will be in trouble with this law would be transgender women who are identifiable as transgender. I know transgender women who have slipped under the radar for years, haven’t had SRS, have a BC that says “M”, who would never be challenged, it is basically targeted at those who look different or are identifiable. If this law was equitable, it would say that anyone going to a women’s room had to show their birth certificate, much the same way that places serving booze these days don’t rely on the way someone looks, they proof everyone. What this bill does is say “it is okay if you are transgender, as long as you look and can pass as a woman”, and that in of itself is discriminatory.
Doesn’t really matter though, the bill itself is illegal, there is a strong SCOTUS decision that makes this invalid, Romer Versus Colorado. The loving Christians of Colorado rammed through on the ballot a law banning any protections for LGBT people, and the Supreme Court invalidated it, partly because the law focused solely on one group, and partly because they said the state did not have that kind of power over local laws. This one could be invalidated on similar grounds, that the legislature basically narrowly defined who deserves protections and who doesn’t and targeted a small group of people (LGBT people and Veterans). McCrory is flailing right and left, he is calling on Congress to back him, he is saying this law protects the civil rights of women (?), but in the end I think he knows he and the bigots on the NC legislature misplayed their hand, they thought there would be this giant groundswell from "real americans’ backing them, and what they face is an economic disaster, both private and public sectors. One estimate said that NC could lose 5 billion a year from the private sector alone, maybe as much as 10 billion in the public one.
If they really were worried about the bathroom consequences, they could have easily written a bill that increased the penalties for sexual molestation, assault or rape in a public facility, by basically invalidating any local LGBT laws and also banning any town in NC passing LGBT rights legislation, it is obvious what this is about, it is the rednecks/religious right once again trying to put LGBT people “in their place”, and they are going to pay the price for it. I have heard from friends that the companies they work for are urging them to not hold business meetings in NC, not attend conventions and such that are held there, and unless absolutely necessary to think twice about giving contracts to firms in NC until this is resolved, and these are some pretty big companies.
I’m happy to say that Massachusetts is trying to protect transgender citizens. It is a glimmer of hope within the sea of despair.
Musicprnt, regarding your 3:31 pm comment, I hope you’re only trying to persuade neutral bystanders, because it’s obvious that the person to whom you’re responding doesn’t listen, and doesn’t care – he just repeats his talking points, no matter what. How many times has he been specifically told that “transgender” is an adjective, not a noun, and that using it as a noun is about as unpleasant as talking about “the blacks,” or using “Jew” as an adjective? He doesn’t care; he just repeats it. How many times has he been asked to provide some authority for his absurd insistence that under laws barring discrimination in public accommodations on grounds of gender identity, one’s “gender identity” can change back and forth every day on a whim, with no consistency required? Or for his insistence that a man could identify as male on Tuesday, insist on Wednesday that he identifies as a woman and freely enter a women’s restroom while still presenting as a man, and then go back to identifying as a man on Thursday? Has he even attempted to provide authority for those propositions? Of course not.
Similarly, has he attempted to provide any evidence that any of the laws barring trans discrimination in 16 states and more than 200 municipalities (some in effect for as long as the last 30 years) has been so interpreted by a court? Of course not. Has he attempted to demonstrate that the passage of such laws has ever led to an increase in sexual assaults? Of course not. Has he attempted to demonstrate the existence of any case in any of those jurisdictions where some guy entered a women’s restroom dressed as a woman (let alone as a man) claiming that they were entitled to do so under such a law, and then committed a sexual assault? Of course not. Is he proposing laws barring male janitors and maintenance workers from entering women’s restrooms, where they could assault someone or (as has happened many times) plant a hidden camera? Of course not (even though there have been numerous cases of such occurrences, versus none of trans women committing such assaults)? Does he advocate for laws prohibiting the many politicians (most of them not the “liberals” he openly sneers at in violation of the TOS) who were convicted of sex offenses from entering any public bathrooms at all? Of course not. Has he ever addressed the fact (pointed out by many in this thread) that it would be extremely easy under North Carolina’s new law (and similar new laws elsewhere) for a man contemplating sexual assault to enter a women’s restroom presenting as male to claim that he’s a trans man required to be in the women’s room under North Carolina law (as he would be) because his birth certificate says “F,” than it would have been under Charlotte’s superseded anti-discrimination law for a man contemplating sexual assault to enter a women’s restroom presenting as male to claim that he has a female identity and is protected by that law (the absurd scenario mentioned above)? Of course not. Has he addressed the issue of trans men at all? Of course not. Has he ever seen photos of trans men like Buck Angel, and does he really want them in the women’s restroom? I doubt it.
A post on another thread describes deliberately and successfully using “triggers” to stun into silence pretentious pontificating progressives. In context, it seemed to me “triggers” represented language understood to be offensive to the one addressed.
fwiw
@donnal:
I don’t do it for the person I was responding to, someone giving the talking points of the idiots who passed this law and Fox News is not going to listen to reason. The reason I respond to posts like that is in case someone else reads posts like that and thinks “hmm, they have a point, let transgender women into women’s rooms, then a man can claim to be transgender and go in there and can’t be challenged”, Justice Brandeis made a comment about speech, and he said the answer to bad speech is more speech, good speech, so that if people hear the bad speech they have something to look to, can say “wow, what the responder said made a lot more sense than the proponents”.
And of course, note that the opponents don’t mention that the NC law didn’t just invalidate the bathroom law (even assuming that was legal, which it isn’t), it invalidated protections for LGBT people (and veterans) in any local law, which the Romer decision invalidated a number of years ago.
What a dumb hill to die on.
@musicprnt FoxNews has had people on different sides of this issue regularly. I was watching at lunch today and 4 of the 5 contributors believed the NC law was stupid and unnecessary. Just thought you might want to know so you weren’t one of the people spreading misinformation.
I support LGTB rights and I support transgender rights. I think HB2 is an abomination and an embarassment to the state of North Carolina. To me the entire bathroom issue is a non-issue. I think transgendered individuals should use the bathroom they feel comfortable with and I don’t see any problems arising from that policy. That whole, “keep women and children safe” is big crock as far as I am concerned.
However, I do see a problem with locker rooms, or more specifically, showers. When I was in Junior High School, (and High School), shower rooms in the locker room were open rooms with showerheads coming out of the wall. It was one big room with no stalls and absolutely no privacy. I don’t think there were even hooks for towels inside that room. I remember not wanting to use this facility at all back then, even as a heterosexual boy among other boys, and made up excuses to avoid having to take the required shower after gym class (I have athletes foot!). In those types of facilities, I have a problem with transgender girls - who still have male body parts - sharing those facilities with girls. If I had a 14 year old daughter (or if I were a 14 year old girl - hard as it may be to imagine this) I would have a problem with this, and I don’t think people that have a problem with this should be labeled “bigots.” Both sides need more empathy, ie, put yourself in their shoes.
Eb, next time there’s a tornado or oil plant explosion, I expect that TX will not be declaring an emergency. They won’t need any of that evil dirty money from the fedrul gubmint.
We are living in 1984. Every day I see another headline proclaiming that white is black, men are women, and the meaning of words change day to day.
@losttexan:
Glad to hear that Fox News had people from both sides, that is a rare thing for them, but their staff commenters have been outspoken both with this issue and with transgender people as a whole, and it hasn’t been favorable. Fox News is about as fair and balanced as talk radio is, the BBC is pretty fair and balanced, NPR and the Nightly News hour on PBS tv is pretty fair and balanced, Fox News is not. I am glad that they actually had people on who thought this law was ridiculous, but that won’t make me change my mind about Fox news or its biases.
That just is not true.
Some on the left seem to confuse commentary with news. The commentators on Fox are very right-leaning. The straight news presents both points of view, and Fox does present many stories that such outlets as the NY Times deem too much for its readers to handle.
NPR and PBS Nightly News certainly have a bias. Unquestionably. Just as the NY Times’ ombudsman owned its bias. There is nothing wrong with having a bias, it’s lying about it that’s the problem.
@musicprnt You are quite wrong that it is rare, but I didn’t think you would change your mind. Everyone has their biases.
Hmmm, here’s what I think about it. If you can write your name in the snow while urinating you can and probably should use the men’s bathroom. I don’t even know if it’s physically possible for me to straddle the urinal or pee in a trough so consider yourself lucky. If you can write your name in the snow then you are again lucky because YOU could use my bathroom which generally has a door and affords some privacy. But no I do not want to see dangly bits when I’m in the locker room at the gym and it would probably cause me to scream out loud if I rounded the corner and saw that. Believe me I draw the line at nude dangly bits in my locker room. I’ve been blessed to live with 4 men, a male dog and a male cat for the past thirty years and the gym and locker rooms are my sanctuary away from the male gender…and if you got dangly bits…you’re a guy even if your head thinks you are a woman. It’s not your head I will see in my locker room when I round the corner. So use some common sense and find a place where you can dress, shower and undress in privacy. I might totally want to go have coffee with you, but I absolutely don’t want to see dangly parts in my gym locker room.
I played tennis before Title IX with no girls tennis at my school so made the ladder over lots of guys and played on the boys team…I had to change before we got to the school we were playing and I didn’t get to shower after the match because there was no accommodation for a female on a boy’s tennis team and I always had to find someone to locate a toilet I could use cause I couldn’t go into the guys locker room and use their toilets and I survived…i sat smelly and sweaty on the bus waiting for the “guys” to shower after their matches but I didn’t stew, I didn’t whine and I never once thought I was being “discriminated” against as I was going against the grain by playing on the boys team because I wanted to. I say to all the people getting worked up over Bathroom-gate “suck it up buttercups” if you don’t get everything you want when you travel outside the mainstream. I’ve got no issue with your wish to be different, I just don’t have to turn my world upside down to accommodate you on every single little thing you want. The world has turned to mush I fear as far as common sense goes.