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This makes the bathroom debate a bit more complex!
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27 Replies
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I can only respond with the spot on comment
Sujay Kentlyn made on her facebook page on this topic…Quote:‘The passage of North Carolina’s recent House Bill 2 sparked a nationwide debate, effectively preventing transgender people from using public restrooms that match their gender identity. To protest the law, photographer Meg Bitton took to Facebook to show how it actually impacts transgender people. She posted a photograph of Corey Maison, a young transgender girl, with the caption: “If this was YOUR daughter, would you be comfortable sending her into a men’s bathroom?”. . . “This really bothers me for two reasons:
1. The use of cosmetics etc. to hyperfeminise and glamourise this child, which I see as part of the trend of setting impossible standards for trans females to measure up to.
2. The implication that only those who pass spectacularly well deserve protection, whereas it’s those whose gender presentation is most transitional and least ‘convincing’ who are most at risk of persecution and (violent) victimisation. -
You are right AA but these extreme cases point out the absolute absurdity of the way some people on the Right in the USA think.
I have no doubt whatsoever that there are forces here that will go this same way if this push to repeal laws is successful and spreads in the US.and another
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I know this is somewhat off topic, but why do we have to slavishly copy “American terminology”. A toilet is a toilet her in OZ, always has, always will be. Tho there are of course, more “vernacular terms”
No one ever “finishes” anything anymore, they are “done”and in terms of “bathrooms in the sky”, I dont now how many times in my travelling work days an American flight attendent’s safety briefing stated “there is “no smoking in the airplane lavatory”.So “political correctness” does not extend to 35,000 feet up?
There are many other examples of the above but before I get even more off topic, I’ll quit whilst (I think) I am ahead..
Caty
PS There are some most unladylike metaphors I could use here, but I’ll leave them to everyone’s imagaination.
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There’s a great article by Josephine Tovey in the Sun Herald today (1 May). The article covers North Carolina’s law on “places of public accommodation”. See I didn’t use the word “bathroom”.
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AAARRRGGGHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
even “bathroom” is better than “places of whatever they said”.
Imagine the outcry if an Aussie went over there and called it a “d….y”
Caty
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“Pissoir” rimes with “sheduoir”. Maybe we should adopt that.
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If one has to find a positive side to the House Bill 2 (HB2), it is that it makes people aware of the difference between sex (what is on one’s birth certificate) and gender (the identity that someone feels comfortable with).
We have struggled to find a effective way to introduce the concept that gender is not the same as physical sex to a population that has always used the two terms interchangeably.
Seeing a super feminised image does perhaps make it easier to grasp – looks like a girl (gender expression), but apparently wees like a man (physical sex).
On the other hand I wonder if the right wing religious bigots behind HB2 are capable of absorbing any challenging new view of the world.
I guess I scratch North Carolina off my travel plans for the foreseeable future.
As for the same thing happening here? Not a chance in my opinion. What a great country we live in! If only we could get over the same sex marriage hurdle.
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I think you may as well cross most of the Americas off your travel plans, like my son says (frequent traveller to USA)’They’re all religous nuts’.
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Adrian found the perfect solution.
Change the birth certificate. Problem solved. Let get on with life and stop this noise. It’s disturbing the beauty of the day.
I don’t see pelvic scanners being installed in rest rooms any time soon.
Besr wishes
Catherine
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Catherine wrote:Adrian found the perfect solution.
I’m not sure that changing ones birth certificate, then having to divorce your long term partner rates in my mind as a perfect solution to going to the toilet. It should be a lot easier than that.
I suspect that someone who has suspicions of your gender bone-fides based just on passing looks will have attacked you with words, fists, or a bullet, before asking you to show your birth certificate.
Stories coming from the States already point to a policy of discriminate first, ask questions later. Which makes changing paperwork a pretty ineffectual solution.
Living in Australia is a much better idea!
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I hear what you say Adrian. Not every system is perfect,yet. My experience is different to yours which takes the rest room debate off the table.
Lets hope the plebiscite rectifies the matter for you.
In the meantime, I vote for pelvic scanners to resolve the matter.
Best wishes
Catherine
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Catherine wrote:I vote for pelvic scanners to resolve the matter
Catherine,
I do hope you are trying to be flippant.However I don’t see any humour in siding with the US bigots who want rest rooms use to be based on physical anatomy.
What the pelvic scanner shows (presence of a prostate for instance) is quite irrelevant in a more informed society that doesn’t base gender on simplistic assessment of physical anatomy.
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A pelvic scan would have cleared this woman for a pee permit but her appearance got her into trouble. She did not pass unfortunately!!
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Oh well!! That’s a NO for pelvic scanners I guess.
I should have declared in previous posts that I have no interest, real or otherwise in companies manufacturing, promoting or dealing with pelvic scanner.
Best wishes
Catherine
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Well Adrian you are quite right, we would get attacked in one form or another long before anyone thought to ask for a birth certificate. Changing a birth certificate is not going to make any difference to most of the general public.
All this talk of a pelvic scanner seems ridiculous and should not be given the time of day.
Surly this bathroom debate could simply be solved by having more disabled toilets or having same sex toilets, both of which seem to be appearing more and more in Australia.
Going in to a Male toilet is a certain recipe for being abused or bashed. Female toilets have individual cubicles so I really can’t see what the Americans are fussing about.
