Out society is finally, albeit slowly, moving away from ruthlessly enforcing strict binary gender identities. For reasons unknown to me this is making some people very uncomfortable. Those uncomfortable souls lack any real argument for why this move is unacceptable so they’ve resorted to emotional appeals. The most common form of this manifests in an obsession with bathrooms. When a transgender individual expresses a desire to use the bathroom of the gender they identify as implications that they’re really sexual predators wanting to prey on innocent girls are made (apparently these bathroom obsessed individuals don’t realize female-to-male transgender individuals exist).
In the most recent episode of this bathroom obsession a bunch of high school students staged a walkout:
(KMOV.com) – More than 150 students walked out of Hillsboro High School over a dispute about the use of the girl’s locker room by a transgender student.
The walkout lasted for about two hours. Roughly 30-40 people showed support for senior Lila Perry, who wants to use the girls’ locker room during gym class. Perry was born a male but said she has identified as a female since 13.
“There’s a lot of ignorance, they are claiming that they’re uncomfortable. I don’t believe for a second that they are. I think this is pure and simple bigotry,” said Perry.
A short distance away, a counter protest was being held by people claiming they have relatives at the high school.
“Boys needs to have their own locker room. Girls need to have their own locker room and if somebody has mixed feelings where they are, they need to have their own also,” said protester Jeff Childs.
I’m a peacemaker by nature… you’re not buying that, are you? Admittedly I’m an extremely opinionated man with an obvious bias on this topic. But like Thorgeir Thorkelsson my bias doesn’t prevent me from being capable of advocating for a mutually beneficial outcome.
The fact of the matter is the strict binary gender identity is becoming a thing of the past (and good riddance, people should be free to define themselves on their own terms). That being the case segregating bathrooms by gender is silly. Why not just give everybody an individual stall so they can do their business in peace? It would allow these bathroom obsessed individuals to finally calm the fuck down and alleviate us men from ensuring we’re always in compliance with proper bathroom etiquette.
This is the setup at the Kitty Cat Klub in Minneapolis. The bathroom area is located in the basement. It’s composed of individual stalls and a common sink for hand washing. In my opinion it’s the best setup because it isn’t based on assumptions about customers and fulfills customers’ expectations that a bathroom will be made available.
Locker rooms are a bit more complicated than bathrooms, what with communal showers and open dressing areas.
Women showering with strange men is only supposed to happen in the privacy of their own home after hooking up at the bar at 2AM…or in porn.
I don’t know the right answer. A woman awkwardly getting naked next to a man who claims to have no in her? It can’t be any worse than straight and gay men sharing a locker room, and that’s managed to mostly work out since the invention of locker rooms.
Does it mean I’m ok to perv in the women’s locker room at the gym as long as I show up in a skirt?
Build separate shower stalls like they have in college dorms and many camps. That solves many problems including the creepy coach gawking at the kids. There really is no need for communal locker rooms, showers, or bathrooms.
No. Policies usually require that you have acknowledgement from a medical professional that you are transgender before you can use the bathroom of the gender you identify as. It’s something most people up in arms over this don’t realize (either because they just didn’t look into it or willful ignorance).
“Policies usually require that you have acknowledgement from a medical professional that you are transgender before you can use the bathroom of the gender you identify as.”
Something tells me that policy isn’t strictly adhered to in every case, though. Particularly for bathrooms for customers or locker rooms at the Y.
“Build separate shower stalls like they have in college dorms and many camps.”
While I’ve seen this, it’s still generally separated by gender, and the shower stalls are not generally large enough for one to undress inside them without a very awkward position. And for high school type environments, what if some bully steals the clothing from just outside the stall of the outcast kids? That was a traumatic enough experience for me when there weren’t girls just outside the showers.
“apparently these bathroom obsessed individuals don’t realize female-to-male transgender individuals exist”
They fully admit this – but just like there are more MTF transgender individuals, it is obvious from biology that a pervy “ex-man” would be at an advantage in the event something were to occur, whereas that wouldn’t be the case the other way around.
And part of this assumption that one shouldn’t be uncomfortable in such an environment relies on a belief that there aren’t trans people that would do this. While I wouldn’t say that there are many that come out as “trans” to meet some sort of fetish or perv on people, I’ve heard enough stories from trans acquaintances to know that there do exist trans people who don’t have a problem with sexually abusing others, and it’s not as rare as one might think.
Just to clarify, most of those stories were trans individuals abusing other trans individuals, but still.
“Build separate shower stalls ”
Hadn’t thought about that. And I should have. My last job built a gym in the basement and had 3 completely separate shower stalls in each basement. The stalls had an outer changing room between the shower and a locked door. Didn’t take up much more room than the toilet stall.
“It’s something most people up in arms over this don’t realize (either because they just didn’t look into it or willful ignorance).”
I plead regular ignorance, because other people’s sexuality doesn’t matter enough to me to make it worth looking into. The only sexual inclinations that are any of my business are mine, my wife’s, and my kids’.
Chris,
I love your writing and you aid in helping me become an anarchist, as well as realizing my own Papacy. That said, I still don’t see how this is anything other than a widespread and highly encouraged mental illness.
However, a free market would have privately run schools that could decide on their own about such issues and let the market decide whether or not their decisions are financially viable.
I really need to implement threaded conversations for controversial posts such as this. But that’s neither here nor there. I’ll start with Matt.
Private entities have a great deal of leeway when it comes to establishing their own policies. My comment regarding procedures was primarily aimed at public schools since they are the subject of this entire outrage.
I have a wonderful example to show at AgoraFest. Some of the shower stalls there include a door that enters into a small room with an area to undress and a shower. Yet another reason to attend AgoraFest.
What if they do that now?
That was more of a snide remark regarding the tendency to focus exclusively on male-to-female transgender individuals since the female-to-male individuals tend not to be a scary to the bathroom obsessed. Also, I’m not sure why a male-to-female can take advantage of this kind of situation but a, for example, gay cisgender male cannot.
This equally applies to homosexuals though. Do we separate bathrooms based on gender and sexual orientation? I know several men who would have a fit if they knew the man standing in the urinal stall next to them was gay.
Moving on to Jason.
Admittedly this thought came to me originally because I hate communal bathrooms. I like to do my business by myself. Maybe I’m just antisocial though.
I assumed as much. The ones who remain willfully ignorant are pretty obvious because they double-down on absurdity as discussions go on.
And now my response to you, Mussorgsky112.
Whether one looks at the transgenderism as a mental illness or a biology anomaly the end result of forcing a person to identify as a gender they don’t actually identify as ranges from severe depression to suicide. With the say much of society treats transgender individuals I would no say the condition is highly encouraged. In fact it seems to be highly discouraged much like homosexuality was back in the day (and still is by some people).
My views can best be described as radical individualism. Part of that is accepting that I don’t know what’s best for another person because I don’t have access to their entirely life experiences. I cannot say what is best for a transgender individual so I can only listen to them say what is best. Most of what I advocate is based on listening to them.
The real shame is the lack of market influence in schools. A lot of private establishments have started using, what I will refer to as, gender inclusive individual bathrooms. There really is no downside for doing so and it opens the establishment up to as many customers as possible.