It’s a surprisingly fraught issue, and it may get worse. The South Dakota legislature wants to pass House Bill 1008. The Republicans there seem to be obsessed with who is using the bathroom.
FOR AN ACT ENTITLED, An Act to restrict access to certain restrooms and locker rooms in public schools.
BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF SOUTH DAKOTA:
Section 1. That chapter 13-24 be amended by adding a NEW SECTION to read:
The term, biological sex, as used in this Act, means the physical condition of being male or female as determined by a person’s chromosomes and identified at birth by a person’s anatomy.
Section 2. That the code be amended by adding a NEW SECTION to read:
Every restroom, locker room, and shower room located in a public elementary or secondary school that is designated for student use and is accessible by multiple students at the same time shall be designated for and used only by students of the same biological sex. In addition, any public school student participating in a school sponsored activity off school premises which includes being in a state of undress in the presence of other students shall use those rooms designated for and used only by students of the same biological sex.
I foresee some problems with the implementation, however. First is this definition of “biological sex”, defined by genitalia and chromosomes. Do the legislators even realize that those two criteria can conflict with each other? There are people with two X chromosomes and a penis, either by genetic accident or surgical modification; there are also people with XY chromosomes and a vagina, by similar causes. What will South Dakotans do in those cases?
Oooh, ooh, I know! Since those are really rare cases, screw ’em. The law is all about serving the majority and punishing the minorities. You will conform. It’s up to those people to get surgery to align their genitals with their chromosomes, right?
Well, how about a more common situation? A “biologically female” person by both criteria is psychologically male, has been getting testosterone shots, comes to school in stereotypically masculine clothes, is beginning to grow that wispy high school beard, and is cultivating a macho strut. They need to use the bathroom. Where does the homophobic/transphobic school administrator send them?
Likewise with the “biologically male” student who comes to school in a dress, with face prettily made up, and breasts budding thanks to their estrogen injections. Do they get commanded to enter the boy’s restroom, and face the mob of teenagers who’ve learned about sexuality from watching cheesy R rated movies on cable?
Again, those trans men and women are a minority, so you could just argue that the law doesn’t give a damn about them anyway — this is all about making them suffer. But twist it around a bit and think of all those cis boys and girls who are going to be exposed to gender fluid individuals! Why, they might get warped into being more accepting and tolerant, or possibly even having confused sexual feelings stirred up! All that sexual ignorance Republican policies try to instill in young people might be compromised.
But let’s keep everything focused on those important cis boys and girls. How is this policy going to be enforced? Will there be genital inspections? Mandatory karyotyping of all students? How does this make any sense?
I went through high school myself, and no, teachers and administrators didn’t get to take a peek in my pants. The one exception was our terrible awful physical education teacher, who would stroll through the shower room making rude comments about student penises. But he was a macho manly man and all-around asshole, so I guess that made him “safe”. Otherwise, though, we’re able to use the restroom without concern that our genitals will be scrutinized and evaluated, and that’s the way it should be — except when blue-nosed twits start having these weird moral panics, and then suddenly it becomes all important to have Official Crotch Inspectors.
I have some general suggestions for these bathroom problems. They involve plumbing changes, which is hard enough, and social engineering, which is even harder. The whole problem rests on these arbitrary requirements to segregate bodily functions by gender, which doesn’t even correlate all that well.
My first idea was that instead of having two rooms labeled Gentlemen and Ladies, we have two rooms labeled Stand Up and Sit Down. You have to excrete in a way that you can do standing up, then there’s a room with urinals or a trough. Quick and easy. You need to sit down? There’s another room with stalls and toilets. Only problem with that is that it favors men, who have one excretory act that’s easy to do standing up, so they get most of the benefit of the Stand Up room (I know, there are ways for women to do that, too). So it’s a little unfair.
My second idea, though, is two rooms, one labeled Open and the other labeled Private. The Open room has a trough for peeing and a long bench with holes for sitting. No stalls. No restrictions. This one would be quick and easy for either sex to dart in and get the necessaries done, but it would be more public. Lest you think that is terrible, it’s the way men’s room urinals are laid out now, and it’s never been a worry that some guy will stare at you. There’s a convention of avoidance.
The Private room would be nothing but stalls with doors and toilets. Pee-shy gentlemen could use it, as well as modest women. I can guarantee that there are plenty of men who would prefer that to the Open room for all functions — even now, when you go into a men’s public restroom, there are men who’d rather not use the urinals and will wait for a toilet stall.
These are difficult solutions requiring a lot of social and architectural changes, but they’d be good for us. Right now there is a bizarre association between sexual behavior and peeing/pooping — which might be a fetish for some few, but for most of us, really isn’t there, except for this unnecessary cultural taboo.
And, actually, my suggested changes are less problematic than the South Dakota solution, which requires even greater invasion of privacy and rather obsessive fiddling over the contents of young people’s pants. But then there’s a fetish for that, too. Maybe it’s something too many Republican legislators in South Dakota share?
Of course, there’s an even simpler solution to all of this. Just make all bathrooms unisex. Change a few signs, and voila, conflicts resolved.
I’d be fine with all- unisex bathrooms. Just have stalls with floor-to-ceiling doors and dividers, and with “vacant/occupied” sliders on the doors so you know that they’re being used. I don’t understand why that isn’t already being done – if freaking Porta-Potties can afford to have those sliders, then public bathrooms should be able to have them too. I like using urinals, but I can live without them in public restrooms.
Then have a common sink area that people who use the stalls can use. Make it open, so the stalls are against the walls on both sides while the sink area is in the center. Have the janitors check the stalls when they’re cleaning them to make sure no creepy assholes are putting hidden cameras in them.
It is about transphobic, horrible old men being obsessed with children’s genitals. There’s a name for that kind of people…
Hampshire College in Massachusetts has a simple solution: they label their restrooms as either “Bathroom with Urinals” or “Bathroom without Urinals”.
The whole “trans men and women are a minority and weren’t in mind with this law” argument doesn’t make sense.
“Only use the bathroom associated with your “biological sex”” is already the social norm, and I – along with many other trans people – opt to hold it in rather than risking any public restroom that isn’t a one-person lockable one. If we do risk using a public restroom, we risk getting beat up, followed, or having the cops called, which serves to enforce said social norm.
Here’s the quibble: if the social norm is already actively enforced by both civilians and law enforcement, why bother making a law about it? Personally, I’d guess that it’s because transgender rights and visibility are on the rise, and bigots are seeking a way to ensure the social norms are enforced if – god help them – the consensus shifts in our favor.
How many people even know their karyotype? I mean, I assume mine is XX, but I’ve never had this tested.
Vivec
It’s about actively forcing schools to make life as shitty as possible for trans kids, because heavens forbid, more and more schools are trying to be less than assholes to trans kids.
Small government, eh? So small it not only fits into uteri but children’s panties as well…
Personally I’m a favor of unisex bathrooms/locker rooms with private shower, toilet, and changing stalls; but that’s just me.
What really annoys/confuses me a single toilet gendered bathrooms.
Yeah, does this mean only people who’ve been karyotyped can legally use the toilet?
I’ve done a squash and chromosome stain of my cells many years ago — didn’t examine it with great detail, but I know I’ve got a Y chromosome, anyway. Unfortunately, I didn’t keep a photographic record.
If I pinky-swear that I’ve got a Y and if I unzip and flash, will I be allowed to go to the bathroom?
@6
Well, yeah. But like, what I mean is that this law is pretty much already de facto in effect. Both me and my partner – both trans – have caught shit from students and administration for using what we’d consider to be the proper restroom. In my case, it was my parents threatening a lawsuit if my “tresspassing in the wrong restroom” charge wasn’t brought down to a suspension for mischief.
That they’re taking something that they already know is basically law and putting it into formal law tells me that they’re afraid that the social norm might no longer be enforced de facto, so they have to enforce it de jure.
Vivec
I’m sorry you had to make it through that shit. And I’m glad your parents supported you.
Yep, I think that’s the thing. As horrible as this law is, it’s also a sign of progress because the horrible bigots think they have to fight back. There are more and more schools being supportive of trans students and this is their desperate attempt to force those schools to conform with their bigotry.
How about making ALL bathrooms one-person-at-a-time? I don’t really like sharing my excretory sessions with anyone.
When I read bigots rant about homosexuality, it’s clear they tend to forget lesbians exist. With transphobia, it’s clear they tend to forget trans men exist. What new laws will they have to enact when these men – http://www.oddee.com/item_98038.aspx – start walking into women’s restrooms?
I can’t wait until Trump weighs in on this one.
Transitioning in 1992, it makes me cry to imagine the idea of having had supportive parents and an understanding school. And to be so close, and have these petty assholes Lucy the football away yet again…I feel deeply for the trans girls, especially, in the state’s schools. It’s not like their lives are going to be hugs and puppies even without the bill, but this kind of petty bullshit is like making them wear a big pink T on their clothes. Evil, small-minded, pervert bastards.
I often come off as a man in public, especially in winter (bundled up a bit, deep voice, short hair) and have always been one to just use the men’s bathroom if the women’s is fully occupied, ESPECIALLY if the men’s bathroom is a single-occupant one.
I once got kicked out of a bar for doing this. Oh well, sucks to be THAT bar!
Back in the early days of the Eisenhower administration, in what they would now call Middle School, our macho asshole of a coach would never make rude comments — he would just stroll naked through the locker room himself. He didn’t do that often, so fortunately he was dressed when one day the school principal, a grandmotherly lady, barged into the locker room looking for him. She was surprised at how the chatter of the boys suddenly stopped as a whole room full of 13 and 14 year-olds dived for their towels. No such modesty should be necessary in front of either your mother or your principal!
Whoever wrote that South Dakota legislation needs a remedial biology course: “male or female as determined by a person’s chromosomes and identified at birth by a person’s anatomy”. Everyone’s got to be pigeon-holed at birth, based on two different categories that can conflict at that time, so, sorry PZ, surgery won’t help. But this is presumably a Republican, and they’re used to defining certain people as non-entities.
That coach of mine also taught science — how they had recently split the atom and found that it was made up of molecules. Dumb. But.. Woof! What a treat for all the gay boys.
With respect, JP, may I suggest that cis people’s experiences with using the ‘wrong’ bathroom as needed are not in the same class as the daily grind of either finding a safe bathroom, or literally holding it all day? That the multiple occasions on which I’ve been pushed around or verbally threatened for being a trans woman needing to pee, perhaps are on a different level than being kicked out of a bar that one time? Trans women get killed by bathroom panic. If you’ve never tried it, you really don’t know what it can be like.
Privilege can be expressed as not knowing what normal is like for those without the privilege. I say this as politely as I can, as I always try to when calling out cis privilege; I hope it helps feel more like “your skirt is caught in your pants” than “you’re a terrible person”, as the former’s my aiming point.
But if boys go to the bathroom alongside girls, girls will get abused, inevitably, because boys will be boys, and if boys are told that they shouldn’t do this and that being together with a girl in a bathroom is no different to being in the cafeteria and that this doesn’t allow for any change in what’s acceptable and what’s not, then boys might grow up to not abuse girls in any scenario, which is unthinkable because what man wouldn’t take advantage of a woman if given even the slightest chance, like being in the same room together?
Regardless this is very clearly intended to humilliate trans* people. You will conform to my stupid norms, i don’t know why, but you fucking will.
Also, i think it’s a bit too much asking for these people to understand biological diversity and the multiple underlying causes behind it. It’s impressive enough that they know about chromosomes…
She was surprised at how the chatter of the boys suddenly stopped as a whole room full of 13 and 14 year-olds dived for their towels. No such modesty should be necessary in front of either your mother or your principal!
My father used to tell the story of a group of university professors who were having a symposium under a tree by a creek. Alcohol was involved. It was a hot day. One of the professors stripped off and walked into the water and the rest followed academic herd instinct joined him. A bit later an undergraduate wandered by, and the professors mostly responded by trying to hunch over and cover their genitalia. Except for the philosophy professor, who covered his face.
Come to think of it, why is there even a gender-based toilet distinction at all? It could have been just one room with stalls all along. Is it the prude christian’s fault? Also, why are so many people so against unisex toilets? Don’t they have one at home? Or do people like the Trump actually install a second toilet in their houses?
And I still think that the “Sit Down and Stand Up” solution is the best one. It doesn’t favor men more than nature does already, and having a pissoir room would at least take some of the load off the stall room. I’d even go further and claim that only a small minority of men would use a sit-down-toilet in a public restroom, for the simple reason that humans don’t defecate nearly as often as they urinate, and most prefer to do it at home anyway. So in the end 50%-X of the total population would use the pissoir room and 50%+X the stall room, and it shouldn’t be that hard to figure out a sufficiently precise value of X and adjust the sizes of the two rooms accordingly.
@19
No, no, you’re not getting it. Clearly, the answer to men assaulting women is to segregate them and treat the assault as the natural consequence of women being so darn attractive. Treating men as conscious, intelligent beings capable of learning not to assault women is just unrealistic and offensive to men.
The presence of millions of men with no real inclination to assault women isn’t evidence against this by the way, because I say so.
I’m much in favour of unisex toilets as well.
The with/without urinals solution still privileges people with penises as it inevitably gives one group more possibilities to pee than everybody else.
In general I wished that people stopped freaking out over bodies, especially prepubescent bodies. That’s creepy. My kids’ daycare has a unisex bathroom. More than once when I waited for one of the kids to get dressed a tod would waddle out of one of the stalls with their pants around their ankles and ask for help with getting dressed again. If you think there’s something indecent about that, there’s something wrong with you.
JP @ 16:
I don’t present as male, but back in the day, I used whatever lav had a stall available, when bar (gay) hopping. Most people didn’t give a shit, but that is not even close to what trans people have to go through, especially kids. There’s a real risk of violence or death, and that’s one fuck of a high price to pay for having to pee. Some dude letting out a shriek on seeing me by the urinal ain’t the same thing.
The ones I can really never understand are gendered single person bathrooms. It’s ridiculous.
Turner syndrome (XO) is fairly common, at 1/4000 to 1/10000 live births. Likewise, Kleinfelter syndrome (XXY) is quite common at 1/500 to 1/1000 people. Here are thousands more non-hypothetical South Dakotans who are being prohibited from using washrooms.
What a vapid drive-by comment.
Regardless, yeah. The floor adviser for my dorm two years ago tried to force you to have your ID on you at all times to ensure that you’d use the bathroom that correlated with the sex on your student ID. Note that this is against my university’s actual policy, which is “Use the bathroom you identify with.” He’d surely have known that, given that floor advisers are supposed to have to take a class to familiarize themselves with the policies, but that apparently didn’t stop him from trying to make up his own rules.
Tom Estes, weren’t you banned ages ago? Either way, fuck off.
Regarding the OP, the mention of chromosomes is especially odd – I don’t know for sure what my own chromosomes are, neither do the vast majority of people, and it seems like such a ridiculous thing to base things on. I mean, I know the actual intention is to be shitty to trans and nonbinary people, but even so, you’d think they’d at least base the law on things that are actually known.
Tabby Lavalamp @13:
That’s because trans men are really just silly women who were allowed to wear pants and flannel shirts once and forgot that their natural place is to be barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen, whereas trans women are sinister gay men who try to lure honest, God-fearing Christian men into deviant behavior when they’re not lurking in bathroom stalls so they can rape women.
And sub
Why does the SD legislature want to peek into bathrooms, I thought only creepy old men did that….oh wait.
Will they pay for the tests, will there be a black market in phony tests?
I see Tom E., the weenie warrior, is back.
Oh, look, somebody who can’t decide between being a troll and a spammer. I’d go with arsehole
I bet all of those clowns would claim they’re opposed to “big government”.
I could be completely wrong, but when pondering that question earlier today, I came up with the theory of blaming the old Romans.
You see, tanning used to use urine as an ingredient way back when. And Romans came up with the idea of making money with that, with the help of public toilets. (That much I’m pretty certain of – it’s where “pecuniam non olet” comes from, “money doesn’t smell”.)
Sit-down toilets don’t allow cleanly separating urine from the rest. So people invent the stand-up variant. But that only works for men. And so …
Plus, modern Christian prudery (I don’t think it was much of a thing in the middle ages) certainly doesn’t help.
My, my, it’s T.Estes again. Fuck off, won’t you, dear?
There’s something about stuff like this — the open hatred and demonization of people like me — that kind of takes the life out of me. It brings back memories. Bad ones.
I’ve only recently started seeing myself as trans, but all my life I’ve known that something about some essential and unchangeable part of my nature, IOW me just minding my own business being me, is seen as offensive and worthy of eradication by the majority of people. (The idea of “transgender” wasn’t around in those pre-Stonewall days, so I got called “queer”, “weirdo,” and worse. And no, I wasn’t especially “girly.”) I spent most of my childhood dreading getting up in the morning and, once I did get up, wishing I could die so I wouldn’t have to face it any more. Things have improved, but it’s never really left me.
Actually, the only way I got the courage to transition, first internally and now externally, was realizing that if I didn’t, I was dead anyway. You can’t keep killing off pieces of yourself (or trying to) without sooner or later killing yourself for real. I still have to remind myself of that frequently, though. “If they kill me, they kill me” is my mantra.
I’m in a very LGBT-friendly area of the USA. I go out looking like a guy in a dress and have gotten no crap at all for it (maybe 2 or 3 remarks from strangers in 10 years.) There are legal protections in the county I live in and in the city my office is in (New York), and my company prides itself on being LGBT-friendly. But I’m still dreading the day I transition at work. And have to use the ladies’ room, where I’ll run into co-workers who’ve always known me as male. I can’t imagine trying to be me in a part of the country where so many people hate and want to make life unlivable for people like me so much that a bill like this wouldn’t get laughed (or sneered) out of the statehouse.
Maybe I’m paranoid, but I think these legislators know exactly what they are doing. It’s an act of terror, the way the anti-black laws were acts of terror against black people. They want to take the life out of us. They want to kill our inside before they kill our outside. And they hope we’ll take care of killing us for them. There’s a reason 41% of trans people have tried to kill themselves. (And that’s not counting the ones who succeeded.) They just think 41% is too low.
Oh, and I was just reading that one of the ways Jim Crow laws humiliated and terrorized black people was to forbid them to use most bathrooms. When they needed to go, black people would have to run around trying to find a “colored” bathroom.
Actually it was the roman emperor Vespasianus who put a tax on public toilets, and in his honour they’ve been called vespasians ever since. When his son Titus complained with him about this tax, he took a handful of money, put under his nose and asked whether it smelled or not: after a negative answer he pronounced that phrase.
@31 I find it peculiar…
a) On the one hand traditionalist religious types will disclaim “transphobia,” as if their beliefs are rationally grounded in deeply-held beliefs, and are totally not emotive fear or paranoia.
b) On the other, the only thing they ever seem to talk about, and the thing that seems to motivate all the lawmaking, are McMartin Preschool-style bathroom rape fantasies.
I suspect that one reason public restrooms (especially ones in schools) don’t do the floor-to-ceiling stall thing is, in brief, an unwillingness to trust the public not to abuse such spaces. A secure and private room could be used for all sorts of shenanigans, and that must not be tolerated.
Of course, it would be fairly easy to stop most of these by employing a bathroom monitor to stay in the ‘common’ area and prevent two people from sharing a cubby, and to notice when someone is spending a bit too long for even a poop, or emerges from the stall surrounded by a cloud of sweet-smelling smoke. But that would require putting more funding into public schools, and we can’t have that….
The only use I can see for that proposed law-change is as toilet paper for when you run out of the politicians who are proposing it.
We will pray your many deviances are cured by the Grace of God.
And if the principal was anything like my grandmother, the principal’s response would have been “Oh, please, I’m married, raised three sons, and grew up on a farm. You have nothing I haven’t seen before.” This was the woman who taught me the expression ‘Shit or get off the pot,’ after all.
Given that the grandmother in question was married to the high school principal of a small town, it’s not impossible for something like that to have happened, either.
Yo! Tom! What is it you don’t get about being banned? A moral person wouldn’t be circumventing a ban.
I wouldn’t exactly call myself “cis,” given that I have, again, literally been taken for a man on many an occasion. I’ve been raped, been harassed and called “it,” etc. The world is not magically safe for me just because my chromosomes and genitals presumably are aligned with each other. (Never checked my DNA or anything.)
This whole business of assuming everybody fits neatly into a box called “cis” or “trans” is something I find annoying in and of itself.
It’s ironic that Tom Estes had to take a P to post again.
How is that at all relevant? How others percieve you is not really a part of the definition of cis or trans.
I have plenty of gender nonconforming friends who are as cis as the day is long, because they still identify with their assigned gender.
“The with/without urinals solution still privileges people with penises as it inevitably gives one group more possibilities to pee than everybody else.”
No, it doesn’t: you remain free to use the bathroom of your choice whether you have a penis or not–the bathrooms with urinals also have stalls. Take your pick.
JP:
That doesn’t have anything to do with being cissexual, and I expect you full well know that. No one said your life is magically safe. I’m genderfluid, bisexual, and I’ve been harassed, and I’ve been raped. Now that’s out of the fucking way, perhaps you could take my point (and Caitie Cat’s), that getting kicked out of a bar is no big deal compared to what a trans person, especially a kid, has to go through each and every fucking day. Read AMM’s posts, and perhaps you can stop whining.
Who says I’m going to stay within my defined gender? I’ve had thoughts of “transitioning,” I’d just like to keep my equipment as is, maybe I’d like to have kids on day, I dunno.
I will say that there’s a nice pirate bar in Hyde Park run by Croatian immigrants with a bathroom marked “Universal,” which is awfully thoughtful on their part. I imagine they have weird buddies like me or something.
Always did get along well with immigrants.
I didn’t mean to put transition in quotation marks, just by the by.
I mean, people in the USA have it much easier in life generally speaking than, say, people still stuck in the former Yugoslavia. I’ve heard plenty of stories.
Tom P Estes @ 46;
Don’t let the door hit you on the arse on the way out, cupcake.
Tabby @ 50:
:Snort: I sincerely hope I never, ever have to share a lav with Pastor Tom.
Once again, not relevant. My partner is trans, they have not transitioned socially, and they have no plans on medically transitioning at any point. They’re just as trans as I am, who is actively doing both.
Well, maybe I’m trans then. I’ve always kind of thought so. I’m just being me.
Introduce the Republicans of the South Dakota legislature to the existence of intersex persons and watch their bigoted heads explode.
Oh, I forget – intersex people are just collateral damage in their crotch inspection crusade, right? And Republicans wonder why decent human beings hate them.
Tom, we know you’re scared, new things can be strange and your discomfort is totally understandable. But I’m sure if you’re a religious person, you can find the inner strength, from your God perhaps, to prevail over your worldly and sad fear of transpeople. I’m sure if God made you, he didn’t make you a coward.
I see it as preventing the hypothetical prevert [sic] who says, “to go see naked girls, I’ll just throw on a dress and walk in and look”.
But even such a hypothetical prevert would never cross-dress to peak. Such a one would be horrified at cross dressing and get mocked by his “peers”.
AND
seems the legislators are implying that x-genderites are simply preverts pretending to be x and just wrapping “protection”, as a disguise around their bigotry.
..ugh
really, have these people never used a public RESTroom? Where eyes are always averted and people in the process are not revealing anything at all. Do they only attend rooms where men strip and wave it around for all present to ogle at?
When I went to high school, it was quite intimidating to be required to shower in group after gym class. Teenagers, no matter how curious, are still pretty averse to physical exposure. I’m pretty sure that a x-genderite who comes to school in a dress will be quite respectful when attending the “facilities”.
The danger they are supposedly protecting against is not only hypothetical but imaginary. Maybe in some dodgy bars in the “bad side of town”… which I think is a little distant from schools.
ugh, bigots
A very centrally located mall/public transit hub here has had a unisex toilet with separate single-person stalls for a few months because the former gents side is under repairs. From what I’ve seen, people behave quite normally, washing their hands while not being gender segregated.
@50 Tabby Lavalamp
Thanks, you just made me inhale my coffee. You know how hard it is to get the smell of arabica beans out of your sinus cavity?
@46 Tom P Estes
I am greatly offended that you feel the need to badmouth me to your imaginary friend. That is simply uncalled for slander and you should be ashamed of yourself.
@12 moarscienceplz
No, that would not work. Neither would PZ’s Up and Down idea. I refer you to every ladies room during a sporting event. You do kind of need a big room with a lot of stalls for women of all types. I believe there was a bathroom in Disneyland or Seaworld I walked into by mistake that was just a giant row of potties with no walls. That was probably a wise, if lacking in any privacy approach to ladies rooms. If you were to put in a few handicapped stalls at the end which did have floorlength walls, that might be enough to satisfy both the disabled and the transgendered communities. Anyone asks why you’re going in there, you just imply you have a medical condition, perhaps something that requires a catheter. It’s not perfect, but it does ensure no one starts a deep inquiry into what’s in your underwear. Most men and women would be too embarrassed to inquire further, the ones that are not are probably the types you can report to security as acting super creepy in a bathroom. I think the last thing any bigot wants is to be questioned on their apparent sexual deviancy. Kind of like when you start implying that a homophobe seems to be “acting gay”.
I think we should start demanding our legislators introduce bills to add checking someone out in a bathroom to lewdness or peeping tom laws. It would go a long way towards making this less of an issue if the bigots suddenly have to start registering as sex offenders.
john cryan
Your privilege is talking.
The bathrooms with urinals usually also come with people using these urinals. Given the gender dynamics present, not everybody, especially not people without a penis, are comfortable using a bathroom where they have to walk past the dick parade or lead their children past the dick parade. That’s why you often find fathers with children in the women’s bathroom anyway.
That’S how it privileges people with penises: They are free to use either bathroom without running any risk of unsavoury incidents while everybody else is restricted to the bathrooms without urinals.
I should correct myself to say cis people with penises. Because trans women with penises are probably even less happy to walk past the dudes at the urinals than I am.
sigaba @ 61:
Eh, that won’t work. T.Estes is an annoyance from way back, on Pharyngula Sciborg. Repeated banning is about the only thing that will work, eventually. And Pastor Tom is a coward – used to post about us all at his blog, but wouldn’t allow comments.
Caine, #48
Probably outraged and offended about the existence of trans people and atheists caring.
Unintentional?
@67 Eh, if I get a response it “worked.”
The important thing with these kind of people is they don’t really believe that transsexuality is wrong, and their religious attitude is almost totally beside the point — it’s all ick factor.
There are people who really, completely believe that God wants there to be only two genders and you shouldn’t disturb “God’s ordering of nature,” but these people don’t post comments on PZ Myers posts. They usually have a modicum of spine.
Yum! Deviance, cured deviance no less, haven’t had that in long time. Can’t say I’m familiar with the “Grace…” brand(? producer?), I much prefer the classic artesian deviances from da Emons Hades region. Slice finely, serve with a baby sundried long pig and tomato / fig sauce, and a robust vin. California Sinfandel works quite well.
Whilst traditionally served at orgies in unisex toilets during breaks in the arena’s lion-feeding shows, that’s by no means required.
Because allowing trans women to use the women’s restroom will allow preditory cis men to dress as women and abuse women in the restrooms, there can only be one solution; no public restrooms for anybody.
Anyone who leaves their homes and are likely to need to relieve themselves must wear diapers. This is the only way to keep women safe from preditory cis men because the bathroom is the only place where abuse can happen.
Take this sugestion as seriously as you wish.
In Washington state recent attempts at bathroom bills have so far failed in the state legislature – the House has a D majority, so the bills died in committee and weren’t brought to the floor. The Senate has an R majority, so far one bill got to vote and was voted down by a thin margin. So now the transphobes are thinking of getting such a law via ballot. I hope they feel it urgent enough to attempt it on a presidential election year, turn out is looking to be high for Democrats.
Ugh… if I wrote characters like this, people would call me a hack. They’re not believable. They have no depth. They have no discernible motivation beyond “hurt the others.” I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that they cackle for hours on end on stormy nights, FFS.
What is it with real world bigots being so poorly written? Are the gods so short on imagination?! Were they always this bad, or is it a recent development?
@Scientismist, 17
It may not be necessary, but some of us are quite happy in our withering shyness. Mind you, I would’ve been one of the few who was already entirely covered up to the neck by their towel, so I guess it’s a bit odd for it to only kick in when certain people or groups are present.
Dreaming @ 69:
Nope. Back in the day, on Sciblogs, we had a lot of fun with Pastor Tom’s name.
Janine:
Commando is commando. So, not for me.
Ah. Nasal-brewed café. Much cheaper but more painful than civet coffee.
(Well, this is a thread with a strong sense of, ah, going…)
@AMM Hugs. FWIW, I know two people who transitioned and life got much better for them. Still plenty of problems, but much much better than it was. I wish you all the luck in the world.
With some kinds of urinals you don’t see anything most of the time. However, I’d guess implementing a similar permanent structure indoors may not be cheap or easy. Also, a door is a much better barrier.
Honestly. Most major Blue State urban restaurants (and also more and more in Europe and Latin America) have unisex bathrooms now. I’m not sure urinals are even a requirement, unless you’re talking about someplace like Fenway Park, where 15,000 men may rush to pee their last beer during the 7th Inning Stretch. And we’re talking abut toilets here, not showers. I’ll apologize in advance if I have some trans naivete here, but sure, I can see how 15-year-old girls might be a bit freaked out if another girl with a big old schlong dangling came into the showers — but then again, I believe most girls’ locker rooms have stalls, rather than the big open boys’ shower. And yes, I can see how boys would be nervous, and the boy with a vagina even moreso, in an open boys’ shower. Maybe in a generation or two we become more acculturated to it, but I can get the discomfort in those scenarios. Of course, it was probably the same discomfort with blacks all of a sudden showing up in campus shower rooms in the 1960s, so I’ll readily concede that people need to get over their discomfort.
But we’re talking BATHROOMS here! Heck, the only thing I’d want is a little red alert light showing me if my significant other were shitting in the stall next to me. Oh! Celia Celia, Celia shits!
Is it a coincidence that all these bills are coming after the bigots lost on marriage equality in the United States? Sure, they’re still doing the occasional yelp on that, and concentrating a lot of their efforts on ensuring marriage equality doesn’t happen in other countries that don’t have it yet, but it seems like in the USA they’re now moving onto another minority to victimize.
anbheal:
Not likely in the States, where most people still act like naked is the worst thing in the world. Back in the day, being the hippie, I used to hang out at a lot of clothing optional places, and it was great. Honestly, you get used to naked very quickly, and seeing people with clothing on is more exciting. When it comes to lavatories though, we aren’t even talking about seeing people naked – with pants down, yeah, skirts flipped up, yeah, for mere moments, if stalls are open. There is zero reason for anyone to be upsetty about anyone else in the lav – this is pure bigotry, nothing more. Unfortunately, this is a bigotry which poses a significant danger to people.
PZ,
Thank you for bringing this issue to light! I am a woman born with Complete Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome, which means I started off with XY (male) chromosomes in fetal development, but was resistant to testosterone and developed as a female. In my daily life I pass as a straight female unless I out myself as Intersex. I know Texas was looking at a similar bill at some time ago. Not sure the status of that.
I attend a conference for intersex folks, which we have designated a “everyone” bathroom. It’s nice to have that option and inclusiveness. I cannot say that I have used it myself.
The Intersex and trans communities are gaining more viability and acceptance, so it is discouraging to lawmakers take steps backwards in discrimination and hatred. That is a LONG history of our society (including the medical community) who is afraid of seeing gender of anything but male and female, which perpetuates shame to those who happen to be born with this variation of human development.
Keep up the good work and continuing this much needed discussion!
Tabby Lavalamp #81
Absolutely no coincidence. The RWA types must be able to discriminate legally against somebody, or they feel oppressed *snicker*. They appear to have lost the fight with gays and their supporters over gay marriage, so they are starting in on transsexuals.
You have to wonder, if god has such a problem with people who don’t fit neatly into the two box system, why does he insist on creating so many of them?
But it is! It makes it much easier to transmit and catch cooties.
I experienced a unisex restroom while traveling in Europe last year. I happened to exit my booth before my husband exited his. I was having a half English, half Italian conversation at the sink with a nice young man when my husband joined us.
It was a great experience for us. I wish that the US could learn to relax like the Europeans.
If these fucking republicans actually gave a fuck, they’d criminalize leaving the seat covered with pee, being too lazy to push the flush lever, or making a little paper dam out of toilet paper on the seat and then leaving that all over the floor and tracking it about. That is a worthy issue for lawmakers to worry about. Mandatory “how to use a public toilet!” training for everyone, I say!!! (or would the creationists try to fuck up that educational program somehow?)
Actually, I’ve wondered if there is some fetish related to “look at the size of what I left because I’ve seen some toilet-blockers in my day…”
Is this the real problem? Guys are afraid that the messes they leave in the toilet will reveal them as pigs, so rather than being neat they just keep the women out?
The fact that this proposed Bill is specific to schools makes me wonder if it’s in response to new guidelines we have here in Alberta. Alberta Education’s Guidelines for Best Practices is all about creating learning environments in schools that respect gender expression and identity.
And, yes, there’s a section on bathrooms and change-rooms. But it all boils down to “if you self-identify as female, use the Girls’ room. If you self-identify as male, use the Boys’ room,” unlike the South Dakota Bill, which seems to go out of its way to negate self-identification of gender expression and identity.
The new Guidelines can be found here. Worth a read.
https://education.alberta.ca/media/1626737/91383-attachment-1-guidelines-final.pdf
Nuclearneil, Republicans have been pushing bathroom bills for some time now, so it’s probably not related. But the reaction of Catholic bishops in Alberta was just another reminder how we need to stop public money going to religious schools.
@Marcus Ranum, 88
OMFG! Not just criminalise – make it a capital offence. The horrors I’ve seen. The horrors.
Ok, I can see the argument for not flushing liquids alone but… I just… ugh. I honestly can’t wait until I can manage to eschew public bathrooms altogether. And why the hell do they make it so doors push inward so you have to grab a handle to get out? Do they not know how fucking filthy something like half of the men who use public toilets are? Why do they ever provide sinks when we’ve got to grab the same fucking handle that they’ve rubbed their entirely unwashed hands all over immediately after drying? RARGH!
…ok, so I may have some minor issues around this topic.
Not many people know their karyotypes; I don’t know mine. Apparently if you are into genealogical research to the extent of getting testing to identify genetic markers to help determine where your ancestors lived, this is one of the side benefits. Apparently the only reasonable explanation for defining biological sex in such a fashion is to impart the maximum damage to transfolk and inflict collateral damage on intersex people (such as Amy at #83).
The legislation in Texas was even nastier and deliberate in the way it targeted intersex folk, alongside the (by now, usually expected) anti-trans hatred: this bill (HB1747) would have made it a crime to enter the wrong bathroom, going by the sex recorded on your identity documents; while this one (HB1748) would have criminalised according to a mismatch of chromosomes — so either your identity documents don’t match up, or your chromosomes don’t. Both bills were submitted by the same sponsor in a double play, because they really wanted to make it impossible for transfolk to use any bathrooms, as well as criminalising intersex folks.
Marcus @88,
If that’s the case, someone’s in for a serious shock, because the female bathrooms are constantly like that around here. I’m in the south, maybe it’s better in other places?
Somehow I doubt it, though.
As others have commented, this news, bad as it will be for too many people, it is also a sign that the bigots are feeling that change is in the air, that the status quo is being challenged and needs laws to protect it.
@PZ: a minor correction, the bill says “identified at birth by a person’s anatomy”, so surgeries would not be a problem.
Of course, there are other things that could be a problem, because they assume that this identification at birth maps perfectly with how the body will develop to a gender binary.
I wonder if while writing the law they actually stopped for a second to think how they are going to enforce it.
@Athywren #74
Please do not dehumanize those you do not agree with, shitty as they might be.
It’s easy to think that there is no depth when all you see is the fearful law they wrote.
We have to be better than this.
@94
Gonna have to disagree on the dehumanization thing. If people want to push laws into effect that will make people like me have even worse lives than we currently do, I don’t think there’s much you could say about them that would be “too far.”
I think there are things that are too far, but “Wow, these people act like poorly written villains” is way, way short of that line as far as I’m concerned.
F.O. @ 94:
I live right next door to South Dakota, in North Dakota. It’s less than half a day to the border. Athywren didn’t even get close to dehumanizing anyone. The white, religious republicans in SD have one depth, and one only: hatred. They have passed bills that wouldn’t pass in other states, even those states which are considered uber-conservative. They shut down most availability to contraception. They’ve passed laws illegalizing abortion, regardless of Roe. They’ve shut down all clinics except for one, and fund anti-choice clinics. I’m not even gonna get into treatment of those on Pine Ridge rez. I’ve linked to Bill Napoli more than once, back when the anti-abortion bills were being passed – that fucker is a creep beyond measure, and he’s representative of the rest of lawmakers in SD. Reading what he said doesn’t get you the full picture – the video of him saying that? Jesus. SD is a haven for hateful bigots, as long as you’re a white man.
@94
Hmm I dunno, I read that as legislating that your birth gender (as construed by your parents, the delivering physician, the county clerk, whatever) is immutable.
Is there any movement by medical professionals to avoid determining gender at birth, or declining to register it on government documents? It seems like, long term, it’s the sort of thing that should eventually fall under doctor-patient confidentiality.
So how do they determine what anyone’s genitals were like when they were born? I don’t have pictures of my ‘birth genitals’ in my baby book.
anat @ 98:
They’re going with the bigot favourite: AFAB / AMAB. (Assigned Female / Male At Birth.)
@98
They just go by what it looks closest to. It used to be if there was any indeterminacy they would surgical alter you right then and there, within days of your birth, so you’d fit into exactly one of the two boxes that was the most “natural.”
Unless they decided you have a penis, and were born in the United States, in which case they ritualistically mutilate you by default :)
@98
They just look at your ID. Getting the sex on your ID changed is a pain in the ass to do, and generally requires proof that you underwent surgery. As such, it’s a “fairly reliable” way to determine what genitalia one had at birth.
@F.O., 94
I don’t necessarily think it’s dehumanising to say that someone lacks depth, at least with regard to a particular issue… but that’s not all I said, and I think I see what you’re getting at when taking it all as one. I’ll keep an eye on it, thanks for pointing it out.
They’re still a massive collection of arseholes, though.
@Caine #96, @Athywren #102: agreed.
This seems germane:
A lot of this bathroom wangst from Christians is projection. These people are convinced that everyone around them is a sex maniac trying to rape children and assault them in bathrooms. How do they get this idea, do you imagine?
ugh: piling on:
looks like a minor typo from what he really intended.
ie strike the “m” and substitute “r” for the trailing “s”
Tom P Estes –> To Pester.
mision accomplished, T.P.E
–signed Galley Proofer, at yer servise [sic]
@Gileall #65
I’ll lay my cards right out on the table I’m pro unisex toilets (and single stalls should obviously be Unisex) but your comment are a classic zero sum fallacy, sometimes treating everyone the same harms both parties.
Urinals are frankly far more efficient and environmentally friendly than stalls, They use less water, take up less space, are more hygienic and take less time to use. If a unisex bathroom had 50% urinals and 50% stalls, I agree it would be monstrously unfair but something more like 80% stalls and 20% urinals would produce a more optimum out come compared to 100% stalls.
To Vivec @101: Not in Washington state. And not for US passports. For those all you need is a letter from a doctor claiming ‘The applicant has undergone the appropriate gender transition clinical treatment.’ without specifying what the treatment was. If you have a friendly doctor, having a consultation and transitioning socially is enough.
Have you ever used an office bathroom? Unisex will not work in office bathrooms, since whenever 2 men who are at the same level on the organization chart encounter one another in an office bathroom they have to penis fence to establish dominance. This is another example of how gay men are advantaged by social conventions.
sigba @ 104:
Frustration related to religious prohibitions against touching themselves.
I’m going to suggest that IF the schools want students to be one gender or the other, they ask the kid’s mom. That’s what they do for race, around here.
How about focusing on educating kids instead of worrying about who uses what bathroom? The only point of these types of laws is to humiliate trans people.
As an aged and obese male I much prefer to sit to pee. I need the rest!
The Supermarket near me has two “washrooms” as we euphemise them in Canada. I check the “M” door first and it it’s locked I use the “W” room if it’s open. I have seen many ladies exiting from the “M” door. Staff often see me and have never yet complained. The apocalypse has not arrived here, or if it has I never noticed it.
phebos #106
You have never worked as a janitor, have you?
phebos
Oh, cool, so cis men get to happily show off their dicks to little girls and boys and women, whether they want to see them or not. If you actually want to make a predator friendly bathroom, that’S the way to go!
In Giliell’s wonderful feminist Utopia this wouldn’t be a problem, because cis men would have stopped being assholes and bodies would just be bodies, but your solution really leaves the door wide open for predators dancing on the brink of deniability, victimising people without ever being held accountable. This would really make public bathrooms unsafe to use for anybody but cis men.
Not that I’m not against unisex bathrooms. I’m against unisex bathrooms where a) cis men get 33% more opportunities to pee than everyone else and b) cis men get the opportunity to show off their dicks to everyone else.
Apart from the obvious hygiene problem because there’s a reason men’s rooms often smell 10X worse than women’s rooms.
+++
Back to the trans women predator myth, I said elsewhere that one defining feature of public bathrooms is that they’re public. This means that there’s usually people coming and going or at least the chance that somebody might enter at any moment. In order for a cis guy masking as a trans woman* to assault a woman in a public toilet they’d have to wait for a time they can be reasonably safe that nobody enters. Which means that at that time there’s absolutely no need to do this whole “I’m a trans woman” charade because nobody is around. Or do they think that the “Ladies”sign magically keeps predatory cis men away now and once trans people are just allowed to pee they will say the magical incantation “I identify as a woman” so they can now legally enter that bathroom to commit a crime?
*Seriously, how do they think this works? Will a cis man just don a skirt and become noticeable as fuck on his way to and from the bathroom where he wants to commit a crime?
Also, serious question about American stores: Are the changing rooms where you try on clothes usually gender segregated? I know they often are in the UK because they have this weird custom where there’s one bog** room with a few individual cabins where everybody strips down, but in most of Europe there’s an area with individual cabins, often with only a curtain to draw that is for everybody.
**I’ll just leave this typo
That could well be the case, but I can also see a couple of practical reasons – stalls with gaps top and bottom use less materials to construct, and the gap at the bottom makes it easier to mop the floor.
Welcome to the restroom. Please deposit the results of your chromosome test at the janitor’s office before entering. Thank you.
@chigau 113
You may be right that my enthusiasm for urinals would wane if I actually had to clean them, but you’ll notice I never said they were cleaner ;-). By more hygienic I meant that you never have to touch them when you use them. To be honest that mess would just be moved if you got rid of the them.
@Giliell 114
I confess I may have miss read your position Giliell from your hostility to urinals’ I assumed you wanted unisex but I’m not so sure now.
If you want the status quo of sex segregate bathrooms but with an allowance for trans people to use their genders rooms? If that’s the case I’m not sure why your hostile to urinals’ as they don’t affect you? Sure the current system is unfair, the prevalence that queue’s to the women’s is a strong indication that they need more floor space in general but removing urinals’ would help with that.
Your objections to unisex toilets seems to be
1). That you’ll be forced to see male peni, which to be blunt you wouldn’t. Every large unisex I’ve ever been in has had a separate section for unrinals and I don’t see any reason why they wouldn’t use this system in future.
2) That its inherently sexist. Which I obviously disagree with as you on, but I would look at it as devoting more effective floor space to women as there would be far more stalls and they would be used by women most of the time.
3) That it would open up people(Women) to assault / harassment. This is probably the main reason toilets are sex segregated in the first place. I’m not sure how effective segregated toilets are on reducing assault. The main protection seems to be based on foot traffic in the current system and I definitely think that poorly used toilets should be single stall. If there is low foot traffic then there’s really nothing to stop a offender from violating the taboo. I could see that it could prevent harassment, but I don’t see why it would be intrinsically worse than anywhere else.
I think you want single stalls with a toilet, basin, hand towels etc, but I can’t really picture how this would work on the large scale without having them all open out into a shared lobby area which would basically then become an inefficiently designed uni-sex toilet.
I’m sorry if there is something I’m missing here.
phebos
If your reading comprehension is so bad that you cannot even figure out whether I’m in favour of unisex toilets or not, I can’t help you. You haven’t actually addressed any of my concerns and seem unable to even understand them
Yeah, that might be the reason “now”, but.. somehow I seriously doubt it was when they originally came up with the idea. More like – “We don’t want women using the ‘nicer’ bathrooms.”, “We can’t have those menstruating people near men, while using a toilet.”, or, worse, “Why would be need to have a women’s bathroom in this establishment?”
The possibility of assault, I would bet, never came into the decision to have special restrooms.
Now.. my theory, is either, “We don’t want to have to actually address assaults and the like, so we can’t do this.”, or, maybe, “We would hate to see the world turn into an even more badly scripted version of Starship Troopers! Now lets go kill some bu… err, I mean ‘possible terrorists’!” Yeah, either one of those… lol
Gillier:
Often, but not always. Bigger stores here usually have separate sections for men & women’s clothing, sometimes on separate floors, so usually have change rooms in both sections. They’re not always labelled with men/women, just assumed to be for whichever section of the store you’re in.
Some have a big bank of individual stalls with doors in the middle of the store, so not gender segregated. (Old Navy here also has individual curtained stalls out on the floor too, not as private of course but handy for trying on jackets or sweaters or the like).
Back to the bathroom thing, though, on the note of exposed peni, I did live in mainland Europe for a time, where I routinely saw bepenised individuals depositing their urine on the side of buildings in the street. Pissoirs were an improvement…
As for safety – in either Calgary or Edmonton I think? – didn’t someone(s) look at bathroom design and safety, and find a maze-type doorway into the bathroom substantially reduced violence over a closed door? Am I remembering that correctly? Anyone have that reference handy?
Oh FSM, they actually passed it.
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2016/0217/Transgender-bill-South-Dakota-moves-to-enact-first-in-nation-law
I wonder if Limbaugh is still subsidizing Americans who want to move to Costa Rica? This seems like a great reason to leave the country before the crazy spreads, and if I can take money away from Rush while I do it so much the better.
Giliell: my apologies for completely borking your name, autocorrect, typing in a tablet, and my aversion to proofreading do not a good combo make :(
I use that brand of batteries that just keeps on going. Rechargeable, of course. Don’t need any more, and especially not any of the many cut-price brands dating back to the bronze age: They don’t work very well, and go wrong much of the time, often in quite nasty ways.
Many new and restored/renovated restrooms in Toronto are getting the ‘common sink area, private stall’ treatment. I like this. I have no explanation for why it’s becoming so common, but I can certainly say that it started with gay bars in the city. It’s always been the expectation that when in a gay bar in Toronto, a person will use the bathroom and the toilet that is most convenient, available and makes them feel safest.
I have the slight suspicion, though, that the uptake in the private stall and common sink area phenom is actually being helped by legislation which is in effect requiring all public and private toilets in businesses and institutions to be fully accessible. That’s called the AODA. It’s good legislation, if late and lacking in some respects. One example of how it’s good is that for places where it’s not possible to create an accessible entrance, for instance, the business must have in place a plan to otherwise accommodate those with disabilities, like facilitating service with them despite the lack of an accessible entrance. The problems are many and this is all beside the point.
The point is that there is an obvious and easy solution to any and all bathroom problems: Private stalls with common sink areas. It’s not just an efficient use of space, it’s nicer for everyone. It’s so freaking easy.
The problem with that, of course, is that it eliminates a point of contention for bigots. Bigots can’t be bigots if there’s nothing to be bigoted about. If the bathrooms weren’t a way for them to scrutinize genitals and (try to) make trans* people feel less than human, why they’d probably have to be even worse. That’s hard for me to imagine. I bet it’s not hard for trans* people.
Currently that’s a chocolate muffin that I really shouldn’t eat. The holy spirit is welcome to help itself, there’s one left.
ibbica
No worries.
Sounds the same as here, though the awefull curtain design is very popular here
Tom P Estes
To which god did you pray?
Did somebody say “muffin”?
But see… This time it’ll work! Right Tom? Just keep repeating the same shit over and over and cherry-pick your victories. No doubt there are hundreds of thousands who will remain deviant or become more deviant. Loser.
Tom, Tom, Tom. I realize that you’re not hip on the narratives of pop culture being a reactionary fuddy-duddy who’s so far up his own ass it would take fracking to get him out again, but really. The person who tries to use magic powers to bend others to his will is the villain of the story.
@TPE
Holy Spirit? You mean your imaginary deity, without a trace of solid physical evidence for it, evidence that will pass muster with scientists, magicians, and professional debunkers, as being of divine, and not natural, original? That makes you a believer in phantasms, better known as a delusional fool, which you demonstrate so aptly with your ignorant posts. Pitiful be thy name.
You might be a human chimera! What then? How does the law work? Do you have to split your body in half?
Note to anybody wondering: I didn’t check out, just been busy with grad school stuff (Slavic languages and literatures) and life stuff (laundry, bills). Reviewing comments at the moment.
I’ll just say that Gieliell has some valid concerns. Creepers are not afraid to follow you after the bathroom and harass you to try to find out what’s “down there.” Especially at “naughty bars”; I’ve been to parties at strip clubs (undies kept on, Suicide Girls style) where this kind of thing has happened. It also happens to the actual strippers a LOT, from what I’ve heard. The world is not always a safe space for cis women, to say the least.
Note: I did once get a lap dance, paid for by a friend who was “dabbling” in politics (and making six figures), but I was very respectful and sat on my hands the whole time just like she told me to.
;-)
I had my karyotype done AND I have records of it! I’m specialer and get to use the potty!
(After my daughter was born my ex and I both had genetic testing done on the off tiny chance one of us was chimeric Trisomy 21 or if there were any other reasons we would be at risk of having another child with it.)
JP
The world is not a safe place for women. It is especially not a safe place for trans women. If you think my comments do in any way, shape or form justify exclusion of trans women, I must really work on my communication skills.
+++
Tom Pest, I want to know, what do you think you’re doing? This is an honest question, because I can’t understand what you think you’re achieving here for the life of me. Obviously none of us is swayed by your posts. None of us is suddenly repenting, crying, praying and vowing to abstain from chocolate muffins. Or masturbation. The reactions are from amused to annoyed, so what’s your goal and how do you think that this is contributing to it?
The South Dakota Governor vetoed the bill.
Yeah Governor. And the sponsor says don’t try to override the veto. I think he heard the dollars that out be siphoned off for losing court battles.