[RD] LGBTQ news

[Samson]

That isn't the current arrangement AFAICT, at least not in the US. I mean sure you can sneak into any bathroom you want, assuming you're properly disguised, but that's not the same thing.

Really? So there are pre existing laws about who can pee where? Just weird.

 

[Cloud_Strife]

Cloud_Strife appears to be arguing with herself.

Good on you for acknowledging your reading comprehension is utterly rubbish, hope you can work on that one day, but until then please try to avoid mentioning me unless i directly quote you, I dont' want my name in your mouth, you dig?

 

[Kyriakos]

I do not get what is wrong with the current arrangement, where people use the one they feel is most appropriate at the moment without any legal involvement? I find it a little odd when a woman uses a no barrier urinal next to me, but not in a bad way. What is the harm that is nessatating any legal intervention?

I don't think that such urinals even exist here - nor should they, imo. Then again, at least the US has a different culture regarding being (partly or totally) naked in public (showers for totally, this type of urinal for partly). Maybe it is not a bad thing, I mean in ancient Greece you had to be naked in the gymnasium (the term comes from there, after all).

 

[Samson]

I don't think that such urinals even exist here - nor should they, imo. Then again, at least the US has a different culture regarding being (partly or totally) naked in public (showers for totally, this type of urinal for partly). Maybe it is not a bad thing, I mean in ancient Greece you had to be naked in the gymnasium (the term comes from there, after all).

Urinals designed for women are very rare, women using men urinals are also rare, but it happens sometimes generally at crowded and "alternative" events.

 

[NinjaCow64]

The reason these norms popped up is because there was a problem.

They popped up due to Victorian attitudes towards women. While I sympathise with how female bathrooms can be a refuge for women the truth is that gender segregated bathrooms emerged due to sexist cultural norms.

Now, if there's a "seperate but equal" situation that arises regarding the stools, then yes, I don't think that works right at all.

This is what is happening. Everything else is a hypothetical.

Edit: Was trying to dig through the big bag of biases to get a better look, like every thorny issue requires, and I have a personal riddle. Trying to decide how many conversational participants I think would switch sides if we were not talking about people in Nashville, but instead people in Berkley.

Zero, because there is a gulf of difference between “store voluntarily puts a sign up saying they are welcoming of trans patrons” and “stores are obligated to identify themselves as trans friendly so Alt-Right mobs can firebomb them later”.

 

[Bamspeedy]

Really? So there are pre existing laws about who can pee where? Just weird.

In the past, there were few, if any, laws that specifically dealt with "who can pee where". It was usually applied under trespass or disorderly conduct, if for example, a man went into a women's bathroom for no good reason.

https://nccriminallaw.sog.unc.edu/is-it-illegal-for-a-man-to-use-the-ladies-room/

 

[Farm Boy]

Zero, because there is a gulf of difference between “store voluntarily puts a sign up saying they are welcoming of trans patrons” and “stores are obligated to identify themselves as trans friendly so Alt-Right mobs can firebomb them later”.

That really plays no bearing on what alt right morons do, in the situation you put forth. The person that will firebomb a place for being trans friendly is going to go find them. For example, black churches don't need to put "we're black" sign up. The sort of person that cares enough to be a terrorist figures that minor detail out. They won't like signs normalizing things though. You are right about that.

 

[Samson]

In the past, there were few, if any, laws that specifically dealt with "who can pee where". It was usually applied under trespass or disorderly conduct, if for example, a straight man went into a women's bathroom for no good reason.

https://nccriminallaw.sog.unc.edu/is-it-illegal-for-a-man-to-use-the-ladies-room/

I do not know about others, but 99% of the instances of the "wrong" person using a restroom that I experience are women using the sit down cubicles in the gents when there is a queue for the ladies. The idea that that should be criminalised just sounds stupid.

 

[NinjaCow64]

I think you weren't careful enough with what the point was The other posts can help there, essentially the point is about binary acting differently when it is just two things instead of ideal (not accessible by definition) edges of a continuum. Leads to various things, including problems with wishing to identify as one of the only two binary titles (man, woman) while requiring their cancellation as set objects.
The metaphor with binary numbers (which are based on just two objects, 1 and 0, but are expanded) was to show that while wishing to be identified as either 1 or 0, you concurrently wish to state that 1 and 0 are only factors in something either ordered but ultimately including a different category for each person (much like binary numbers can have a great many digits) or something not even as ordered, like all the points on a line with male and female on opposite edge.

If I am understanding your point correctly this simply isn’t true. Many non-binary people identify between male and female or some mix of the two but others identify outside of that binary all-together

And while I do agree that gender is more logically to be seen as a continuum, this in no way helps with legal stuff, since you can't have infinite different identified by law genders.

I have limited understanding of the nuances of this issue but having three options for gender (male, female and nonbinary) seems like a good first step here. Take my opinion on this one with a massive grain of salt.

Moreover I do see an issue with wanting to be simply male or female, when you don't agree those are things - and, which is a different issue, there are the people who just think those are set things anyway, and so can't be asked to cancel that either simply to gratify you.

The overwhelming majority of nonbinary people think that male and female are real things, I can guarentee this. The amount of people who genuinely think that male and female doesn’t exist is so insignificant its not worth talking about.

If you are instead talking about people who think that male and female are immutable things assigned at birth well then they are wrong and they should stop being wrong.

In my view it is self-defeating to wish to be man or woman officially, just because you feel that way, since those who are already seen as man or woman aren't seen as that because they want to in the first place. Would make sense to try to be accepted as something by the same route those who are accepted as that already are, and I pointed out why simply not caring about the dynamics and logic involved beyond emotions of anti-trans as well as pro-trans people is ultimately not going to cut it (by this last part, I certainly don't mean that trans people won't get more accepted, they will, but I mean that it will be pushing the underlying issue of identification in a continuum and its incompatibility with legislation which requires a set number of categories, persist and perpetuate problems).

Genuinely unsure what you are trying to say here.

 

[NinjaCow64]

I think bathrooms are less of a problem than locker rooms. Most folks are in and out of bathrooms pretty quickly and pay little attention to who might be in there with them. Locker rooms present a different set of problems because people not only get naked, they take showers and hang out there for an extended period of time.

There hasn’t been any real problems with lesbians in locker rooms, shouldn’t be with transwomen either.

When you think about it in terms of public property, particularly government buildings, having a room where women (or men) are not allowed entry seems blatantly unconstitutional. Particularly if there are legal, rather than only societal, repercussions.

One can only hope this horsehocky will get shot down by the courts.

 

[NinjaCow64]

So the devil made you do it...

Lord Xenu did.

What have I implied?

That LGBT people only exist, suffer and die to make cishets into better people.

If the "t" in lgbtq is a valid designation, why is it bigotry to acknowledge "t" exists?

Asking questions completely unrelated to the topic at hand is fun.

Does the sign clarify there is no wrong bathroom?

It doesn’t. You know it doesn’t. It does the opposite.

I dont remember gay or bi as slurs growing up. But wouldn't that mean lgbtq should be treated like the n word?

Gay was regularly used as a slur when I was in high-school. If you can’t remember gay being used as a slur you should seriously seek medical attention was that was less than twenty years ago.

 

[NinjaCow64]

I'm confused on this as well. This whole thread has confused me as to whether acknowledging the "t" exists is... bad? good?

Don’t listen to anything that Berzerker has to say about this is a good first step.

Acknowledging transpeople existence can be good or bad depending on what you mean. Legal recognition and straightforward mechanisms for changing gender that doesn’t involve expensive surgery that not everyone wants = good. Laws that are designed to denigrate transpeople = bad.

But is a "This establishment has Unisex Bathrooms" (or whatever - I'm not proposing a sign) a bad thing? It seems a good thing? As @Berzerker points out, doesn't a [better] sign convey "there is no wrong bathroom in this establishment"? Isn't it an intermediate step to a Good Thing (signs unneeded)? I know the Tennessee Legislature didn't mean it in a good way, but is it not a good *step* (hoping just asking isn't a landmine) for establishments to start displaying [better] inclusive signs?

The Tennessee bill mandates that, by default, transwomen must go into the men’s toilet and transmen must go into the women’s toilet and that non-binary people must go into the toilet of the sex assigned at birth or they will be breaking the law (presumably cis men and women going into the wrong toilet will be breaking the law also). If any businesses have policies that are contrary to this they must warn patrons by placing warning signs at their entrances. The bill is designed to humiliate transpeople and business owners who support them.

I'm in support of trans-rights (even there, I'm not sure I used the right term). So I like to think I have good intentions but am not "hip" "on point" "en flique"... I think I'm "cheugy" at this point. I also think by me using that term, I just made cheugy passe.

I don’t know what cheugy means so that was probably very cheugy.

 

[Farm Boy]

I remember hearing gay as an insult a couple times in grade school, but then it went way from like 4th grade until I went to university and got re-exposed to it through the more cosmopolitan world. Then it was everywhere as an insult in the early aughts, disappearing again from tolerable company in that usage sometime around 2010? There are legit sheltered people, especially pre-internet youth.

 

[NinjaCow64]

That really plays no bearing on what alt right morons do, in the situation you put forth. The person that will firebomb a place for being trans friendly is going to go find them. For example, black churches don't need to put "we're black" sign up. The sort of person that cares enough to be a terrorist figures that minor detail out. They won't like signs normalizing things though. You are right about that.

These signs don’t normalise things though. They’re just painting targets on pro-trans businesses. You are being wildly optimistic to think that this situation will resolve as neatly as you think it will.

 

[Farm Boy]

I don't think it will be "neat" at all. If it's neat, nothing will have been gained.

The chains have to be won.

But what do I know? Bear it in mind, I'm just strategizing over what seems to have worked and how.

 

[Bamspeedy]

Gay was regularly used as a slur when I was in high-school. If you can’t remember gay being used as a slur you should seriously seek medical attention was that was less than twenty years ago.

Gay was a slur in school when I was in school in the 80's to early 90's. Bi not so much. Not that being Bi was acceptable, but being Bi would just be lumped in as being gay. Bi was just a word not being used because many kids probably just weren't aware of it, and why would a bully use Bi when they can use gay?

Berzerker is older, so went to school in the 70's? 60's? And I'm not sure where, Kansas? If gay wasn't a slur back then, it wasn't because they were accepting of gays but lack of awareness of gays. Bullies probably called the weaker boys girls instead of gay.

 

[Manfred Belheim]

The Tennessee bill mandates that, by default, transwomen must go into the men’s toilet and transmen must go into the women’s toilet and that non-binary people must go into the toilet of the sex assigned at birth or they will be breaking the law (presumably cis men and women going into the wrong toilet will be breaking the law also). If any businesses have policies that are contrary to this they must warn patrons by placing warning signs at their entrances. The bill is designed to humiliate transpeople and business owners who support them.

As far as I can tell the bill doesn't mandate who or what can use which facilities at all, but leaves that decision up to the businesses/establishments. It "just" requires that they put up a sign if they have an open peeing policy. So I don't think it would be correct to say anyone would be breaking the law by going into the "wrong" toilet, since the law isn't dictating that. It's the businesses who would be breaking the law if they didn't put up the signs, but that seems to be the only opportunity for anybody to be breaking any laws in regard to this bill.

 

[schlaufuchs]

As far as I can tell the bill doesn't mandate who or what can use which facilities at all, but leaves that decision up to the businesses/establishments. It "just" requires that they put up a sign if they have an open peeing policy. So I don't think it would be correct to say anyone would be breaking the law by going into the "wrong" toilet, since the law isn't dictating that. It's the businesses who would be breaking the law if they didn't put up the signs, but that seems to be the only opportunity for anybody to be breaking any laws in regard to this bill.

As I noted before, this is the whole point. It doesn't have to penalize any individual to be effective. The problem right now isn't that I will get fined for walking into the wrong bathroom, the problem is that I'll get clocked and harassed by another patron. This means that when I go out, I need to either make sure I'm not going to be out for so long that having to go to the bathroom will be a problem, or else that I will be able to make a pitstop at a place that's simpático or has single-occupancy toilets, or else that I need to be presenting masculine while I'm out, or else that I just don't go out at all. None of that thought process has anything to do with what the state might do or what the cops might do, and everything to do with what some stranger might to a femme-presenting person in a men's room, or a trans woman in a woman's room. What the Tennessee bill does, without having to impose any penalties on me personally, is force simpático places to put up garish signs that signal to the public: "ALERT ALERT TRANS PEOPLE MAY BE ON THE PREMISES. BE ON THE LOOKOUT FOR ANY TRANSES ENTERING YOUR BATHROOMS," which serves to concentrate the level of scrutiny I might receive in simpático places such that what might previously have been a simpático place is no longer such. And secondarily, while it may not impose legal penalties on me personally, now it offloads policing responsibilities onto private business owners. Whereas before an owner might not have been able to kick me out of a store or deny me privacy in using a bathroom, now they not only have a legal pretext, but a legal responsibility to harass or police me and my bathroom usage. In both cases, without having to actually criminalize me personally, the bill makes it significantly harder and more dangerous for me to be out in public for any length of time greater than a few hours. Which is, of course, the actual objective of the bill.

 

[Cloud_Strife]

As far as I can tell the bill doesn't mandate who or what can use which facilities at all, but leaves that decision up to the businesses/establishments. It "just" requires that they put up a sign if they have an open peeing policy. So I don't think it would be correct to say anyone would be breaking the law by going into the "wrong" toilet, since the law isn't dictating that. It's the businesses who would be breaking the law if they didn't put up the signs, but that seems to be the only opportunity for anybody to be breaking any laws in regard to this bill.

You don't get it and you never will until they start targetting you.

As I noted before, this is the whole point. It doesn't have to penalize any individual to be effective. The problem right now isn't that I will get fined for walking into the wrong bathroom, the problem is that I'll get clocked and harassed by another patron. This means that when I go out, I need to either make sure I'm not going to be out for so long that having to go to the bathroom will be a problem, or else that I will be able to make a pitstop at a place that's simpático or has single-occupancy toilets, or else that I need to be presenting masculine while I'm out, or else that I just don't go out at all. None of that thought process has anything to do with what the state might do or what the cops might do, and everything to do with what some stranger might to a femme-presenting person in a men's room, or a trans woman in a woman's room. What the Tennessee bill does, without having to impose any penalties on me personally, is force simpático places to put up garish signs that signal to the public: "ALERT ALERT TRANS PEOPLE MAY BE ON THE PREMISES. BE ON THE LOOKOUT FOR ANY TRANSES ENTERING YOUR BATHROOMS," which serves to concentrate the level of scrutiny I might receive in simpático places such that what might previously have been a simpático place is no longer such. And secondarily, while it may not impose legal penalties on me personally, now it offloads policing responsibilities onto private business owners. Whereas before an owner might not have been able to kick me out of a store or deny me privacy in using a bathroom, now they not only have a legal pretext, but a legal responsibility to harass or police me and my bathroom usage. In both cases, without having to actually criminalize me personally, the bill makes it significantly harder and more dangerous for me to be out in public for any length of time greater than a few hours. Which is, of course, the actual objective of the bill.

This is such a good explanation but i fear it'll be ignored.

 

[Broken_Erika]

Meanwhile in Florida

Florida bans transgender athletes from female sports

Florida has become the latest US state to ban transgender girls and women from participating in female sports at public schools and colleges.

The state's Republican governor Ron DeSantis signed the measure into law on Tuesday.

The law says women and girls must play on the teams of the biological sex on their birth certificate.

LGBT activists have denounced the move as "discriminatory", with one group vowing to launch a legal challenge.

• Trans athletes face 'huge' equality fight

"We believe that is very important that the integrity of these competitions are preserved," Mr DeSantis said as he signed the law at a Christian school in Jacksonville city.

"We're gonna go based on biology, not based on ideology when we're doing sports."

The move comes as Republican-led states push back against pro-LGBT policies supported by the administration of Democratic US President Joe Biden.

What does the law say?
Florida's law defines an athlete's sex as that stated on official documents at birth.

Called the Fairness in Women's Sports Act, the law says sports teams for girls and women "may not be open to students of the male sex".

It's not clear whether all female athletes must now show their birth certificates to be in sports teams.

The law would not bar female athletes from playing on boys or men's teams.

• Breaking barriers as transgender athlete
• Are trans women really a 'threat' to female sport?

The law also allows students to take legal action against the school if they feel it has violated the act and "deprived" them "of an athletic opportunity".

Supporters of the bill say transgender female athletes have an unfair advantage, having been designated male at birth but having since transitioned.

But critics say the banning of transgender girls and women from sports is unnecessary and discriminatory.

The law will apply to public secondary and high schools, colleges and universities when it comes into effect on 1 July.

What reaction has there been?
Florida state representative Carlos Smith, a Democrat who identifies as Latino and gay, spoke out against the bill, calling it "appalling".

"This fuels transphobia and puts vulnerable kids at risk for no good reason," he wrote on Twitter.

Another Democratic lawmaker, Shevrin Jonesit, criticised what he called the "insulting" timing of the bill's signing on 1 June, the first day of Pride Month, an annual celebration of the LGBT community.

But Kelli Stargel, a Republican state senator who supported the bill, denied the law was discriminatory.

"This bill is very simply about making sure that women can safely compete, have opportunities and are physically be able to excel in a sport that they trained for, prepared for and work for," Ms Stargel said.

The Human Rights Campaign (HRC), a group which defends LGBT rights, said it would challenge the measure in court.

"Gov DeSantis and Florida lawmakers are legislating based on a false, discriminatory premise that puts the safety and well-being of transgender children on the line," the president of the group, Alphonso David, said.

"Transgender kids are kids; transgender girls are girls. Like all children, they deserve the opportunity to play sports with their friends and be a part of a team."

The Florida move comes as pro-equality measures have gained momentum at the national level.

On his first day in office, President Biden signed an executive order aimed at preventing discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.

In an attempt to make Mr Biden's executive action more permanent, the US House of Representatives passed the Equality Act - considered the most pro-LGBT bill in US history.

On Tuesday, Mr Biden urged lawmakers in Congress to pass the Equality Act as he issued a proclamation to mark the start of Pride Month.

But without Republican support, the bill is unlikely to be passed by the Senate, the upper chamber.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-57326790