"Transgender N.J. man sues over firing from job requiring men only"

[SuperJay]

You guys really care about the gender or sexual orientation of a medical professional standing in the room while you pee in a cup? I don't think I'd be bothered by a man or a woman, gay, straight, or transgendered. They're not touching my package, so what's the big deal?

 

[MobBoss]

You guys really care about the gender or sexual orientation of a medical professional standing in the room while you pee in a cup? I don't think I'd be bothered by a man or a woman, gay, straight, or transgendered. They're not touching my package, so what's the big deal?

Where does it say he/she is a 'medical professional'?

To me knowledge, the only real requirement is that you have a set of eyes to look at the junk, not any special medical knowledge.

For the Army, your generic urinalysis observer is usually the first NCO that got hit by the 'hey you' grenade.....

 

[Cheetah]

The 'hey you' grenade can sometimes be worse than the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch.

 

[Elrohir]

Actually, to get this more on the borderline-problem that Elrohir was wondering about:

How many here would be okay with a trans-gendered person watching your junk as you pee in a cup, but would not be okay with it if it was a woman watching?

I think Elrohir is asking a quite interesting question. I will never be "hurt" by strangers looking at my junk, and I really doubt that peeing in a cup is an ideal situation to hit on a woman if she would happen to be attractive (in a job like this? - yeah, right!), so it really doesn't matter who looks, as long as they're professional about it.

Though I've never had people actually watching my junk while peeing. I have peed in a cup under time-pressure with a long line of other guys also having to pee in a cup behind me and to my sides, and a doctor watching that no-one "cheats" in an obvious way (wasn't something anybody would want to cheat on anyway). While that was uncomfortable, it didn't really bother me. I think the situation considered in this discussion would be equal in comfortness-level for me...

Thanks for trying! You're one of the few people who seemed to actually try and understand what I was getting at, instead of just going off the rails and discussing transgender issues. (Which was not the point at all.)


For those of you who have said that you wouldn't particularly care if anyone, male, female, transgender or not, watched you pee in a cup, thanks! But the second part of the question would be whether you think it's legitimate to force all of society to be OK with that, as well. (Particularly in contexts like this, where it's likely non-consensual -- you have to do this, or you fail parole and go back to prison.) Ir you think it's legitimate for society to allow for discrimination based on gender, then why not on transgender status?

For those of you who ignored the OP, shame on you! You may redeem yourselves by answering my question. In short: can we consistently allow for discrimination based on gender, but not for transgender status? If not, should we bring the law into harmony by banning discrimination based on gender, or for allowing discrimination based on transgender status? If so, on what basis can we make that distinction?

 

[Yeekim]

"History" of that particular trans-gendered person would also be important. In this particular story it is told that (s)he had been "living as a male" since age 5. But what if (s)he had lived as a female until, say 25? How would the guys who, say, went to school with "her" feel about "him" then? I'd wager it'd make it quite a lot more difficult to feel comfortable around her as "him".

And yes, if it is OK to discriminate based on gender, then discrimination based on transgender should also be OK.

Actually, my first impulse as to harmonizing this difference was to say "what the hell, do away with this silly discrimination thing entirely, ain't no big difference who watches you pee!". But then I realized that for some people, "bladder shyness" may be very real and actual problem, so... :shrug: