The Bathroom Issue

[dreadgeek]

I decided that I would add my voice to those people standing up and saying "do I really look like I belong in the wrong bathroom?"

Please feel free to download the image or (even better) point people at my blog.

https://blackhypatia.wordpress.com/2...athroom-issue/



Cheers
AJ

[Andrea]

Texas man follows woman into a bathroom to check her gender

http://m.nydailynews.com/news/politics/texas-man-woman-bathroom-check-gender-article-1.2622029

A Dallas woman was questioned about her gender by a man who followed her into a bathroom because he said she was “dressed like a man.”

Jessica Rush told KXAS-TV she filmed the last seconds of the encounter on her cell phone Thursday afternoon at the Baylor Medical Center in Frisco, Tex.

“My first thought was ‘I’m about to be attacked’ just because I am 5 [foot]3, female,” Rush said. “I understand one thing if you are like a cop of the Dallas Police Department, but just some random guy coming in I think is absolutely absurd and inappropriate.”

Rush, who is not transgender, was receiving treatment for an injured arm at the hospital Thursday as so-called “bathroom bills” prompt debates about the use of public restrooms by transgender people. Rush's Facebook video of the conversation had drawn over 10,000 views by Monday.

“When I saw you enter...I thought you was…,” the as-yet-unidentified man said.
Jessica Rush posted a video of the encounter on Facebook after it happened Thursday afternoon at a hospital in the Dallas suburb of Frisco, Texas.

“A boy?” Rush replied. She was wearing a t-shirt and basketball shorts.

“You know it’s difficult,” the man said with a shrug as he walked away from the bathroom. “You are dressed like a man. Of course, you are dressed like a man, so…”

He later told Rush he was “confused” when he saw her go into the bathroom and went into the restroom with his mother “to make sure she was good.”

Baylor Medical spokeswoman Julie Smith said the incident was not reported and therefore isn't being investigated by hospital officials. Representatives for the Frisco Police Department didn’t immediately respond Monday afternoon to a request to know whether police are reviewing it.

Rush, who didn’t immediately respond to a request for an interview, wrote on Facebook saying “Welcome to my world” and asking, “Do you actually think I would choose this life?” She shared local and national news reports as word of the video spread over the weekend.

Andrea: Click link for rest of article

[BullDog]

"Let me also speak directly to the transgender community itself. Some of you have lived freely for decades. Others of you are still wondering how you can possibly live the lives you were born to lead. But no matter how isolated or scared you may feel today, the Department of Justice and the entire Obama Administration wants you to know that we see you; we stand with you; and we will do everything we can to protect you going forward. Please know that history is on your side. This country was founded on a promise of equal rights for all, and we have always managed to move closer to that promise, little by little, one day at a time. It may not be easy – but we’ll get there together."

Loretta E. Lynch, U.S. Attorney General

At the Press Conference to Announce Complaint Against the State of North Carolina to Stop Discrimination Against Transgender Individuals

Full transcript:

https://www.justice.gov/opa/speech/a...cing-complaint

[BounceBounceBabyBoi]

I dont speak too much on here..

but this is an issue that terrifies me

I avoid all bathrooms now because i dont pass for one gender or another yet
i confuse people terribly O.o

https://youtu.be/Ov-ocQpQtrw <----but now we have people like this popping up all over the place...
and i cant help but have hope for the human race

https://youtu.be/qjGv6exoKkw

[storyspinner70]

This is the most amazing piece I've read yet on the bathroom issue.

https://driftingthrough.com/2016/04/...et-boycotters/

[Andrea]

I’m Proof Bathroom Bills Are Not Just a Transgender Issue
by Sally Kohn

http://time.com/4322953/north-carolina-mississippi-bathroom-bills/

I’m a lesbian and I fear public restroom confrontations

I hate using public restrooms. Airports and rest stops are my least favorite. I avoid locker rooms whenever possible. But really every restroom is bad. In fact, it happened to me just the other day in my fancy office building in New York City. I was at the sink, washing my hands, when a woman walked into the restroom and did a double take, first looking at me and then looking back at the sign on the still-open door of the restroom. Was she in the wrong place? Or, implicitly, was I?

I am a biological female who identifies as a woman. I am not, for any intents or purposes, transgender. But as a non-gender conforming butch lesbian, I have my own tiny window into our nation’s current political debate about bathrooms—the always looming fear that easily slips into shame, and the occasional outright harassment, all because I have to pee. And that’s from using the bathrooms that I “should” be using according to vicious anti-transgender bills sweeping the nation.

The first time I was actually yelled at in a bathroom, at least that I can remember, I was 19 years old. I was, and still am, 6’1″, but back then I had straight shoulder-length hair that dangled as awkwardly around my chin as everything else about me at that age. I was openly gay but still otherwise finding myself. I still wore dresses sometimes. Also awkwardly. I was a study abroad student in England on vacation in Bath. I don’t remember much of anything from the entire semester, but I remember going into some lavish hotel along the beach to use the bathroom and, while I was washing my hands at the sink, getting yelled at by a group of women.

One of them, standing next to me at the sink, yelled to her friends in the stalls: “There’s a boy in here!”

As the others came out, they loomed at me and shouted things like: “What are you doing in here?” and “You’re in the wrong place!”

And in a sense, they were right. It turns out the women were all part of a bridal shower, wearing those most conventionally feminine pastel dresses to participate in that most quintessentially heteronormative of traditions. They belonged—in that bathroom and in society more broadly—and I most certainly didn’t. And still don’t.

Whatever you might have heard to the contrary, the “bathroom bills” that have passed in North Carolina and Mississippi and are now pending in other states have nothing to do with public safety. The simple fact is that under existing laws, it is already a crime to dress up as a man or woman in order to falsely gain entry to any public restroom to harass or harm anyone. That is a crime in states with transgender legal protections and a crime in states without such laws. Fox News anchor Chris Wallace noted that such crimes have not taken place in communities that have transgender rights laws.

What these “bathroom bills” are actually about is enforcing traditional gender codes and norms in an increasingly diverse and shifting America. Single-sex restrooms just like single-sex dormitories have always been rooted in compulsory heteronormativity and the sense that we have to protect women from men who can’t expect to be reigned in. This still echoes today, as when an all-male elite club at Harvard University suggested that allowing women to join would increase the potential for sexual assault. And notice that no one seems to worry about pedophiles being forced to use the little boy’s room instead. The point is that girls need protecting.

And femininity must be protected, too. Or even enforced. A video that recently went viral shows a woman being forcibly evicted from a restroom because she looks more masculine. Should women not only have to be born women to use the ladies room but wear skirts? Maybe have their hair a certain length and curled?

That moment in the restroom in England, I blurted out something like “I am a girl!” and then rushed out in tears. I wiped my eyes and pretended with my friends that it was no big deal, joking that I should have flashed the women my breasts and said: “Here are my ID cards!” And I’ve thought of a million more clever comebacks ever since. But it was a big deal, and it still is. Those women weren’t just confronting my right to pee but my right to belong—my right to be just as much female as they were, even if I wasn’t female in their exact way. They were questioning my right to feel like I was in the right place and the right body not because they decided I was but because I did.

That may scare the hell out of some people, that people born as men can transition to being women and women can be women and wear men’s clothes. But it’s a form of liberty and freedom—the sort our nation was supposedly founded on and we’re just now getting around to extending to everyone besides straight white men. I try to remember that, and to feel brave and confident, in my own skin, in my own style, in my own stall, every time I have to pee.

[BullDog]

Great article Andrea. I stand with my transgender brothers and sisters whether these horrible laws effect me or not, but I know as a butch that I could be affected as well. It makes it less safe for all non-conforming gender people and doesn't make it any more safer for those who may be assumed to conform to their gender. And of course these laws and movements make it less safe as well beyond public bathrooms.

[morningstar55]

Originally Posted by BullDog

Great article Andrea. I stand with my transgender brothers and sisters whether these horrible laws effect me or not, but I know as a butch that I could be affected as well. It makes it less safe for all non-conforming gender people and doesn't make it any more safer for those who may be assumed to conform to their gender. And of course these laws and movements make it less safe as well beyond public bathrooms.

I agree with you BulDog ... that was a great article and made me think of the same exact incident of Electro and I in a bathroom 1 time washing our hands and talking and a lady walked in ... but walked back out when she seen us .. then look at the sign on the door ... but never came back in. .. but never said anything either that we know of.