The Bathroom Issue

[morningstar55]

I couldn't find a anything on the bathroom topics thats been going on.

Hope its ok to start one here.

Alabama ... seems to be joining NC ....
http://www.lgbtqnation.com/2016/04/a...oom-ordinance/

OXFORD, Ala. — People in an Alabama city who use public restrooms intended for a gender other than what is listed on their birth certificate will be punished under an ordinance officials passed this week.

Oxford City Council President Steven Waits was quoted by news media outlets as saying the ordinance was a response to a new policy announced by Target Corp. last week allowing transgender employees and shoppers to use the restroom that matches their gender identity. There is a Target store in the Oxford Exchange shopping center.

Target representatives did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment Wednesday. Target officials said on the company’s corporate blog April 19 that its stance on inclusion and equality was reiterated to employees amid heated national debate over laws that LGBT advocates say effectively legalize discrimination against transgender people.

The Oxford ordinance makes it a misdemeanor for a person to use a restroom that doesn’t correspond with their gender at birth. Violators of the ordinance could face a $500 fine or up to six months in jail.

The Washington-based Human Rights Campaign blasted the ordinance, saying it raises a number of privacy concerns and questions about how it will be enforced.

Oxford Police Chief Bill Partridge said the law will be enforced like any other city ordinance, such as noise violations or public indecency.

“If somebody sees something that makes them uncomfortable, they would call the police,” he was quoted by Al.com as saying. “If the person is still there when the officer arrives, the officer has to witness the crime. Then we take down the person’s information, and the person who reported it has to sign out a warrant.”

HRC officials said the ordinance is unprecedented in imposing criminal penalties and the city of roughly 21,000 is the first in the nation to pass this kind of law.

“This ordinance is a shameful and vile attack on the rights and privacy of transgender people,” HRC Alabama State Manager Eva Walton Kendrick said in a statement. “Transgender people are our neighbors, our co-workers and our fellow churchgoers, and every Alabamian has the right to live their lives without fear of discrimination and prejudice.”

© 2016, Associated Press, All Rights Reserved.
This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

[morningstar55]

I never knew what a problem bathrooms were for some until I experienced it 12 yrs ago .. with Electrocell.
Now with all this bathroom problems going on ..... I really am concerned for his safety as well as others.
I know he is out on the roads doing his job doing deliveries.
Although Electrocell is not trans , some well I know a lot assume he is.
Stay safe out there to everyone.

[Andrea]

Transgender teen fights back after suspension for using 'wrong' bathroom

http://www.cnn.com/2016/04/26/health/sc-transgender-student-bathroom-suspension/

The pep rally was underway as a South Carolina high school student headed to the bathroom. A teacher trailed him. The student is transgender, and she wanted to make sure he used "the right one," he said.

To him, the right one is the boys' bathroom, which he says he has used since seventh grade without incident. Then, in his senior year, school administrators told him he had to use the girls' restroom, he said. They also gave him the option to use the nurse's restroom.

When he exited the bathroom, the teacher did not say anything to him, but he knew from the "exasperated" look on her face that he was in trouble.

The next morning, he was called into the vice principal's office and told he was suspended for one day for using the boys' bathroom.

Andrea: Clink link for rest of article

[Andrea]

City: Use bathrooms for biological sex or face jail

http://www.kcra.com/health/city-use-bathrooms-for-biological-sex-or-face-jail/39258464?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter&utm _campaign=kcranews

Transgender people in Oxford, Alabama, could now face six months in jail for using restrooms labeled for the gender with which they identify.

The Oxford City Council passed the ordinance this week after the retail giant Target announced it would allow transgender employees and customers to use the restrooms they feel comfortable with. Target has a store in Oxford.

In the ordinance, the Council says people in public restrooms "do not reasonably expect to be exposed to individuals of the opposite sex while utilizing those facilities."

"The Council further asserts that single sex public facilities are places of increased vulnerability and present the potential for crimes against individuals utilizing those facilities which may include, but not limited to, voyeurism, exhibitionism, molestation and assault and battery," the ordinance states.

The law includes some exceptions, such as for adults accompanying children under age 12.

Those violating the ordinance could face six months in jail or a $500 fine.

Oxford Police Chief Bill Partridge did not return a CNN call for comment. But he told CNN affiliate WBRC the law would be enforced just like any other for a misdemeanor: A person would have to call police to complain, and when police arrive the officer would have to witness the crime.

After that, Partridge said, the person who called in the complaint would have to sign a warrant.

Oxford's new law comes amid a spate of bathroom policies affecting transgender people across the country. But the ordinance does not explicitly mention the term "transgender."

The Human Rights Campaign, which advocates for LGBT rights, lambasted the ordinance.

"This anti-transgender law is unprecedented in its establishment of criminal penalties for violations of the law, and raises a myriad of privacy and legal concerns, including questions about how the law will be enforced," HRC said in a statement.

And the law could affect more people than some realize, HRC Alabama manager Eva Walton Kendrick said.

"Transgender people are our neighbors, our coworkers and our fellow churchgoers," she said, "and every Alabamian has the right to live their lives without fear of discrimination and prejudice."

[JDeere]

Ugh so sick of ignorance. People just need to pee. However are they really going to police bathrooms? Make you show id and then drop your pants to inspect? Talk about invasion of privacy.

[storyspinner70]

She is clearly female. But, hey, this isn't about hate. At all. Not even a little bit.

[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.