{"id":4236,"date":"2016-04-01T07:51:11","date_gmt":"2016-04-01T13:51:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/?p=4236"},"modified":"2016-04-04T13:34:21","modified_gmt":"2016-04-04T19:34:21","slug":"bathroom-bills-and-the-refusal-to-compromise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2016\/04\/bathroom-bills-and-the-refusal-to-compromise.html","title":{"rendered":"“Bathroom bills” and the refusal to compromise"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

They\u2019re everywhere, right now: \u00a0legislation that either gives individuals the absolute right to use the sex-specific public bathroom of one\u2019s choice (Washington, actually a state Human Rights Commission ruling<\/a>), or that requires individuals to use bathroom, in public facilities, that corresponds to their genetic sex (House Bill 2 in North Carolina<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Two things ought to be obvious:<\/p>\n

First, that whether you agree with their choices or not, individuals who have taken steps to alter their appearance have, to some degree or another, become, let\u2019s say, \u201cartificially intersex,\u201d and the \u201cright\u201d bathroom to use becomes dependent on individual circumstances, so that it can cause harm to such individuals to enact \u201cgenetic sex\u201d requirements, where following such rules can expose them to harassment from other users who think that just the opposite is happening.<\/p>\n

Second, \u201copen bathroom access\u201d bills can put women and girls at risk from molesters, pedophiles, and voyeurs who claim a spot in the women\u2019s bathroom or locker room, and, even with respect to \u201ctrue\u201d transgender people, will oblige women and girls to be exposed to male genitalia, in what was, after all, the original \u201csafe space.\u201d<\/p>\n

Supporters of \u201copen access\u201d bills seem, so far as I can tell, to treat the impact of such legislation on \u201ccis\u201d women and girls as a sort of collateral damage. \u00a0In part, they reject traditional morality that says that people shouldn\u2019t view the genitalia of individuals of the opposite sex as an irrelevant and outdated consideration. \u00a0When issues of harm are raised, because of the ability of men to abuse the law to access women\u2019s restrooms\/locker rooms, or the impact of physical-men in the locker room on women or girls who are especially emotionally harmed due to a prior molestation experience, these seem, as far as I can tell, to be shrugged off as needing to give way to the greater goal of Trans Rights.<\/p>\n

Supporters of \u201cclosed access\u201d bills, at the same time, seem to reject the possibility that their legislation\/policies can do harm to real people. \u00a0Taking as a starting point the idea that \u201cthese people never should have started down the path in the first place,\u201d they seem unwilling to consider the reality that they have<\/em> taken this path, and do need some reasonable accommodation. \u00a0In the case of the student in Palatine<\/a> a couple months back, what was occasionally buried in the thicket of the reporting was that the student had been undergoing hormone therapy \u2014 no details were ever provided, so it was never clear whether this was a matter of\u00a0puberty-blockers, or active estrogen treatments, but, regardless of whether the student had breasts or or just a prepubescent boy\u2019s body, the student wouldn\u2019t have fit in among high school boys, either.<\/p>\n

I say \u201cseem\u201d for a reason: \u00a0in the various articles that I\u2019ve read over the past several months, I have not really seen either side address the concerns of the other side, even if just to discard them, let alone consider the fact that there is need for a compromise, that the other side has valid concerns. \u00a0And that speaks to the problem, not just with the subject at hand, but our political discourse in general.<\/p>\n

UPDATE:<\/p>\n

Everyone\u2019s talking about \u201csafe spaces\u201d at universities. \u00a0Well, women\u2019s restrooms are the ultimate \u201csafe space.\u201d \u00a0(Do men care as much about whether women walk in while they\u2019re peeing in a urinal, or whether a man at the pool with a girl past preschool age takes her into the men\u2019s locker room rather than letting her change in the women\u2019s locker room? \u00a0I don\u2019t know.) \u00a0And the fight is about who gets to use that \u201csafe space\u201d \u2014 and whether opening up access takes away the \u201csafety\u201d of it. \u00a0A comment I came across during my lunch break noted another issue: \u00a0a Muslim veil-wearing woman wouldn\u2019t use the restroom to adjust her veil or headcovering if the washrooms were decreed to be gender neutral.<\/p>\n

Further update:<\/p>\n

The comments are starting to prove my point. \u00a0Pro-transgender-ers: \u00a0do you see any difference between a transgender person \u201cpresenting as female\u201d using a woman\u2019s restroom in a public building, and such a person (pre-op) using a changing room where everyone undresses in the open? \u00a0Do you see any validity to the concern that laws offering protection can be written broadly enough that a man can enter a women\u2019s changing room? \u00a0(After all, how do you prove that he is or isn\u2019t watching the women there, without policing whether everyone is going about their business with sufficiently downcast eyes?)<\/p>\n

Anti-transgenders-in-the-locker-room: \u00a0do you recognize the difficulty with telling a transgender person who visibly looks female on the outside, even if genetically male, or with male body parts, or the reverse, that they must use a changing room which will visually appear to be the wrong one?<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

They\u2019re everywhere, right now: \u00a0legislation that either gives individuals the absolute right to use the sex-specific public bathroom of one\u2019s choice (Washington, actually a state Human Rights Commission ruling), or that requires individuals to use bathroom, in public facilities, that corresponds to their genetic sex (House Bill 2 in North Carolina). Two things ought to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[149],"class_list":["post-4236","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-transgender"],"yoast_head":"\n"Bathroom bills" and the refusal to compromise<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"They're everywhere, right now: \u00a0legislation that either gives individuals the absolute right to use the sex-specific public bathroom of one's choice\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2016\/04\/bathroom-bills-and-the-refusal-to-compromise.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" 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