Poll: Majority of Americans oppose trans people using preferred bathroom

[michelle]

I use the ladies room all the time,  in schools, in the county courthouse, at my clinic, the football stadium where a Super Bowl was held once, and in all the stores.   

I try to come and go quickly, and I always keep my privates covered and use the wheelchair stall because it is big and has its own sink and allows more privacy.  I do have a problem with big feet. 

I will not go into ladies' restrooms where they are extremely busy and where women are standing around waiting for a stall because that would give other women too much of a chance to look me over too closely. 

Being 68 and a broken-toothed old lady,  I am invisible to many people.   Also, I never dress and will never dress in male fashion again, so all anybody sees is an eccentric old lady whose clothes are mostly mismatched. 

Advantages that I have are that my facial hair is very light brown to blond to gray so I never appear to have a 5 o'clock shadow and my Adams apple is not pronounced.   My skin tans nicely and my complexion is fair.

  I live in a warm state and I don't have a car having to walk most places that I go, I pretty much stay tanned.  Also though I never was called a sissy, I never have been taken seriously as a male and didn't attempt to be so.

[GendrKweer]

I tend to think polls like this are biased toward one particular result, due to the wording: "preferred gender". Although it is a term many of us use, and might indeed be the best available one at the moment, "preferred" seems as capricious to me. I "prefer" salmon to tuna when I have some sushi, but hell, I can take either one. I don't "prefer" to live as a particular gender. And that's someone who is fairly fluid speaking; for those of us who are completely MTF or FTM, it is of course a thousand times more inaccurate. The term is falling out of favor when used with respect to sexual orientation (few would consider it right to say someone "prefers" to be gay; they just are, even if they are abstinate) but maybe we should come up with something better to describe our situation so that others will better understand. Physical gender vs Psychological gender? Birth gender vs Correct/corrected gender? "... someone who uses the bathroom in keeping with their psychological or corrected gender" sounds a lot better to me than "preferred." 

[Dena]

As I am post surgical 33 years I would feel very uncomfortable using the bathroom of my birth gender. Our education problem is a simple one. We go to the bathroom because we gotta go. Once our business is done, we leave. We have no interest in sexual conquest or peeping. These are all stories made up by a public with an overactive imagination that are not based in reality.

The people who would do harm or spy on others in the bathroom are not transgender and we are in agreement with the public that these people should be kept out of the wrong bathroom.

Just think of how uncomfortable it would make men feel if someone passing well as female walked in to the mens bathroom. No, the public hasn't put much though into this one.

[Pax Fidelis]

What I've always wondered about these bloody bathroom bills is: how can they possibly enforce it?

Are they going to go by legal gender, like on your driver's license? Are people going to have to carry ID on them to go to the bathroom? Where I live, I can get that legally changed, so does that mean all their silliness suddenly isn't an issue anymore because I got the papers changed? Will they have people stationed outside every public bathroom? Are they gonna grope people at the door or peek down their pants? What would they do with intersex people? Are they gonna flag down every person who doesn't meet their idea of what a man or woman is "supposed" to look like? Guarantee some cis people are going to get questioned, and they'll be ticked off. (_sarcasm How dare someone think they're trans! The shame! _/sarcasm ) What then? The first cis person who gets stopped and questioned in a restroom would absolutely flip, mark my words.

[Wynternight]

What I've always wondered about these bloody bathroom bills is: how can they possibly enforce it?

Are they going to go by legal gender, like on your driver's license? Are people going to have to carry ID on them to go to the bathroom? Where I live, I can get that legally changed, so does that mean all their silliness suddenly isn't an issue anymore because I got the papers changed? Will they have people stationed outside every public bathroom? Are they gonna grope people at the door or peek down their pants? What would they do with intersex people? Are they gonna flag down every person who doesn't meet their idea of what a man or woman is "supposed" to look like? Guarantee some cis people are going to get questioned, and they'll be ticked off. (_sarcasm How dare someone think they're trans! The shame! _/sarcasm ) What then? The first cis person who gets stopped and questioned in a restroom would absolutely flip, mark my words.

It's already happened. There's an article posted on the forums about it.

[michelle]

Doesn't doing this type of polling increase the awareness among Cis gendered people that transsexual people might be using the same bathrooms as they are and increase their anxiety level.  In many cases you don't perceive what you are not aware of.   You don't recognize trans individuals when you are not looking for them and don't have your radar turned in that direction.   I use the ladies room all the time now, but I never linger, I do my business and leave.   I know a lot depends on where you live on rather it's a rural or urban area.   It also depends upon how well known you are in your community and if people who really care about the issue live there. 

When it comes to bathroom safety everyone should be careful and scout out the situation before you enter the bathroom.   Bathrooms can be dangerous because they are just plain lousy with pathogens microbic and human and sometimes in places like Florida where I live there is a slight possibility of having a python slithering out of the toilet.   

Just use the restroom where you are comfortable and feel safe.  If you are in the lady's room act like a lady and in the men's room act like a man, unless you are dressed like a lady, then there's no point acting like a man.   Use privacy stalls and keep your privates covered and you will probably be safe unless you are unlucky and you happen to share the restroom with that one bigot who is minding everybody else's business butt their own.   (I meant to write butt with two t's.)

One of the barriers to all of us transitioning and being comfortable with ourselves is worrying too much about what other people think.    Lots of people only care about what they think and what anybody else thinks is just fly poop on the wall.

Let sleeping bathroom police lie.   What people are against and what they will ignore in practice are often two totally different things.

[RaptorChops]

I use the men's room all the time and use the stall. Have yet to have anyone confront me. Luckily most guys don't even pay attention in the bathroom either.

[Obfuskatie]

You can lead a horse to water but you can't make them drink. There are people who don't believe transgender is a thing. It isn't our responsibility to educate people, that's what laws and governments and schools are for. We could argue in circles about the systemic failures that perpetuate marginalization against us, or just know that empirical evidence proves that the places who have passed laws allowing transpeople to use the restroom matching their identity have had no problems. Bigots want to make people fear us, it's a smokescreen to hide their treatment of us.


     Hugs,
- Katie
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[suzifrommd]

You don't recognize trans individuals when you are not looking for them and don't have your radar turned in that direction.

Well, not everyone blends in, right? There are those among us who are quite obviously transgender, and they deserve our support as well.

[dearlybeloved]

I heard they were talking about changing to unisex bathrooms. That is the way it should go. But, prob too extreme for the US of A.

[TG CLare]

Hello everyone.

People are conditioned at an early age to use the one marked boys and the other girls. Beats me what the problem is as I haven`t seen bare female genitalia in any female bathroom. Of course, many boys have sneaked a quick peek at the fellow next to us at the urinal. If you want lack of privacy, try the military!! Think of the heads (bathroom) in Full Metal Jacket!!

I have not had any problem (yet) using a women`s public washroom but I know there is some resistance to it where I volunteer. To ease the tension, right now it`s a long walk across the hangar floor to the male dominated aircrew flight room bathroom or the not so clean one (oil, grease) in the aircraft engineering area. Since I don`t wear a coverall, it can be hazardous to my clothes. I often do wonder what the woman next to me would say if she knew I was beside her in the next stall? Someone in the office I learned didn`t like me using theirs as I`m a "volunteer", not an employee. I'll probably resign as a volunteer from the venue sometime soon.

I do what I have to do in there, don`t try to make eye contact, maybe brush my hair quickly and get out but I am sure some people might suspect I am not a natal female.

To show how people are conditioned, I was at an event with port-a-potties. (I hate those things even more as a woman!) A number were cordoned off and marked as men the others as women. The line at the women`s one was long but no line at the ones marked men. A lady said that she was going to use the men`s ones and her friend said it was marked men. The lady said to her friend, "you really think they are any different inside"? The line soon disappeared and no one called the potty police.

The big problem is lack of education and understanding on the public's point. Many still think being transgender is a choice we make. Like what we will wear today as opposed to our internal feelings of who we are.

As has been said, probably a good number of those people have shared a bathroom with a transgender person and didn't even suspect it. Nothing happened to them but I sure wouldn't want to use a men's washroom in a bar as a transgender woman!

Love,
Clare

[Samantha C]

One great piece of news is on strangely shortly on the heels of this survey a Bill was submitted in FL to ban bathroom use based on DL or passport gender.  Hurray for enlightened lawmakers who shot the bill down later in the year both in the state house and state senate. Baby steps but someone is listening.

"We need to keep educating people..."