So these bathroom bills that keep getting proposed, I have to ask, how exactly will they work? Like you can't force someone to drop their pants because that's an invasion of privacy and against the law, and if you have had SRS then what? But then what if they want to check your Birth certificate, who carries that thing around everywhere? And if you get your gender marker changed then well they can't really get you that way. You can't really have someone watching the bathroom 24/7, and what about all the people who are far enough into their transition that they pass without question? Like how exactly can they really enforce these proposed bills, because there isn't really a way to force it without breaking another law, or resorting to some extreme measure? This whole situation makes no sense to me.

As far as I can understand it they work by getting the republicans voted back in. The rest is mere details.

There's some other discussions on this topic in the forums.

Aside from being unconstitutional, these laws are pretty much unenforceable.  The purpose is just to hassle transgender folks, not to accomplish anything meaningful.  If it's unsafe to go to the men's and you are worried that someone might hassle you if you use the ladies' then maybe, they are thinking, you'll just not bother going on the premises at all.  That's what they want.

Quote from: KathyLauren on March 29, 2016, 10:23:58 AM
Aside from being unconstitutional, these laws are pretty much unenforceable.  The purpose is just to hassle transgender folks, not to accomplish anything meaningful.  If it's unsafe to go to the men's and you are worried that someone might hassle you if you use the ladies' then maybe, they are thinking, you'll just not bother going on the premises at all.  That's what they want.

That's so stupid! If I feel unsafe then I'm going to get out of there regardless of if their is a law or not.

The people attempting to pass them are working on the assumption that all trans people are identifiable on sight

Also, how would these laws apply to intersex people, or those whose gender was recorded wrong on their original birth certificate due to a clerical error?

Quote from: tgchar21 on March 29, 2016, 02:11:48 PM
Also, how would these laws apply to intersex people, or those whose gender was recorded wrong on their original birth certificate due to a clerical error?

I guess the laws rely on the idea that intersex people don't exist so that they can lean on the basic XY/XX definition of male/female. Either that or they'd hope that anyone who was intersex would hide in their houses like they want trans people to do

Well they are mostly targeted at schools and collages so they have a captive user base who they have ID and history records for,  so they know that billy jean was billy bob the year before and therefore can restrict their bathroom use.

In other encounters where its more random, then its authority to challenge, it will then put the onus on the user to prove they are entitled to be there whether they are trans or cis, but importantly its the threat that keeps trans people away which after all is what they want in the first place although their main aim is to make life hostile to trans people so we either stay in the closet or find a rope.

From what i can tell by reading the NC bill there isn't any punishment or redress to actually using the "wrong" bathroom other than humiliation and ejection although it may be contained in other legislation i haven't read and some of the bills do impose fines and prison time even to the point of putting a $2.5k bounty on our heads.

The main crux of the NC bill seems to be make life harder for trans people, drive a wedge between LGB and T as LGB lost protections due to the bathroom bill and LGB wont all associate the bathroom bills as in response to gay marriage they'll just see T causing them problems.

The other possibility is to set up a challenge to title IX but that could go either way, and to a degree actually having one of these laws pass may be loosing a battle for us but could move is closer to winning the war.  All the time we win at wack a mole, we are just playing wack a mole.  Now there is a law where there wasn't before,  there actually is a law to be challenged as unconstitutional and hopefully see a SCOTUS ruling that will hit the whole country the same as it did with marriage.

I wondered also how they would be enforced. My License and Passport both say Female. Its not like people carry around their Birth Certificate, so how would they know what sonmeone's BC says? Some states allow a BC to be changed with surgery (IL requires the surgeon to be in the US), some without (CA, DC, IA, NY, OR, UT**, VT, WA, WI**, AZ***), and some not at all (ID, KS*, OH, TN*). Without knowing where someone was born, even a genital check (which would be highly unconstitutional) wouldn't be of much value since some places will change it without surgery and New York City apparently will change it with just a letter from a therapist indicating your gender identity. Some states will issue an entirely new birth certificate and others will only amend it (sadly, I think my state is one that amends rather than replacing).

*Tennessee has the only law explicitly prohibiting gender changes on birth certificates for trans* persons. Kansas law permits "minor" changes, but the courts have ruled that changing the sex/gender for a trans* person is not "minor" and cannot be changed.
**Utah and Wisconsin state that a court order from ANY US or Canadian court is required, which would seem to leave the door open to changes without surgery depending on where the person lives.
***Arizona will accept proof of chromosomes in lieu of surgery to change a birth certificate, which would allow maybe 0.1% to 1% of the population to change without surgery.