'Any transgender, on plain reading of statute, could obtain entry to female restroom'

http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=60012
02/02/2008

A war of words has erupted in Montgomery County, Md., where a citizens group is nearing the number of signatures needed to force a new law granting special protections to those with "gender identity" issues to a vote of the people.

the law seems too open....

trans men should not use the womens facilities, androgynes should use a neutral facility. you want equality? fine, but the womens facilities are for women only, end of in my opinion...
R >

Quote from: Rachael on February 02, 2008, 06:44:24 AM
the law seems too open....

trans men should not use the womens facilities, androgynes should use a neutral facility. you want equality? fine, but the womens facilities are for women only, end of in my opinion...
R >

many public places here in the US only have two restroom choices.... I'd gladly use single or neutral if it was available... but it ain't... and I gotta go somewhere 

y2g

every place pretty much HAS to have a disabled/family restroom with changing facilities stuff... thats for familys, disabled, other am neutral enough?....

No offense to anyone, but i feel as uncomfortable sharing the ladies room with an an androgyne, as i do with a man.
neither are women.
R >

Such a specious bunch of bullshyte from the attorney. I imagine a lawsuit over a bathroom would be moot from the get-go. Can you imagine 'holding' it long enough to get through court?!!! *giggle*

In all the toilets I have had to use I have yet to see either a male or a readily-identifiable TS/TG in one of them. It just doesn't seem to occur.

The child-care worker provision is just plain BS as well. I doubt there are any 'facility' child-care orgs that do NOT have background checks done on their employees. And the tenor of the atty's reasoning is that anyone who is moving toward a 'sex-change' or who is dressing in 'gender-variant' ways is, perforce, a pervert.

These people are, as normal, appealing to base fear, agents provocateurs and know-nothing 'reasoning' to have their own prejudices and hatreds have the force of law.

And I think that women and men need to understand one thing very well: they will NOT be satisfied with discovering simply 'cross-dressers.' They will make attempts to find us all out if possible. I am beginning to sniff the smoke of 'burning pyres' and 'witch hunts' in these folks.

In many ways this resembles the McCarthy Era where people found 'communists' under every bed and the early civil rights movement when some rather 'lesson' lynchings were performed.

N~ 

there will be a Night of broken glass before we are finally accepted in mass sympathy after god only knows what will happen is done and finished.
R >

Goddess! I so hate it when I think you are right!!

But, I wonder exactly that. And I am starting to have this image of many WBTs as we are dragged into the public square screaming: "But we are like you!!" as they tie us to a stake and light the fire. (Okay, a bit dramatic, I suppose.) But the kernel I think is right.

So many of us want to 'think' we are different and ignore the fact that this lot hate us all and are frightened by us all. Perhaps fear more the WBTs and the MBTs than anyone else, simply because they CANNOT tell the difference without paperwork and a gene-analysis.

I am deciding more and more that to remain separate and confrontational with one another is NOT the way to go for the good of any of us.

Nichole 

Quote from: Nichole W. on February 02, 2008, 09:20:10 AM
And I am starting to have this image of many WBTs as we are dragged into the public square screaming: "But we are like you!!" as they tie us to a stake and light the fire. (Okay, a bit dramatic, I suppose.) But the kernel I think is right.

Who knows what it'll be like in 20 years in a world where radical Islam and fundamentalist Christianity are the two fastest growing religions and everybody and his dog can buy a Russian nuke...

Quote
So many of us want to 'think' we are different and ignore the fact that this lot hate us all and are frightened by us all. Perhaps fear more the WBTs and the MBTs than anyone else, simply because they CANNOT tell the difference without paperwork and a gene-analysis.

I am deciding more and more that to remain separate and confrontational with one another is NOT the way to go for the good of any of us.

Absolutely. Even if we are all different in every way - transsexual, genderqueer, crossdresser, whatever, we get painted with the same brush. We have common cause - our right to simply be, and not be judged by that, but by our actions and who we are. If we can't put aside our differences and insecurities about each other, we are all screwed...

I've spent billions of hours in Montgomery Co MD, and have not yet seen anyone in a ladies room that did not actually belong there.  Unless they are they best CD around.  Even then, if they're a CD, they hafta go somewhere, and if they went into the men's, they might get the crap beat out of them instead of , well, you know. And no, there are very few gender-neutral facilities throughout the state, not that I care personally anymore.
I don't get into M.Co frequently now, but when I do, there doesn't seem to be a special scrutiny of us all at the wash basin, just the usual smiles, or chit chat.

Bev
Just another lady

I doubt that there will be any sort of gay or trans Kristallnacht in the U.S. for several reasons, but mostly the Second Amendment, coupled with a broad willingness to use it.  What is happening is a gradual coming apart into different areas that can scarcely recognize the other - and increasingly can't speak to each other.  The red/blue split, which is also an educational split, and income split, a economic split, a cultural divide, a social gap, an urban/rural deal, and a coastal/interior problem is just going to grow.

Quote from: Nichole W. on February 02, 2008, 09:20:10 AM
I am deciding more and more that to remain separate and confrontational with one another is NOT the way to go for the good of any of us.

To paraphrase a quote attributed to Benjamin Franklin;

"We must hang together...else, we shall most assuredly hang separately."

My reason for speaking at the Real ID Town Hall was my suspicion that Real ID could, and thus most assuredly would be used as a tool to 'smoke us out'.

I feel these shrill, energetic attacks against anything that would codify equal civil rights for transgenders (the most icky of the homosexuals) are the start of their attempt to 'sundown' us from their godly towns.

Claiming HBC or WBT won't deter them one iota once they vector your 'true, god-given sex'.

And I suspect that they would want the post-ops amongst us to have to use the room  appropriate to our birth sex, thus outing us, shaming us and putting us in danger of physical violence all at once.

No, we MUST hang together, and do what it takes to hang with as many of the Gays and Lesbians as possible.  It'll probably mostly be the genderqueer, as that's what we have in common.

Karen

P.S., It just occurred to me, I bet the straight-passing gays and lesbians, such as Barney Frank/John Aravosis/Chris Crain will at some point ally with HBS/WBT women (at least, the most passable of them.)

I always thought they wanted to go back to a time before bathrooms - or at least indoor plumbing.  Forward into the past and all that.

Quote from: tekla on February 02, 2008, 01:30:01 PM
I always thought they wanted to go back to a time before bathrooms - or at least indoor plumbing.  Forward into the past and all that.

Hmmmm, at least if we go back to outhouses, they could be considered unisex/single stall and they won't have to worry about trannies invading their outhouses  >

y2g

Quote from: tekla on February 02, 2008, 01:10:05 PMWhat is happening is a gradual coming apart into different areas that can scarcely recognize the other - and increasingly can't speak to each other.  The red/blue split, which is also an educational split, and income split, a economic split, a cultural divide, a social gap, an urban/rural deal, and a coastal/interior problem is just going to grow.

Does it look something like the below?  From The Nine Nations of North America, by Joel Garreau.  I have a sneaking suspicion that the above splits, as well as the support/hate LGBT split, can be generally mapped to the boundaries on that map.

Karen

I find nothing particularly wrong with the WBTs, John Aravosis, Joe Solomoneses. What they want is what we all want. Yep, even tekla.

We'd like nothing more than to have our words taken seriously occasionally. Okay, tekla prolly wants to be global emperor *giggle* .. but otherwise they want acceptance that they are real and important, at least to someone.

Don't we all want that, at least for ourselves?

The problem is that we go looking for other people to blame for why we aren't taken seriously. And the more it happens the more seriously troubled we get. I mean go read some of the stuff Ms. Robins goes on about in her comments on blogs. Is that anyway to spend a day when you have 'a full and happy life?'

No. Probably no Kristallnacht and probably no 'public burnings' either. Our technologies, like our bathrooms, are much more sophisticated these days. Better ways and less noticeable to get rid of what we fear.

Why shouldn't people want to 'woodwork?' I imagine few of us really have any desire at all to be any more 'open' than we are about right this second. What woman wants to go through her life with an asterisk by her name or being called 'sir' etc? What man wants to go through life asterisked and being sent to the ladies?

And those who don't want any part of the binary -- what does it hurt to grant them the status of 'non-binary human beings' with all rights, privileges and respect that come with simply being human?

Women blasted the crap outta each other in the 70s and 80s due to the socio-economic differences in what feminism was all about and what the goals of it were. And I am thinking that's exactly where we are going these days with all the fuss about pre-post-non, etc. We are honing distinction to the point that we become little lonely interest groups of one.

That ain't no way to win what hasn't been won yet, nor to protect anyone who might be outted as any different from what she is supposed to be in any way.

And no amount of sarcastic humor, personal attacks, and denigration of another is going to change one very salient fact: they hate us all. And they aren't concerned whether or not you have a 'neo-vagina' or an inverted penis or a 'non-vagina' or an extruded penis.

It's 'against god' whatever it is and if you're thinking about it your just as dangerous as those who've done it. The Phelps group has already placed all of us in hell in their minds anyhow regardless of op status or intention, and will probably be happy to help us to travel into what they think is the real one as well..

And a cogent analysis of what will happen and how may look good, but what to do about what the analysis points out? More of the same?     

Quote from: Nichole W. on February 02, 2008, 01:49:53 PM
I find nothing particularly wrong with the WBTs, John Aravosis, Joe Solomoneses. What they want is what we all want.

I want what they want -- that is, to be treated the same as everyone else even if it is found out I'm not heterosexual or not presenting the same gender as my birth-sex.

I don't out myself every time I buy a quart of milk and a tank of gas at the convenience store.  In fact, with most transactions I either pass just fine or the other person doesn't make an issue of it if they do read me.

Sometimes I have to out myself, like for medical stuff or legal reasons.

As for advocacy, I only out myself when I feel there's a chance that it will do some good and make a difference.

However I do have a problem with the examples named above and others like them because they have either advocated or acted upon dividing themselves off from the "T" and sacrificing the "T" to get their 'rights'.

And it's that willingness to sacrifice others to get your desire that I'm against.

Karen (written as just another opinion from just another member of Susans)

Quote from: Nichole W. on February 02, 2008, 01:49:53 PM
And no amount of sarcastic humor, personal attacks, and denigration of another is going to change one very salient fact: they hate us all.

Yep. All sinners.

To come back to the bathroom question: There was a time when black people had to use seperate bathrooms as well, couldn't get on the same bus as a white person, didn't have the right to vote - Hell, I grew up in a place like that, and I'm not 30 yet!

Equal rights has to mean equal for all. It took Nelson Mandela going to jail, school-children getting gunned down by policemen, border wars and terrorism, but racism is gone - it might still exist in many hearts, but as an institution it's gone, and in South Africa today it's a criminal offence to discriminate on that or any other basis.

We are going to have to fight for that same kind of acceptance, and the only way to do that is together.

You know, we're all sinners going to hell, but then, in the eighties black people were "Die Swart Gevaar" - from afrikaans, "The Black Menace". These days white South Africans look back on that propaganda and wonder how they could ever fall for it. At the end of the day, the same thing is happening to us. Religious extremists, ultra conservatives and the like paint us as this huge evil, and in the absence of an opposing story, people are going to fall for it. We have to change that, and we're only going to do that by being visible, becoming familiar and thus becoming safe.

Karen, as another member of Susan's I seem to live my life like you do as well.

And I do see what they do: get my own and toss you over the side if need be to save my own ass. Like the Billy Zane character in Titanic, hold the child to get in the boat and then qucik give it to someone else to hold onto.

Yet, when I read them I also cannot help but feel their humanity as well. I can feel their fear and their lack of esteem for who they are, if they even know. I suspect the loud and eager sacrifice of everyone else indicates a very large blockage in the self-efficacy department.

Simone, maybe this is why the why in South Africa. Why English Africans, Afrikaaner Africans and Bantu Africans have discovered that not killing one another and hating one another might provide a bit of hope for all. Maybe the way to end the killing is to stop killing one another. Novel notion, no?

Our kultur seems to have a preference for 'human sacrifice.' Its just too easy in USA, seems to me, for any of us to demonize who ever seems to be 'other.' 

Quote from: Nichole W. on February 02, 2008, 03:47:39 PM
Simone, maybe this is why the why in South Africa. Why English Africans, Afrikaaner Africans and Bantu Africans have discovered that not killing one another and hating one another might provide a bit of hope for all. Maybe the way to end the killing is to stop killing one another. Novel notion, no?

Isn't it just. I just feel so sad that it took South Africa, like 300 years to realise that. Hopefully we've learned from that past though - we do have a constitution that includes the rights of the transgendered, amongst everything else (though I don't know if the writers of said constitution were actually fully considering the implications of what they meant when they said "no discrimination on any basis" ). Granted it's still a struggle to get it implemented in the real world, but hopefully we're on the right track.

Quote from: Nichole W. on February 02, 2008, 03:47:39 PMAnd I do see what they do: get my own and toss you over the side if need be to save my own ass. Like the Billy Zane character in Titanic, hold the child to get in the boat and then quickly give it to someone else to hold onto.

Yet, when I read them I also cannot help but feel their humanity as well. I can feel their fear and their lack of esteem for who they are, if they even know. I suspect the loud and eager sacrifice of everyone else indicates a very large blockage in the self-efficacy department.

An apt metaphor, that.  I hope some day I can use it to good effect!

I agree they have humanity.  My issue is with the actions they take, or the arguments they make, to promote themselves at the expense of others.

Gosh, this has been an exhilarating topic;

Karen