When Bathroom Access is a Life or Death Issue

http://gendersense.com/2011/04/29/when-bathroom-access-is-a-life-or-death-issue/
4/29/11

Laws define the rights of citizens. When a law affords protection to one group, it restricts the freedom of another. Because of this, we have to balance the effects of a law so that it doesn't give too much to one group or takes too much away from the other. It is with this balance in mind that we approach bathroom rights.

It may sound frivolous to those it doesn't affect, but passing laws protecting the use of bathrooms is a central issue for transgender people like myself. The recent assault on Chrissy Lee Polis is testament to this importance. Though appropriate bathroom access is a very important issue to transgender people, we have to look at opposing arguments to it in order to understand why such laws haven't already been passed.

I have to take serious issue with this poster. To the extent of stating that she is utterly wrong.

QuoteWhen a law affords protection to one group, it restricts the freedom of another.

No, that is not the case and must never be the case.

A law which grants each of us the right to live, free from fear of being physically attacked may be interpreted as restricting the rights of those that wish to attack others. The reality is that being legally free from the fear of physical attack is a basic principal of living in a society, any society, not just a free society. Rights are fundamental and innate. The right to life. The right to participate in society. The right to associate. These are fundamental rights.

The right to attack others is not a fundamental right. It is the imposition of your will onto others. It it the removal of the rights of others.

Rights are not whatever the strongest can take. They must be equitable to be fundamental.

It would be convenient to excuse the notion, put forward by the poster, as being simplistic. But it isn't simplistic at all. It is utterly wrong. And more, it is dangerously wrong.

That leads to the second point.

QuoteMost arguments used to oppose bathroom rights for trans people include some form of the potential victimhood of innocent women and children.

This argument is a crock.

The right to use a toilet/bathroom/restroom is to use the facility. There may, in some circumstances, be an acquired custom of some elements of social interaction. But the only part that can ever be incumbent upon the use of a toilet is the function of toileting.

The only restriction that is and can ever be, necessarily imposed upon the use of any toilet is based upon the vulnerability that we may place onto ourselves by the preparation.

The rules governing the use of toilets must be exactly the same as in any other part of the world, namely that everyone must feel confident that they are free from attack. An attack is based upon actual threat.

If some can claim they are fearful because they don't like the look of another patron, because that patron may be ugly, may appear more associated with another gender, because they appear to be of the wrong race, that is unacceptable.

And in any part of daily life, the only acceptable reaction to perceived threat, of any kind, must be to report it. Once we permit anyone the right to physically justify attacking someone else, based upon any perceived threat, we have destroyed the most fundamental values that any society must be based upon. Namely, equanimity.

@Spacial,

Well said. I cannot add to that..

Freedom is the freedom to do anything. We have laws to restrict the freedom of doing certain things (usually taken to be harmful to others). Yes, it seems silly that a law forbidding violence against one group should seem to be a restriction on the freedom of the perpetrator, but that's what it is. I'm not saying in any way that they deserve that freedom or that it is in itself right–I'm just identifying it as a freedom.

I really wish that "...being legally free from the fear of physical attack [was] a basic principle of living in a society, any society, not just a free society..." but that's blatantly not the case. Do you even know what other countries are like? Women in some Middle Eastern countries, after being raped (physical and sexual violence) are then forced to marry their rapist. Is there adequate retribution to the perpetrator? No. What does that mean for women in those countries? That means that they are not legally free from the fear of physical attack.

Rights are not fundamental or innate. Rights are given to a person by their government. I'm not sure where you come from, but here in America, without the Bill of Rights, we wouldn't have the rights contained therein. Your "right to participate in society" isn't innate, either. I suggest you read the 19th Amendment to the United States Constitution for an example of this. It seems simplistically serene to say that humans deserve certain rights. Yes, in utopia, we have all the rights we want and they don't infringe on the liberty of anyone else. No, that's not how it really works.

So, if you can realize that no rights are fundamental or innate, the "right to attack others" isn't either. I never said they were, by the way. I wasn't discussing the contrast of the right to attack others with having access to gender-appropriate bathrooms. I don't really know where you got that. The freedom issue at stake here is the weak argument by cis gender people who are "uncomfortable" with transgender use of bathrooms and the more strong argument that transgender people should have access to such bathrooms, especially because of the potential violence thrown our way by cis gender people.