The Bathroom Issue

[BounceBounceBabyBoi]

I dont speak too much on here..

but this is an issue that terrifies me

I avoid all bathrooms now because i dont pass for one gender or another yet
i confuse people terribly O.o

https://youtu.be/Ov-ocQpQtrw <----but now we have people like this popping up all over the place...
and i cant help but have hope for the human race

https://youtu.be/qjGv6exoKkw

[storyspinner70]

This is the most amazing piece I've read yet on the bathroom issue.

https://driftingthrough.com/2016/04/...et-boycotters/

[Andrea]

I’m Proof Bathroom Bills Are Not Just a Transgender Issue
by Sally Kohn

http://time.com/4322953/north-carolina-mississippi-bathroom-bills/

I’m a lesbian and I fear public restroom confrontations

I hate using public restrooms. Airports and rest stops are my least favorite. I avoid locker rooms whenever possible. But really every restroom is bad. In fact, it happened to me just the other day in my fancy office building in New York City. I was at the sink, washing my hands, when a woman walked into the restroom and did a double take, first looking at me and then looking back at the sign on the still-open door of the restroom. Was she in the wrong place? Or, implicitly, was I?

I am a biological female who identifies as a woman. I am not, for any intents or purposes, transgender. But as a non-gender conforming butch lesbian, I have my own tiny window into our nation’s current political debate about bathrooms—the always looming fear that easily slips into shame, and the occasional outright harassment, all because I have to pee. And that’s from using the bathrooms that I “should” be using according to vicious anti-transgender bills sweeping the nation.

The first time I was actually yelled at in a bathroom, at least that I can remember, I was 19 years old. I was, and still am, 6’1″, but back then I had straight shoulder-length hair that dangled as awkwardly around my chin as everything else about me at that age. I was openly gay but still otherwise finding myself. I still wore dresses sometimes. Also awkwardly. I was a study abroad student in England on vacation in Bath. I don’t remember much of anything from the entire semester, but I remember going into some lavish hotel along the beach to use the bathroom and, while I was washing my hands at the sink, getting yelled at by a group of women.

One of them, standing next to me at the sink, yelled to her friends in the stalls: “There’s a boy in here!”

As the others came out, they loomed at me and shouted things like: “What are you doing in here?” and “You’re in the wrong place!”

And in a sense, they were right. It turns out the women were all part of a bridal shower, wearing those most conventionally feminine pastel dresses to participate in that most quintessentially heteronormative of traditions. They belonged—in that bathroom and in society more broadly—and I most certainly didn’t. And still don’t.

Whatever you might have heard to the contrary, the “bathroom bills” that have passed in North Carolina and Mississippi and are now pending in other states have nothing to do with public safety. The simple fact is that under existing laws, it is already a crime to dress up as a man or woman in order to falsely gain entry to any public restroom to harass or harm anyone. That is a crime in states with transgender legal protections and a crime in states without such laws. Fox News anchor Chris Wallace noted that such crimes have not taken place in communities that have transgender rights laws.

What these “bathroom bills” are actually about is enforcing traditional gender codes and norms in an increasingly diverse and shifting America. Single-sex restrooms just like single-sex dormitories have always been rooted in compulsory heteronormativity and the sense that we have to protect women from men who can’t expect to be reigned in. This still echoes today, as when an all-male elite club at Harvard University suggested that allowing women to join would increase the potential for sexual assault. And notice that no one seems to worry about pedophiles being forced to use the little boy’s room instead. The point is that girls need protecting.

And femininity must be protected, too. Or even enforced. A video that recently went viral shows a woman being forcibly evicted from a restroom because she looks more masculine. Should women not only have to be born women to use the ladies room but wear skirts? Maybe have their hair a certain length and curled?

That moment in the restroom in England, I blurted out something like “I am a girl!” and then rushed out in tears. I wiped my eyes and pretended with my friends that it was no big deal, joking that I should have flashed the women my breasts and said: “Here are my ID cards!” And I’ve thought of a million more clever comebacks ever since. But it was a big deal, and it still is. Those women weren’t just confronting my right to pee but my right to belong—my right to be just as much female as they were, even if I wasn’t female in their exact way. They were questioning my right to feel like I was in the right place and the right body not because they decided I was but because I did.

That may scare the hell out of some people, that people born as men can transition to being women and women can be women and wear men’s clothes. But it’s a form of liberty and freedom—the sort our nation was supposedly founded on and we’re just now getting around to extending to everyone besides straight white men. I try to remember that, and to feel brave and confident, in my own skin, in my own style, in my own stall, every time I have to pee.

[BullDog]

Great article Andrea. I stand with my transgender brothers and sisters whether these horrible laws effect me or not, but I know as a butch that I could be affected as well. It makes it less safe for all non-conforming gender people and doesn't make it any more safer for those who may be assumed to conform to their gender. And of course these laws and movements make it less safe as well beyond public bathrooms.

[morningstar55]

Originally Posted by BullDog

Great article Andrea. I stand with my transgender brothers and sisters whether these horrible laws effect me or not, but I know as a butch that I could be affected as well. It makes it less safe for all non-conforming gender people and doesn't make it any more safer for those who may be assumed to conform to their gender. And of course these laws and movements make it less safe as well beyond public bathrooms.

I agree with you BulDog ... that was a great article and made me think of the same exact incident of Electro and I in a bathroom 1 time washing our hands and talking and a lady walked in ... but walked back out when she seen us .. then look at the sign on the door ... but never came back in. .. but never said anything either that we know of.

[*Anya*]

Woman who donated hair to cancer patients mistaken for trans woman and harassed in bathroom

Has North Carolina’s anti-transgender bathroom bill created an environment of fear and paranoia in public restrooms? One woman named Aimee Toms, who was recently harassed in a Walmart restroom after someone mistook her for a transgender woman, believes that it has.

Danbury News Times reports that Toms was accosted by another woman while she was washing her hands in a Walmart bathroom in Danbury, Connecticut. Toms was wearing a baseball hat and she had very short hair because she recently donated her hair to a charity that makes wigs for children with cancer.

She said that she was approached by a complete stranger in the bathroom and was told that “You’re disgusting!” and “You don’t belong here!” The 22-year-old Toms posted a video on Facebook talking about how the experience opened her eyes to the abuse that transgender people face every day.

“After experiencing the discrimination they face firsthand, I cannot fathom the discrimination transgender people must face in a lifetime,” she said. “Can you imagine going out every day and having people tell you you should not be who you are or that people will not accept you as who you are?”

Toms also linked her experience back to the current debate over whether transgender people should be allowed to use the public bathrooms of the gender that they identify with.



http://www.rawstory.com/2016/05/woma...d-in-restroom/

[DapperButch]

Originally Posted by *Anya*

Woman who donated hair to cancer patients mistaken for trans woman and harassed in bathroom

Has North Carolina’s anti-transgender bathroom bill created an environment of fear and paranoia in public restrooms? One woman named Aimee Toms, who was recently harassed in a Walmart restroom after someone mistook her for a transgender woman, believes that it has.

Danbury News Times reports that Toms was accosted by another woman while she was washing her hands in a Walmart bathroom in Danbury, Connecticut. Toms was wearing a baseball hat and she had very short hair because she recently donated her hair to a charity that makes wigs for children with cancer.

She said that she was approached by a complete stranger in the bathroom and was told that “You’re disgusting!” and “You don’t belong here!” The 22-year-old Toms posted a video on Facebook talking about how the experience opened her eyes to the abuse that transgender people face every day.

“After experiencing the discrimination they face firsthand, I cannot fathom the discrimination transgender people must face in a lifetime,” she said. “Can you imagine going out every day and having people tell you you should not be who you are or that people will not accept you as who you are?”

Toms also linked her experience back to the current debate over whether transgender people should be allowed to use the public bathrooms of the gender that they identify with.



http://www.rawstory.com/2016/05/woma...d-in-restroom/

This just highlights for me again my concern that there will be an increase in harassment for gender non-conforming butches. I believe that it will level out and things will go back to "normal" (you know, the "normal" intensity/frequency of harassment butches are used to dealing with <eyeroll>), but I don't know how long that will be.

The other thing to keep in mind though, is that there really isn't any way to know if harassment in bathrooms is increasing or if it is just being publicized.

Too, I am wondering if butches who are often suspected as being male are feeling more anxious now when using bathrooms?

What is stupid about this whole thing, is that I can see the possibility of butches choosing to start using men's room just for safety. Guys don't notice.

I started using the men's room as soon as I started testosterone. It takes a while to see some changes happen. Point is, I looked the exact same. I wasn't hassled at all (unlike the women's room), and I was amazed at how much more relaxed I was. I used to have such crazy high anxiety going into the women's room. As soon as I started using the men's that all abated. I wish I had started using the men's restroom years before I decided that taking testosterone was right for me.

However, if I were a woman identified butch, I would be pissed off at the idea that using the men's room is the only way I would feel "safe". I would also feel like I was giving into the boxes of gender conformity that I had fought against my whole life.

[morningstar55]

Originally Posted by DapperButch

This just highlights for me again my concern that there will be an increase in harassment for gender non-conforming butches. I believe that it will level out and things will go back to "normal" (you know, the "normal" intensity/frequency of harassment butches are used to dealing with <eyeroll>), but I don't know how long that will be.

The other thing to keep in mind though, is that there really isn't any way to know if harassment in bathrooms is increasing or if it is just being publicized.

Too, I am wondering if butches who are often suspected as being male are feeling more anxious now when using bathrooms?

What is stupid about this whole thing, is that I can see the possibility of butches choosing to start using men's room just for safety. Guys don't notice.

I started using the men's room as soon as I started testosterone. It takes a while to see some changes happen. Point is, I looked the exact same. I wasn't hassled at all (unlike the women's room), and I was amazed at how much more relaxed I was. I used to have such crazy high anxiety going into the women's room. As soon as I started using the men's that all abated. I wish I had started using the men's restroom years before I decided that taking testosterone was right for me.

However, if I were a woman identified butch, I would be pissed off at the idea that using the men's room is the only way I would feel "safe". I would also feel like I was giving into the boxes of gender conformity that I had fought against my whole life.

living in the country up in this area where there is a lot of farms and some of them farm girls whom 100% straight .... but have masculine features ... I'm sure have or will run into a issue with this whole mess.