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defrogDISCLAIMER: I’m not very familiar with the transgender issue in general (see Point 8, below). I mean, yes, I’m aware that transgenders exist and face discrimination issues, etc. But I don’t know a lot about gender identity or understand how it works. So if this disqualifies me from commenting on this, you can stop reading now.
1. Transgenders in the US comprise somewhere around 0.3% of the population. So the scale of the “problem” the NC HB2 bill claims to be addressing is pretty small. (Put another way, it’s not like there’s going to be some massive transgender invasion of America’s washrooms.)
2. As near as I can tell, the NC law applies only to publicly funded facilities (i.e. government buildings, public schools, etc). Private businesses (such as, oh, say, Target) can legally set their own policies on washroom usage if they want.
3. Even so, the Justice Department has decided the law violates Title IX (which bars discrimination in education based on sex) and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which bans employment discrimination.
4. Apparently that’s partly thanks to Antonin Scalia (albeit unintentionally).
5. For the life of me I have no idea what HB2 supporters think they’re accomplishing with this law. I’m not sure which washrooms transgenders were using before, but I’m pretty sure hardly anyone noticed or cared until a group of conservative lawyers decided to make it an issue.
Many (if not all) transgenders tend to look and dress like the gender they identify with (or so I assume), which means the law basically requires trans guys who look/dress like ladies to use the men’s room and vice versa. If yr the kind of person who gets freaked out easily by transgenders, I don’t see how making them 100x more noticeable in a washroom setting is supposed to make you feel more at ease.
And of course, plenty of people who are not transgender don’t always conform with the physical appearance or dress codes associated with a specific gender. I predict a lot of false alarms and general embarrassment for everyone involved.
6. One justification I’ve heard for HB2 is that straight guys and/or child molesters will use the law as an excuse to go into the ladies room and rape them and their children or something.
A few points here: (1) that’s never happened in any other city or state with the same transgender washroom provisions, (2) if it ever does happen, it would still be illegal under such laws and (3) the only guys infiltrating ladies’ rooms at the moment seem to be from right-wing conservative groups trying to make some half-assed point that technically it can be done.
7. Police forces in NC have already stated for the record that they really have no game plan for enforcing HB2. And even if they bothered to try, HB2 contains no enforcement provisions or penalties.
Yes, there are a few reports in circulation of cops arresting people in NC, but one of them is an outright fake and the other one not only didn’t happen in NC, it apparently happened at least six months before the NC law was passed. I’m sure we will start seeing some real incidents like this sooner or later. But I think they’ll be the exception to the rule, though I’m sure the magic of social media will blow them way the hell out of proportion – just like it does with everything else.
8. One key caveat: my above comments pertain mainly to washrooms. Locker rooms are a different matter, because some level of socially acceptable public nudity is involved, which lowers the privacy bar, and makes it more difficult for transgenders to blend in mainly unnoticed.
NOTE: This may not be the problem I imagine it might be. If any readers know otherwise, feel free to comment. And I'll stress here that I'm not personally afraid of encountering transgenders in the changing room. But I'll admit, I would be doing a double take and wondering if I'm in the wrong room, if you see what I'm saying.
To my mind, that's not transphobia – that's the product of cultural mores about gender identities and roles that have been deeply embedded into our social and psychological DNA, which means that sharing locker room space with someone who is not the same biological gender is going to feel odd (at first), and it’s going to take at least several generations for cisgender people to get over that.
The same is true of transgenderism in general. Gender identity is a concept a lot of cisgender people don’t fully grasp (including me – I didn’t even know what “cisgender” meant until I did some research for this post). That’s no reason not to pass anti-discrimination laws addressing it, of course. My point is that there’s a lot of cultural baggage for most people to overcome, and it will take a long time for them to achieve that.
I don’t think this can be understated, because some people think the way to help them overcome that baggage is to scream “FUCK YOU, YOU FUCKING BIGOT!” at them until they just shut up. That’s counterproductive, IMO – a lot of “tranphobes” are really just people who just need to be better educated about transgenderism and given time to process it. Screaming insults at them won’t make them wiser or sympathetic. It will arguably make things worse.
Who’s the woman who’s the man,
This is dF
1. Transgenders in the US comprise somewhere around 0.3% of the population. So the scale of the “problem” the NC HB2 bill claims to be addressing is pretty small. (Put another way, it’s not like there’s going to be some massive transgender invasion of America’s washrooms.)
2. As near as I can tell, the NC law applies only to publicly funded facilities (i.e. government buildings, public schools, etc). Private businesses (such as, oh, say, Target) can legally set their own policies on washroom usage if they want.
3. Even so, the Justice Department has decided the law violates Title IX (which bars discrimination in education based on sex) and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which bans employment discrimination.
4. Apparently that’s partly thanks to Antonin Scalia (albeit unintentionally).
5. For the life of me I have no idea what HB2 supporters think they’re accomplishing with this law. I’m not sure which washrooms transgenders were using before, but I’m pretty sure hardly anyone noticed or cared until a group of conservative lawyers decided to make it an issue.
Many (if not all) transgenders tend to look and dress like the gender they identify with (or so I assume), which means the law basically requires trans guys who look/dress like ladies to use the men’s room and vice versa. If yr the kind of person who gets freaked out easily by transgenders, I don’t see how making them 100x more noticeable in a washroom setting is supposed to make you feel more at ease.
And of course, plenty of people who are not transgender don’t always conform with the physical appearance or dress codes associated with a specific gender. I predict a lot of false alarms and general embarrassment for everyone involved.
6. One justification I’ve heard for HB2 is that straight guys and/or child molesters will use the law as an excuse to go into the ladies room and rape them and their children or something.
A few points here: (1) that’s never happened in any other city or state with the same transgender washroom provisions, (2) if it ever does happen, it would still be illegal under such laws and (3) the only guys infiltrating ladies’ rooms at the moment seem to be from right-wing conservative groups trying to make some half-assed point that technically it can be done.
7. Police forces in NC have already stated for the record that they really have no game plan for enforcing HB2. And even if they bothered to try, HB2 contains no enforcement provisions or penalties.
Yes, there are a few reports in circulation of cops arresting people in NC, but one of them is an outright fake and the other one not only didn’t happen in NC, it apparently happened at least six months before the NC law was passed. I’m sure we will start seeing some real incidents like this sooner or later. But I think they’ll be the exception to the rule, though I’m sure the magic of social media will blow them way the hell out of proportion – just like it does with everything else.
8. One key caveat: my above comments pertain mainly to washrooms. Locker rooms are a different matter, because some level of socially acceptable public nudity is involved, which lowers the privacy bar, and makes it more difficult for transgenders to blend in mainly unnoticed.
NOTE: This may not be the problem I imagine it might be. If any readers know otherwise, feel free to comment. And I'll stress here that I'm not personally afraid of encountering transgenders in the changing room. But I'll admit, I would be doing a double take and wondering if I'm in the wrong room, if you see what I'm saying.
To my mind, that's not transphobia – that's the product of cultural mores about gender identities and roles that have been deeply embedded into our social and psychological DNA, which means that sharing locker room space with someone who is not the same biological gender is going to feel odd (at first), and it’s going to take at least several generations for cisgender people to get over that.
The same is true of transgenderism in general. Gender identity is a concept a lot of cisgender people don’t fully grasp (including me – I didn’t even know what “cisgender” meant until I did some research for this post). That’s no reason not to pass anti-discrimination laws addressing it, of course. My point is that there’s a lot of cultural baggage for most people to overcome, and it will take a long time for them to achieve that.
I don’t think this can be understated, because some people think the way to help them overcome that baggage is to scream “FUCK YOU, YOU FUCKING BIGOT!” at them until they just shut up. That’s counterproductive, IMO – a lot of “tranphobes” are really just people who just need to be better educated about transgenderism and given time to process it. Screaming insults at them won’t make them wiser or sympathetic. It will arguably make things worse.
Who’s the woman who’s the man,
This is dF
