Age of the Geek

By: 
Travis Fischer

Potty pettiness
 
     Having utterly and completely lost the cultural battle against gay people, social conservatives have moved on to the next battle line in their never ending mission to be on the wrong side of history.
     Their new target for bullying: Transgendered people.
     Personally, I don’t understand trans people. I fall along the line of thinking that genders are defined by people, not the other way around. For instance, I am a male. Being male doesn’t define me. My actions and traits contribute to the greater pool of actions and traits that define what it means to be male.
     But whatever. It’s easy for me to say that when I’m not an outlier. If somebody out there realizes that they have more in common with the average woman than the average man, I’m not going to lose any sleep over it.
     But you know who is losing sleep? People in North Carolina. If by “sleep” you mean “money.”
     Last March, North Carolina Republicans haphazardly slapped together a bill that superseded an anti-discrimination ordinance passed in Charlotte, dictating that men and women must use the restroom that matches the gender of their birth. The same bill also prohibited cities from raising their minimum wage above the state level. Because to the GOP, “small government” is apparently defined as “whichever level they control.”
     Response to the bill has been interesting, to say the least. Unlike the cultural battle for gay rights, economic powerhouses are jumping off the fence much faster and harder. PayPal has cancelled plans for an expansion that would have brought 400 jobs. Lionsgate pulled production of a show. Bruce Springsteen canceled a concert and several other events have been relocated.
     The Center for American Progress estimates that this law has threatened more than half a billion dollars of economic activity. If this keeps up, Raul Castro is going to have to visit the U.S. to discuss lifting economic sanctions on North Carolina.
     And while Target hasn’t closed any stores, they have weighed in on the matter, making it clear that transgendered people are welcome to use the bathroom that corresponds with their identity, not necessarily their biology.
     Naturally, the American Family Association has called for a boycott. Somehow I doubt their economic retaliation is going to have the same effect.
     Not surprisingly, this is a situation where people clearly haven’t thought things through.
     Trans people have been around for quite a while. Gender reassignment surgery is a century old and people have been dressing in drag for far longer. For all the people out there seemingly terrified of trans people, I’m curious which bathrooms they thought they were using all this time.
     This one simple point pretty much undercuts any argument one might have about the issue. The whole point of Target’s statement was to reassert that their policy wasn’t changing. If you were comfortable with the thought of using a Target restroom last month, nothing has changed between then and now.
     There is no army of “bathroom predators” out there just waiting for permission to put on a dress and assault women in a public restroom. We know this because transgender protections have been federal law for years and it hasn’t happened.
     Oh sure, you have outliers like that guy who was arrested for lewd conduct in that airport restroom, or that other guy that got busted in a park restroom for offering $20 to perform a… wait… no, sorry. Those weren’t transgendered people. Those were Republican Congressmen.
     The point is, lewd conduct is frowned on no matter which restroom you’re in. The vast majority of people, even transgendered people and Congressional Republicans, just want to do their business in peace.
     For some reason, I’ve seen a lot of people worried about women being exposed to male genitals in the ladies room if we (continue to) allow trans women to use the restroom of their preference. This seems like a pretty irrational fear.
     I’m not sure what it’s like on the other side of the wall, but in my many years of using the men’s room there’s generally very little eye contact, much less exposure of genitalia. And that is an environment where men are asked to stand next to each other and urinate in the open.
     I have it on good authority that the ladies room offers considerably greater privacy. Which brings me to my next point.
     How exactly do you enforce this law anyway?
     It’s a bathroom, not an airport security checkpoint. Now, again, maybe things work differently in the ladies room, but I’ve never had to flash my credentials before lining up to use the stall.
     Is North Carolina planning on implementing a statewide program of bathroom police? I don’t think they’re going to have the money for such an initiative.
     Of course, the clearest evidence that North Carolina didn’t think this law through is that, in their zeal to make sure transgendered women couldn’t use the ladies room, they failed to consider the alternative.
     A lot of people aren’t comfortable with the idea of sharing a restroom with somebody who was born the opposite sex. Fair enough.
     So instead of putting women in a situation where they have to wonder if the blonde in the red dress washing her hands was born a man, now they get to share their restroom experience with a broad shouldered bearded man who was born a girl.
     Meanwhile, the blonde in the red dress has to click her high-heels passed the line of guys relieving themselves at urinals.
     Yep… that sounds like a really comfortable situation for everybody involved.
 
     Travis Fischer is a news writer for Mid-America Publishing and doesn’t care where you go as long as you wash your hands when you’re done.

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