Gender and plumbing

Skepticism General Skepticism
1

Once we (well, some of us) got over hating each other over our skin’s Melanin content, it seems our private parts were next, and even more importantly, what we DID with our private parts. But with enough slogging we (well, some of us) got through thinking women couldn’t X or Y (pun intended), and eventually many barriers in their way fell. Then we (well, some of us) worked on not hating people who like people of their own gender. With some even more slogging we (well, some of us) are even getting over people who don’t want to identify as a specific gender, or who were born with ambiguous gender, or who want to be the opposite gender and then be homosexual… and so on and so forth etc. Turns out there’s nothing binary about gender. How I wish we could teach that to more people.

But now things in the gender arena seem to have gone completely haywire. Men’s Rights Activists are now having to fight in the USA for men’s rights after women have become the default victors in various legal arena’s including rape, domestic abuse, or child custody battles. But I think I’ve mentioned this before… I say it here for context…

Meanwhile feminists are trying to shut up (and succeeding) any public discourse that disagrees with their agenda at the expense of science, education and pretty much everyone.

And then we get to my current gripe: Determining gender for the purposes of propagating tradition. More specifically: Where should you be allowed to defecate?

Yes gentle-gender-neutral-persons, this is where we find ourselves. As the US has exploded into a battle for the potty, (reminiscent to me of racial segregation laws), the great problem of the modern world is whether you are woman enough to go to the ladies’ room. Bravo!

And almost immediately people start getting it wrong. I’m so surprised! Are you surprised? 'Cause I sure am!

I put to you, that our deeply-ingrained beliefs about how the world is supposed to work wrt gender are so wrong that even those progressives trying to fight for the rights of the transgendered have their argument all wrong. Even they are too indoctrinated to notice the base assumptions they are making. They lack the imagination to see a truly different world.

Let me tell you what I think, and then please question it for me:

This is not a “new” problem of course, this could’ve been happening happily for 100’s of years and nobody would’ve been the wiser because to most people “transsexuals” didn’t exist until just the other day. (There is no Pedi word for it, after all). But moreover even if transsexuals did not exist it was still a problem, just not one that really seemed to matter to anyone in particular even though the implications are pretty much the same: Where should homosexuals go?

Is anyone under the impression that people who are sexually attracted to them haven’t in been their gym locker room checking out their naked goodies?
How is this fundamentally different to having women and men sharing a bathroom anyway?

Of course, on a practicality scale this can get out of hand very quickly. We can’t have seperate bathrooms for women, men, transsexuals who used to be men but now are women, and other transsexuals who went the other way, and pansexuals, and homosexuals, and asexuals… etc. This would be madness!

So what are we trying to prevent here? I surmise we don’t want “men” ogling “women” and we don’t want “women” ogling “men”, and we don’t want “men” ogling “men”, and so on and so forth. Part of my assumption questioning step would ask: “Well if gay men are checking my package out anyway what’s the problem with letting women do it?”… but let’s calm this down to “baby steps” for a moment. Our societies are 100’s of years away from contemplating that en-masse (outside of nudist colonies, of course).

A different objection that the US conservatives use, which I personally consider a conveniently made-up reason, is that there could be male predators that claim to be transsexual going into female bathrooms and presenting a danger to young girls. The assumption I’d like to question there is: Why do we always assume MEN are inherently more dangerous to minors than women? Like, at least 1/2 the school sex-scandals I’ve ever heard of were female teachers with male students. AT LEAST that. And given that sexual preferences can go either way with either gender… But I’ll tell you why: Feminist Propaganda. Men are the evil ones, men are not to be trusted, men beat their spouses, “1 out of 4 men” are a rapist, or a predator, or… and some equally laughable “statistics” that get quoted over and over and over. Drives me frikin insane. But anyway…

Brass tax: Would you leave a female toddler alone in a female restroom filled with strangers, and be sure when you returned they’d still be there? I surely wouldn’t!

Back to my main vein of thought: The real problem here, the one that everyone seems to be oblivious of: is that we have very little personal privacy in restrooms/locker rooms/toilets to begin with. How’s this for fucking insane: We take down the walls separating the men’s and women’s and actually apply our minds to some very extreme and drastic measures: Private showers, Nice, thick, stall doors and walls that reach ALL THE WAY to the floor and ceiling, private changing stalls in the case of locker-rooms/gyms. You know… CRAZY PERSON TALK!

Boom! All these gender problems disappear, we all have drastically improved privacy and more comfort using “the amenities”, and we don’t have to come up with new, imaginative, and arbitrary gender definitions we have to somehow guess at when determining who may enter. Basically, make the bathroom a public space like anywhere else.

I can dream.

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The whole storm over transsexuals and their bathroom facilities is probably just one more non-issue that Americans invented to worry about, so that they don’t have to fight the upcoming election about the real problems facing their country… :slight_smile:

3

Yar, it must be really uncomfortable to wash your hands next to this dressed up bitch with impeccable make up and the stunning shoes and calves to die for knowing she lost her dangly bits under her skirt a year ago. Its fucked up to say the least. Im aware of three in our organisation and nobody is the wiser on outer appearances. Yesterday we celebrated the purple anti-homophobic day thingy at work and I gleefully accosted strangers sans the purple ribbon by asking them if they are homophobic and pinning the ribbon on them. Loads of inner giggles and fun…

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I once pushed a dear old queen to tell me if he’d ever consider a fling with a woman. He objected on technical grounds: “O god, no - it’s just far to complicated! I wouldn’t know what to do … it’s all flaps and buttons and levers down there!” :-X

Which has absolutely nothing to do with the topic of this thread, except maybe tangentially with plumbing…

Rigil

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Then there is this:

I can only imagine how many teenaged boys in those schools are suddenly going to realize that they are in fact transgendered… :slight_smile:

The article is a bit blunt. Still, I think one can in fact make a case that transgender people are mentally ill. If I wanted to have my feet amputated on the grounds that I feel uncomfortable in my body and have always felt that I am really, at heart, an amputee, I don’t think doctors will oblige. Neither will I be allowed to use the handicapped people’s parking space. :slight_smile:

But of course, if transgenderism is a mental disease, it is actually a fairly innocuous one, and I’m not sure we need to make an issue of it, or that we need government to get involved. Why can’t restaurant owners etc. not simply decide for themselves what their bathroom policy is (and, while we’re at it, their policy on smoking)?

Another point that occurred to me: why exactly is it necessary that some or other bureaucrat needs to know what is between my legs? In other words, why is it necessary that anyone should at all costs be either male or female, on official documentation? What would be the problem if we no longer had officially designated genders?

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Thinking back on my own teenage years, getting undressed in a group was bloody horrifying and led to all sorts of taunts and bullying, cant think that it would get any worse if they had to do it together. Which brings me to why the hell that is permitted in the first place. Lets embarrass the teenagers who have body issues already, Yeah! Lets make it worse! I hate societal norms… I mean, what is normal anyway?

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Yup Yup Yup.

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Or better, how many male gym teachers will discover the same thing?

The article is a bit blunt. Still, I think one can in fact make a case that transgender people are mentally ill. If I wanted to have my feet amputated on the grounds that I feel uncomfortable in my body and have always felt that I am really, at heart, an amputee, I don't think doctors will oblige. Neither will I be allowed to use the handicapped people's parking space. :-)

You’d be surprised at some of the “interesting” “gender” “identities” floating around out there.

Why can't restaurant owners etc. not simply decide for themselves what their bathroom policy is (and, while we're at it, their policy on smoking)?

And here’s where libertarianism can get a bit prickly. The same can be said for sex, religion, race, … there’s a thin line between complete autonomy and going back to apartheid and/or a world where a muslim majority makes all women wear a burqa to be able to function in their society, etc.

Another point that occurred to me: why exactly is it necessary that some or other bureaucrat needs to know what is between my legs? In other words, why is it necessary that anyone should at all costs be either male or female, on official documentation? What would be the problem if we no longer had officially designated genders?

Because how would the discriminate against you otherwise?

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Yes, one can imagine all manner of problems arising. My personal intuition is almost always a libertarian one. Whatever the laws, people who want ot discriminate may well do so anyway. If you don’t want black folks in your motel, you simply tell them you are fully booked, and it will be difficult to prove otherwise. Etc. etc.

We cannot eliminate any and all discrimination, whatever laws we make. Best we can hope for is to limit it to an acceptably low level, and I suspect that simple business interest will prevent most of it.

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Well, since we are here again. Allow me to rant a little due a deeply personal experience which altered my personal viewpoint and provided me with a rooted bias which I didnt have two years ago.

After 10 years of marriage my ex “decided” that he is indeed transgender and would henceforth dress as a woman and be addressed as a “she”. I wont go into details but allow me to say that I experienced three years of utter hell before I got myself out of that chaotic situation and another years worth of therapy and am still on anti depressants.

He told his conservative mother that she raised a daughter, he told me that he makes a better woman than I, he fired the maid who worked for us for 20 years because she slipped and called him “Tata” instead of “Mam”. He apparently identifies as a woman but is still attracted to women too, which I guess makes him transgendered lesbian?

I dont know, what I do know now is that if you are an adult and have had children and/or a marriage under your belt and then decide to “come out”, you are a liar and a thief. I find myself cool with the youth, but the older lot with their entitlements drives me into a rage. Lying about who you really are and stealing decades from another person’s life is unforgivable. The devastation is immense, the questions their “ex” partners have to deal with borders on victim blaming “how could you not know?”. The support for the affected partners is non existent, loads for the trannies but none for those around them.

Im here now, a few years later with an inherent disgust for these people which is quite the opposite of my previous liberal outlook. There are many “victims” in these situations, Im so sorry if you were confused but you are a liar, a thief, and an all round no good person if you dragged other people into your life to protect yourself and then one day demand the refer to you as a “she”.

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I’m very sorry to hear all of that Faerie. It is a sad tale indeed. There is a lot of pressure on people with different orientations to go “under cover” and hide who they really are, and as we can see here: The heartache it causes can be severe.

I can’t help but get flashbacks a post I made some time ago wrt my latter outlook on relationship exclusivity. One of my thoughts at the time, that I don’t seem to have raised there… I think I’ll go post.