I looked at your first link. A reactionary, biased web site that claims people MAY be fired for being LGBT, yet sites no instances of this actually happening. I agree that the LGBT community deserves the same rights as the rest of us. I do not agree that the rest of us should significantly alter our lives to mold to their ideals. You mentioned earlier that the whole bathroom/locker room/dressing room thing seems to resonate with me. It does. Let me explain why: I have nieces, cousins, and friends that are female and I'm very protective of them, as most people of my generation were brought up to be. Statistics say that 1 in 5 females have been sexually assaulted, and in most of those cases the assailant was a male. Now the LGBT wants to allow guys into what has traditionally been a safe space for females, a place where they're the most vulnerable. The LGBT community doesn't seem to give a fuck about these actual victims and the repercussions their ideals may have on them, their only concern is their own perceived victimization. Is it that fucking difficult to use a gender neutral space that has been provided specifically for you and not make others uncomfortable? If it is, fuck you. You don't want equal rights, you want rights tailored to just for you. And I have a problem with that.
I Dude, they are facts. I stated that it is not against the law in many states for one to be fired for being gay, you asked for sources, the article and wikipedia page i linked to verify my statement. I also find it ironic that your issue seems to be that because there aren't a huge number of instances where people are fired for being gay (which, I would argue there are many cases of people being fired for being, though mostly through church organizations), there shouldn't be laws protecting LGBT people from such cases, when in fact there are hardly any cases where a man has assaulted a women in a bathroom as a result of laws that prohibit discrimination against transgender people. http://www.vox.com/2015/10/20/9576343/hero-houston-bathroom-myth Do me a favor and read through the link I provided. I'll say this again; an ordinance prohibiting discrimination against LGBT has nothing to do with a man going into a ladies bathroom and assaulting someone. If a man goes into a women's bathroom and peers over the stall at a women going to the bathroom, that's illegal. Anti-discrimination laws don't all of a sudden make that ok. One more link that highlights how the "man in a women's bathroom" argument doesn't really work in reality: http://www.advocate.com/politics/tr...espond-bathroom-bills-wejustneedtopee-selfies Finally, let me again say that I get why people are uncomfortable with the idea of men who identify as women in a girl's locker room or bathroom. My argument has never been that people have no right to be taken aback or upset with such a situation, and if they are they are bigots. But your concerns have nothing to do with ordinances meant to protect LGBT against discrimination.
Ok hows about we makes a deal? Guys won't go into woman's bathrooms claiming to be females just to see female's naught bits if those fab post op trannies won't fuck guys without telling them they used to be dudes? It'll be Mutually Assured Destruction. We'll promise not ruin it for everyone. Ive watched enough efukt to know there are freaks on both ends that just can't wait to do this.
You keep saying "let guys into the women's restroom", but really it's "let women into the women's restroom." There's no real reason that trans people should only be allowed to use gender neutral bathrooms, in my opinion. As far as I can tell, there are zero cases of trans people sexually assaulting other people in bathrooms. Pull quote: "Although hundreds of trans-inclusive nondiscrimination ordinances have been in force in cities around the country for several decades, there has never been a verifiable, reported instance of a trans person harassing a cisgender person, nor have there been any confirmed reports of male predators "pretending" to be transgender to gain access to women's spaces and commit crimes against them." This jibes with my anecdotal experience that the last thing most trans people want to do is call a whole bunch of attention to their gender identity. Because then, you know, people beat and kill them for it. Also, this conversation seems centered around trans women, but should trans men be using the women's bathroom? Because it's going to cause way more of a fuss if he uses the women's bathroom, than if she does:
Oh, so this is all for women's safety? I'm glad we're all militant feminists now. I'm sorry if I don't buy that's the real concern with these people who also scoff at tons of other women's safety concerns and are always sticking up for the sanctity of (cis) men in other situations , not to mention also scoffing at gun control measures saying what people are and are not allowed to do because "criminals don't care about the law anyway." You know what a guy itchin to rape, assault, or perv on some women in the bathroom or locker room has to do now? Open a door. I really don't think they're going to put in all that extra effort to first mockingly pretend to be transgender and burst in. Or are they first going to take the time to attempt to pass as transgender so that they can slip in undetected? Because man that seems a little silly when they can just open a door today. Or is it that actual transgender people are supposed to be the ones doing all this assaulting? Because that's a thing with transgender people, they just love raping women? Just like all gay men are pedophiles or whatever the conversation was a few decades ago? Because come on, this is all the same conversation just replacing "gay" with "trans" and this grasping at justification for it is tiring. Oh wait no but we don't hate trans people we just hate that our own lives have to change so much. Thankfully, as someone who has spent a lot more time around trans people and places actively working to be inclusive towards trans people than someone hanging out in the middle of the desert, I can report that my life has not been affected whatsoever. You know what the worst experience I had sharing a bathroom with a trans woman was? She told me I should probably fix my makeup, but like, in a real shady way. I'm still mad at that bitch. And where are all these places that have a male, female, AND gender neutral bathroom? Because they sound pretty cool. Or are trans people supposed to leave wherever they are and go wandering around looking for another place that only has gender neutral bathrooms and see if they'll let them use it and then go back to where they were? Because as someone who's pissed in an alleyway several times because no one has let me just use their bathroom I can attest to the fact that's not going to be easy. Or are trans women supposed to use the male bathrooms? Because yeah I'm sure the same men complaining about this are going to love that. I hear if you cross streams with one that makes you instagay. I'm sorry, but I just have very little sympathy for straight white men complaining about how they have to adjust their lives, whether it's about what they can say or who pees where or whatever the fuck else people have been getting on about these past few pages. The entire world was built to accommodate straight white men and everyone else has been adjusting to it and now that's changing and I just don't think it's that tragic for them to now have to put in the slightest amount of effort - most often just a change of a state of mind - to accommodate women or minorities or gay people or trans people. Just. Get. Over it. (And to be fair, if there really are women who are concerned for their safety with trans women being "allowed" to pee near them - and I really haven't heard from any, it's only been straight men in a tizzy about it- they can fuck right off too.)
Or people can just go to the bathroom and not concern themselves about who is in the next stall. It's a bathroom, you're with people in there for 5 minutes and then never see them again. It's not a huge deal.
Well, y'all are talking about hypothetical toilet situations. What of the trans-boy/girl/person who wanted to change in the girl's locker room? I can see teenage girls, in their insecure and formative years, having a bit of an issue with a person who may identify as a girl but still has cock and balls being in various states of undress with them. I'm a filthy progressive and even that gives me a bit of pause. Adults? Who gives a fuck, get over it. Not to say my issue is with some "protecting the children" nonsense, but they are still kids with vastly different toilet parts they may not even understand properly themselves. This is one of my few old white man issues with cases like this. It's easy to say to the girls to deal and act like adults, learn something about the world larger. But statistically, some of those girls have been raped by family members and you're making them change in front of a biological male.
So, I get the stick in the brain about locker rooms a lot more than bathrooms, but it's still something that I don't really think is an issue once people take a little bit of time to think beyond the initial reaction to something they don't understand and might make them a little uncomfortable at first because of that. Again, going back to the first wave of gay rights, it's just like having gay people in the locker room and is really less of a big deal because a trans person is most likely to be attracted to the sex that's in the opposite locker room that they're using. Even if they were, and they were just existing around someone who was raped or molested, when it comes to triggers "being around someone of the opposite biological sex who might possibly want to have sex with me if opportunity presented itself" typically isn't one of them. And again, when this argument gets trotted out by the same people who are so incredibly defensive and protective of cis men whenever women speak up against things that make assault survivors uncomfortable, I just can't help but think it's disingenuous. As for women who have not been assaulted or have but would not be triggered by it but would still rather not see dicks hanging around when they're not really in the mind set for them (and vice versa for men with trans women), which I think is the most fair sticking point, for the most part, outside of a porn studio, if a trans woman still has a penis, it's probably something they're trying to be discreet about, not aggressively flaunting it in everyone's faces. In the end, I think there is a lot less danger to a woman maybe unexpectedly catching a glimpse of a flaccid wang and being taken aback than for a trans women attempting to casually change in the averages men's locker room, regardless of age.
I don't think the issue is with actual trans people using a room, it's non-trans people claiming to be trans to take advantage of the lack of visual validation of gender that's been afforded people up until now. There are already cases where male students in high schools are claiming to be trans to get access to the girls locker room. Who's to say they're actually trans? Who's to say they're not and are taking advantage of the situation?
Both sides of these arguments are based on a lot theories and "maybes." Maybe a trans male will get beat up in a men's locker room. Maybe a trans women will let his penis flip out in front of a 15 year old girl in a women's locker room. Probable occurrences of both are pretty low because the proportion of society that's trans is a tiny fraction of the whole. Whether you are strangely uncomfortable around transsexuals or if you have a weird vendetta against white men, it doesn't matter. All the hypotheticals and straw men in the universe don't add up to anything.
I think the bigger issue that the "trans thing" is leading toward is the hangup that we seem to have around sexuality in general. Until a nip-slip won't evoke a national outrage or a pair of tits can't be blurred out on tv, trans is the least of the issues. Never mind sex-ed in schools.
This is misguided in several ways. 1. Visual validation is a significantly more arbitrary standard of gender. If we're talking high school, what do you do about the boys who like to wear skirts and makeup? Or the flat-chested girls with short hair? 2. California has had similar rules in place for a decade now. There have been no reported instances of misconduct in which a cisgendered student pretended to be trans to gain access to a different bathroom. 3. This is because these rules aren't solely confined to the space in the locker room. You can't casually decide that you're a trans student after gym and then go back to being cis after you've started changing. Eligibility is usually determined on a case by case basis (it has been in CA), and the amount that a student would have to go through to be allowed in the girls locker room would be way more trouble than just putting on some "visual validation" (see 1). 4. The idea that a student would pretend to be trans has no real basis, not even anecdotally. Few people would pretend to go through something that difficult, and fewer still would do it just to get to make a bunch of people uncomfortable in the locker room. 5. What does have real basis is the fact that trans people get harassed a whole lot. In high school, out of high school, in public, etc. etc. In my opinion, it makes very little sense to worry about the 0% of men pretending to be trans to access female locker rooms, and a whole lot of sense to worry about the 53% of trans people who have faced harassment, the 40% who will attempt suicide and the 15% that live in serious poverty, in no small part due to identity collision.
#checkyourprivilege Here's a little blanket commentary: It really shocks me to see young people today arguing for safe places, social justice and concerning themselves with a percentage of one percent of the population when such terrible things happen in the world elsewhere. You look selfish and entitled. These are first world problems that people looking at the big picture don't have time for and cause them to discount you. For instance, read this: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-11-06/congress-proposes-chilling-resolution-social-security I know some of you don't trust ZH so look at what the GAO has to say: http://www.gao.gov/cghome/portland1201/img11.html Look. I get it, everyone is self absorbed and has their own little pet cause but it's time to be serious: This country is in real trouble and we can't sit around arguing about trannies in bathrooms.
I think people concern themselves with these issues because the discrimination is so unnecessary. This is America, one of the few places where you can live in plain view, not hide shamefully in the shadows. Legally. We've had generations of discrimination, hate, ostracization and thanks to the internets, people have fomented a movement comparable in exposure to the 60s civil rights movement. The reasoning behind that movement is suspect (ego, armchair warriors, liberal arts degrees), but the ultimate outcome is a positive. To say because X has it worse, doesn't mean something else should be ignored. That's a specious argument. Constitutional Rights ARE A BIG FUCKING DEAL.
Don't be an asshole. The existence of other problems doesn't mean that we can't discuss this one. If you want to talk about another topic, talk. If you just want to shit on the topics that are here, show yourself out.
My first thought when I read something like this is good, they reap what they sow: Anonymous releases names of known KKK members http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/nov/06/anonymous-ku-klux-klan-name-leak But you have to think of how far reaching something like this might go in ruining someone's reputation/life/career much like the Ashley Madison thing. How responsible is Anonymous being with their due diligence that this is an accurate list and not a list of suspects or persons of interest? If someone really is a KKK member, good, let them be outed for their bullshit beliefs. But what happens to people who show up on those lists just due to being in wrong place at the wrong time? How hard would it be to disprove their involvement and save their reputations? Obviously with Ashley Madison it was people who willingly signed up, so they can't really deny anything, but this from what I've read is a stolen FBI list. How competent are they? How competent are anonymous at checking how the names were compiled, or do they care?
People support internet lynch mobs as long as they aren't on the receiving end of it. I have no love for the KKK, but for the exact reason you mentioned, its a shady thing to "release."