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The people really concerned about "but I need to be able to use the bathroom I identify with" are the ones who, to be blunt, don't pass. Who have something that says "not biological/cis female" about them - I don't see much fuss about trans men using bathrooms and again, to be blunt, that's because a short, plump trans guy is a lot less of a threat to cis males than the other way round.
"I look insufficiently female so that I am in fear of being challenged" is behind a lot of the fuss around trans women wanting laws about bathrooms. And yeah, the creepers are going to take advantage of that. Buck Angel, to take your example, looks sufficiently male that using the men's room isn't going to stand out particularly. Now imagine someone who looks like Buck Angel in a skirt going into the women's room. That's the problem.
Or is it because the typical trans man is less interested in being a man than the typical trans woman wants to be a woman?
Of course trans men don’t want to be women- that’s the whole point- but I don’t hear about them hitting the gym To try to bodybuild or whatever. Trans women at least are wearing frilly dresses. Trans men seem to be aiming for something close to androgynous or at least desexualized.
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At least in my area of Europe, there is no fuss about anyone using men's bathrooms. Whenever there's a queue at the women's bathroom, but not the men's, cis women routinely use the men's bathroom, and I haven't heard anyone complain about it. This is not a new development, but has been going on for as long as I can think.
Men, contrary to women, don't have and don't expect reserved sex-segregated restrooms.
In the US we have them and do expect them, by and large. I certainly have never (edit: I remembered one occurrence, see below) observed women using the men's room, and it would be considered rude for one to do so.
You obviously have experienced a very different set of US restrooms than I have. I have regularly observed women using the men's room in the US and was mildly reprimanded as a child for complaining about feeling uncomfortable because of it.
That's interesting. The only time I have seen a woman use the men's room was in college, when this one girl would take a shower on our floor when she spent the night in her boyfriend's room. Multiple people complained to the RA about it, and he intervened to put a stop to it. Nobody (so far as I know) thought it was unreasonable to complain, even if they hadn't personally felt uncomfortable enough to do so. As an adult, I have never once seen a woman go into the men's room.
Taking a shower there is different.
Where I'm from (Canada) you routinely see the sort of thing JFKay talks about at crowded bars, concerts, and similar events, as long as the restroom in question allows for a reasonable amount of privacy.
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... Except for the law making it illegal in many states?
That seems like a fuss.
I seems like you're saying 'well Buck Angel can and should just casually break the law every day, it's no big deal'... Maybe if you're fighting for a law that you want lots of people to break every day, you should be fighting for a different law instead?
Listen, if people were passing bills that said 'You must have 1 year of HRT and FFS before using the women's room' in an effort specifically only to make sure trans women using the women's room mostly pass, that would still be contentious but it would at least be credible that that's what the laws are worried about and trying to fix.
That is not at all what the actual laws say, the actual laws say Buck Angel uses the women's room, and no one backing the laws in reality has any problem with that. The laws are anti-trans in concept, not just focused on a single set of outliers.
If the pro-trans lot didn't wave around Buck Angel every chance they got, I'd listen more attentively.
But since their 'sample case' isn't very convincing, I'm not bothered. I do think the illegal stuff was overdone, but on the other hand, if anyone now can predate - and yes, there are those who will take advantage - and there is no recourse because "well, it's the law and the ACLU took a court case and got a ruling", that does no favours to genuine trans people and only turns public opinion against them. That may be unfair, but it's how the world works.
I'll knock it back to you - which bathroom should the gay guy in drag use, as distinct from the trans woman dressed up like a clown, after drag queen story hour?
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What everyone wants is a law that says you cannot use a gendered bathroom if you don't pass as that gender. It's just a hard thing to define so they usually end up making it over or underinclusive on some other criteria.
I straightforwardly disagree. Maybe 'everyone' here wants that, but that's not at all how the politicians behind these laws talk about them.
But either way, I say again: you shouldn't be passing laws that criminalize hue swaths of actions you want to be legal.
If your goal really is just about the small subset of trans women who don't pass, find some narrower way to enforce that. If it's too inconvenient to be worth the effort, then it's not worth the effort.
Don't criminalize things you have no problem with just for the sake of convenience.
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No law is intended to make it illegal for TIFs to use the men's room, they're all designed to stop TIMs from using the women's room.
They have to be written in a neutral language, due to the 14th Amendment and the 1964 CRA. You know this, and I know this, and so does everyone else. I'm not sure why you're acting dumb about this issue.
???
You are agreeing with me that all of the laws apply to trans men and force them to use the women's room, but saying that's ok and good because they have to be written that way (for some reason), so it's ok that they criminalize things you don't want to be criminal?
If so, that is not how I want laws to work, you should not be criminalizing things you actively want people to do on the assumption they'll just break the law and it'll be fine. That seems entirely insane to me.
And I don't know where your confidence that Republican lawmakers have no problem with trans men is coming from. That's not what their rhetoric says, at all.
I'm not agreeing with you at all. You are both correct and missing the point.
I'm saying it's ancillary to the real point. An externality, if you will, nothing more.
For the same reason anyone has to put up with this delusional nonsense: 14A and CRA. Not just any reason.
It's ok to create laws that have externalities, yes, and to still support those laws despite the externalities, especially if you find them irrelevant.
These people are completely irrelevant when it comes to the controversies over sex segregation, in sport, in spaces, in restrooms. The problem is solely and exclusively with the men, not the women.
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