C
ConfusedLucy
Guest
If the restroom only has one toilet there isn’t much point in two people trying to use it.
- Status
H
Hope1960
Guest
One restroom, multiple toilets, men and women allowed in at the same time.
T
TheAmazingGrace
Guest
That’s not what we’re talking about.
P
Pug
Guest
Not true. Where I went to college (shall remain nameless, but I did go) they had multi-sex restrooms (one stall of which was a large shower at the end) in several dorms. Oh yay.
Fortunately I was off-campus. But it was, shall we say, irritating when I was visiting friends.
H
Hope1960
Guest
Uh, maybe you should get out more.
K
KyPerson
Guest
I see this a lot. There are so many picture books about transgenders that are available for very small children.
T
TheLittleLady
Guest
I am a person who has a stark, startling physical difference. Every child I have encountered, or at least 99.99999999999997% of them, have never seen a person like me. My deformity cannot be masked or hidden. Kids are going to point and stare and say “mommy look!”, older kids/teens/adults ARE going to take pictures of me with their cell phone, they will mock me, call me names. Some kids will scream in terror when they see me! I know what it is like to be a freak in the grocery store.
How I wish that there were so many picture books available for very small children where they would be aware that people like me exist, that we are people, that we don’t like being the object of fear or ridicule. That they can simply smile and say “hello” or ask me my name, picture books are very valuable for teaching children how to be kind citizens.
So, for a moment, think of how your child might react to seeing me, or to seeing a trans-person, at the store tomorrow. Wouldn’t you want your child to not react with revulsion or fear or inordinate curiosity, but, to simply be kind and respectful?
How I wish that there were so many picture books available for very small children where they would be aware that people like me exist, that we are people, that we don’t like being the object of fear or ridicule. That they can simply smile and say “hello” or ask me my name, picture books are very valuable for teaching children how to be kind citizens.
So, for a moment, think of how your child might react to seeing me, or to seeing a trans-person, at the store tomorrow. Wouldn’t you want your child to not react with revulsion or fear or inordinate curiosity, but, to simply be kind and respectful?
P
PetraG
Guest
Those who want to commit offenses against others without getting caught look for places in which their intended victim is both vulnerable to attack and isolated from help. Multi-user bathrooms provide such an opportunity. This is not just people looking to commit sexual offenses, but also those who just want to get someone alone to intimidate them or to verbally or physically abuse them.
Single-user bathrooms largely remove that opportunity.
Single-user bathrooms also give a place to tend to very personal needs in a setting that actually is private.
I remember someone complaining to an advice columnist about people who floss their teeth at the mirrors in public bathrooms, because she didn’t want to see them picking at their teeth.
The columnists answer: Where are they supposed to do it?
Very often, what is very necessary for a few is very welcome for nearly everyone at one time or another. (I include wheelchair accessibility in that…how wonderful that was when my twins were in their double stroller!!)
Last edited:
P
PetraG
Guest
Yes, I have a relative who is transgender. He is very certain he is a woman. He is not a woman. He has a female name now and he wears women’s clothing and people at work refer to him as a “she,” but that is a concession the law gives him. The law doesn’t change reality.
In any other case when someone presents to a psychiatrist with a personal view of themselves that is at odds with the physical facts concerning themselves, we consider the patient to be suffering from confusion or dysphoria. In this single instance, though, the patient’s personal view is considered correct and all evidence to the contrary is irrelevant. The “treatment” is to tell the patient that their personal view is correct and everyone else is ignorantly afflicting them with their unfair expectations. They are even given medications and sometimes also surgery to change their appearance, enabling them to feel more comfortable with their self-assessment and to lead other people to treat them according to their preferred gender stereotypes.
Let’s hope this doesn’t become the general solution to treat patients who suffer from a dysphoria. Just because someone thinks he is a chicken doesn’t mean the rest of us do not know what it really means to belong to the class we call poultry. We don’t have an “assigned species” and with the exception of a very few people who are ambiguous even in a physical sense, we don’t have an “assigned” gender, either. We have a gender, and some people have serious psychological difficulties coping with theirs. That doesn’t make them bad people or needing to be locked up as crazy, it may even mean that society needs to rethink their expectations of the sexes, but it does mean they’re suffering from a confusion that is afflicting them.
Last edited:
P
Pug
Guest
Okay, thanks for answering me, I guess I just don’t get it. I see no reason someone couldn’t hide behind the door in there. It would be less likely if the light were permanently “on”.
I am actually creeped out going into a room at my work (huge public, open building) if no one is nearby (evenings) because it is fairly small, windowless, and until I walk into the middle of the room, the automatic light does not come on. I’m not the only one who sees this room in this way.
A
amt1985
Guest
Exactly. I’m confused about a lot of things; my gender isn’t one of them.
P
Pug
Guest
I agree they are small, but with big, handicapped accessible doors. The lurker is ready, I am not. They’ll just grab an arm or whatnot to unbalance me the instant they see me and shove the door shut.
Maybe I had too many people get me with “boo!” as a child. No worries.
Maybe I had too many people get me with “boo!” as a child. No worries.
C
ConfusedLucy
Guest
That’s different and I agree I would not be comfortable using one as a woman without bringing someone to chaperone me.
J
JimG
Guest
Well, there was (still is?) the recent fad of teen werewolf romances. Will we now be seeing teen transgender werewolf romance novels?
P
PJH_74
Guest
I still don’t understand why people who are offended by transgender people would be against this, it makes moot one of the few real arguments regarding the social standards affected.
A
amt1985
Guest
As I said above, if my local library when I was a child had had any LGBT+ related material, it would’ve made my childhood a LOT less confusing, and quite a bit less traumatic, too. My family prevented me from even talking about it, which meant I had no idea what was going on. I was stuck trying to figure it out on my own, without any resources or information to help me make sense of it. All I knew was that I couldn’t control or change the way I felt, even though I wanted to. I prayed and prayed for something to change, but it never did, and I just ended up hating myself, which had some nearly tragic consequences in my teen years and early adulthood. It wasn’t until I was about 30 that I first began to seriously make peace with myself. If LGBT+ related resources would’ve been available to me as a child, I’d have figured it out a LOT sooner, and it would’ve saved me about two decades of torment.
P
PetraG
Guest
Yes. Besides, the solution of providing private bathrooms for everyone solves a range of problems, not just this one.
There can be differences about how this issue ought to be addressed, but I don’t think there is any question that it is an issue that deserves accommodation and, whenever possible, an accommodation that preserves privacy to the greatest degree possible.
When any of us need a private bathroom rather than a group situation, I think we can all agree we want to deal with the issue without calling attention to ourselves. It isn’t a matter of it being shameful but a matter of all people wanting to deal with bathroom issues discretely. That this solution gives predators and bullies one less attractive opportunity only makes it more desirable for the general public.
P
PetraG
Guest
Yes. It is difficult enough to have a problem like this as a child without being given the idea that you’re the only one in history to ever have it. I don’t think my relative is a woman, even though my relative does. It is still heartbreaking that he carried such a deep concern throughout his childhood and young adulthood and into marriage without being able to even articulate what he was experiencing.
None of the issues that anyone in my family has gone through would be better if everyone just pretended there was no problem. A lot of them were much worse because this is how our family (including my relative’s immediate family) actually “handled” problems ,including problems like alcoholism. It would be better to give children the idea that everyone has issues, some that they keep private and some that they don’t. To keep a matter private doesn’t mean someone is ashamed. To ask for help does not mean someone is weak. If someone doesn’t understand themselves, it doesn’t make them stupid or weird. It does mean that not everything you are or that you are going through is the business of the whole rest of the world.
What I’m saying is that there are ways to give children a place to talk about things that concern them and yet also not give them the idea that the entire world is an AA meeting. You ought to have people you can trust to talk to about anything. You shouldn’t feel that anything you do not share about yourself with the entire world is somehow shameful. It does not harm children old enough to be discrete to learn that everyone wants and deserves privacy. (Children who are only three years old or thereabouts don’t always realize that there are things that they know but not everyone else does.) There are obviously things a child can go through that don’t belong in a public library, but a child’s views about herself? Why not?
Last edited:
P
PetraG
Guest
This is the main thing: we can disagree about what the solution to the issues that children go through may be and what materials libraries should or should not make available to children, but we ought to agree that it doesn’t help to act as if nothing difficult ever happens to children. Feelings of every kind about ourselves are transient in enough cases that I think children who feel this way ought to be told that sometimes people feel this way and sometimes it is a transient feeling but sometimes it isn’t. It is very common for children and adolescents to going through changes in their self-concept and their concept of others, not just the way of how they relate as males and females but across the board of their self-concept. We also ought to tell children that as long as they’re not asked to lie or otherwise betray the truth or themselves or others, it doesn’t harm them to mind their own business about other people who haven’t asked for their opinion.
That is easier to do when we do more to maintain people’s privacy, though. People who want to “shield” their children from other people’s issues and how other people handle their own issues ought to want private bathrooms, not fight them.
That is easier to do when we do more to maintain people’s privacy, though. People who want to “shield” their children from other people’s issues and how other people handle their own issues ought to want private bathrooms, not fight them.
Last edited:
- Status