In my experience this tends to be based on the loudest members of each party clinging to core concepts of which they have a great degree of certainty while branding opposing partisans with straw men. The problem materializes when a loud member of the opposing view actually defends the straw man.
Just as an example, look at a recent controversy with this whole HB2 thing in North Carolina.
On the one hand you have proponents of the bill raising concerns about it enabling men an opening to enter women's restrooms by simply claiming they are something they are not. Those same proponents are willing to ignore all of the other problems with the bill while holding to this one very defensible view. Very few actually have any concerns about true transgendered people and statistics would support that view as well.
On the other side you have people outraged about discrimination of transgendered individuals who are willing to totally ignore the problem of allowing men to enter those same rooms. These people are also rightly citing the other discriminatory areas in the bill.
The news focuses only on the bathroom piece.
The result is one group rightly shouting about concerns over allowing men an excuse to enter ladies rooms and another group rightly shouting about concerns over discrimination of the transgendered.
If either side was actually listening to the other we'd be able to have a pretty simply solution to everyone's concerns.
Make men's rooms into generally accessible restrooms and leave ladies rooms as ladies rooms. That would pretty much solve the problem although it hits on the other political hot button...
Pretending men and women are not different. So the cycle begins again.
And while that's going on things like the TPP happen.
EDIT: The amount of up and down voting I'm seeing on this post seems to validate the paper's findings.
> Make men's rooms into generally accessible restrooms and leave ladies rooms as ladies rooms. That would pretty much solve the problem although it hits on the other political hot button...
I'm pretty sure the simplest solution is just gender neutral bathrooms with suitably private stalls. That's it. No need to complicate this further.
I've been in several establishments[1] where this is the bathroom situation and it works just fine.
Requires updating bathrooms to ensure they have those suitably private stalls, potentially replacing urinals and is basically an attempt at having private restrooms with shared sinks.
That means it will come with costs of adjustment for every restroom to implement it in a suitable manner.
The solution I mentioned above involves nothing more than a sign on the door and it addresses the majority of concerns that have people at odds.
> Requires updating bathrooms to ensure they have those suitably private stalls
The "default" American restroom design, where you have to make an actual effort to not accidentally spy on people doing their business, is like something out of a comedy dystopia. If it was fiction, people would say it was too implausible. I'm fine with holding owners responsible for fixing this bafflingly wrong-headed design. The fact that it would also completely solve the transgender bathroom issue is a bonus.
(The one concern is ventilation, which is easily solved with louvered vents that allow airflow but not line-of-sight. I once worked in an office with stalls like this, and it was wonderful.)
> If it was fiction, people would say it was too implausible.
I'm in I'd think the upper 10% or so of earners in society, as probably are most other people on this site, I work largely unsupervised and can come and go as I please.
Yet for some reason it seems reasonable that I have to sit in a tiny stall in a dead quiet room to do my natural business while a coworker sits less than two feet away, separated by only a tiny wall with a foot gap between the wall and the floor (to facilitate the free flow of odor and sound I assume). Am I a prude or is this a bit ridiculous?
It's simpler than that. Since gender is a social construct, just have two types of bathrooms: 'standing' bathrooms with urinals and 'sitting' bathrooms with private stalls.
The real issue is that there was never a discussion or vote on this proposition. People have the right to be offended when their language is pulled out from under them without their consent. It doesn't make people bigoted to insist that the meaning of words matter. The whole thing comes across as very Orwellian to many.
"Sexologist John Money introduced the terminological distinction between biological sex and gender as a role in 1955. Before his work, it was uncommon to use the word gender to refer to anything but grammatical categories."
NC checking in. There are several issues with your treatment of the debate around HB2, the most egregious being perpetuation of the claim that the core intent of this bill was to limit bathroom access in the first place. I would like to direct readers attention to the portions of the bill that prevent cities in North Carolina from setting their own discrimination standards or setting a city-wide minimum wage, and most especially the section that strips citizens ability to file suit for discrimination in state courts. Furthermore I think it's important to highlight the fact that this bill was rammed through in ~12 hours during a special session with no prior debate.
> Make men's rooms into generally accessible restrooms and leave ladies rooms as ladies rooms.
This is an idiotic non-solution, as should be obvious to anyone who has even a little capacity to think from the perspective of a trans person.
If you look, dress, and sound like a woman, the natural restroom for you to use is the women's restroom. So if you're a trans woman who's transitioned, you use the women's restroom, not the "men's plus" restroom.
The only way you can stop trans women from using women's restrooms is by enforcing some HB2-like checking of birth certificates, which is exactly the situation that NC is in right now.
So either trans people use whatever bathroom they want, with nobody trying to check any birth certificates (i.e, the pre-HB2 situation), or trans people are prohibited from using certain bathrooms because of what it says on their birth certificate (i.e., the post-HB2 situation).
What exactly is your shitty "solution" accomplishing here?
Not saying a "men's plus". Saying have an everyone and a ladies only.
Ladies rooms tend to have longer lines and also tend to be stocked with additional products.
The concern raised by supporters of the bill his largely been unwanted men entering ladies rooms. This solution would totally address that concern in a cost effective manner.
> The concern raised by supporters of the bill his largely been unwanted men entering ladies rooms.
The fact that the criterion revolves around birth certificates (as opposed to, say, state ID) shows quite clearly that the point of the bill is to punish trans people.
Instead of drawing on a single example and claiming that the truth must be in the middle somewhere, try coming up with two examples, preferably contemporary if possible, one from the right and one from the left, one where the weight of the facts and of history are clearly on the side of conservatives, and another where they are on the side of liberals. Then, compare how various parties act when this issue comes up either in the media, or in government, or whatever, and how you think they should act.
The reason I say this, is that the very way you have framed this gives no one any reason to be reasonable or non-partisan. You may not realize it, but you have described an adversarial relationship where both sides on the issue have good reason to be as extreme and intransigent as they can, with a view to dragging the conversation more in their direction so that the final compromise favors them. If, instead, we cared more about facts and results, and were actually willing to call out one side as being totally wrong and off-base, and undeserving of a seat at the table in negotiating this or that point of policy, everyone would have an incentive to act reasonably lest they be cast out entirely.
We're all adults - we don't need to be coddled. If someone is clearly in the wrong, they should have that explained to them. After that, if they continue to assert that their wrong opinion should factor into policy somehow, they should be ignored.
And don't get me wrong, I'm totally aware that American culture is a long, long way from being able to do this. But it should be a goal, anyway, and your advice points us in the wrong direction.
> We're all adults - we don't need to be coddled. If someone is clearly in the wrong, they should have that explained to them. After that, if they continue to assert that their wrong opinion should factor into policy somehow, they should be ignored.
This would require people to acknowledge objective reality (for starters), and from where I sit the likelihood of that ever happening is getting slimmer every day.
You're right. I should have chosen a better example.
I mainly went with that because it's what is currently in the news but when I started writing the comment I had actually planned to do exactly what you laid out.
You are getting a lot of deserves downvotes for the last part part your comment, which looks like it is purposely made to be inflammatory by posting an obviously non-solution which discriminate against a large portion of hn readership, since the effect would be that men would have longer bathroom lines (serving men plus whatever spillover from the women's)
The entered thing isn't new, trans people have, presumably, used bathrooms of the gender they belong to so long as there has been gender segregated bathrooms. You just don't notice, because they pass.
25 comments
[ 22.3 ms ] story [ 941 ms ] threadJust as an example, look at a recent controversy with this whole HB2 thing in North Carolina.
On the one hand you have proponents of the bill raising concerns about it enabling men an opening to enter women's restrooms by simply claiming they are something they are not. Those same proponents are willing to ignore all of the other problems with the bill while holding to this one very defensible view. Very few actually have any concerns about true transgendered people and statistics would support that view as well.
On the other side you have people outraged about discrimination of transgendered individuals who are willing to totally ignore the problem of allowing men to enter those same rooms. These people are also rightly citing the other discriminatory areas in the bill.
The news focuses only on the bathroom piece.
The result is one group rightly shouting about concerns over allowing men an excuse to enter ladies rooms and another group rightly shouting about concerns over discrimination of the transgendered.
If either side was actually listening to the other we'd be able to have a pretty simply solution to everyone's concerns.
Make men's rooms into generally accessible restrooms and leave ladies rooms as ladies rooms. That would pretty much solve the problem although it hits on the other political hot button...
Pretending men and women are not different. So the cycle begins again.
And while that's going on things like the TPP happen.
EDIT: The amount of up and down voting I'm seeing on this post seems to validate the paper's findings.
I'm pretty sure the simplest solution is just gender neutral bathrooms with suitably private stalls. That's it. No need to complicate this further.
I've been in several establishments[1] where this is the bathroom situation and it works just fine.
[1] http://ppcorn.com/us/2016/01/04/strange-world-concert-venue-...
That means it will come with costs of adjustment for every restroom to implement it in a suitable manner.
The solution I mentioned above involves nothing more than a sign on the door and it addresses the majority of concerns that have people at odds.
The "default" American restroom design, where you have to make an actual effort to not accidentally spy on people doing their business, is like something out of a comedy dystopia. If it was fiction, people would say it was too implausible. I'm fine with holding owners responsible for fixing this bafflingly wrong-headed design. The fact that it would also completely solve the transgender bathroom issue is a bonus.
(The one concern is ventilation, which is easily solved with louvered vents that allow airflow but not line-of-sight. I once worked in an office with stalls like this, and it was wonderful.)
I'm in I'd think the upper 10% or so of earners in society, as probably are most other people on this site, I work largely unsupervised and can come and go as I please.
Yet for some reason it seems reasonable that I have to sit in a tiny stall in a dead quiet room to do my natural business while a coworker sits less than two feet away, separated by only a tiny wall with a foot gap between the wall and the floor (to facilitate the free flow of odor and sound I assume). Am I a prude or is this a bit ridiculous?
Tear down the walls!
Bonus: You could play cards with your neighbor. If the toilets faced each other, you could balance a chessboard on your knees and theirs.
The real issue is that there was never a discussion or vote on this proposition. People have the right to be offended when their language is pulled out from under them without their consent. It doesn't make people bigoted to insist that the meaning of words matter. The whole thing comes across as very Orwellian to many.
"Sexologist John Money introduced the terminological distinction between biological sex and gender as a role in 1955. Before his work, it was uncommon to use the word gender to refer to anything but grammatical categories."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender
This is an idiotic non-solution, as should be obvious to anyone who has even a little capacity to think from the perspective of a trans person.
If you look, dress, and sound like a woman, the natural restroom for you to use is the women's restroom. So if you're a trans woman who's transitioned, you use the women's restroom, not the "men's plus" restroom.
The only way you can stop trans women from using women's restrooms is by enforcing some HB2-like checking of birth certificates, which is exactly the situation that NC is in right now.
So either trans people use whatever bathroom they want, with nobody trying to check any birth certificates (i.e, the pre-HB2 situation), or trans people are prohibited from using certain bathrooms because of what it says on their birth certificate (i.e., the post-HB2 situation).
What exactly is your shitty "solution" accomplishing here?
And more evidence on group polarization appears before our eyes.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Ladies rooms tend to have longer lines and also tend to be stocked with additional products.
The concern raised by supporters of the bill his largely been unwanted men entering ladies rooms. This solution would totally address that concern in a cost effective manner.
The fact that the criterion revolves around birth certificates (as opposed to, say, state ID) shows quite clearly that the point of the bill is to punish trans people.
The reason I say this, is that the very way you have framed this gives no one any reason to be reasonable or non-partisan. You may not realize it, but you have described an adversarial relationship where both sides on the issue have good reason to be as extreme and intransigent as they can, with a view to dragging the conversation more in their direction so that the final compromise favors them. If, instead, we cared more about facts and results, and were actually willing to call out one side as being totally wrong and off-base, and undeserving of a seat at the table in negotiating this or that point of policy, everyone would have an incentive to act reasonably lest they be cast out entirely.
We're all adults - we don't need to be coddled. If someone is clearly in the wrong, they should have that explained to them. After that, if they continue to assert that their wrong opinion should factor into policy somehow, they should be ignored.
And don't get me wrong, I'm totally aware that American culture is a long, long way from being able to do this. But it should be a goal, anyway, and your advice points us in the wrong direction.
This would require people to acknowledge objective reality (for starters), and from where I sit the likelihood of that ever happening is getting slimmer every day.
I mainly went with that because it's what is currently in the news but when I started writing the comment I had actually planned to do exactly what you laid out.
The entered thing isn't new, trans people have, presumably, used bathrooms of the gender they belong to so long as there has been gender segregated bathrooms. You just don't notice, because they pass.
http://blog.constitutioncenter.org/2016/05/explaining-bathro...