The fight over bathrooms continues. While in the recent past this has resulted in the addition of a third bathroom option (gender-neutral) or requiring people to allow anyone to use the bathroom of their choice, Cooper Union in New York has removed signs from bathrooms that designate them as male or female. Now, everyone can use the bathroom of their choice. Co-ed bathrooms. Ironically, the dorms are still gender segregated.
Bill Mea, president of the college, “When people see someone who they think doesn’t belong there [in their gendered bathroom], it can create stress for everyone. So we thought, let’s just take that away.” Right. Once again, let’s do away with the reality of biology so that we don’t hurt anyone’s feelings. I could agree to a law that says someone who has undergone a sex-change operation should be able to use the bathroom of their “new sex,” but just allowing anyone to use whatever bathroom they want because of how they feel about their gender is a recipe for disaster. Why isn’t Bill Mea concerned about the feelings, well-being, and safety of the women in those bathrooms? Why isn’t he considering how they feel when a man enters the facilities they are using? Why are we ignoring the concerns and feelings of the majority to accommodate the feelings of a tiny minority of individuals who are confused about their gender? Such is liberalism. It’s about feelings, not thought.
Thinking to Believe 
April 2, 2016 at 11:18 pm
I agree with you I would not feel comfortable or safe with he/she’s using my sex bathroom. I am sorry that they feel uncomfortable using their one sex restroom, but what about my rights and my children’s right. We are to politically correct.
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April 3, 2016 at 4:21 am
Perry Marshall’s “Evolution 2.0” He has done such a good job that the typical evolution (and Darwinism) is dead!
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April 3, 2016 at 3:38 pm
Bathroom stalls do not have open doors; it is much like our houses when guests come over everybody uses the same facilities, they simply shut the door for privacy.
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April 5, 2016 at 5:23 am
I have to say that this is really the only sensible route now given society’s view. Plus, Spiritual Giant is right in this respect – toilets have doors. My suggestion is to move to individual toilets and have them unisex.
I am also confused as to why we think that people cannot control themselves in a bathroom! Plus, the french had (not sure nowadays) unisex toilets everywhere.
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April 5, 2016 at 10:50 am
Scott,
A restroom is not used exclusively for the toilet. They are also used to change clothes and adjust clothes. People also use them to wash at the sink (sometimes using baby wipes for the upper part of their bodies. You simply can’t do that in the toilet stall, especially if it’s occupied.
There should be an expectation of privacy when entering a restroom, especially for women who do not want guys ogling them when they’re changing clothes, etc. It’s astonishing to me that folks are seriously talking about changing all of our restrooms over the concerns of an extremely tiny fraction of the population. What about privacy expectations?
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April 5, 2016 at 8:58 pm
scaliaalito:
Face it; Scalia is dead.
Who is limiting toilet stalls? If you need to include basins as part of the toiletry stalls, so be it; it’s very easy to accommodate…. all you are trying to do with your argument is to skew progress to your own conservative myopism.
AND IT WILL NOT STAND!
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April 6, 2016 at 12:22 am
Yes, toilets have doors and we all know how secure they are. This is a matter of privacy and the right to feel secure. The last thing women want when their pants are around their ankles is a man outside of their door or in the stall next to them. Talk about easy access for rape.
Jason
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April 7, 2016 at 5:31 am
Jason, please! The idea that a current restroom is that much harder for rapists is a ridiculous and low comment in my view. Especially given that in France, unisex toilets were commonplace and the amount of raping going on wasn’t such an excess for me to ever hear of it.
Sacliaalito had an interesting point re: restrooms though to which I agree in part. So surely the idea will inevitably lead to single occupant restrooms (which takes up a lot more space). I suppose this even answers Jason’s criticism.
While I don’t agree with Cooper Union’s view, I don’t see how else you can compromise between traditional views (gender based on DNA) and contempory view (gender based on mental capacity). While the latter is imo incorrect, it is, unfortunately, society’s standard view.
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April 7, 2016 at 12:03 pm
scottspeig:
Just to trim the edges of your “IMO”. Society has a total worldview standard which is: not something you can determine is incorrect because Society has taken the absolute perfect stance which is that gender is in the mind of the beholder and therefore my gender cannot be beholding in your mind because my gender can only be beholding to moi.
Think of this phrase. “Beauty is in the mind of the beholder”.
In the same way you cannot assume that beauty in the mind of another beholder is incorrect just because you cannot see it, understand it, share it or own it; the best you can say is that it is incorrect in your mind because your mind is beholding an incorrectness attitude. The acronym “imo” is way, way too broad to be used when it comes to personal privacy. Opinion can be right or wrong because it is only an opinion and should be changed to Mind so that imm you can rightly say is incorrect in your mind but even that is totally incorrect because opinion engenders other people’s minds and you can’t do that on this level.. Gender is mind-personal, opinion is not.
For your information:
Humans are born with 46 chromosomes in 23 pairs. The X and Y chromosomes determine a person’s sex. Most women are 46XX and most men are 46XY. Research suggests, however, that in a few births per thousand some individuals will be born with a single sex chromosome (45X or 45Y) (sex monosomies) and some with three or more sex chromosomes (47XXX, 47XYY or 47XXY, etc.) (sex polysomies). In addition, some males are born 46XX due to the translocation of a tiny section of the sex determining region of the Y chromosome. Similarly some females are also born 46XY due to mutations in the Y chromosome. Clearly, there are not only females who are XX and males who are XY, but rather, there is a range of chromosome complements, hormone balances, and phenotypic variations that determine sex. So it’s simply not determined by what’s between your legs but more what’s between your ears.
source: World Health Organization
http://www.who.int/genomics/gender/en/index1.html
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April 7, 2016 at 10:55 pm
I don’t know why privacy concerns have to lead to single-occupant restrooms. The fact that the women (or men) of France may not care to undress in front of those of the opposite sex does not obligate us to follow suit.
There are several places where I live that have three restrooms—male, female, and family. If we’re going to spend the money to go the accommodation route, something like that seems more workable.
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April 11, 2016 at 10:45 pm
The need to use a toilet to dispense of bodily waste is an issue of biology, and our biology dictates to us what apparatus all of us have when conceived, then born, whether male or female, through our chromosomal make-up. In one instance, the apparatus used to dispense of bodily waste is different; in the other, the apparatus used to dispense of bodily waste is basically the same (trying to be polite, here–I hope you all catch my meaning).
Additionally, academia has been teaching for decades that one’s sex (i.e the internal and external organs for procreation) is determined by one’s biology, as indicated at conception, then birth. In this way, a person is a male based on his chromosomes and the accompanying genitalia. Conversely, a female is so because of her chromosomes and accompanying genitalia.
On the flip side, however, academia has also been teaching for decades that gender is a socially created device to arbitrarily characterize and categorize people into separate groups, under various motivations. In this way, a person is a man or woman (or neither, or both, as the case may be) according to their psychological make-up and the reinforcement, or lack thereof, of gender roles according to the cultural mores into which the person was conceived, then born.
This teaching is what has led to the spike in the social acceptance of transgender and transneutral ideologies, even to the deconstruction of formerly held cultural mores.
As it pertains to the use of a toilet, it should therefore be obvious that the need to use one is based in biology and not gender, and that the way in which a person uses a toilet as it pertains to their specific apparatus, as it were, is likewise a matter of biology.
I therefore submit that toilets in public facilities should not be labeled “men’s room” or “women’s room”, as that speaks to the now socially accepted view that gender is a psychological construct.
Instead, public toilets and restrooms should be demarcated based on biological apparatus and chromosomal reality received at conception, then birth.
In this way, a person who has an external male apparatus and a male chromosome should use the same public toilets and restroom, regardless of how the person in question self-identifies as it pertains to gender. Additionally, I submit that a transsexual person who has the male apparatus (even if not the male chromosome) should use the same public toilet and/or restroom.
Likewise, a person who has an external female apparatus and a female chromosome should use the same public toilets and restroom, regardless of how the person in question self-identifies as it pertains to gender. Additionally, I submit that a transsexual person who has the female apparatus (even if not the female chromosome) should use the same public toilet and/or restroom.
We can therefore label all public toilets as either “XY” or “XX”, which makes their use of them merely a matter of one’s biology, and not of one’s psychology.
And if at all we are dealing with triple chromosomal people, such as those with Down’s Syndrome, we default to the appropriate apparatus as defined by their biology at conception, then birth to determine which public toilet/restroom should be made available to them.
This, I think, if adopted, would solve all the relevant issues.
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April 12, 2016 at 10:20 am
Aaron:
Glad to see you’ve come out of the closet; haven’t heard from you in quite a spell.
I respectfully submit that your simplistic classification not only would not solve all relevant issues but in fact what you are proposing is exactly the way the “foetus northmanni” works now; i.e., based solely on biology. You also neglect to mention that there is a range of chromosome complements, hormone balances, and phenotypic variations that determine sex. So it’s simply not determined by what’s between your legs but what’s between your ears; that is the brain aspect; or, psychological; yet, please don’t forget that biology also plays a huge role in the brain determinant of psychology.
For example one of my male kin(adopted) displayed homosexual tendencies at a very early age of 4yrs old and while not much was thought about it at that young age, by 5 years of age the behavior was increasingly obvious and I actually predicted the outcome by verbal observations to my sister(the adoptive mom). Just to be clear here, the point is that social influence and societal norms would not have rendered a psychological profile upon this child at such an early age and that observation contradicts your statement: “……that speaks to the now socially accepted view that gender is a psychological construct……” Gender is not a socially accepted psychological construct as a stand alone element of gender identity and I don’t know where you ever got the idea that it is. Yes, it is true that the “foetus northmanni” of gender, compliments the psychology of the person generally but that only holds true insofar as the psychology factor of gender makeup is the same as the genitalia of the physical biology.
There are hidden components that we are yet unable to positively identify in the genome system at this time but it is worth noting that the irony of believers, who hold the literal aspect of Biblical Text purely by belief, demand complete scientific proof that homosexuality is “foetus northmanni” that opens new avenues of research in an attempt to quell the illusion of believers that it is a lifestyle by choice and not a lifestyle by design.
It was customary in ancient time for both female and male, hetero- and homo-, to become shrine pimps for the priests of the Temples and while the Bible admonishes the children of Israel not to go that way, it was nevertheless a lifestyle some were birthed with and others psychologically adapted to, it has been quite impossible to deter such “normal” people from a perceived, unseemly behavior in the eyes of the intolerant, opposite persuasion, as it is still today around the world. Eventually understanding by knowledge and acceptance of diverse humanity will supplant the intolerance of religious belief in the literal and letter of the law but are quite content to systemically neglect the spirit of the law.
Deuteronomy 23:17-18 No daughter of Israel is to become a sacred prostitute; and no son of Israel is to become a sacred prostitute. And don’t bring the fee of a sacred whore or the earnings of a priest-pimp to the house of God, your God, to pay for any vow—they are both an abomination to God, your God.
And then Jesus: “For there are eunuchs who were born that way from their mother’s womb; and there are eunuchs who were made eunuchs by men; and there are also eunuchs who made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. He who is able to accept this, let him accept it,” (Matthew 19:12). While the context of this statement speaks to divorce and marriage, its meaning easily extrapolates to the broad realm of gender identity: Heterosexuality, B-LeGiT Community, Chastity and Celibacy
The phrase “abomination to God” is actually an abomination to the intolerant self righteous who use the pleonastic term God to support pejorative personal prejudices.
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April 13, 2016 at 11:32 pm
Scottspeig,
Such a policy makes it easier to harm because their entry into the bathroom itself will not be viewed with suspicion since they are there legally. It makes it easier to carry out voyeurism or rape or assault because no one can sound an early alarm.
Besides, even if it didn’t make it easier for men to harm women, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t keep the law as-is. What if I said, “Why have such a thing as a “restraining order”? Anyone who wants to harm a person will do so despite the restraining order on them.” We still have restraining orders because they can deter some people from doing harm. Same goes with the bathroom laws.
Besides, the fact of the matter is that many women are made uncomfortable by the presence of men in their bathrooms. A CBS poll shows that 56% of women are opposed to transgender people using the bathroom of their preferred gender, while only 29% support it (http://www.cbsnews.com/news/cbs-news-poll-transgender-kids-and-school-bathrooms/). Why should the feelings of the majority be vetoed simply to make a few psychologically confused people feel better?
Jason
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April 14, 2016 at 12:33 am
Check out this video of men who have already entered women’s restrooms in drag to do harm to women. The threat is real.
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2016/04/video_sexual_predators_take_advantage_of_transgender_laws.html
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