I am continually amazed at this OT forum. Instead of answering the question, the same rhetoric is spewed over and over again.

Mdlbuildr wrote:

 Kovnik Obama wrote:

Asterios wrote:
heads up this just in:

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2016/06/02/georgia-aclu-leader-resigns-amid-controversy-over-transgender-bathroom-directive-but-theres-a-twist/

wikipedia wrote:TheBlaze is a multiplatform news and entertainment network available on television, radio and the Internet founded by conservative talk radio personality and entrepreneur Glenn Beck.

My work here is done.

You do realize that this has been reported in every news outlet everywhere in the world right?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Spinner wrote:

Mdlbuildr wrote:
This. Directly quoted from the article.


"How can we ask these kinds of questions without being called a homophobe?” the video asks. “How do we prevent predators from preying on kids in bathrooms?”

As a point of fact, not all Trandgender individuals are homosexual.

Clearly, the answer is plastic signs saying who can't be in a bathroom. Everyone knows child predators are terrified of signs. They make them melt, much like water to those aliens in that movie. What was it called?

Or, you know, attacking children and anyone else in a restroom is already illegal and having more people going in and out of a restroom is probably going to make it harder for predators to do anything and I don't recall hearing anything about unisex public restrooms being huge child-abduction magnets.

I am continually amazed at this OT forum. Instead of answering the question, the same rhetoric is spewed over and over again.

This is a legitimate question asked by the population at large. Minimizing it like you just did with dripping sarcasm only makes the problem worse.

Do you want to propose an actual solution or continue to argue the same point that isn't getting anyone anywhere?

 jreilly89 wrote:
OR, or or or, it's not a legitimate question...

 Mozzyfuzzy wrote:
I'm still confused as how not letting transgender people use their bathroom of choice also stops sexual predators from doing their thing?

Other than their vampiresque reaction to gendered signs if they try and use the opposite genders bathroom.

Or is it a fear of not knowing that all the penises in a bathroom, may not be penises( and vice versa)?

Asterios wrote:

 Mozzyfuzzy wrote:
I'm still confused as how not letting transgender people use their bathroom of choice also stops sexual predators from doing their thing?

Other than their vampiresque reaction to gendered signs if they try and use the opposite genders bathroom.

Or is it a fear of not knowing that all the penises in a bathroom, may not be penises( and vice versa)?

for starters I don't use public bathrooms so I have no voice in this debate.

the problem is sick perverts been sneaking into the womens restrooms since time immortal, the problem with this new law is it just makes it easier for them, thats it, plain and simple, instead of skulking and hiding to get into the womens restroom they can walk right in like they own the place. remember this gender identity has nothing to do with what they wear. or even sexual preference, they just think they are a guy who should be a girl or a girl who should be a guy.

personally I think they should make all restrooms single occupancy, solves the problem all around.

 Spinner wrote:

Asterios wrote:

 Mozzyfuzzy wrote:
I'm still confused as how not letting transgender people use their bathroom of choice also stops sexual predators from doing their thing?

Other than their vampiresque reaction to gendered signs if they try and use the opposite genders bathroom.

Or is it a fear of not knowing that all the penises in a bathroom, may not be penises( and vice versa)?

for starters I don't use public bathrooms so I have no voice in this debate.

the problem is sick perverts been sneaking into the womens restrooms since time immortal, the problem with this new law is it just makes it easier for them, thats it, plain and simple, instead of skulking and hiding to get into the womens restroom they can walk right in like they own the place. remember this gender identity has nothing to do with what they wear. or even sexual preference, they just think they are a guy who should be a girl or a girl who should be a guy.

personally I think they should make all restrooms single occupancy, solves the problem all around.

1) We haven't had restrooms since time immemorial.

2) That's a very interesting picture of how transgender people work/take a leak.

3) For someone who has no voice in the debate, you're saying quite a mouthful.

4) This sounds an awful lot like the argument that gay people shouldn't be able to get married, because something something fake marriages for insurance fraud. I don't think we're going to get a transgender bathroom issues-centered version of I Now Pronounce You Chuck And Larry, but there's no word from Sandler as of yet, so...

 jreilly89 wrote:

Mdlbuildr wrote:
This. Directly quoted from the article.


"How can we ask these kinds of questions without being called a homophobe?” the video asks. “How do we prevent predators from preying on kids in bathrooms?”

As a point of fact, not all Trandgender individuals are homosexual.

"How can I discriminate against these people without all my friends hating me?"

 Ouze wrote:

 jreilly89 wrote:
OR, or or or, it's not a legitimate question...

Alternately, it's not a great question because guy asked this exact question on page 4, got all the same responses, and then just sort of kept repeating it for the length of the thread.

 Spinner wrote:
We've already got laws telling people not to assault anyone in bathrooms. Or anywhere else. So that's the sick pervert demographic covered. Meanwhile, people who are actually affected by transgender bathroom laws include: male parents looking after female children in a public restroom (and vice versa), transgender people with full bladders who may or may not 'pass', and people who any nosy Walmart rando thinks 'don't look right'.

It's useless discriminatory harassment legislation - worse than useless, since it's actively making restrooms less safe - and there's a hell of a lot my state should be doing instead of pioneering it.

Mdlbuildr wrote:
Yep. This is exactly the kind of useless rhetoric I'm talking about. Keep it up.

Mdlbuildr wrote:

 jreilly89 wrote:

Mdlbuildr wrote:
This. Directly quoted from the article.


"How can we ask these kinds of questions without being called a homophobe?” the video asks. “How do we prevent predators from preying on kids in bathrooms?”

As a point of fact, not all Trandgender individuals are homosexual.

"How can I discriminate against these people without all my friends hating me?"

Yep. This is exactly the kind of useless rhetoric I'm talking about. Keep it up.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Ouze wrote:

 jreilly89 wrote:
OR, or or or, it's not a legitimate question...

Alternately, it's not a great question because guy asked this exact question on page 4, got all the same responses, and then just sort of kept repeating it for the length of the thread.

Alternatively it's the question everyone in Politics and at home are asking. Except here. The "safe place".

Why LGBT Advocates Say Bathroom ‘Predators’ Argument Is a Red Herring
It’s become a common refrain in recent months: Allowing transgender people to use the restroom that aligns with their gender identity will end up letting male sexual predators into women’s bathrooms.

From North Carolina to South Dakota, supporters of controversial bills seeking to limit transgender people’s use of public restrooms have repeatedly made that argument. There is little hard evidence to back up this assertion, but LGBT advocates and other opponents of the bills have had to develop a number of counter-arguments to refute it.

Here’s a breakdown of their arguments.

Several states and major cities have supported transgender people’s bathroom access for years. There are more than a dozen states and several cities that have non-discrimination laws that protect gender identity in public accommodations, which is a legalistic way of saying transgender people can use whatever bathrooms they want in public. This is the kind of affirmation that started the whole controversy in North Carolina. Charlotte passed such protections earlier this year, state lawmakers said there would be terrible effects and passed a countermeasure, HB2, that eliminated Charlotte’s protections and banned other cities from passing anything similar.


Fears about male predators have not been borne out in those places. New York City has banned discrimination based on gender identity for more than a decade. California has affirmed the rights of K-12 students to use the bathrooms and locker rooms that align with their gender identity for years. Advocates say that while there are some past examples of heterosexual men dressing up like women to gain access to women’s spaces, there’s no record of that behavior increasing when there’s an LGBT non-discrimination law on the books. “We have so many places that do prohibit discrimination where this has never come up,” says the Equality Federation’s Rebecca Isaacs. “This is a red herring.”

Police and school officials say they haven’t seen it either. Media Matters, a liberal media watchdog, has asked state leaders, law enforcement and school officials in places with these protections whether they’ve seen any increase in sexual assault or rape after passing these laws, and they have repeatedly said that they have not. “We have not seen that,” a Des Moines police department spokesman told the outlet in 2014. “I doubt that’s gonna encourage the behavior. If the behavior’s there, [sexual predators are] gonna behave as they’re gonna behave no matter what the laws are.”

The nation’s leading organizations dedicated to stopping violence against women signed a letter saying that this argument is a myth. “These initiatives utilize and perpetuate the myth that protecting transgender people’s access to restrooms and locker rooms endangers the safety or privacy of others,” the letter states. “As rape crisis centers, shelters, and other service providers who work each and every day to meet the needs of all survivors and reduce sexual assault and domestic violence throughout society, we speak from experience and expertise when we state that these claims are false.”

LGBT rights advocates emphasize that the signatories are not only the experts on what endangers women but that groups like the National Center on Domestic and Sexual Violence would be first out of the gate to oppose any law that did seem to endanger women. “All those arguments, to me, crash and burn,” says the Equality Federation’s Isaacs, “because this is everybody working on male predators.”

Sexual assault remains a crime no matter why someone claims they entered a women’s space. The predator argument is based on an assumption that men who prey on women will be inspired to dress as women and enter women’s spaces because they could falsely claim to be transgender and therefore allowed to stay. But, advocates emphasize, if a female alleges she was sexually assaulted, the gender identity of the perpetrator has no bearing on the criminality of the act. “If you are a man who dresses as a woman and goes into a bathroom and commits a crime,” says the Human Rights Campaign attorney Cathryn Oakley, “whether you have a non-discrimination protection on the basis of gender identity or not, that behavior is illegal and criminal and you could be arrested and go to jail.”

If male predators were waiting for alleged loopholes like this to pop up, they could be using the women’s bathrooms already. The North Carolina law mandates that people must use bathrooms based on their “biological sex,” defined as the sex on their birth certificate. Transgender men, who are likely to have a birth certificate with an “F” on it, are often indistinguishable from cisgender men, notes the Center for American Progress’ Sarah McBride. So a male predator could skip the trouble of dressing up and go into the women’s room in North Carolina today, pretending to be a transgender man. “We know that’s not going to happen,” she says, but the notion that the lack of a law protecting transgender people is all that’s stopping male predators from acting “is preposterous.”

Some of the arguments about bathrooms are just a cloak for prejudice. McBride, who is a transgender woman, recently went down to North Carolina and took a selfie in the women’s restroom that went viral. She says among her many critics, about half believed she was really a man and opposed her presence in the women’s room, telling her to kill herself, as well as threatening to gang rape or murder her. “The other half were people that said ‘I’m sure you’re a good person, but you need to know this isn’t about you, this is about people who would pretend to be transgender,’” she says.

For many people in the former camp, advocates say, emphasizing concern for women’s safety is simply a cloak for a less politically palatable position—one some people have openly expressed. “I don’t want men who think they are women in my bathrooms and locker rooms,” a Marylander testified in a debate over this issue. “I don’t want to be part of their make-believe delusion. Males are always males. They cannot change. I’m here to stand up for women, children and their safety.”


Similar “predator” arguments have been used and debunked in the past. “We are not the first people who have been called predators for political gain,” says Mara Keisling, executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality and a transgender woman. “Look most recently at Donald Trump saying Mexican immigrants were rapists. There’s a long, really horrifying history of demagogues and fundraisers saying, ‘Hey, those people over there, we have to hate them because we have to keep our women and children safe.’” Advocates have circulated old propaganda like videos saying “the homosexual” lurks in the bathroom waiting to prey on young boys. Arguments about bathrooms were used to justify segregation and helped doom the Equal Rights Amendment.

These arguments have been effective, advocates argue, because people tend to feel vulnerable in the bathroom, and women and children do have legitimate reason to fear assault in general. And they’re particularly effective against transgender people, they say, because for decades media portrayed transgender people as deceivers or deviants (think Silence of the Lambs or Ace Ventura: Pet Detective) and many people don’t have a personal relationship with someone who is transgender. A report from the Public Religion Research Institute found that while 65% of Americans say they have a close friend or family member who is gay, just 9% say the same thing about having a personal relationship with someone who is transgender.

Studies show transgender people are more likely to be victims. “What is really unacceptable,” says HRC’s Oakley, “is we’re pinning [these fears] on people who are, in fact, themselves incredibly vulnerable in bathrooms.” In a study from UCLA’s Williams Institute, nearly 70% of transgender people said they had experienced verbal harassment in a situation involving gender-segregated bathrooms, while nearly 10% reported physical assault. And, advocates argue, laws that force transgender people to use restrooms where they can look out of place makes them more likely targets.

While opponents have circulated photos that suggest transgender people are unmistakable, many transgender people can go about their day without anyone being aware of their gender status. “When you are aware that trans people exist but you don’t understand trans people … that does create this opportunity for fear-mongering to slip in,” says Oakley. “You’ve probably been using bathrooms next to trans people for a long time.”

Asterios wrote:
doesn't matter who is right and who is wrong, it is a hot button issue that will cause controversy, that is why I say make all restrooms single occupancy, that way no one is offended or slighted or has a leg to stand on one way or the other.

already California has mandated all single occupancy bathrooms are gender neutral, and yet no one is arguing about that or fighting about that.

Asterios wrote:
doesn't matter who is right and who is wrong, it is a hot button issue that will cause controversy, that is why I say make all restrooms single occupancy, that way no one is offended or slighted or has a leg to stand on one way or the other.

already California has mandated all single occupancy bathrooms are gender neutral, and yet no one is arguing about that or fighting about that.

Asterios wrote:
instead of skulking and hiding to get into the womens restroom they can walk right in like they own the place.

 Peregrine wrote:

Asterios wrote:
instead of skulking and hiding to get into the womens restroom they can walk right in like they own the place.

And do what?

Seriously, what exactly is this terrifying thing that you think people are going to do that isn't already covered by existing laws? So a man walks into the women's restroom like he owns the place, what does he do next? Quietly do his business and leave, because anything else is going to attract police attention?

 Mr. Burning wrote:
In this whole debate no one has even asked the opinion of those most affected by these changes...the sexual predators.

We really need to hear their voice and find out how changes to signage really affects their activities.

Do they skulk?

Have they been preying on family members or close friends only because there was no way they could counter the magic of restroom signs?

Will they start purchasing a myriad of disguises?

I think we need to hear from them.

 Ensis Ferrae wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

Asterios wrote:
instead of skulking and hiding to get into the womens restroom they can walk right in like they own the place.

And do what?

Seriously, what exactly is this terrifying thing that you think people are going to do that isn't already covered by existing laws? So a man walks into the women's restroom like he owns the place, what does he do next? Quietly do his business and leave, because anything else is going to attract police attention?

Pfft... clearly the terrifying thing is that women will have to put up with a "man" peeing all over the seat in public, as well as at home!

 plastictrees wrote:

If you've ever cleaned a public women's restroom then you know that really won't be a problem.
If anything a refreshing shower of urine will spruce up many women's stalls.

 d-usa wrote:
But did they rape you?

Asterios wrote:

 d-usa wrote:
But did they rape you?

no but it is disconcerting when I'm trying to use the facilities and the opposite sex comes rampaging in, I like my privacy, but on the other hand I don't care if gay males are in the same facilities I'm in, go figure.

 Alpharius wrote:

Asterios wrote:

 d-usa wrote:
But did they rape you?

no but it is disconcerting when I'm trying to use the facilities and the opposite sex comes rampaging in, I like my privacy, but on the other hand I don't care if gay males are in the same facilities I'm in, go figure.

Why would that even be an issue?