Current Events: Bathroom Laws (Warning slightly adult content)

Of all the current events I imagined myself covering on this blog I would have never guessed restrooms would be one of them. Many are talking about trans people and which restrooms they should enter. What I thought was a simple inquiry into @NYapologetics position on twitter turned into (I assume) mutually disappointing conversation. I am using that conversation as a jumping off point for this post.

First, I should explain why I am even covering this, because it is not obviously about religion.

The first answer is that the impetus for this post was a twitter interaction with the aforementioned @NYapologetics. Their website is www.newyorkapologetics.com 

The second is that a strict binary of restrooms is disproportionately supported by evangelicals; thus, this issue is divided along religious lines. The reason: many evangelicals believe that God distinctly created us to be male or female and have different moral obligations, while many mainline Christians and non-church goes do not believe that gender is NOT strictly binary. 

Look at what Ken Ham the president of the Answers in Genesis, a creationist organization has to say about Target's restroom policy.

Also, there have been evangelicals protesting Target's policy.

Now compare these positions to one promoted by Rachel Held Evans an ex-evangelical. 

Twitter exchange with @NYapologetics

In my very long twitter exchange with @NYapologetics, they thought I never answered their main question and I never felt that I was never given a concrete policy. I originally engaged in this conversation because I was genuinely curious about alternatives to allowing people to use the restroom of the gender that they identify with.

Their main question boiled down to: how do we protect the rights of 99.7% who would suffer potential abuse/feel uncomfortable due to policies that allow people to go to the restroom of the gender they identify with. I maintained (and still maintain) that forcing the choice of restroom on a person in transition would actually decrease safety and increase discomfort.

One of the first things I did was survey some people I knew. Granted this is not a representative nor a very large sample, but I do want to share two anonymous sentiments that I received from women:

If they were going to build another restroom, I would prefer they just spend the money on making women's restrooms larger. 

These people [like @NYapologetics] are making me uncomfortable by sexualizing restrooms.

I received no sentiments that they were worried about increased abuse. Though, I want to emphasize that I did not even attempt to do a comprehensive survey. However, someone else did do a survey. It found that women and young people are more comfortable with trans people in the restroom of their choice than older men.

I think it would enlightening for someone to conduct different survey. The survey would ask: how comfortable would you be if someone who is obviously dressed and presents themselves as a woman enters the men's restroom and vice versa.

Here are a couple of examples:



Would you be comfortable with this person in the men's restroom?

Or this person in the woman's restroom?

In case it is not obvious, the person in the top image is a transwoman (born with a penis, for those not in the loop) and the bottom image is of a transman. 

I suspect that these individuals using the restroom of the their birth-sex would make just about everyone uncomfortable.

But what about abuse?

In every locale that has regulations allowing trans people to go to the restroom of their choice there has been no statistical increase in abuse. 

There really isn't much more to say. Trans people in restrooms makes (mostly) older men uncomfortable and they claim to be defending women and children from predators, when there just isn't any evidence that Target-like non-discriminatory policies increase sexual abuse. 

And to be clear I would be very concerned if there was any evidence that it did increase sexual abuse. To reiterate, I would be very very concerned.

Other proposals:

NYapologetics maintained a third restroom would be an acceptable solution. However, they also produced one other option, simply making the rule standard that you must use the restroom of your birth sex. 

Policy 1: A Third Restroom

A third restroom is not a practical solution for two reasons. 

First, outside of large areas like stadiums and airports there is just not space. And these places typically already have family restrooms that would likely suffice. But this is not just possible in a standard restaurant, bar, or shopping center.

Second, you are putting people who identify as different genders into the same restroom. Trans people are NOT all the same in their gender identity, most trans people would not appreciate this. You might be able to avoid this to some degree if you make it a locked room, but again, in places that are large enough already have family restrooms. Thus to make this feasible at all, you would likely need four restrooms: one for those born male, one for those born female, one for those transitioning into male, and one for those transitioning into female. 

Policy 2: Back to the Golden Age

Their second suggestion was to only allow those born male use the men's restroom and those born women use the women's restroom. They maintained that this was the original policy; and, things got mucked up when we started trying to make more complicated rules about restrooms. I was not able to get an answer as to how they would enforce this policy. 

Even so, I emphatically disagree that this was the original policy. The original (unstated) policy was that if you looked like a man you walked into the men's restroom and if you looked female you walked into the women's restroom. No one really checked. There was little if any dichotomy between birth sex and gender expression. 

If birth sex is/was the policy as opposed to appearance we would have developed a way to check the birth sex. The fact is that people who don't look enough like their gender (usually women who are dressed masculine) sometimes get harassed going into the restroom of their birth sex. (Note: I am only using this link as evidence that someone was harassed, it was not actually in relation to HB2).

Bottom line: 

These policies proposed by @NYapologetics don't work and the initial question assumes that non-discriminatory policies make people are uncomfortable (which admittedly SOME are, but mostly older men) and that these policies also lead to abuse (which they don't). 

I am open ears to new policies would help more people be more comfortable, in fact this is my main question on this issue. Please comment with any concrete proposal.