March 25, 2016

North Carolina orders men into women's bathrooms

Daily Beast - North Carolina’s bathroom bill forces transgender men to use women’s bathrooms—creating the exact problem it’s purporting to solve.

Forget the transphobic myths. It is Republicans who want men to use women’s bathrooms.

In fact, the Republican National Committee approved an official resolution in February that encourages state legislatures to force men to use the ladies’ room.

And North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory signed into law a slapdash but sweeping anti-LGBT measure that will, among other things, require women in the state to share public restrooms with bearded and muscled transgender men.

Of course, the sponsors of anti-transgender “bathroom bills” don’t perceive transgender men as men. In their minds—if they have even thought through the consequences of these measures, and it’s not clear that they have—they believe that they are sending women back to the women’s room based on the RNC’s shaky definition of “biological sex.”

But as LGBT advocates were quick to remind Governor McCrory on Twitter, many women in North Carolina would be none too pleased to see transgender men enter the restroom.

This is the very outcome that these laws are supposed to prohibit. But it’s exactly the outcome that Republican legislators in Kansas, Tennessee, and many other states are actively working to bring about, whether they realize it or not.

The North Carolina law does not take self-presentation or appearance into account. According to the text, public bathroom use in the state is now determined exclusively by “the physical condition of being male or female, which is stated on a person’s birth certificate.”

No matter what it says on someone’s birth certificate, transgender men are, in fact, men as major medical associations and health care professionals can affirm. They are men whether or not they have beards, like the men pictured above, and whether or not they have had surgery.

But the spotty laws around birth certificates and government identification for transgender people will create ridiculous scenarios in which many men fail to meet North Carolina’s new standard for male bathroom use, even if they have surgically transitioned.

A majority of states require expensive sex reassignment surgery to change the gender marker on a birth certificate. A handful of states, including Tennessee, will never change the gender marker on a birth certificate, even with proof

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

DENNY CRANE !!!