Gavin Grimm - or, which restroom to use?

[Canarr]

So, I stumbled across this topic today.

Gavin was born a girl some 16 years ago, but doesn't feel like one, so he got his name legally changed to Gavin, is in therapy and undergoing hormonal treatment. But so far, no surgery.

In October last year, after the official name change, the school gave him permission to use the boys' restrooms, and for while, all was fine. Then, parents complained, apparently seeing a risk of sexual assault. What if boys suddenly decided they wanted to be girls, in order to gain access to the girls' restrooms! Won't somebody think of the children!

So the school dedicated a separate restroom to transgender students, and Gavin is the only one using it. The ACLU filed a suit for him, claiming it stigmatizes him and isolates him from his peers.

Others say this:

http://downtrend.com/robertgehl/will...-up-to-pee-too

Personally, I don't get the drama: I'm used to women invading the mens' rooms at practically any concert venue, since the lines at the female restrooms is always a lot longer. Once I witnessed a woman walking along the row of men standing at the urinals, peeking over every man's shoulder, to "check out the equipment", as she commented to a (visibly embarrassed) friend. Nobody batted an eye.

What do you think of this? Should Gavin be allowed in the boys' restrooms? What if it were the other way aroung - if he'd been born male, but identified as female? Would that make a difference?

[s_stabeler]

these complaints actually border n the misandrist, if you think about it. (misandry is prejudice against men) since it assumes that the only thing preventing men from assaulting women is there being seperate male and female toilets.

in short, I honestly don't give a crap about who uses what toilet anyway. If the school was fucked up enough that going to the loo in the same room caused sexual assaults, then it's fucked up enough that it would require classes to be separated into male and female classes.

[Andara Bledin]

Yeah, this is asinine.

Not to mention that in order to gt access to the ladies' room, a boy has to go through therapy and be diagnosed with gender dysphoria. It's not like medical marijuana where you can walk in and ask for a 'script.

It's an "OMG, I don't understand this, so I'm going to grasp at any straw I can to complain about this freaking me out" flail reaction.

[HYHYBT]

If you can see the genitals of the person in the next restroom stall, something is very wrong; either the stalls are poorly designed or in serious disrepair, or else you're deliberately peeking.

[LewisLegion]

Of course Gavin should be able to use the boy's restroom. And if it were reversed, and it was a kid who had been assigned male at birth but was a transgender girl, of course they should be allowed to use the girl's restroom.

As HYHYBT said, if you can see genitals you pretty much have to be deliberately peeking. I've used women's restrooms my entire life, including rather poor ones at beachsides that do not even have DOORS on the stalls, and I have never seen another woman's genitals inadvertantly while using them. Heck, I helped my elderly grandmother pee in the woods and didn't see HER genitals even though I was helping her out.

It's also funny. The people who generally say this make the argument that any man could just claim to be transgender to get into the women's restroom. Firstly, if any man wants to get into the women's restroom to do something like attack women, he's not going to care that 'it's a girl's restroom I can't go in.' There's not a force field over the door stopping them.

Secondly, let's say it gets made into law that people can only use the restrooms of the gender they were assigned at birth, regardless of transgender status. Ok, so now what is stopping a cisgender man from CLAIMING they were born a female to get into the female's bathroom on THOSE grounds? And have they seem some transgender men? A lot of them look far more macho then a lot of cisgender men. Are they really comfortable with transgender men with deep voices and full beards going into the women's room? They were born female after all, right? What's good for the goose is good for the gander.

Are we going to start requiring people to carry around medical records and have checkers at the door making sure the only people who enter into any public bathroom meet the criteria to use that bathroom? For heaven's sake. Every one of these people complaining has used a restroom with a gay or transgender person in it as well, and they didn't even notice. Every one of them, I guarantee it. Let the kid use the restroom in peace.

[s_stabeler]

If you think about it, the argument about letting a transgender person use the appropriate toilet for the gender they identify with has an obvious flaw. If someone is determined to assault somebody- sexually or not- them being in a gender-specific toilet is not going to stop them.

ad that's not even accounting for the fact that I bet that the separated-out trasngender restroom will not be cleaned as often as the gender-specific ones are.

[Lace Neil Singer]

It's ridiculous. I once came out of a cubicle in a public loo to find a gorgeous drag queen washing her hands. Should she have been there? Why the hell not? If you identify as a certain gender, then that's the one you use. Gavin is a boy, regardless of being born a girl, and therefore, he should use the gents.

[Mr Hero]

I'd think it would still be more convenient for Gavin to sue the women's restroom since she's still unaltered save for the hormones. She'll still need to sit down to pee in order to make a mess, and a women's restroom likely provides more stalls for that. Urinals are almost useless.