Contributors

Wednesday, February 17, 2016

Ending the Transgender Bathroom Hysteria

South Dakota is the latest entrant in the fearfest many Republican-run states have been whipping up over transgendered individuals and bathrooms. Mike Huckabee dialed up his creep factor to 11 last year when he said:
"Now I wish that someone told me that when I was in high school that I could have felt like a woman when it came time to take showers in PE," Huckabee said.
The number of transgendered individuals in South Dakota high schools is going to be amazingly small. The number is estimated to be about 0.2 to 0.3 percent, or about 700,000 Americans. Given South Dakota's small population and lack of tolerance for transgendered individuals, there can't be more than a couple dozen in the entire state. So why the big stink?

The problem, as conservatives appear to see it, is that males claiming to be transgendered will be physically attracted to women and wish to spy on them in the toilet (because sitting in the stall next to someone taking a dump is so alluring).

However, many people born male who identify as women are attracted to men. And many people born female who identify as male are attracted to women. Which, in Republicans' minds, means they are gay. That means Republicans want to make people with homosexual tendencies use restrooms that are frequented by the sex they are physically attracted to.

In other words, Republicans want to force Mike Huckabee's wet dream on these transgendered individuals.

Not that long ago Republicans were going through a gay panic, worried that they would be trapped in a bathroom with a rapacious gay man. Now, just a few short years later, they want to force every allegedly gay man to share bathrooms with them, even when they've sex reassignment surgery, lopped off their penises, taken hormones and grown breasts.

Now, imagine how disconcerted Mike Huckabee will feel when he's taking a leak in the men's room and Caitlyn Jenner walks in. Wouldn't he rather she visit the ladies room and save everyone the embarrassment?

And how is this going to be enforced? Is South Dakota going to post toilet police outside every restroom and check your ID before they let you in? Or are they going to strip search everyone on the way in? With all those phony IDs floating around you just can't be too safe.

One thing these Republican men may not be aware of is that women's bathrooms provide a great deal more privacy than men's bathrooms. Men's bathrooms sport communal urinals, but women get private stalls. There's really nothing to see in a women's bathroom.

When I went to high school, boys showered communally, which I felt was a terrible invasion of privacy. Unlike Mike Huckabee, I didn't really like getting naked with a bunch of guys. However, my wife's school had private shower stalls in their locker rooms. The locker rooms in the women's sports programs at our local university have separate showers, the men shower communally. Even women's prisons, if Orange is the New Black is any kind of guide, have separate shower stalls.

So, sorry, Huck. Even if you had claimed you were a girl in high school, you'd be showering alone in a personal stall anyway.

Scanning the Internet, this seems to be the way it is across the country: women get privacy in their bathrooms, while men get communal urinals and sometimes even rows of toilets with no walls separating them.

Rather than fretting about transgendered individuals sneaking peaks, legislators should be taking steps to ensure everyone's privacy in the bathroom. Every student should be free from the prying eyes of other students, whether they're straight, gay or trans.

While we're talking toilets, there's another problem that deserves mention: in many places -- sports stadiums, for example -- there are nowhere near enough facilities for women. The line for the women's room is really long, while the men's room is empty. This has prompted some women to use the men's room instead.

Many public places now have three kinds of bathrooms: mens, womens and family -- the later being a single stool with a baby-changing station. This idea should be expanded: separate men's and women's rooms should be eliminated, replacing them with facilities that can be used by anyone in privacy. An adjacent penis-only urinal room could be provided for men who absolutely must flash their dicks for other men to see.

That would also put men and women on an equal footing waiting in line for toilet stalls.

The most dishonest thing about South Dakota bathroom scare is that trans kids are threatening anyone. By far and way the most frequent sort of sexual harassment in the schools is straight students harassing gays and trans kids.

But institutionalizing that harassment is the entire point, isn't it?

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