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We ignored the bathroom signs and nobody died.

Wow. Hard for me to imagine. When I was in Middle School, not showering after PE meant you got a "0" for the day AND a whack on the ass with a 2' paddle from the football coach... and if you cried people just made fun of you. Literally nobody gave a **** if you were made uncomfortable.


My how things have changed.

Yeah kids don't shower after PE these days. I don't get it. They usually don't shower after athletics either.
 
So I went to Pride yesterday, and I'd like to report my findings.

The bathrooms at Trafalgar Square, where the main stage and gathering was, are side-by-side, and they have the little boy and girl signs we all know, but for the purposes of Pride, they basically just threw it out the window and declared them both to be gender neutral.

So I went to the bathroom. The first time I just reflexively got in the "girl" side of the line. But next time, I got in the boys because it was moving faster.

In that line was me, several other ladies who were much more femme than I am, many men, some queer people of indeterminate gender, you get the picture.

Urinals to the left, stalls to the right, sinks in the middle. Yup, I could see the boys and and anyone else with a penis peeing. Well, their backs anyway.

Guess what?

Absolutely nothing happened and absolutely no one cared. All day.

All day, nothing happened and no one cared. No one attacked the ladies in the stalls (or at the urinals). There weren't many kids in attendance, but the one I saw in line seemed perfectly happy, and was also amazingly un-molested. People were not butt ****ing each other at the urinals. Sodom and Gomorrah did not descent upon London.

Girls and boys chatted casually in line, with friends and strangers alike. People who ****ed gender so brutally that I have no clue what sex they were laughing with people who were so flamboyantly gendered that their tail feathers barely fit through the door.

The only thing that happened to me is that someone told me they liked my rainbow cat ears.

And nothing happened and no one cared.

Just thought I'd update the chicken littles that, somehow, as if by magic, the apocalypse does not occur when bathrooms are not gendered. We all survived. That one drunk chick probably has a headache today, but that is the closest thing to a casualty that we witnessed.

I know, right? Amazing.

Can someone remind me why this is supposedly such a problem?

This fight to remove gender is disturbing to some people. Where I understand it, to me peeing doesn't require gender segregation a lot of people feel it should.

If you want tolerance you have to be tolerant. And yes that means tolerating people that are opposed to your views.

We don't need to change this, it isn't necessary. You look lady like enough use the ladies room. I don't think many guys give a **** if you come into the men's room.
 
Yeah kids don't shower after PE these days. I don't get it. They usually don't shower after athletics either.

My middle school and high school didn't force us to do that either. I always thought it was strange to make kids get naked and shower together. A few stall walls wouldn't have cost much.

There is no other time that you'll have to shower in the same room with a bunch of other boys, so what does this teach? Except of course you fail physical education if you don't partake in this odd ritual.
 
This fight to remove gender is disturbing to some people. Where I understand it, to me peeing doesn't require gender segregation a lot of people feel it should.

If you want tolerance you have to be tolerant. And yes that means tolerating people that are opposed to your views.

We don't need to change this, it isn't necessary. You look lady like enough use the ladies room. I don't think many guys give a **** if you come into the men's room.

I'm not necessarily fighting against keeping the tired old binary bathrooms. I think it's unnecessary, especially since all bathrooms have stalls (and I know cis guys who use them because they just have shy bladders), but whatever.

But if we're gonna keep the binary bathrooms, one may see a trans person who perhaps doesn't quite "pass" in said bathroom. Not everyone is lucky enough to go through transition young, or just have easily moulded features, or maybe they're just in an awkward stage of transition, and they don't all pass. You may also see someone who just isn't gender binary and doesn't fit the mould of what we expect of their gender, but they are not trans so they go into the bathroom that matches their genitals. And we need to learn to see these people without assaulting them, as a society.

Either we should get rid of the gender divide, or we need to stop assaulting trans people in bathrooms or refusing them entrance into bathrooms. A trans person needing to pee should not trigger a completely justified fear response. That's just heinous.

My point with my post was simply that it is entirely possible for people to coexist peacefully, in their mutual innocent need to just pee and get on with life, with people of the opposite sex or gender, or even people whose gender they can't discern at all. So there's no reason it should be impossible to coexist with people of your same gender, who you simply suspect may be trans for one reason or another. There's no need for this to be an issue.
 
I'm not necessarily fighting against keeping the tired old binary bathrooms. I think it's unnecessary, especially since all bathrooms have stalls (and I know cis guys who use them because they just have shy bladders), but whatever.

But if we're gonna keep the binary bathrooms, one may see a trans person who perhaps doesn't quite "pass" in said bathroom. Not everyone is lucky enough to go through transition young, or just have easily moulded features, or maybe they're just in an awkward stage of transition, and they don't all pass. You may also see someone who just isn't gender binary and doesn't fit the mould of what we expect of their gender, but they are not trans so they go into the bathroom that matches their genitals. And we need to learn to see these people without assaulting them, as a society.

Either we should get rid of the gender divide, or we need to stop assaulting trans people in bathrooms or refusing them entrance into bathrooms. A trans person needing to pee should not trigger a completely justified fear response. That's just heinous.

My point with my post was simply that it is entirely possible for people to coexist peacefully, in their mutual innocent need to just pee and get on with life, with people of the opposite sex or gender, or even people whose gender they can't discern at all. So there's no reason it should be impossible to coexist with people of your same gender, who you simply suspect may be trans for one reason or another. There's no need for this to be an issue.

I kind of agree with you about this peeing thing. I think we should be allowed to pee in the street.

We don't assault these people as a society. We're just struggling to understand. Sex is absolutely binary, you are either one or the other or in very rare cases a mixture of both. Gender identity isn't sex. Sex is what you are born with.

Further with the restrooms I'm going to tell you what I tell people who want laws requiring you use the restroom associated with the sex you are born with. It is the property owner's prerogative. They own the bathroom they own the building, you don't have to go there.
 
I kind of agree with you about this peeing thing. I think we should be allowed to pee in the street.

We don't assault these people as a society. We're just struggling to understand. Sex is absolutely binary, you are either one or the other or in very rare cases a mixture of both. Gender identity isn't sex. Sex is what you are born with.

Further with the restrooms I'm going to tell you what I tell people who want laws requiring you use the restroom associated with the sex you are born with. It is the property owner's prerogative. They own the bathroom they own the building, you don't have to go there.

Well, I'd prefer people kept it to places with plumbing, being a city dweller. London already went through that sanitation nightmare in the Victorian era, and it wasn't pretty. But anyway...

Yeah, we do. The vast majority of trans people have been assaulted or harassed, and the vast majority have been assaulted or harassed in a bathroom specifically.

Well, that gets kinda muddy since trans people are born with brains opposite their body -- like intersex people might have a mix of traits. But regardless, the gendered bathrooms are, well, about gender. You're expected to look a certain way inside them. As long as you do, it doesn't matter what's in your pants. You can be an intersex person with a naturally very female appearance, but who has testes in your pants, and no one will notice. The issue comes with people who don't entirely "pass" as a certain gender, often for reasons they can't help, despite having the "correct" genitals in their pants. So, yes, this is very much an issue of straight-up gender presentation. A trans person with the "correct" genitals might be subject to violence, but someone who just "appears" to have the "correct" genitals won't be, even if they actually don't.

I don't think we should say businesses have the "freedom" to discriminate against certain people based on their gender/sex, or simply allow violence to happen on their premises. We don't let them for any other reason, and if this weren't an issue, no one would be raising it.
 
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