This isn’t the first time I’ve heard this “joke”, and I always wonder, what is it about Huckabee and those like him that they think showering with people you’re attracted to when you’re a teenager would be anything but an incredibly uncomfortable and potentially humiliating experience?
Then again I’m kinda stupid. I’m still trying to figure out why an elected official would feel it was necessary to threaten transgender people with murder.
I also want to note that this is a timely issue for me. The college that I work for just installed 22 all-gender bathrooms26 (which can be used by everyone).
As stupid as the story about Huckabee is, at least this was great to hear. I’d like my college to do something similar, but since our system just got a $250 M budget cut, I’m not holding out much hope. Not so oddly, but anything even remotely progressive is the first thing cut in these situations.
Huckabee and his ilk don’t give a rat’s ass about “genuine” gender dysmorphia. For them, there is no such thing; everyone falls into this picture they’re trying to paint. It’s not like they or their supporters live in an evidence based world or anything.
… but [as I mentioned above] social conservatives need somewhere that queer students can’t escape violence and administrators can pretend not to know about the violence.
#Re-education through labor.
you forgot “I’m thinking about the children!”
It’s cultural. No more than that. Roman public toilets had side by side seating. In Belgium, men’s urinals will often be on the way to the women’s toilets. Partly there is a convention in this; people agree not to notice certain things (like middle class Indians agree not to notice street beggars, and English lawyers agree not to read misdirected emails.) Breaking the convention is a serious offence.
In the US, or other countries with a wide range of cultures, cultural agreement is impossible. Ultimately the risk is of ending up with the most culturally exclusive behaviour system. For instance, the Islamic takeover of much of India caused Hindu women to have to cover themselves. On the other hand, when Sweden was a largely culturally homogeneous country mixed showers were possible, because of the convention that they were not sexual locations.
They always seem to miss the corollary: that nothing stops men who want to ogle women (or worse) from doing that now. There’s no guard on the ladies room. I’ve been followed into bathrooms before. I’ve walked into a restroom labeled “Women” as a (presenting) male was walking out.
“Pretending” to be a woman, as Huck seems to think, is going about it the hard way when you can just stroll in as you are.
Also I’m amused by the mental image of 20 women just … standing around the bathroom or locker room letting someone leer at them. Like … we’re not gonna notice? Or complain that the person is behaving inappropriately? I’m getting the distinct feeling that Huckabee thinks women’s locker rooms are full of shapely ladies giggling while gently soaping each other’s bosoms.
Frankly though, I wish he’d said that while he was in high school too. And then endured the mockery and hatred from classmates. He might have learned a little compassion along the way.
And the adults are legally not under in loco parenits orders to disrobe or risk their future with a dented GPA or other compulsions.
They just make many more before they die…
I think that’s what happens to some people… others it just makes them mean assholes.
If only they wouldn’t be so “weird” …
I am really kindof shocked that Huckabee failed to see the most obvious solution to people feeling uncomfortable in the presence of others. Concealed Carry, of course!! If those girls would just shower with their guns as God intended…
They are supposedly working on better signage, but for now:
Unfortunatly, I don’t think just the words “RESTROOM / BATHROOM” would work either. We have a large population of non-native speakers who are attending to learn English for the first time…
I can’t get this to work now, but it could be worse than public showering:
http://www.itsjerrytime.com/naked-swim-test.html
I work at a university that replaced the “Men” or “Women” signs on some single-occupant bathrooms with “Gender Neutral Restroom”. It’s an elegantly simple solution, and one that’s relatively inexpensive, but I guess with a $250 M budget cut even something so straightforward might be too much.
I think one of the stadia in Chicago has urinals in-the-round.
Me, I’ll go out of my way to find a bathroom with no one else in it. Chalk it up to bourgeois cultural hangups, whatever, I yam what I yam.
Erm… concealed?
That’s just the thing - in what cultures exactly is a shower a “sexual location”? Or a changing area? Or a toilet? I think it’s only body-shame neurosis, because (I could be wrong, but my admittedly limited experience indicates) that these locations are generally not used for sexual activity by anyone, anywhere. It seems more likely to me that many simply equate nudity with sex, which is still rather irrational when one counts how many minutes in one’s life one spends nude, compared to minutes spend engaged in sexual activity. And even if - “worst” case scenario - people around you were having sex - who cares? If it doesn’t involve you, then you don’t need to be doing it.
IMO there isn’t much less sexy than someone taking a dump, so the idea that this is a gendered, private activity strikes me as being ridiculous. These are hygiene issues, and the only reason they demand privacy is because people are ashamed of their bodies, which is a quite unhealthy norm. And since people ARE THEIR BODIES it is also a religious/philosophical problem, as the whole mind/body split is hardly a fact everyone need subscribe to.
