*lolz
I generally don’t encourage assumptions, as we know where that path usually leads; but in this case I’ll make an exception.
It simultaneously bemuses and disheartens me that someone could be so willfully glib about something so simple.
If there were no discriminatory laws and policy being passed under the guise of “religious freedom” or “protecting innocents/privacy” in the first place, then there would be no widespread misunderstandings, and potential “needless conflicts.”
This was at Baylor, so the rules get extra weird. I have known of a few men’s university dorms in Texas where the urinals were removed. They were originally installed, but later removed. The anecdote I heard was they were confusing for some foreign students who would occasionally use them for solid matter, which they aren’t designed to handle. This anecdote is most likely false, but the idea of solid matter entering the urinal is probably true.
Men’s restrooms are confusing places. For example, this is a real thing found in some men’s restrooms:
Sink or Urinal?
Do you live in a very dangerous and frightening place? Do really bad things happen all the time where you are?
Also, where you are, if what stands between bad-things and no-bad-things is conforming to societal norms, perhaps the place you live is imaginary.
The place I live (USA, Earth) bad things happen all the time. Also, bad things DON’T happen all the time. It’s messy, uneven and not particularly fair.
Whether I wear trousers is totally irrelevant. No one confuses me for a man. Or do you think it’s only womanly-women who should have pants privilege? Insufficiently pretty/curvy women should wear frilly dresses, to soothe your sensibilities and to activate the sympathetic magic of conforming to societal norms leading to no-bad-things happening, or something?
Edit for grammar.
(source)
On behalf of other English folks here, stop. You’re embarrassing us.
My guess would be sink - whatever is below it looks like a trigger, and with a urinal, it would be too high to comfortably reach with a foot, and too low to comfortably reach with a hand. As a sink, though, I could trigger that with a knee or hip (neither of which I’d like to do with a urinal).
The context of how high it was mounted would be helpful, though, too - I can’t think of many sinks I’ve seen that were mounted low enough to be useful as a urinal, or vice versa for urinals high enough to be useful as a sink.
Any sink is a urinal if you need to go real bad.
or tree, or fence post, or houseplant, or empty milk carton, or quart size baggie, or random tupperware found in the office fridge, or …
It states in the actual article that she has short hair.
There is no exclusivity for long hair or short hair, just societal averages (be them right or wrong). How often do men with long flowing blonde hair get mistaken for a woman from behind?
Not everyone is socially enlightened as Boingboing readers seem to be. That does not make them horrible abusive people, but honestly average.
‘Gender neutral’ is not something the average person in the world has in their vocabulary. They were raised with a fairly clear distinction of what a man should look like and what a woman should look like (thanks to the media, church, school). Fashion is a subject that is squarely in the eye of the beholder. Are pants men only? No, but there are cuts that are intended for women and cuts intended for men. I dont care if a man identifies as a woman, woman as a man, white as black, dog as cat. A persons happiness is their own. If attaining that happiness crosses traditional images of gender… a unfortunate byproduct of that is the occasional misidentification of gender, not as an act of malice but of a society who still defines man and woman as separate genders with seperate ways of dressing.
I dont see a victim. I see a woman who is frequently misidentified as a man, being frustrated by such, taking that frustration out on yet another person who misidentified her as a man.
I support peoples rights to be happy, and if that includes woman who dress in a traditionally masculine fashion, they have to understand there will be unintentional confusion. Confronting that person in an inflammatory manner will cause tension and conflict where none is needed. A simple ‘lol sorry, I get that alot’ would have showed compassion for a person who was clearly (and understandably) confused. Nothing will be gained by conflict, only fights and bad feelings.
Until it becomes a legal liability for someone "important’, apparently.
No matter what anyone says, this person keeps intentionally missing the point that the “gentleman” in question would likely have not made such an “honest mistake” in the first place, had he not been emboldened by bigoted laws which were created to allow people to ‘legally discriminate’ against a certain subset of society.
How long must one suffer fools?
“Social enlightenment” is not a prerequisite for minding your own business and not harassing people.
Just stop.
There are so many things wrong with what you’ve been posting that I just don’t know where to start.
It seems to me that you are saying that the victim of harrassment should apologize to their harrasser. Or am I confused about that?
Which tradition are you referring to?
Tradition is a terrible thing to appeal to as a standard. Bigotry and hatred are a tradition in America. Does that make them acceptable or justifiably expected? Of course not.
So you’re saying the woman should apologize because she caused the mistake on the part of the officious man by not looking how he would expect a woman to look?
Apparently not if you expect them to just accept being harassed because someone else thinks they don’t look right.
This whole concept of “if you see something, say something” that you’re espousing is statistically at odds with the rate at which the acts you’re afraid will happen actually occur. “Something” to a lot of people is anything that they’ve never seen before, anything that doesn’t conform to their biases, experiences, and privileged life. Punishing people for not conforming to the expectations of any other portion of the population by expecting them to just accept being harassed, inconvenienced, approached, or questioned about their nonconformity is absurd and judgmental.
You seem to be missing the fact that the conflict is already created by the person who takes it upon themselves to approach and question others, even if, should we provide the benefit of the doubt, they are actually trying to “help.”
Damn, I wish I could give you more than one ‘like’ for that.
I had long hair at one time and got regularly mistaken for a woman, sometimes from behind, sometimes from the front. What I didn’t get was harassment from people who thought I was using the ‘wrong’ bathroom based on unnecessary and discriminatory laws passed in another state.
Perhaps you don’t see any malice in the man’s actions, but that’s as much of an assumption as your insistence that the woman was dressed “like a man”, whatever that may be.
Saying “average” people are ignorant does not make your argument any smarter. Among other things I never said the man would be familiar with the phrase ‘gender neutral’. I simply said some clothes are. You can dispute that if you wish, but given the depth of the hole you’re already in it would be a bad idea to continue to dig.
I’ve long felt slightly smugly superior in this regard. When out and about with my son and daughter when they were small, if one of them needed to go, I’d march 'em right into the men’s room. It didn’t require any agonized handwringing on my part.
In the venues we’d find ourselves, the Gents’ room wasn’t likely to be markedly filthier than the Ladies’.
When it came to the issue of one of my kids accidentally glimpsing some strange schlong in the loo, I didn’t waste any brain cells worrying that they might be scarred by it. For one thing, as @Mister44 points out above, one almost never catches a glimpse of exposed dongs in the Men’s Room, unless one is actually trying to. Also, my kids have seen each other and both their parents naked pretty much every day of their lives, and they cannot remember a day when they didn’t know what penises are and what they’re used for in the loo.
When it came to the comfort of bystanders, I know there could very well be occupants of the Ladies’ Room who might be discomfited by my presence in that room, even in the role of loving dad helping his sweet toddler children go to the bathroom. Most people would be understanding, but some might be made to feel uncomfortable by my presence there. So I just go into the Gents’. Any people there made uncomfortable by the presence of my small daughter in the room can just suck it up and call their therapist. The last thing I’d ever do is impose on some unknown-to-me woman, however kindly, by asking her to take care of my kids.
Jesus, it’s the crapper. We all go there, every single day of our lives. Our kids need to use 'em, too, as do all adults of every gender identification. Let’s just let each other crap and piss in peace.
That makes WAY too much sense, entirely.
