North Carolina’s bathroom bill was called Hate Bill 2 by Reverend William Barber when he addressed the Network for Public Education Conference last week. It not only requires transgender people to use the bathroom that is aligned with the gender on their birth certificate, but it also permits discrimination against gay people. A federal appeals court overturned a school’s effort to accomplish the same goal in Virginia.
Here are my thoughts on the matter, which I think is incredibly dumb. It was posted at Huffington Post an hour ago. I try to get at the reasons for the bill and explain why it can’t ever work.
Picking on a small and powerless minority benefits certain politicians, but no one else. In fact, it diverts attention from other issues that are far more important.
Transgender people are already using the bathroom of their choice, but no one knows it.
The law is unenforceable. Who will check to make sure that those entering the women’s bathroom were born female?
When NPE was in Raleigh, every public facility already has a gender-neutral bathroom. There are men’s bathrooms, women’s bathrooms, and a “family bathroom” open to men and women. There were gender-neutral bathrooms in the Marriott Hotel, the Raleigh Convention Center, and the airport.
It is a dumb bill and the courts won’t let it stand. But in the meanwhile, a lot of politicians have gained notoriety, and many corporations have let the state know that the business climate is hostile to their employees.
A dumb bill.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
It does nothing to solve any actual problems, since no one can point to any documented incident of a “man in a dress” assaulting women in the bathroom. At the same time it increases the possibility of discrimination and harassment based on how people look. If someone like, say, Castor Semenya, who is legitimately a woman, goes into a bathroom in North Carolina, she might now have to “prove” that she is, in fact, a woman. And, of course, most trans people look like the gender they identify as.
Next thing you know we’ll have to go through one of those full body scanners like they have at airports just to use the bathroom, although I probably shouldn’t say that because someone will take it seriously.
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Perhaps ALL those who live in NC will have to carry their birth certificates and pictures of their genitals. Or maybe there will be a special card they will have to obtain from a state office. Which government officials or department will be charged with inspecting birth certificates and genitals? Of course, then we need to have restrooms monitored to be sure the proper people are going to their correct bathroom. What will the legal punishment be for attempting to enter the “wrong” restroom? Taxpayers, get out your wallets! A whole separate state department will be needed to address this urgent situation.
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This blog claims to be “A site to discuss better education for all.”
I do not see what what the North Carolina bathroom bill has to do with discussing better education for all.
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You don’t think there’s any transgender kids in North Carolina schools? And that maybe those kids have to use the bathroom at school sometimes?
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Lighten up Raj. Let some air out of your “choose”. If D wants to
discuss the bum bill, so be it.
Take the “post” for what it cost you…
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Raj, it is my blog and I write whatever I want.
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NoBrick
Thanks for the advice
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Raj, if it’ll make you feel better you can write a comment expressing your hope that I’m captured and executed by ISIS.
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Tim,
I am sure you and I are some the few sane persons commenting on this blog. I wish nothing of the kind for you. I wish you long life and happiness. Besides, the ISIS comment in this blog is unjustified and reckless.
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Raj, is someone forcing you to read this blog? Not me. You read by your choice, so far as I know. You are always free to go and read The 74 or Education Post. You will find more diversity of views here, is my guess.
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Los Angeles Times, 4-20-2016, “Santee community rallies in support of a gender-neutral bathroom after fight.”
Link: http://www.latimes.com/local/education/lausd/la-me-edu-santee-gender-neutral-bathroom-lausd-protest-story.html
Bathrooms. Students. Schools.
It’s an education issue.
“Diane Ravitch’s blog A site to discuss better education for all.”
Education issue on an education blog.
😎
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Leaving aside whether courts will strike the law down, it seems to me that there may be settings where the law is much more enforceable than others. I’m thinking of settings like high schools or public workplaces, where the population is generally a closed set and people have a high degree of knowledge about each other. In non-anonymous settings like that, people will tend to know if a person is “transitioning.” And although I assume it must be true that people often can’t tell whether someone is transgender, there are certainly cases in which they can tell. Years ago, I worked with a transgender man (“FTM”). It was obvious, and people talked about it. (“Hey, what’s up with XXX?” “Oh, you mean the ‘guy’ who works in the XXX department?”) If there had been a highly publicized law that banned XXX from using the men’s room, all it would take is one person making a complaint. I can’t say how events would unfold from that, but pity the poor human resources person who receives that complaint. And most of all pity XXX, who would live in dread of the day he’s called to a meeting where he’s told, “I’m so sorry, this is terribly awkward, but there’s been a complaint, and the law is clear, and I have to ask you whether you have a penis.”
I shudder to think of how this would play out in the high school setting, where restroom users have a notorious capacity for petty viciousness.
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The court case in Virginia was about a high school student who had transitioned to male and did not want to be required to use the girls’ bathroom. The federal appeals court agreed with the student.
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I would agree, as I think you’re suggesting, that this likely dooms the North Carolina law’s application in the school setting. In the meantime, the law remains on the books. And the Grimm case doesn’t address the workplace setting.
If I were transgender, I would be very worried about the immediate future.
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Sometimes the viciousness is not so petty!
Me, personally? In many thousands of visits to public and workplace restrooms, I’ve never seen a penis (other than my own), a vagina, or any form of transitional genitalia. There is a really simple common-sense solution to all this, but maybe the fine folks of NC should make it officially illegal to look at other people’s junk while in a bathroom?
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Tim, you may not have noticed but the girls in that terrible bathroom fight were all born female (to the extent that anyone knows). No one has suggested that the fight involved a transgender student.
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dianeravitch: right on cue.
Non Sequitur with a non sequitur.
Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly…
😎
P.S. FLERP!: well put.
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Not a non sequitur! There is a lot of bullying, and as Flerp put it, petty viciousness that goes on in schools, but especially in unsupervised areas. In too many cases, including the Delaware school, where last year a total of SEVEN violent felony incidents took place, the viciousness isn’t petty, but escalates into brutality and physical harm.
IOW, I agree with his point that in a school setting the negative impact of an already toxic law might be made even worse. I can understand how you missed this, being in a rush to post an ad hominem and all. No worries.
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dianeravitch: I didn’t know that Non Sequitur was a Billy Preston fan, albeit with the usual rheephorm twist that turns an admonition against doing into a command to do—
[start]
Nothin’ from nothin’ leaves nothin’
You gotta have somethin’ if you wanna talk with me
Nothin’ from nothin’ leaves nothin’
You gotta have somethin’ if you wanna talk with me
[end]
But then again, when actual serious issues are raised, there is no one [except for Non Sequitur Jr.] more apt to miss the point of a posting.
But you can’t fault him on consistency…
A consistency born from the rigor and grit necessary to maintain $ucce$$ Academy’s “Code of Silence.”
A consistency also born from learning how to Dial up the courage to deal with those monstrous five- and six-year-olds that wantonly throw heavy desks Olympic distances against mild-mannered EduproductDeliverySpecialists née teachers.
😎
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Flerp,
They wouldn’t need to ask that because school records include a copy of the birth certificate. And gender is indicated on all student records.
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Busted!
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But that’s the problem – a student who is transitioning probably won’t match the gender listed on their birth certificate.
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“But that’s the problem – a student who is transitioning probably won’t match the gender listed on their birth certificate.”
I think Involved Mom is saying is that it’s the “solution.” When the transitioning student identifies as male and wants to use the men’s room, but the student records list the gender as female, the student is banned from the men’s room without any need for genital inspection. I agree with the analysis, and it’s another example of how “bathroom laws” would be relatively easy to enforce in non-anonymous settings like schools and workplaces, where the identity of all restroom users is known, where administrators have records that document the gender of each restroom user (see, e.g., every single form with a checkbox next to “male” or “female”), and where other restroom users function as an ad-hoc citizen’s patrol service. This is why such a law is so scary in those settings. It’s not just a laughable, ridiculous manifestation of fear and prejudice. It’s a tool that enables institutions, rather than just individual jerks, to harass a particular group of people.
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“Who will check to make sure that those entering the women’s bathroom were born female?”
Why genital inspectors, of course! I believe there was a notice on this very site recently seeking applicants for these, um, “positions.”
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Markstext, yes, it will be a major new jobs program in NC and elsewhere, especially in the South.
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Yes, North Carolina’s version of the New Deal….
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I don’t find that joke funny. It’s so obvious and so cliche. And it is crass.
There are not going to be genital inspectors.
And NC will have jobs. There are always unintended consequences from every action. There is no way to know how this will all turn out. But I do know that self-fulfilling prophecies have a way of happening, and in NC we love our state so we’ll get through this.
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Unfortunately it’s not just a bill. . .it’s a law.
I agree with your point about politicians. I think it is all politics. . .every way you look at it. Even the responses. It has provoked emotional and visceral responses, inspired brand protection and division.
I do, though, think it was provoked by Charlotte. And I wonder was there another way for them to achieve their goals in a way that wouldn’t have provoked the hornet’s nest in Raleigh? Did they truly model their law after other cities? Which ones?
I have noticed, because I have attended political events with LGBT candidates, that the bathroom issue is very symbolic within that community. It reminds me of the struggle friends and I had in middle school at church youth retreats about whether we could use the “staff shower,” which during the summers was for staff, but during the off-season when our church used the camp there really was no staff. And it became a power struggle. The volunteer adults on our retreat with us would put a sign up saying, “adults only;” and we would take it down because we were insistent there was no “staff” when camps were not in session. I attended one campaign kickoff where the folks running it immediately put their own sign over the sign of the establishment on the bathrooms saying “gender neutral.” I knew most of the folks there and while I would consider many of them gender non-conforming, it was not a gathering of trannies. And I didn’t even see anyone use either bathroom during the event. So I wonder, because I think it best to thoroughly examine anything that creates this much hype, if the LGBT community has attached to this symbolism a little too much and also attached a little too much to the symbolism therein. It is true that most places have “family” bathrooms, or single user ones that can be used by anyone. Or, as you note, that trannies already use the one they identify as and nobody gives a darn and never did.
It is fair to ask what hand LGBT had in creating this situation. On the one hand, they want to be like everyone else. But then they want to be a special class. And most other folks are just trying to live their lives and let others live theirs.
If you get in people’s faces, unprovoked and unsolicited, there will be backlash.
I question the leadership around all of this. . .on both sides. Where is the wisdom? There really isn’t any, which is why I agree it is all political from both sides of the perspective.
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Also, I have read articles that surmise that the right is using the left here to create their own smokescreen. HB2 has a lot in it about municipalities and what they can and can’t. That’s the more troublesome part.
But LGBT issues are trendy and that community is loud and so everyone’s going to try to show that they epitomize Christian and brotherly love by “we embrace everyone” and “we won’t do business with NC because of this” and meanwhile Raleigh will bend on the LGBT stuff (because, really they don’t care) and meanwhile the rest of the bill will stay intact.
So I think some people are, as I’ve noted before, punching the Tar Baby. . .and Raleigh is in the briar patch, which they like.
Wisdom takes thought. . .not reaction.
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“It is fair to ask what hand LGBT had in creating this situation. On the one hand, they want to be like everyone else. But then they want to be a special class. And most other folks are just trying to live their lives and let others live theirs.”
It wasn’t the LGBTQ people who created this situation. They just want to be left alone to use the bathroom as they see fit without fear of being genital-checked or beaten up. Is that too much to ask? It was the conservatives in Raleigh who rattled the hornets’ nest by not only saying that people have to use the “proper” bathroom, but also by overruling local ordinances protecting LGBTQ rights. I always thought conservatives were in favor of local rule, but someone when locals rule something that conservatives don’t like, it’s suddenly okay to overrule those lousy locals with a higher power.
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*somehow
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Dienne, I don’t think that’s entirely true about LGBT wanting to just be left alone.
I think, as with any group, some seek attention and lime light.
Chicken and egg and no way to prove. Not a right or wrong here. But a situation that has sparked debate and dialogue.
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Yes, there is a right and a wrong here. LGBTQ people want the same rights and protection from discrimination and harm as anyone else – that’s the right. The wrong is people who are trying to discriminate against them and deny them their rights and not allow them to be safe.
As far as just wanting to be left alone vs. speaking out, it’s the same as it was (and often still is) with black people. They want their rights and to live their lives. But when it gets to a point where they can’t live their lives and do the things normal people do (like using the bathroom), then they have to speak out. That’s not for “attention” as you seem to think, it’s so that they can live safely as who they are. You would do the same in their shoes. Are you even remotely aware of the history of violence against transgender people?
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Ok, fair enough….
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Thank you Dienne for your well said and straight to the core of a political incorrectness.
All thick skulls have a very dense thinking skills of bullying the weak and the powerless.
People in NC need to take their time to pull their courage up and demand the law HB2 to be aborted due to civilized reason.
Everyone has known that all public washrooms have three DISTINCTIVE choices: MALE, FEMALE, and HANDICAPPED or FAMILY. Therefore, what purpose does the law HB2 have? Back2basic.
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I wonder if concerned mom has a point here. Let people scream and shout about the most visible of the bill’s provisions, and then bend to the rhetoric but leave the other provisions intact.
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The bathroom controversy in Charlotte was used by a very right-wing legislature in NC to eliminate the right of employees to sue for discrimination in state court. This is something that the Republicans tried to do before but did not succeed. So, when the opportunity arose, they packed this “bathroom bill” with items from their anti-labor wish list.
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This appeared on HuffPost Queer Voices.
Very relevant to the discussion here. Includes terrific graphics.
Link: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/cathy-renna/bathroom-battles-new-reso_b_9748806.html?ssssss
Two teasers: 1), “DO YOUR BUSINESS MIND YOUR BUSINESS” and 2), “PLEASE BE KIND TO THOSE THAT CHOOSE THIS BATHROOM. A person’s gender isn’t always clear, but we all need to pee in peace.”
😎
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