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McDonald’s Employees

There is a petition at change.org which is calling for the McDonald’s employees who stood by, laughed, and videotaped the violent attack on a trans woman be held responsible.

I have no idea what kind of precedent that might be, but a law like this is long overdue.

Not at all ironically, it is in Maryland that a recent non-discrimination law recently went down in flames because gender identity was added to the bill and legislators, as per usual, were presented with the bullshit argument that somehow “men in dresses” would be hiding out in ladies’ room inflicting violence. THERE HAS NEVER BEEN A CASE OF THIS HAPPENING, and as we can all see here, it is transpeople who require protection and safety from transphobic bigots. The Democratic Senators who backed out of supporting the bill – even after confirming their support – should be ashamed of themselves.

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Passing Privilege and Maine Politics

Last week, Jennifer Finney Boylan spoke to the Maine legislature over gender inclusion in Maine’s non discrimination laws. She writes:

Yesterday, I spoke to the Maine legislature’s Judiciary committee. A bill has been proposed to “exempt” transgender people from protections under the Maine Human Rights Act, which went into effect six years ago. Currently, Maine protects GLBT people from discrimination, and this includes a so called “public accommodations” provision of the very sort that was, in part, the deal breaker in the Maryland law that was shelved last week. (Although I should make it clear that the Maine law has been on the books for six years without problem, and the proposed legislation is to REMOVE the protection for trans people; Maryland currently has no such provisions and the shelved legislation would have put these protections into place.)

She made some lovely remarks to the Maine legislature’s judiciary committee, which she’s reprinted in full on her blog, but the issue that comes up is that of passing privilege: how people are more than ready to have trans people who pass in their transitioned gender protected and welcomed in gender-specific spaces, but that the people who don’t pass are suspect.

That’s obviously a problem, since it’s exactly the trans people (and cis people, for that matter) who don’t have “acceptable” or culturally legible genders that need the protection most. No one asks for anyone’s ID on the way into a public bathroom after all; we are carded by our gender expression, and if our gender isnt normative, there’s often trouble, whether the person is trans, butch or some other gender that doesn’t stick closely enough to “man” or “woman”.

A quick thanks to Boylan for the heads up and for speaking up, too.

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Trans Friendly Bathrooms

Genderqueer Chicago is working on a campaign to make bathrooms in Chicago trans-friendly:

CHICAGO–In an unprecedented effort to make the city of Chicago safer for transgender individuals, Genderqueer Chicago, a local youth group, launched the “T-Friendly Bathroom Initiative,” a grassroots project that challenges business owners to recognize and protect gender identity in their public restrooms, according to a press release.

This year, more than 500 businesses and organizations will be asked to sign a pledge that commits them to allowing gender-variant customers to use the bathrooms they choose. Businesses that sign the pledge will receive window decals that gender-variant people can easily identify as trans-friendly.

It sounds like a very cool plan; I hope to see this idea transfer to other cities. Maybe there will be a day when Safe 2 Pee isn’t needed — imagine!

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Gender Neutral Bathrooms at CSI

The College of Staten Island is making some of their restrooms unisex, or gender neutral. It’s not particularly tricky: they’re putting signs on the doors of both male & female stick figures, add a lock to the main door and a sign letting people know they can use the gender neutral bathroom as a single-use, private one.

Amazingly uncomplicated, and as the article points out, useful for more than people whose genders are in flux, fluid, or trans: a father who has to change his daughter’s diaper, for instance, doesn’t have to worry about finding a family bathroom, either.

(h/t to Darryl Hill, who is also mentioned in the article)

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Bathroom Salon

& Here’s some more (not) good news: a group called Mass Resistance took video of First Event, the annual trans party/conference that takes place up in Boston in January of every year. They cobbled together some footage (badly) in order to show very tall trans women & crossdressers using the ladies’ room at the Radisson where the event was held.

What’s funny about the video is how horrendously boring it all looks. I mean, video footage of people going into & leaving a bathroom is exactly that. You may as well watch paint dry. With any luck, at least some of the people who viewed it thought, “um, yeah. People using a bathroom. Nothing horrible happened.”

On a positive note, Salon’s Broadsheet actually covered the horror of the bigotry being expressed. It’s good to see Salon start to cover trans issues with compassion and even some regularity.

(to to Jean)

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Getting It

Interesting coverage of a trans person who is suing their employer for building a gender-neutral bathroom for them:

Interesting because the guy seems hip to trans identities in general, & is only critical of the person’s decision to sue. Strikes me as similar to how I felt about Kim Nixon’s case.

(via TransAdvocate)

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DC Bathroom Campaign

DC Trans Coalition and Office of Human Rights Launch Bathroom Access and Safety Campaign

Groups Mobilizing Community to Ensure Enforcement of the Human Rights Act

Washington, DC –   On Friday, July 3rd, the DC Trans Coalition (DCTC) along with the DC Office of Human Rights (OHR) launched the Bathroom Access and Safety Campaign, otherwise known as the Pee in Peace Campaign – a community mobilization project designed to ensure bathroom access and safety for all residents, including transgender, transsexual and gender non-conforming individuals, in the District.

Even with the District’s comprehensive Human Rights Act, which includes protections for gender identity or expression, trans and gender non-conforming people continue to experience verbal and physical harassment ranging from being attacked and thrown out to even being arrested for simply trying to use the bathroom in the District.  In fact, according to a recent citywide survey for transgender and gender non-conforming people, 70 percent of respondents indicated that they had experienced problems accessing or using gender segregated bathrooms. Continue reading “DC Bathroom Campaign”

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Peeing, Again

Have you all seen this latest iteration of trans + feminist(ing) + bathroom issues? Oy, it makes me tired. Here’s what I had to say about it four years ago.

Some days I just want to apologize to all the trans people who I ardently needed to talk to about bathrooms when I was working this stuff out, so let me: sorry, all of you, and thank you for educating me when it wasn’t your responsibility.

In the meantime, Gunner Scott has started a new blog about trans people + bathroom experiences, and he put up a sample at TGB (& info about how to send him your own stories, too).

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Gainesville Says No

Unofficial results from Gainesville are that the good citizens of the historic Florida town voted no to turning back the clock and getting rid of LGBTQ discrimination protections.

58% No on Amendment 1 (and 42% Yes) according to Mara Keisling of NCTE & Allyson Robinson of HRC.

Good news! Not only that, but the “keep crossdressed men out of bathrooms” schtick didn’t work. Go Equality Gainesville!