Tempest in a Pee-pot

By now that incredibly stupid Carolina law -- forbidding people to use restrooms that don't jibe with the genders on their birth certificates -- has slipped off the front page, and doubtless the governor and legislature hope it stays that way.  Alas, while the law is still there, the opposition will be too.  There's no escape, you pious fools;  get rid of that law or remain a laughingstock -- as Tennessee was for decades after the Scopes "Monkey Trial". 

Not the least of the law's stupidities is the fact that very few people walk around carrying their birth certificate with them -- drivers' licenses or other state IDs yes, but not birth certificates -- so how is anybody supposed to check them out?  Second, who's going to do the checking, anyway?  Official Pee-Pee Police assigned to every public restroom in the state?  If you've got the tax money to pay for that, you'd be better off spending it on improving your schools.

And without handy birth certificates or Pee-Pee Police, how are you supposed to tell a "transgender"/"transsexual" on sight, anyway?  Real transsexuals are quite rare;  it's a condition in which a person is born with the genes and/or endocrine system of one sex and the physique of the other.  It's a miserable condition, in which the sufferer's body just doesn't fit right, work right, or feel right until s/he gets treatment to bring his/her physique into line.  This is not helped any by the social roles expected from the different sexes in most societies;  a lot of people psychologically fit the "standards" of the opposite sex, which tends to muddy the waters.  But in any case, a real transsexual will do his/her best to look, act, talk, dress, and otherwise be like the sex s/he identifies with -- so a passing glance, or even a close look, wouldn't tell you which gender s/he originally was.  If someone who looks like a man walks into the boys' room and goes to a stall rather than a urinal, how is anybody to know that s/he isn't a born male?  Ditto for females.

The whole excuse for this squawk is the old standby, "to protect the children".  Supposedly, perverts will dress like the opposite sex so as to get into bathrooms and assault kids.  The classic cartoon shows an 8-year-old girl complaining that there's a 40-year-old man in a dress lurking in the Girls' Room.  Uhuh.  Well, what's to keep perverts from sneaking into bathrooms and assaulting kids right now?  A law about birth certificates won't help that.  The solution is to keep some sort of attendant in every public bathroom in the country, and how likely is that?

And even having attendants in the bathrooms, ready to perform "short arms" inspection on everyone who walks in, is no protection against perverts -- because the Pee-Pee Police just might be perverts themselves, using their jobs to get free ogles and gropes.  Twice, while traveling, I've had seat-mates and suite-mates pull this trick on me;  the perv notes my contralto voice and the rather large muscles in my arms and shoulders, insists that I'm really a man in disguise, and demands that I "prove" I'm really female -- by displaying my tits.  Uhuh.  I didn't comply, either time, but I know I can't be the only woman that dirty lads have tried this on.  The last thing we need is to make this game legal.

The only thing attendants in the bathrooms might prevent is actual assaults in the johns, if that.  The birth-certificate law won't do anything but create fights and lawsuits.  It deserves to be laughed to death, along with the fools who voted for it.

--Leslie <;)))><