The Bathroom 'Freedom Fighters'
- Thread starter GURPS
- Start date
I understand you are defensive. If I had taken a position such as you have, I would be defensive as well.
I might have misunderstood what you meant by "No law is going to make a difference, Vrai. If a predator wants to get to someone in the bathroom then he will dress like a woman and walk in or simply walk in." Please explain what you meant by that, if not "they're going to do it anyway."
Tilted
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I would not have supported what Charlotte did. But then again, I'm generally against any laws that prohibit discrimination on the part of private actors. When it comes to its own (government) facilities, I think I'd have said - just leave things as they were. Considering all the competing interests, it would probably be better not to have specific laws requiring that transgenders be allowed to use certain bathrooms and not to have specific laws requiring that they not be allowed to. Let it work how it long has, not every possibility needs to be addressed by law. Common sense works fairly well a lot of the time. Transgenders who look and dress as their identity sex can go on, as I would assume they sometimes do anyway, using what would seem (to others) to be the right bathrooms. People who look and dress like men, however, might be challenged when they try to go in women's bathrooms. Is that the perfect set-up? No, but it may be the one that causes the least problems for all involved.
So that's this specific scenario. More broadly, do I think it's fair to discriminate against the majority in an effort to accommodate the minority? As you're describing what might be considered as discriminating? Yes, sometimes. It depends on what we're talking about.
Laws discriminate. For the most part that's how they operate. The issues are on what bases do they discriminate and are those proper (e.g. constitutional) bases - are there good enough (or otherwise allowable) reasons for the discrimination that they represent? So do I think the Charlotte law was itself discriminatory in some way? Yeah, in sufficiently technical senses laws are necessarily discriminatory.
I want to be clear again though, as that was my point in the last post to you, North Carolina didn't just forbid local discrimination laws (and effectively override the effect on bathrooms that the Charlotte law would likely have had). It went further and took the state of the law from where it had been (prior to the Charlotte law) to where, now, there's a special law requiring that transgenders not be allowed to use the bathrooms in question. I think the common sense thing to do - assuming they disagreed with the Charlotte law and others like it - would have been to just prohibit those kinds of laws. That would have fixed the issue that they supposedly think such laws create. As it is I think they went on to create an issue where they didn't need to, as now real transgenders - e.g., a biological woman that looks and dresses as a man - are required to cause scenes by using what would appear to others to be the wrong bathrooms. It's the majority that this new law will - to the extent it's abided by - sometimes make uncomfortable, not just the minority. At any rate, even if you don't agree on that point I was trying to correct your understanding of what the North Carolina law did. I took the way you stated it as suggesting that you weren't completely sure about it.
I hope that more or less answers your question about what I think of the situation.
“As you can tell from this video … most women are not comfortable sharing a bathroom with a trans person,” Salads said. “There has to be another solution for this debate because women are not comfortable sharing a bathroom and the trans people want to share the bathroom.”
The problem is that he is clearly not a trans person at all, but there's no way to prove that. Apparently these days you are whatever you say you are, all evidence to the contrary, and that is an accident waiting to happen.
I'm completely good with a simple solution of making single unisex restrooms and showers available. Instead of all these crazy machinations and legal nutbaggery, why don't they just have singles for whoever wants to use them? Many public facilities already have this in place: campgrounds, parks, bars and restaurants, etc, and it's worked out just fine without the activists and lawyers getting involved.
If the warring factions don't want this simple solution, it's because they don't want a solution at all and just want to be at war.
Radiant1
Soul Probe
No, you don't understand, nor am I defensive as I have no need to be.
I certainly do think a predator will do it anyway regardless of the law. That law or the lack thereof will not make a difference; therefore, you cannot attribute to me that it will make it easier for them as you, Gilligan, and Psy have. I never said any such thing. I don't believe it, and I certainly didn't say it. You can attempt to vilify me if you feel some sordid need to do so, but I've made myself clear. It's not that hard to understand.
Classic. You write. We "don't understand you". Our fault.
All that aside, I have to be sympathetic on some level, after discovering a few years ago that I am a lesbian, tragically trapped in a man's body.
It does and I agree with you: instead of making a law to counteract Charlotte's law, NC should have just nullified municipal laws of that nature. (That is, in a nutshell, what I understand your position to be.)
Stay out of my bathroom.
I will..I will...I heard you the last time..you don't need to keep harping on it.
What exactly do you not believe? That it will make it easier for predators to gain access, or you don't believe it will be easier for them?
Tilted
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About the use of quotation marks, as this is a point I've wanted to make (and maybe have) in other contexts and we're all guilty at times of misusing them: You should really only use the full quotation mark (") when you are quoting someone verbatim or when whatever alterations are made within the quoted passage are clearly identified. For instance, you might change the tense of a verb such that the quotation works grammatically within the sentence you're writing. When doing so you should indicate that by putting brackets around the tense change - something like "walk to school..." where the original passage was "walk to school...".
In using full quotation marks you are, at least to many and traditionally, asserting that the enclosed words are the actual words that were used by whomever is being quoted. It's not just an assertion that they said something like this or something that pretty much meant this. You can also use full quotations for hypothetical quotes - as in, someone in this position might say this - but they shouldn't then be used in a way that suggests that some particular person actually did say those words.
Anyway, it's fine to paraphrase or otherwise characterize things that have been said. And single quotation marks (') can be useful in expressing the essence of what someone has said. But it matters that readers can trust that what's included within full quotation marks is what was actually said. That's the point of the full quotation mark, to make it clear that this is actually what was said.
In using full quotation marks you are, at least to many and traditionally, asserting that the enclosed words are the actual words that were used by whomever is being quoted. It's not just an assertion that they said something like this or something that pretty much meant this. You can also use full quotations for hypothetical quotes - as in, someone in this position might say this - but they shouldn't then be used in a way that suggests that some particular person actually did say those words.
Anyway, it's fine to paraphrase or otherwise characterize things that have been said. And single quotation marks (') can be useful in expressing the essence of what someone has said. But it matters that readers can trust that what's included within full quotation marks is what was actually said. That's the point of the full quotation mark, to make it clear that this is actually what was said.
At least go to Sephora and have one of the nice ladies show you how to properly apply eye shadow and contouring.
But that's so much extra work...
Like my Abe Lincoln quotes, for example.
Tilted
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Yes, and it did just that. The bathroom provision was on top of doing that.
For my part, I'd like them to go further and repeal their own anti-discrimination laws (as they apply to private actors) and nullify other existing local anti-discrimination laws. But that ship is so far out to sea now that I don't expect it to ever get recalled.
Tilted
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Yes. Sarcastic use is okay as well. Because sarcasm is always okay.
Bah. This is not English class and I am not writing essays with MLA citation for a grade. At some point people have to understand that this is a casual environment where everything is right there in black and white if they care to verify it and interpret for themselves.
Tilted
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I'm not saying that based on some rigid application of proper English rules. I don't care about it in that sense. I have no problem with casual syntax or tense conjugation mistakes or wrong spelling or whatever, I make those kinds of mistakes all the time. I'm getting at the substance of what it means to use full quotation marks. It's something that matters, not just about style or semantics or such fairly trivial considerations.
When we use full quotation marks we are communicating something fairly definitive to the reader. Just like no has a meaning, and it isn't - well, I'll think about it. When we say no we are communicating something, we've long understood those two letters together to mean something. Much the same is true of full quotation marks. We are telling the reader something in particular. And if we don't want to tell them that particular thing, we shouldn't use full quotation marks (perhaps we could use single quotation marks) just as we wouldn't tell them no when what we mean is I'm not sure or yeah I think so.
When I direct quote someone, I use the quote feature which is their own remarks with a link to the post in which they made them. If I do not include that, you should understand me to be paraphrasing.
It's like all the insistence on "opinion vs. fact" disclaimers. That is unnecessarily pedantic. One should presume that any statements someone makes on a public forum are their opinion and not "fact" unless backed up by links and citations.
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Tilted
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Going forward I'll try to remember that (regarding posts from you) so as to avoid confusion.
Wait... What am I thinking? I'm sorry, but if you're going to insist on using full quotations (rather than, e.g., single quotations) in that way, then we're just not going to allow you to post here anymore.