On Wednesday, March 23, the North Carolina General Assembly rushed back to session and passed House Bill 2, a law designed to overturn Charlotte’s recent anti-discrimination ordinance.
What does it do? Well, among other things, the bill makes it legal to discriminate against gays, lesbians, and military veterans; it bans cities from regulating child labor; and it prohibits you from suing in state court if you’re discriminated against. (Instead you’ll have to go through the state’s Human Relations Commission, which the GA nearly eliminated just last year.)
(Read the bill for yourself if you think I’m exaggerating.)
But forget all that! The real purpose of House Bill 2 is to protect your safety – by prohibiting men from going into women’s restrooms, and by keeping women out of the men’s room. That was the thing that got everyone upset about Charlotte’s ordinance, after all – one provision that would have allowed transgender individuals to use the bathroom that corresponded with their gender identity, rather than their “actual” biological sex.
And I mean a lot of people were upset about that. What? Men dressing up as women, going into the women’s room? And Charlotte wants to allow that? Outrageous!
And the NCGA heard your outcry. So now we have House Bill 2, which requires everyone to use the bathroom that corresponds to their “biological sex,” or the gender that’s listed on their birth certificate.
Makes sense, right?
Problem solved? Easy fix?
Let’s find out!
You are hereby deputized as an agent of the North Carolina State Bathroom Patrol! Your job is to enforce House Bill 2 – by steering the men to the men’s room and the women to the women’s room. Remember, we’re talking biological sex here: it’s not what you look like or how you dress, it’s the gender on your birth certificate that matters.
Ready?
All right, ten people are heading your way. No time to check birth certificates, but this should be easy. All you have to do is separate the men from the women. Go!
Time’s up! Any trouble?
If House Bill 2 makes any sense at all as a public safety measure, this quiz should have been super easy. Men are men and women are women, right?
Well, as it happens, this quiz was super easy. Turns out, the boys and girls had already separated themselves!
The top four photos are all biological men. First guy up there in the denim shirt is male model Ben Jordan. Looking good! Right under Jordan is New York Times bestselling author Janet Mock, followed by internationally-renowned model Ines Rau. They’re both transgender women. The guy in the bumblebee shirt is Brooklyn Beckham, son of David and Victoria. One hundred percent man right there!
The bottom six photos are all biological women. In the red hoodie is YouTube celebrity Jamie Raines, aka “Jammidodger.” After that is former Canadian first lady Margaret Trudeau, the mother of current Canadian PM Justin. That steamy-looking tough guy underneath Trudeau? That’s transgender fitness model Ben Melzer. Better make sure to send him to the women’s room, right? After Melzer is a woman you might recognize, human rights lawyer Amal Clooney. (Maybe you know her better as George Clooney’s wife.) Following Clooney is another fitness model, Aydian Dowling; last year he became the first trans man to make the cover of Men’s Health magazine. And finally – time warp! That last picture is actually YouTube celebrity Jamie Raines again, after his transition from female to male.
So!
How’d you do?
If House Bill 2 makes sense, then you should have gotten 10 out of 10, no problem. The underlying assumption behind House Bill 2 is that men and women are profoundly different, totally easy to tell apart, and there are no blurry lines or fluidity between the genders at all.
But I bet you didn’t get 10 out of 10, did you?
And even the ones you got right, I bet a couple of those were lucky guesses?
That’s the problem with the “biological sex” approach. House Bill 2, and the lawmakers behind it, don’t really believe there’s any such thing as being “transgender.” It’s men and women, they think, and that’s it.
Trouble is, there is such a thing as being transgender.
There are blurry lines.
There is fluidity.
And if we ignore that fact – as House Bill 2 does – then all of a sudden we find ourselves waking up in a state that forces sexy supermodel Ines Rau to go into the bathroom with a bunch of guys…and sends muscle-bear Ben Melzer into the women’s room to hang out with the ladies.
Because that’s what House Bill 2 does, y’all. And that’s the best thing it has going for it.
Good morning.
(Photo Credits: Ben Jordan via W Magazine, Janet Mock via janetmock.com, Ines Rau via Oob Magazine, Brooklyn Beckham via Man About Town, Jamie Raines via YouTube, Margaret Trudeau via Arlen Redekop/Vancouver Sun, Ben Melzer via Instagram, Amal Clooney via Jason Merritt, Aydian Dowling via Men’s Health, and Jamie Raines via YouTube.)
What bs. No, there is NO such thing as transgender except as a mental disease. It should not be capitulated to. If your caught using the wrong bathroom, you get arrested, just like now. See, if REALLY is simple. Stop giving in to the liberal bs
Dude, why are you SO OBSESSED with other people’s genitals? You wanna check inside everyone’s pants before they’re allowed to use the restroom to make sure they’re using the “right” bathroom? Why is it any of your business? Transgender people aren’t predators and this law won’t protect you or anyone else from the bathroom creepers you so seem to fear. Horrible people are horrible people and they’re going to do horrible things. All this does is completely endanger the safety of trans individuals. I’ll gladly go into the specifics and statistics relating to violence against trans people and how the DSM-V (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, published by the American Psychiatric Assosiation) removed Gender Indentity Disorder as a mental illness in 2013 if you’d like.
You bigoted walnut.
“You bigoted walnut”….this phrase made me happy. Excellent rebuttal to the above legume, JJ Wrong.
Even checking in everybody’s pants is unreliable, what with the state of surgical techniques these days. Clearly, what is needed is a full battery of comprehensive medical testing before anyone is allowed into a public restroom. It’s the only way to protect ourselves from the heinous crime of being forced to listen to a person of another gender going poop in the stall next to us. Kinda sucks for anyone who needs to go in less than 4-6 weeks, though.
Right on! It’s much better to give into conservative bs like ignoring scientific fact, hating things you don’t understand, and constantly trying to marginalize people who aren’t like you.
Ya ya ya. We hear ya. Heil Hitler.
Wow how does it feel to be that ignorant? They say ignorance is bliss so you must be incredibly happy.
I think you have a mental disease, It’s called stupid. Also its not liberal or conservative, it’s love or hatred and clearly you side your self with hatred. Luckily for you there’s a cure….please find it!
*you’re
**it
Maybe you should open a book as well as your mind.
Well, God bless them all. However, I would think the Transgender male/female would love going to the restroom of the opposite sex…perhaps for attention, love…seduction…since they are gender – confused it really shouldn’t matter to anyone…but those of us who are not gender – confused would prefer not to have our children so brashly confronted.
I’m sorry Elizabeth, but you don’t know what you’re talking about, they are not gender confused they know exactly who they are. I’d say you’re confused by the concept, that having less information, less education, less experience, makes you more knowledgeable on a subject. No, it doesn’t make you more knowledgeable, in fact it’s kind a prophetic that you actually think it would. I personally would much rather deal with somebody who is transgender than somebody who thinks stupid is the new smart.
Give me a break. I think we should have separate bathrooms for homophobes like you!
Elizabeth, I’m not sure you realize that gender identity (person identifying as male or female) has nothing to do with sexual orientation (which sex you’re attracted to). And this is why education and awareness are so important. Don’t pray for people, educate yourself. Secondly, no one I know goes to public restrooms to meet their next “date”.
Personally, I use the bathroom to pee. I suspect that’s what most people use it for. If your children are confronted by gender-bending peeing, perhaps they should stay out of the occupied stalls?
Ignoring science hahaha transgender people are ignoring science they have a disorder. XX and XY chromosomes determine sex that’s science and that’s fact.
Lol except you’re wrong. It’s not just xx and xy. It could be xxy, xyx, xyy, etc. This means that some females may produce male hormones, and some males may produce female hormones, and many people are born with ambiguous genitalia. Yay for science! Oh wait, that means that people can feel like they aren’t truly in the right body, which is what you’re claiming is wrong…. That’s science, and that’s a fact too. Woopsies.
Very good friend of mine (and an army veteran btw)–born with a dick–struggled with gender dysphoria all her life. After lots of heartache she decided very recently to start transitioning. And only then was she informed by doctors that she was in fact born with XX chromosomes….and ovaries.
But by all means, you keep enjoying your sad, lonely, closed mind.
Scientific fact: there are a variations to xx and xy chromosomes. Medical fact: there are an unknown number (because there has never been a system for reporting it) of infants born with an indeterminate sex. These infants have, until very recently, been assigned a gender by the delivering doctor, without benefit of any sort of testing, and in a matter of, usually minutes. There was a recent change in this practise so that now the parents are told to choose and are given 48 hours to decide, and based on nothing more than preference and/or hunch/guess/pressure. That decision will mark the infant for life. so much for your scientific knowledge, ha ha ha. Here’s another scientific fact for you. We’re poisoning our planet, and some of the poisons we commonly use are known hormone disrupters. Is it any wonder we’d see a surge in gender and fertility issues as a fallout? The conservative’s position is that this is a morality issue. Well, you’ve got that much right. Refuse any legislation that disrupts your obscene greed and continue to poison the unborn.Outlaw the resulting children born with conditions YOU cause, and encourage the abuse of anyone who shows signs of it. If ever there was an example of immorality, tgat is it.
https://biodesign.asu.edu/news/blurred-lines-human-sex-chromosome-swapping-occurs-more-often-previously-thought
Some more science.
Given those scientific facts, and the fact that it very well could have been you, who was assigned the gender of the opposite sex, how well do you think you’d play society’s fit in game? The frustration of being given gifts and clothes that have no appeal, while everyone else gets what they enjoy must surely feel like a cruel taunt, and then puberty hits and now, nature itself is taunting. I am not transgender, but I am both intelligent and empathetic enough to know that anyone who can’t put themself in that position and well imagine the distress that would cause is neither intelligent nor empathetic. The last thing we need is lawmakers who lack intelligence and empathy ( and correct information), (ie: ignorant bigots) and the second to the last thing we need is ignorant bigots flapping their jaws and thumping their bibles ( which makes no mention of any of thus, anyway) about it.
To those that make the ridiculous argument that creepsters will have access to the girl’s bathroom without HB2: Congrats, your logic just backfired, as now any male sicko can just tell the authorities he was in there because he was born a girl and is following the law. He now does not even have to pretend to be a woman whatsoever! And this quiz proves you can’t always tell the difference! Which is to the creepster’s advantage. Way to go, you just made your supposed fear more likely to become a reality.
You nailed it, Jaycee. Now in order for a creepy biological male in NC to try to sneak into the women’s bathroom, all they have to do is say they’re an FTM. They don’t even have to bother with dressing up like a woman, they can just decide to drop in spur-of-the-moment. What they don’t account for in these laws is transmen, like myself. After a year on testosterone, we look like any other guy. Their options, when dealing with a dishonest weirdo breaking the law, or an honest transman honoring their dumb law, are the same. They can either take them at their word, or go strip them down and inspect their genitals, I suppose. Or insist that all people must carry their birth certificates at all times, or at least on days when they might have bodily functions. I’m amazed that we haven’t been hearing about a rash of lawsuits out of this state from people being harassed by police and the general public for honoring this law. Maybe it’s because the trans people in NC are ignoring the law, or maybe it’s because the cops realize it’s a stupid law and aren’t going out on a limb to support it. Bottom line, nobody really wants to use a public bathroom, least of all transpeople. Its far more uncomfortable for us than you. But there’s frequently no other option. And I can say, as someone who has used both bathrooms, I’ve never seen the genitals of another person in a bathroom. That’s because I don’t look, and we have various barriers to provide a modicum of privacy. If those barriers are not enough for the shy or paranoid, then we probably need a better system, rather than ostracizing trans people, or gay people, or anyone else who might glance the wrong way. We’re not there to peep, or flirt, or incite anything, we just have to pee, too.