Word Salad II

I do think a single, inisex loo is the only logical answer.

Otherwise, where do you send a TV? What's the difference between a TV and a TS who's only just started the process? What's the difference between a TV and someone who's in drag for a joke that day? What's the difference between someone in drag and a guy who happens to have borrowed his wife's sweater that day?

Too many gradations, like almost everything in this life.

(But I suspect that the silly bigoted MP would still protest at the post-op colleague, and is using the whole thing as a partisan issue.)

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geekgirlsarah.livejournal.com

I think unisex (or anysex, I guess is better?) bathrooms are a great idea, but confining people to them can be extremely stigmatizing. Who wants to be known as a person who can only go to a single bathroom in a building?

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Well, if each person in the building had their own loo, that'd work. But otherwise, let everyone go to all the loos.

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Not to mention that single unisex loos are very good for parents and small children, especially small children of the opposite sex who are really too small to be in a strange loo alone.

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Is it a problem for the kid to go to the parent's appropriate toilet, if they're so small? (No children, so I haven't had to consider the question in depth -- I've seen it done though, and never found it strange.)

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There's an age where it's starting to become awkward. I'm thinking about kids of five or six, where ordinarily they would be fine by themselves, say at school or in a Known environment, but somewhere like an unfamiliar mall in the holiday is not recommended for them to be alone in the crowd.

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Fair enough, I hadn't thought of that. I was thinking of younger children, but what you say makes sense.

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And I wasn't thinking so much about the very young children, because there's no question that they've got to be with whatever parent they've got.

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kengr

Where I live local laws says that TVs *and* pre-op MtF TSes get to use the women's bathrooms. And pre-op FtMs can use the male ones. Ditto for just about every other single sex facility except locker rooms or other places where they are going to be naked in front of the other users (or vice versa).

No need for all your gradations. Basically, "if it's trying to look like a [fitb], it uses the facilties for a [fitb]"

Trust me, I've seen GGs that look less female than all but the sloppiest TV or TS.

Frankly, the big deal is usually "they're spying on me". Which is rarely the case. And if a person is worried about that, they obviously haven't considered all the *gays* of their gender that use the facilities with them.

BTW, anybody using those laws I mentioned who does "out-of-line" stuff, like obviously staring or the like is not protected. then again, *anybody* behaving that way should get in trouble.

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I remeber feeling somewhat out of place one time in the Men's when it was full of MtF TVs ... so I guess, best of both worlds for them.

Or, more seriously, perhaps a case that "if it's trying to look like a [fitb], it uses the facilties for a [fitb]" is also a graduated thing.

(I'm not sure what your 'fitb' stands for, though it doesn't hurt the sense too much if used as a metasyntactic variable.)

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kengr

In that particular case, just "male" or "female", but the same value in both places in the statement.

Me, as long as I'm not in danger of getting attacked, I don't care about the other folks in the bathroom. Then again, I've been to a lot of events where the gender of participants was not always obvious. And where the dress code was "whatever".

So if one bathroom was full, you used the other and nobody batted an eye.

More "mundane" folks tend to get bothered by that sort of thing.

But with the exception of obvious draq queens/drag kings, TV/TG/TS folks who are either really bad at looking and acting like their preferred gender or the TG folks who deliberately want to be ambiguous, it's generally safest to be in the restroom for the gender you appear to be.

This goes double for MtF folks as if they use the mens room they risk getting beaten up in many areas.

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kayshapero

"fitb" probably stands for "fill in the blank".

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Ah, yes, that makes perfect sense.

(Being a computery sort of person, I'd use 'foo', which is brazen in its meaningless. 'fitb' is obviously coming from somewhere, obviously an initialism of some form, and I was just curious as to what it would originally have meant.)

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Actually, Vladimir Luxuria is not transex, and hasn't had an operation -- and she uses the term "transgender" for herself. She is very outspoken and in-your-face about gay/transgender rights. Like Ilona Staller/Cicciolina, she used to be a sex worker. She is also a communist.

Right wing MPs have been wailing about her using the ladies' room since she was elected. This is entirely political, of course.

I wish we had more MPs like her... unfortunately, most Italian MPs are just as boring as everybody else's MPs...

(She also has a personal web site, by the way.)

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pauamma

Italians have the best MPs. Didn't they have a porn star, at one point?

Ilona Staller, aka la Cicciolina.

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Not a transcript of the debate, but I did find a juicy interview with Ms Gardini. I've posted a translation on my LJ because it's a bit long for a comment...

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dduane.livejournal.com

(laughter) Anna, thank you! Hilarious.

(I think "weenie" might be a good candidate for a translation of that one word: and possibly "peepee" for its diminutive.) (Heh. Just caught myself thinking "weenie-olino.". Doubtless nonsensical.)

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I like weeniolino! Now to find an excuse to use it... :-)

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trdsf.livejournal.com

I just love the name 'Vladimir Luxuria'... and that Europeans elect far more interesting representatives than we do over here. :)

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You've had a former movie star as president. What more do you want?

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Less shrubbery.

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trdsf.livejournal.com

For the win. :D

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trdsf.livejournal.com

At this stage, a time machine and a script that would've kept him in Hollywood for the rest of his life...

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madfilkentist

Sometimes things get crazy. The place where I work, Harvard University, has a policy of making things easier for transgendered people by having single-unit, unisex toilets where possible. The building where I work -- one of Harvard's newest buildings -- has single-unit, lockable toilets. By unofficial policy, anyone can use any of them. However, the City of Cambridge requires that the toilets be designated "men" and "women," even though the building is locked and no one should be able to wander in off the street. (Where random people can wander in, I can understand the restriction, since there is a certain type of person who will "accidentally" leave the toilet unlocked.)

The result is psychologically interesting. I think everyone's comfortable using any toilet, but most will choose the toilet labelled with their own gender first. And there are tampons only in the "women's" room. (For all I know, all women's rooms have tampons, and I don't normally get to find this out. :)

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keristor.livejournal.com

In my last job we were an all-male office (all 6 of us!), but there were two separate toilets, gender marked. Even though it was "just us" it was almost never that the 'ladies' got used. Weird...

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amberfox.livejournal.com

At my last job, late one night, there were 4 people there: 3 men, and me. The ladies' room was being cleaned, and I really couldn't wait, but I still wouldn't use the men's room until I went and checked with my supervisor to make sure it was going to be okay with everyone. People are odd about bathrooms.

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kengr

As I noted in a comment to someone else, local laws say TVs and pre-op TSes can use the bathroom appropriate to their "displayed" gender.

So, one evening after attending a meeting of a local "kink" group with a friend, we were at the restaurant across the street socializing with a bunch of other folks from the meeting.

Now, my friend is legally nlind, but has enough vision that sometimes she can get along pretty well and sometimes she needs her cane and direction. That was one of her "blind as a bat" nights.

I was in full femme mode, nice dress, quite passable, if not "pretty". And my friend knew this.

Since she hadn't been to the restaurant before, she asked me to show her where the bathroom was. Which I did.

Since I was feeling a need as well, I followed her in. And she did this "what are you *doing*?!" bit.

I reminded her of the way I looked, and she admitted to not thinking.

Fortunately, there wasn't anybody else in the bathroom at the time. I have no idea how they'd have reacted to her spazzing out. Or my explanation.

On the other hand, when I used to work in a restaurant, cleaning the bathrooms near closing was "interesting". Always had to knock and ask if anybody was there when going into the "wrong" one.

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