an interesting article you sould read...

[Kai]

Transgender restrooms urged for schools By Joyce Howard Price
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20020211-85270590.htm
The United States Students Association is urging the nation's
colleges and universities to provide single-stall "gender neutral"
restrooms for transgender students to protect them from harassment
and physical attacks.
Transgender is the termused to designate people "whose sexual
identity doesn't match what society expects" of their biological
sex, says Kristy Ringor, spokeswoman for USSA, a Washington,
D.C.-based national confederacy of hundreds of college-level student
bodies. Transgender often describes someone who dresses and lives as
the opposite sex but who has not had his or her body surgicallyaltered.
"We're the nation's oldest student association, and we believe
access to education should be open to all, regardless of gender,
ethnicity or sexual identity," Ms. Ringor said.
She said transgender people "have a problem with bathrooms"
that are for men or women only. "They face a risk of being assaulted
if another person in there doesn't think they belong. If a person is
not safe [in a restroom on a college campus], that person won't
necessarily be able to go to college," Ms. Ringor said.
Because of those concerns, USSA's National Congress passed a
resolution last summer committing the organization to support
"gender neutral" restrooms. Ms. Ringor stressed that such facilities
should not be equated with unisex restrooms used by both males andfemales.
Peter LaBarbera, senior policy analyst for the Culture and
Family Institute, an affiliate of Concerned Women for America,
responded with dismay to USSA's recommendations. "Maybe you are
chronicling the decline of society by the number of restrooms it
takes to accommodate all the different sex identities and sexual
orientations," he said.
Two students at the University of California at Los Angeles,
who are both members of UCLA's Gay and Lesbian Association, brought
USSA's position to light in an opinion piece published last week in
the Daily Bruin, the university's student newspaper.
"In a statement heralding the arrival of the transgender
liberation movement, the national chapter of the United States
Students Association recommended that university bathrooms become
gender neutral in order to accommodate the needs of the transgender
community at UCLA," the students, Erwin Ong and Masen Davis, wrote.
A UCLA spokesman said he saw the column in the student
newspaper but was unable to say whether any single-stall restrooms
are planned for transgender students.
Tim Kelly, a spokesman for the University of Wisconsin at
Madison, which Ms. Ringor described as "progressive," said that
institution offers both "unisex bathrooms" and single-stallrestrooms.
Mr. LaBarbera, who tracks homosexual activism, says
transgenders are emerging as a vocal minority. "Right now, they are
the young Turks of the whole gay movement," he said.
Meanwhile, a state lawmaker in West Virginia is distancing
himself from the transgender-rights movement as he pushes a bill
aimed at senior citizens that would put unisex restrooms at many of
the rest stops along that state's interstate highways.
Sen. Mike Ross, a Democrat, said his bill has the backing of
the AARP and other senior citizen groups. It's designed to prevent a
recurrence of a situation that occurred at a West Virginia rest stop
in July, when a woman entered the women's restroom and her husband,
an Alzheimer's patient, went into the men's room. "That was the last
time she saw her husband," Mr. Ross said in a telephone interview.


So the question is what do you think? I mean i don't mind but uh... Yo know that's just me ^.~ However I can see alot of people having problems with this. Not on PO though...., right?

[Shurikane]

Just sit on the fucking bowl!

[Doot]

I'd have to agree in most cases with Shuri. Granted all male rooms may not have stalls. I am in every way believing in equal human rights but even then you have to understand that means no special rights as well. I figure it would be more obvious of a problem if you enstated these bathrooms than carry on as normal business. It would be easier to pick out someone and target them as transgender if you make these bathrooms where-as now most people could care less.

If it is such an issue then uni-sex bathrooms would be the way to go. I know it doesn't create the "my own haven" feel but then again, it would be for everybody of different genders and situations.

[Kai]

But it's hard you don't know! Like there was this one time a bunch of girls locked me in the restroom so I couldn't 'see' them! It was really scary and it took me all day to get out.

[Doot]

You are right. I don't know on the level you do. Kids are going to be cruel. Whether or not sexual orientation is an issue or not. They will continue to be that way and you'll be hard pressed to get that to change. Kids get targeted for being ugly or fat or physically challenged or have special needs.

But now you are creating a situation of, if they didn't know before they certainly know now and can further put you in situations outside of a restroom. And who is to say they wouldn't go into that bathroom to pick a fight?

Honestly it does come down to the fact that you stop caring what other people think about you when you realize how little they actually do. Anyone who goes out of their way to make your life hell obviously has nothing better to do in their life and should take up a healthier hobby.

[Shurikane]

They don't, unfortunately. Bullies in high school are known to ram, beat up and even stampede any and all students that don't fall into the norm. I was one of them. No one is going to create a "nerd bathroom" for me. I had no place to go and no place to hide. If they created a haven for a different group of people, then the targets would be even easier to pick.

Take Montreal. They blew up a Jewish school not too long ago and defaced the surroundings with hateful remarks. Now imagine a school for homosexual. Then a school for nerds. Then a school for athletes. And then a school for people who have too many zits. And then a school for those who have a small penis. Bad idea.

You don't know which gender is yours? Go eject half of your log in one bathroom and the other half in the other bathroom and then compare the comfort level. If still undecided, pick at random, whatever. No one's gonna kill you if you pick one and find out later it wasn't the good one for you.

[Therin]

This seems to me like a case of bigotry trying to camoflauge itself as having the best interests at heart for the targeted group. You know what I say? Fuck 'em. They're going to do this every single time some "trend" emerges that makes them feel insecure. It happened with skin color. It's happening with sexual orientation. What's next? Religion? Oh wait.

[Shurikane]

Catholic bathrooms: Josephs & Marys

Islam bathrooms: Mohameds & Farimas

Satanist bathrooms: Incubi & Succubi

Atheist bathrooms: Dudes & Chicks

Agnostic bathrooms: "Please shit here."

[Therin]

[Aindriahhn]

What, no handy arrow.


It seems to me unisex bathrooms in certain places wouldn't be the best place to... ah... enter.