Well, now...

[conuly]

Apparently some people think you should only use the bathroom if you pass a genital inspection to prove you belong. Or something, it's a little incoherent.

Now, I was under the impression that surgery for transgendered folks was expensive and not always very useful (and then you don't even get to show it off afterwards, do you?), and that you have to go through this whole process first before they even let you do it. (A process where, I guess, you aren't allowed to pee in public toilets?)

Classist (only those who can afford or choose to have genital surgery get to use the bathroom?), misogynist (women aren’t women if they have facial hair), anti-Intersex (there are only two kinds of genitals in Frank’s world)… I could go on, but I’ve said it before: Social justice is not going to come from cis, white men.

Well, Frank probably doesn't know that much about intersexed people and probably thinks this is much rarer than it is. This is because he's ignorant, and we can't blame him. There's a good reason he's ignorant about this. That reason is because, in our society, it's considered impolite to look at other people's genitals except in very specific situations. It's so impolite that it's also considered impolite to show other people your genitals except in those specific situation. We even call those parts of our bodies private to emphasize how non-public our pubics are.

So this whole "bathroom" thing just doesn't make sense to me. If you don't want to be confronted with the wrong parts, surely it's easier for you to just not look? You know, like we teach three year olds to stop peeking under the door? The toddlers can get it, why can't you?

Oh, and this other article. Apparently it's relevant to ask if gay couples count as "families" because "families" can set up extra tents on parkgrounds.

“A lot of the advocates of gay marriage in Iowa have said, ‘It doesn’t affect anything. Nothing has changed,’” Bartz says. “The reality of it is that everything is changing.”

OMG! He's right! Everything is changing! Why, if Bartz doesn't hold the line against this travesty, gay folks will be able to go... go camping and set up more than one tent! Oh, heavens, what shall we ever DO about this terrible thing? Next they'll be taking road trips or geocaching!!!!!

I never thought same-sex marriage could possibly affect me before except in maybe causing me to buy a few extra wedding presents over my lifetime, but now, now I'm just convinced. Two tents! It's just not right!

Comments

[lady-angelina.livejournal.com]

Wat.

To both articles.

And in regards to Frank's statement in the first article, I guess this also means that fathers can't take their toddler-aged daughters to the men's room. >.< Oh, will someone PLEASE think of the children! *Eyeroll*

As to the other article... I guess my friends who are married to each other and have been in a stable relationship with each other for even longer than that, and have raised three children between them, are NOT a family just because both members of the couple happen to be female. *Gasp* I never would have guessed! *Another eyeroll*

My apologies for the snark here, but... that's precisely what these kinds of attitudes bring to mind.

[conuly]

As to the other article... I guess my friends who are married to each other and have been in a stable relationship with each other for even longer than that, and have raised three children between them, are NOT a family just because both members of the couple happen to be female. *Gasp* I never would have guessed! *Another eyeroll*

That'd be more effective sarcasm if they didn't actually think that.

I guess this also means that fathers can't take their toddler-aged daughters to the men's room.

Some people actually think that. This is because they think the men's room is just a den of iniquity and vice where pedophiles lurk, hour after hour, patiently waiting for some negligent parent to allow their child to go in unattended. How toddlers with their dads are likely to be harmed by That Random Lurking Pedophile is unclear (somehow, the pedophile, in all defiance of statistics, is never the parent), but there you go.

[lady-angelina.livejournal.com]

Erk... guess I completely misunderstood then. ^^;; Sorry about that.

(And dear self: don't post anything until you fully understand what you're ranting about; you'll make yourself look less like a complete idiot.)

[conuly]

Oh, no, I think you understand just fine. I think it's the people who do not understand (or want to understand) that families come in more shapes and sizes and configurations than "mom, dad, kids, pets - and also, NO EXTENDED FAMILY" are the ones who have problems and look like complete idiots.

[lady-angelina.livejournal.com]

Well, except that I didn't read the article fully... I just kind of skimmed it, which I really ought to know better than to do because I easily miss things that way. >.>; This is hardly the first time I've spoken without knowing the full context.

But I agree with you... by that kind of definition, the family I grew up in wouldn't have been considered a family. =P And what really gets to me is how even some members of the gay community seem to consider same-sex couples as "non-traditional," when I see many lovely examples of "traditional-appearing" families that simply have two members of the same sex comprising the head-of-the-household couple. I actually wrote a letter to the local newspaper about this when my state had a ballot measure seeking to define marriage as strictly between a man and a woman.

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

True that. This fool is all upset because OMG, gay or trans couples (in their thousands) will now be setting up two tents in their campsites, and it will change everything. He should be more worried about the families of five screaming, littering, plant-trampling, branch-breaking, erosion-causing brats, and their oblivious beer-swilling, loud-music-playing parents.

Tell you what, for over three decades I've been camping in the most diversity-friendly venues; the Pagan festivals, Ren Faires, rainbow and leather-community gatherings, etc. of the Midwest and Pacific Northwest: places where the GLBT folk who like camping are most likely to camp. Even in such venues, they're a very small percentage of the population. In mundane campsites, surely they've got to be even fewer, and the percentage of those campers who wanted to put up two tents on the 'family rate' would obviously be a lot smaller.

So, realistically, in the course of an entire season, throughout the entire Parks System, there might be, what, half a dozen same-sex couples with an extra tent each? Six tents a year, and that "changes everything": gedouddahere.

[wodhaund.livejournal.com]

No! Not geocaching!!!!

IS NOTHING SACRED

[conuly]

They're changing everything. Well, the buck stops here. With the damn tents. We can FORCE those gays to sleep in the same tent with one another...

You know, I'm not sure that adds up the way some people think.

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

Yeah really; didn't they see Brokeback Mountain?

[sayga.livejournal.com]

Ugh, if gays start geocaching, it will destroy the sanctity of geocaching. All the straight people will quit and start calling it gay-o-caching. The nerve.

[kittiethedragon.livejournal.com]

This journal entry For The WIN.

[leora.livejournal.com]

My understanding was that as long as you weren't being disruptive, you could use either bathroom, because sexual discrimination is generally illegal. That while bathrooms generally encourage people to divide by sex/gender, it is not mandatory that you obey the little plaque on the door. And that people often do go into the opposite-sex/gender bathroom if given a good reason, such as desperately needing to go and the other one not being available for use at the moment.

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

Yeah, there are people who are paralyzed with panic at the thought of sharing a public restroom with someone who was not born the same sex as themselves. Actually, a lot more people have 'issues' about public restrooms than one might suspect; toileting is a major focal point for neuroses.

As for the camping rule, all they have to do is define family as "adult(s) with minor child(ren)", and the problem is solved. A couple, gay or straight, is a couple, not a 'family', and gets one tent. A group of adults is a group, even if they're all related, and gets the group-camping rate or whatever. It ain't rocket science.

Remarks such as "Social justice is not going to come from cis, white men" are every bit as prejudiced as the same sort of remark made about 'lesbian Asian women' or whatever. Any time you see a whole group of people disrespected for traits they did not choose, that is prejudice, and it stinks just as bad when one 'side' does it as when the other does.

Social justice is not going to come from people who want to put their identification-group up, and therefore put other peoples' identification-groups down. Doesn't matter where the lines are drawn between the groups: sex, sexual orientation, gender identification, religion, skin color, ethnic heritage, social class, appearance, physical ability or whatever - it's all the same thing. Any time you hear shit to the effect that "All of THEM are bad/stupid/blind/ corrupt", you might as well walk out and go home, because you've heard the heart of the matter, and it's rotten.

US vs. THEM is a stupid game. It's especially stupid when US is the losing side, the traditionally poor, oppressed, disenfranchised, disorganized grassroots side that needs all the allies they can get. As it happens, I know a bunch of heterosexual men of European descent who are highly committed to social justice, and bullshit statements like that one are a slap in the face to all of them.

[conuly]

You're right, but I wanted to make my snarky little comment and I couldn't find another place to break into that quote.

[marveen.livejournal.com]

Remarks such as "Social justice is not going to come from cis, white men" are every bit as prejudiced as the same sort of remark made about 'lesbian Asian women' or whatever. Any time you see a whole group of people disrespected for traits they did not choose, that is prejudice, and it stinks just as bad when one 'side' does it as when the other does.

Amen. (I was considering saying something about how women didn't vote for their OWN suffrage because it doesn't work that way....)

[queenlyzard.livejournal.com]

I refuse to read either of these articles on the grounds that I don't want to spend the rest of the day pulling my hair out.

I do like your responses to them, though :)

And yeah, gender-binary bathrooms seriously need to become a thing of the past.