Well stated, Mr. Constant. This news is horrifying

Paul,
Will you clarify for all those that don't keep up on these sort of things. This "transgender woman" in this case is an adult male biologically dressed and identified as a woman. Correct? "She" entered and used a women's restroom and was subsequently was ticketed? Correct?
And, you're saying the ticket by the police is "discriminatory"? I just want clarity here before I
make a judgment on your conclusion.

I would have guessed Florida, but Texas fits too.

@2 No. She was a transgendered woman "biologically dressed and identified as a woman". All the other points are correct.

OK, so you're (I'm assuming) a woman who observes someone dressed as and otherwise outwardly presenting as female enter a women's restroom, make use of the facilities in a timely fashion, and leave. You harbor suspicion that the person in question is biologically male. You have the following options:

(A) simply shrug it off, go on with your day

(B) consider the possibility that you've just observed a somewhat mannish woman, conclude it is not worth embarrassing yourself and/or her to make an issue of it, shrug it off, go on with your day

(C) consider the possibility that you've just observed a person in transition, realize that he/she isn't bothering anyone, shrug it off, go on with your day

(D) call the fucking cops!

...and you pick (D)???

Also in Texas bigotry today: http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/business/201…

@2, you're going to come off as a lot less of an ignorant asshole if you knock it off with the scare quotes.

Lark, we owe it to our conspecifics (wanting to avoid the "fellow human beings" phrase here) to make some effort at keeping up on these sorts of things, or just make an operational assumption that you're out of date and avoid rendering judgments.

if it's got a dick it needs to use the proper restroom. and that ain't the little girls room.

A little queer vocab lesson: "transgendered" isn't really an appropriate word to use. Drop the "-ed."

Read more here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joanne-her…

How awful for her.

@ 2- Transgendered women are not the same as crossdressing men. Transgendered women do not wear womens' clothes or live fully as women because it excites them or because they find it sexually stimulating.

It's hard to know the difference if you don't know anything about transgendered women, so here are a few pointers:
-Men who crossdress for a sexual thrill are unlikely to go into a women's bathroom, use the facilities, and leave. They want to be noticed, and if they are out in public, they are there to enjoy showing off. Dressing as the gender you are, emotionally and mentally, is not showing off. It's being yourself, despite having been born into a body that you don't want.
-Crossdressing men do not identify or live as women. They like to pretend to be one from time to time, but they do not want to actually *be* a woman. The vast majority of them are heterosexual, otherwise normal men. Therefore, they would not see a doctor or therapist about transitioning, and they would definitely *NOT* ever undergo hormone therapy or expensive surgeries. Not that every transgender woman can afford them or chooses them, but crossdressing men would just not do so.
-Transgender women, unless they are also sex workers, do not typically dress like hos. They want to be pretty and feminine like other women, and are generally not crazy or self-destructive enough to walk around dressed in a sexually provocative way. Most of the transgendered women I know actually dress more conservatively day-to-day then I do.

And really, I don't know what you do in bathrooms, but in a typical womens' restroom, you don't see other women undressed. If you were a pervert and trying to perv on the ladies, you'd have to be pretty fricking obvious, peeking under stalls or face pressed against door cracks.

Anyone, man or woman, who does that is breaking the law and subject to arrest. Just using the facilities, even if you were a bio man dressed as a bio man, is not arrest-worthy. Geez.

@9, May I ask why, exactly, you feel that's important, especially if we're assuming that everyone is going to behave appropriately, like sane human beings, and not waggle any superposed may-or-may-not exist dicks in anyone else's face?

So angry. That's just awful.

And it puts her in an awful bind. Qualifying for SRS usually involves proving that you've been living completely as the target gender for a while. Impossible to do if you're going to get ticketed for using the appropriate restroom.

Grrrrr........

Agree with tainte. Parts need to match.

I shouldn't have read the comments on the original article. I know better than that, but I thought, hey, it's MSNBC, and they are supposed to be sort of a liberal news outlet, right?

Boy was I wrong. The VAST majority of those comments were from vile bigots. What is wrong with people? It's embarrassing to know that I share the same planet with these creeps.

As a female, I appreciate the sex separation of bathrooms, purely on the basis that women's bathrooms don't stink as much..

With all the debates on whether transgender ladies should have access to women's toilets/ prisons/ shelters, the choice to uphold the tradition of sex segregation of these spaces is rarely debated in the media.

To those who support sex segregation ( ammended to mean only gender separated) spaces, and support transgender women using these spaces, I am curious whether you are assuming that the macho male aversion to dressing up as a lady will remain? Because that seems to be the only thing there is to prevent male identified men faking a transgender identity to encroach on traditionally women only space.

This doesn't solve the problem of transgender people being treated badly when they have no where to go, but It seems to me the only thing keeping female only spaces female only is the assumption this macho aversion will continue to prevail. Why do we assume that?

A transgender woman is a WOMAN. This is really not complicated. Do not make up fake problems like "but then men will dress up in evening gowns and feather boas in order to use women's restrooms."

@16, I think people get way to hung up on these kinds of things. I really don't care who else uses the same bathroom as me. And I have a feeling that any theoretical guys dressing as women to get their rocks off in the girls' room are about as much of a threat as the theoretical perpetrators of "voter fraud" that republican states use to argue for disenfranchising minorities.

@14, same question for you, then: Why?

@9 And don't refer to a transgender woman as "it." If you can't handle she/her, use gender-neutral pronouns, unless your goal is to be hurtful and offensive. (Which is sorta what it looks like.)

@17 @20
A restroom for an actual woman is a sanctuary. Wanting that space to be free of freaks and deviants is not a fake problem.

@21 Trans men and women are human beings, not "freaks and deviants." They face actual violence on a regular basis from people with your mindset. I am a cis woman, and I would rather treat other people decently then keep a place where I go to pee as a "sanctuary." I've always thought it would be difficult to fail at being human, but you're doing it so effortlessly...

ah, i was just kidding with the "it" thing..sorry, that did seem dickish. but i do believe that if you've got a swingin' thing down there you should use the men's room. it just makes sense.

@23 Can you imagine what might happen if someone who presents as a woman were to walk into a men's restroom? Do you have any idea of the level of violence trans women and men face? (Start here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans_bashi… ) It is much safer for a trans woman to use a women's restroom, where she can safely use a stall, free from harassment or violence. (Outside of Texas, anyway.)

I was already never going to go to Texas. Now, I'm never going to go to Texas, twice as much!

@22 I didn't say the transgendered were those things. I said that ladies should expect a level of privacy that can't be breached by a man wearing a dress to gain access which will happen and you know it will. The world is filled deviants looking for ways to invade the privacy of women.

@5. Word. Do we really have to worry about a trans-panic defense now, too, for these idiots who can't simply live-and -let-live?

The emotive aspect of this story is that a transgender woman was treated badly in Texas, and we focus on bigotry, because bigotry is more emotive than discussing the history of the bathroom, but I'm curious what people think of this question;

If, as a society, we'd always agreed that some people feel more at home in the (socially constructed) roles associated with a sex other than the one they were born into, would we still have come up with the idea of male and female bathrooms? or would there just be unisex bathrooms? or male / female / unisex bathrooms? or something else?

I guess what I'm trying to say (in my above post) is;
why are trans activists fighting for the right for transwomen to use the ladies room, rather than fighting for all bathrooms to be made unisex?

@16--Do you seriously think that the primary impediment to men going into women's restrooms is a "macho aversion to dressing like a lady" in order to do so?

@28 and 29: and how would said woman know the person was "bepenised", unless she were a dreadful peep? This cis-woman has never been in a bathroom where women suddenly strip and show off their junk (unless it also serves as a locker room, which sure as hell wasn't the case in this Texas story).

You can't expect all bathrooms to be unisex and men are understandibly less sensitive about theirs. The men's room should be the default choice. You have no business being in a ladies room unless you were born one no matter how you "identify".

@34 So then I expect you want trans men to use women's restrooms? Which means you are totally fine with someone who looks like a man, but who was born with "lady parts," to use the women's restroom and you won't call the cops or otherwise raise a stink?

Yeah, I don't think so. People should use the restrooms in which they will be most safe and secure from harassment and violence. Period.

Um no. I plainly said:
You have no business being in a ladies room unless you were born one no matter how you "identify".

The men's room can be the "catch-all" for men and misc.

I have trouble empathizing with this woman, because she chooses to live in Texas. In fucking Dallas, no less. She might as well be a US citizen of Mexican descent in Phoenix, "shocked" that a cop asked to see her papers.

16 states have protections encoded into law for situations like this. Move to one of those, Ms. Witherspoon.

@37 Right, because it is SO easy to pick up and move to another state, away from friends, family, jobs, support systems, etc. You know nothing of her situation, but feel free to judge her decision on where to live. Not to mention that some people would rather stay and fight for their rights right where they are...

@38 I can't fight your lack of reading comprehension so I'm done trying. You can "identify" as whatever the hell you want but if you were not born a woman you aren't one. Deal with it and use the proper restroom. It's called respect.

Hard to believe how much transphobia is on display even on Slog comments. A public bathroom is a public bathroom, not a magical lady-haven. If someone harasses you in the bathroom that's a problem no matter how they identify, but if they just want to use the toilet? Seriously, who gives a shit (... figuratively speaking)? Let's get out of the damn stone age and treat other people with some fucking respect and decency.

@41--AMEN! I was shocked that the MSNBC comments were close to 95% transphobic, but here I expect better. Apparently this story brought the hateful trolls out.

I don't understand what the transphobes think happens in women's bathrooms. We use the toilet, we wash up, we fix our hair & makeup... the idea that a transwoman would somehow be violating a "sacred space" is like saying an outhouse is some kind of nature preserve.

@43

So why do we still have men's and women's bathrooms separate? And why is no one talking about that?

FWIW, New York ("The Greatest City In The World," just ask Dave Letterman) granted transgender bathroom rights years ago, by law. You have the right to use the bathroom appropriate to your outer presentation. Establishments that deny transgender rights, or discriminate on the basis of gender status, are subject to civil fines up to $250,000.

And you know what? The world hasn't ended.

And you know what else? If I'm standing at a urinal in the men's restroom, and a woman, or someone looking like a woman walks in, unless I'm really drunk it's going to freak me the fuck out (in a shy-run-and-hide type way, not a violent one!). It breaks all the social cues and responses that are trained into us. Please, let women (or anyone presenting as one) use the women's room!

@44 - I don't know. I think it probably has more to do with urinals being right inside the door of most men's rooms.

@19, For the same reason we segregate in the first place, Balderdash. I can't say what it is, but if we're going to be in the business of gender segregation, we must be equal in its application. The only way to do it fairly is by identifying parts. You can't expect every (any?) cop to have the ability to evaluate and judge a person's unseen mental status in the application of the law as it pertains to enforcement. There is just no time. Does this marginalize a very (very) few? Yes. But, as Spock so eloquently stated in Star Trek II: Wrath of Khan, "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few." (your welcome)

The answer is clearly unisex bathrooms, but I won't let my son or daughter use it out of fear for their safety...unless there's a age-segregated version. Those aren't dice I'm willing to roll. People are too fucked in this world.

SOMEONE SAVE US CIS WOMEN FROM ... nothing. No violence is happening to cis women by trans women in bathrooms or otherwise. On the other hand, violence against trans women is fucking serious and happens often. We need to put a priority on preventing ACTUAL VIOLENCE, not pear clutching by a bunch of ignorant assholes.

@50: Word.