Colorado parents of transgender 1st-grader file complaint over restroom ban

[TaraJo]

Tara, the only time I ever see bathroom issues come up in the news, it is because someone was raped or assaulted in one. If we make it so it is not suspicious for a man to follow a woman into a public restroom, it could result in problems. Sure, it might not, but I might be biased. A girl was murdered in a restroom at a rest stop near here. The same goes for women following boys into the bathroom. I am not okay with grown women using the bathroom with my nephews. There are a real reasons why they are separate. Ignore them if you want, but they are real. Also, I like being able to go to the bathroom without any men in there. Is that such a crime?

Much of that is true. I think the majority of the rapes that happen in bathrooms are men raping women, so I can go with that. Assault, though, I haven't really seen any stats or numbers or anything that has said that those are more likely to happen in bathrooms, especially that they're going to be a man assaulting a woman in the bathroom. I've seen a LOT of stories about one woman assaulting another in the bathroom and about one man assauling another in the bathroom. I even know there was a trans woman who was assaulted when she was trying to use a restroom in a Baltimore McDonalds a while back.

http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2011-09...nder-woman

But, again, from my perspective, being able to use the women's room can be VERY important. I mean, I seem to pass well enough that I can go about my life without too much harassment or anything. A large part of that is that I don't think the haters know I'm trans. If I go use the men's room, I'm pretty much announcing to everyone that I'm trans. That puts me in extreme danger. And for a lot of us, restrooms are about the only gendered resource we use, so if we could find a way around that, it would be a huge help to us.

I also think the pre-op designation is problematic. I know a few trans women who have chosen not to have genital surgery. Does this mean they should permenantly be using the men's room? Worse yet, there aren't very good options for trans men getting genital surgery. If we're determing how someone should be gendered based on their genital configuration, just about ever trans man I have ever met would be considered a woman. And that's where things get REALLY strange; I mean, going by that logic, it would be more acceptable for Buck Angel here to use the women's room than it would be for me to.