Apparently some laws have been passed that state you have to use the restroom designated for the sex on your birth certificate. A major chain store also announced it was making all restrooms unisex. Heated debate rages all over social media and the news.
"Perverts will pretend to be transgender to get to our daughters." Do you think only male perverts exist, and that they only go after girls? Even if a pervert were to do this - as has happened - all he can do legally is "accidentally" expose himself. Anything else is covered under other laws. During a trial, the revelation of his birth certificate would make him in violation of this one. It is your job as a parent (or parent proxy) to protect the child from threats. If you are too busy to escort the kid to the restroom, that's on you.
Are we going to station guards at every restroom and require matching the physical evidence with the birth certificate? What if the two don't match? We send a person with a penis into the women's room anyway - refer back to the perv argument. What do you do when the "man" you've stopped proves to have both a vagina and a female birth certificate?
We have probably all, at some point in our adult lives, shared a public restroom with another adult bearing different genitals than ours. We never knew because they had the exterior appearance of our sex. They went into the stall and shut the door, just like we did. Or maybe you ignored the Restroom Closed For Cleaning signs and the janitor was using one of the toilets - that happened a lot when I was a janitor.
Why are they wasting time and money (taxpayer's money) on laws that make no sense and can't be enforced? I've not done the math, but I'm sure the salaries of these lawmakers earned while passing this nonsense is a lot more than 15 bucks an hour - you know, the amount useful people are greedy for wanting.
Wednesday, April 27, 2016
Wednesday, April 6, 2016
Labels
Back in my day, the same people we now say have Social Anxiety were simply Painfully Shy. When I was hospitalized for Dysthymia (a form of Clinical Depression), I explained it to my grandmother with the catch-all "Nerves". So have we, as a society, become weaker or stronger? Some say a medical diagnosis is better, that we've come to understand things better. Others call it the rather vulgar "pussification" of society. Honestly, I don't think it matters.
To me "She has Social Anxiety" isn't much different than "She's painfully shy". Either way, it means I'm going to give her some space and let her deal as she feels best. My grandmother went to her grave saying I had "Nerves" - a term that would cover a myriad of today's medical diagnoses. They say hers was a simpler time, and at least in this area, they are right. "Nerves" meant the person has trouble dealing with life, but that they weren't a danger. Come to think of it, that would cover Social Anxiety...
Coloreds become Blacks become African-Americans, because for some reason the earlier terms become offensive. (I am deliberately ignoring certain words, which were/are almost always used as insults. I've known folks to use those words innocently, but they were rare - and usually ignorant.)
Political labels change, too, as the parties evolve. The same party that fought giving the freed slaves rights after the Civil War is the one today championing their descendants. Theodore Roosevelt, the man behind the National Parks, belonged to the party that today puts money over nature.
I can't refer to myself as fat without people freaking out. Guess what, folks? I'm not quite five and a half feet tall and I average 200 pounds. You can use whatever label you like, but it has the same definition.
But I digress. Why do we feel the need to update our labels? My first example, I think, comes from the notion that a medical diagnosis is more likely to be respected. Words are symbols, and maybe they become tainted by association with folks who use them cruelly, like the swastika and the Rebel Flag?
To me "She has Social Anxiety" isn't much different than "She's painfully shy". Either way, it means I'm going to give her some space and let her deal as she feels best. My grandmother went to her grave saying I had "Nerves" - a term that would cover a myriad of today's medical diagnoses. They say hers was a simpler time, and at least in this area, they are right. "Nerves" meant the person has trouble dealing with life, but that they weren't a danger. Come to think of it, that would cover Social Anxiety...
Coloreds become Blacks become African-Americans, because for some reason the earlier terms become offensive. (I am deliberately ignoring certain words, which were/are almost always used as insults. I've known folks to use those words innocently, but they were rare - and usually ignorant.)
Political labels change, too, as the parties evolve. The same party that fought giving the freed slaves rights after the Civil War is the one today championing their descendants. Theodore Roosevelt, the man behind the National Parks, belonged to the party that today puts money over nature.
I can't refer to myself as fat without people freaking out. Guess what, folks? I'm not quite five and a half feet tall and I average 200 pounds. You can use whatever label you like, but it has the same definition.
But I digress. Why do we feel the need to update our labels? My first example, I think, comes from the notion that a medical diagnosis is more likely to be respected. Words are symbols, and maybe they become tainted by association with folks who use them cruelly, like the swastika and the Rebel Flag?
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