Tag Archives: toilet

January 2019 Trans Talk on KKFI

This month on Trans Talk we’re going speak with Courtney, a local woman who recently faced a terrifying and demoralizing level of discrimination as she was thrown out of a local casino for trying to use the ladies’ room. After hearing Courtney’s story, we will have a round-table discussion about the Supreme Court’s anti-transgender ruling this week, and what it means for the future of all transgender rights.

We will have a take on the transgender news of the month, have a book review from Anthony, and then finish up the show with the community calendar update.  I do hope you will be able to join us this Saturday, January 26 at 1:00 pm on 90.1 KKFI, Kansas City Community Radio! You can also stream the program live on kkfi.org, or via various apps on your phone.

June 2016 Trans Talk on 90.1 KKFI

KKFI

Hello everyone! We have two great topics this month on Trans Talk. First, we will be talking with attorney Larry Altman about the current status of North Carolina’s anti-transgender legislation, and how the upcoming election could impact transgender rights. Next, we will have a discussion with Nyla, Kelly, and Freddie, three transgender persons of color who are joining us to explain the specific challenges faced by their community, and to educate us on how we can be better allies to this community which is at such high risk.

Fiona Nowling will be co-hosting today’s program, and she will give us the community calendar update, while I will provide my view of some of the LGBT news this week. I do hope you will be able to join us this Saturday, June 25 at 1:00 pm on 90.1 FM KKFI, Kansas City Community Radio! You can also stream the program live on kkfi.org.

Happy Indiana Transphobe Touts Toilet Bill with $5,000 Fine

Source: Indiana Lawmaker Introduces ‘Pay To Pee’ Bill For Transgender People | Indiana Talks

I guess Indiana must have an inferiority complex of some sort. After all, what is the first thing you think of when you hear the word “Indiana?” The Indianapolis 500 race? Jim Nabors? Sorghum?

Obviously feeling as if his state is even further in the shadow of such states as North Carolina and Mississippi, Republican State Senator Jim Tomes (second from the left in the photograph above) wants Indiana to be stuck in our memories, like a fly in toffee, for having the strictest anti-transgender toilet terror bill on the books. Tomes SB 35, which he calls “a simple bill,” would accomplish two things. First, it makes it illegal for any transgender student to ever use a bathroom, locker room, or changing facility congruent with their gender identity. Students would be classified by the Sorting Hat of genitals and chromosomes. And Indiana’s public schools would be blatantly in violation of Title IX, but hey…

Much more scarily, however, the bill also states that any transgender person who uses a public sex-specific restroom, locker room, or shower room that matches their gender identity has committed a “single sex public facility trespass,” which it deems a Class A misdemeanor. A Class A misdemeanor is the highest non-felony charge in Indiana, punishable by up to one year in jail and a fine of up to $5,000 dollars.

Displaying a pair of “brass ones” the size of two Jovian moon, Tomes insists his legislation doesn’t target transgender people, stating somewhat disjointedly “Shouldn’t we also ask about…what about the other sector of society of people that who have all through the decades women been using women’s restrooms and men been using men’s restrooms and kind of like that and kind of expect that level of privacy?”

Strong words. Strong, confusing, and hateful words.

Georgia Governor Vetoes Anti-LGBT Bill, and a North Carolina Update

Georgia_Governor_Nathan_Deal
In news today, Georgia Governor Nathan Deal has vetoed the anti-LGBT rights bill passed by the Georgia legislature. The bill, known as House Bill 757, would have exempted anyone claiming to be a “faith-based organization” from complying with any hiring, state labor practice, public service, or other laws which cover those who serve the public. In other words, it would allow groups to discriminate against an LGBT person based upon any allegation that it violates their organized “religious belief.”

The reason for the veto was money, pure and simple – an unprecedented number of companies, sports teams, and professional organizations came out against this bill, threatening to take their business elsewhere, or even move their entire company out of state. Sources close to the Governor are alleging (with no confirmation, mind you), that the most worrisome threat was that from the National Football League, which threatened to disallow Atlanta from hosting a future Super Bowl should the law be passed (one wishes that they had said the same about North Carolina’s bill, but then that bill was ram-rodded through their legislature in an unprecedented 3 hours from start to finish).

Republicans have threatened a special session to over-ride the Governor’s veto, and there is no information at this time as to how serious or possible such an attempt may be.

In related news, two transgender men, a lesbian woman, the American Civil Liberties Union of North Carolina, and Equality North Carolina have filed a lawsuit in Federal Court, seeking to overturn the state’s disastrous anti-transgender legislation which was passed last Thursday. In response to the lawsuit, North Carolina Republicans are doubling down, releasing a “frequently asked questions” about the new law which has been proven to be deceptive and misleading – a scary thing, coming from the Governor’s office – claiming that the entire purpose of the law was to prevent men from using women’s facilities.

This lawsuit has significant potential to impact the transgender community nationwide. It is very likely that unless one side relents, the case will reach the United States Supreme Court, where at this time it is uncertain whether it would be upheld or thrown out – and on what possible grounds. The Supreme Court has never ruled on the subject matter of whether transgender discrimination is sex discrimination, and transgender-rights observers are nervous about what sort of precedent could be set should a “conservative flu” be contracted by the Court on this issue.

There are some nail-biting times ahead, folks.

North Carolina Enshrines Transgender Toilet Terror Bill Into Law

Torched_Rainbow_Flag
Well, they’ve done it.

In response to the city of Charlotte passing an ordinance protecting LGBT rights, Republicans in the North Carolina legislature have ram-rodded a comprehensive anti-LGBT rights bill through to the governor’s office, where it was signed with incredible speed not shown towards any other legislative measure in that state in recent history. A mere three hours of debate and 20 minutes of public comment were allowed before the bill was passed, and Governor Pat McCrory – who I’ve reported on before due to his many anti-transgender statements regarding children – signed it without any hesitation. Claiming it was to “keep our children safe.”

Why did this happen? One primary, driving issue: Republican lawmakers were horrified that transgender women might be using the same toilet as cisgender women.

That’s it. The economy, crime, jobs, civil rights, the environment – all of these issues paled to the Republicans, compared to the thought that a transgender person might need to pee in a place where they can do so without fear of harassment or assault. While widely advertised as a ban to protect kids in schools, the hateful piece of legislation actually extends to “all public facilities” as defined in the state, with no age range mentioned. Furthermore, the hateful piece of legislation also mandates that your sex is defined solely by what is listed on your birth certificate.

Mercifully, North Carolina is one of few states which will allow transgender persons to change their birth certificates – provided you have surgery. At least until Republicans figure out that we “decepticons,” as one North Carolina Republican lawmaker referred to us, can change our birth certificates. Most likely, they’ll use the same excuse used by New Jersey Republican governor Christie, who claimed he rejected a bill allowing transgender persons to change their gender marker on their birth certificate due to “security concerns.”

You can read the full text of the bill at this link, and information for this article came from this source as well: North Carolina Governor To Sign Anti-LGBT Law Into Effect

Illinois District Violated Transgender Student’s Rights, U.S. Says


The New York Times has printed a very detailed article on a recent major victory for transgender youth. Township High School District 211 in Palatine, Illinois, had refused to allow a transgender girl equal access to school locker and toilet facilities, and a complaint was made by the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois. In a letter sent Monday, the Office for Civil Rights of the Department of Education told the district that requiring a transgender student to use private changing and showering facilities was a violation of that student’s rights under Title IX, a federal law that bans sex discrimination. The district has 30 days to reach a solution or face penalties, including potential administrative law proceedings or a Justice Department court action. The district could lose some or all of its Title IX funding.

From the article:

“All students deserve the opportunity to participate equally in school programs and activities — this is a basic civil right,” Catherine Lhamon, the Education Department’s assistant secretary for civil rights, said in a statement. “Unfortunately, Township High School District 211 is not following the law because the district continues to deny a female student the right to use the girls’ locker room.”

Officials in the Palatine district, which serves more than 12,000 students, have framed their position as a middle ground. The transgender student in question plays on a girls’ sports team, is called “she” by school staff and is referred to by a female name. But the district, citing privacy concerns, had required her to change clothes and shower separately.

The district said she was allowed to change inside the girls’ locker room, but only behind a curtain. The student, who has not been publicly identified, has said she would probably use that curtain to change. But she and the federal government have insisted that she be allowed to make that decision voluntarily, and not because of requirements by the district.

As a rebuttal to ignorant parents who claimed that the student was a “boy” who was “gaming the system to see girls naked,” the Times reported that the student “…has identified as a girl from a young age, has changed her name, received a passport as a female and is undergoing hormone therapy…”

Source: Illinois District Violated Transgender Student’s Rights, U.S. Says

Dear YMCA of Pierce and Kitsap Counties – We’re Not Predators

Separate but EqualTo: YMCA of Pierce and Kitsap Counties, 4717 S. 19th Street, #201, Tacoma, WA 98405

From: Una Nowling, P.E. M.Sc.

Re: Your conflation of transgender rights with enabling sexual predators

To whom it may concern:

Upon hearing of your sudden change in policy to prohibit transgender members of your organization from using the locker rooms and showers congruent with their gender identity, I was at first just disappointed. As a transgender woman and political activist, I’m somewhat used to ignorance, prejudice, and fear walking hand-in-hand to marginalize my people and deny us dignity and rights. But upon reading that your spokeswoman Michelle LaRue said “The concern was that a non-transgender individual might pose as a transgender to gain access to our locker rooms and expose themselves to children and cause harm to children,” I became both disappointed AND cross.

Your managers report that you are responding to a “flood of phone calls, e-mails, and social media posting by members who are concerned about or opposed to allowing transgender people in transition to use public locker rooms.” However, at the same time you admit that your entire reaction is “It is fear-based. We’ve not had any complaints filed about inappropriate use of our locker rooms from transgender members.”

I must say, you certainly have a shiny pair of brass ones, don’t you?

Admitting on one hand that there are no actual problems, and you’re only reacting out of an irrational fear expressed by what appears to be a well-organized social media manipulation campaign – and yet, cracking down on the rights of transgender members anyhow, is just sad.

And somehow you feel it’s acceptable to do this, even under the extant Washington State Law Against Discrimination (RCW 49.60, q.v.) banning discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity in employment, housing and public accommodations. You need to understand that segregating innocent transgender people at your facilities is no different than other ethnic and racial fear-based segregation which is part of this nation’s civil rights history.

Furthermore, your excuse for doing this attempts to “weaponize” transgender persons as the proverbial Trojan Horse which will allow child sexual predators to somehow have unfettered access to your locker rooms and bathrooms. You seem to be completely unaware that nothing whatsoever stops a child sexual predator from – wait for it – ignoring your rules and trying to gain entrance anyhow? The fact that you feel discrimination against transgender persons will somehow magically create a barrier against real sexual predators is both silly and ignorant.

And destructive to the self-esteem and dignity of your transgender members and the transgender community in general.

Please take some time to consider just how discriminatory your actions are, and consider that being on the wrong side of history is not a place most would wish to have for their life legacy.

Una Nowling

For Transas City

Sources: YMCA Backtracks on Policy About Transgender Locker Room Use

Pierce, Kitsap YMCA Transgender Policy sets off a Storm

Olathe School District’s Transgender Restroom Policy Stirs Controversy – Not

The bathrooms inside a Johnson County high school are sparking some controversy, and it all has to do with which restrooms transgender students can use.

Please note that this is an old event, which has been bumped on social media and sent to me by two separate people, so I thought I would at least address the issue.

The original article from KCTV5, which is linked below, has a headline which implies that there is a major protest action, or some sort of mass resistance to the fact that two transgender students in the Olathe School District are being allowed to use the restroom congruent with their true gender. In reading the article, however, we find that the “controversy” consists of:

“KCTV5 News received an email from someone who said they are a concerned Olathe East High School parent outraged the school never told them anything, and now their student will be in a restroom with the opposite sex.”

A single e-mail. From one person, not identified. Wow, does Obama know about this? The article makes a further error, when it prints:

“The school district is in uncharted territory. They are the first metro school to address what the school paper calls the transgender ‘bathroom issue.’ “

Except of course for the entire KCMO School District, as proven by my interview with Lawrence Altman on last month’s Trans Talk on 90.1 KKFI, Kansas City Community Radio.

Honestly, I’m really uncertain at the level of reporting here, especially given that KCTV5 has a rather good record on transgender reporting, as seen in their reporting on the recent murder of Tamara Dominguez.

Source: District’s change over restrooms for transgender students stirs controversy

March 2015 Trans Talk on 90.1 KKFI

KKFIPlease join us on Saturday, March on “Trans Talk,” 90.1 FM, KKFI, Kansas City Community Radio at 1:00 pm central. You can also tune into kkfi.org to listen in via live streaming audio from anywhere with an internet connection.

On this program Luke Harness and myself will take the reins and interview our guests about some great topics. Luke will kick off the program with some LGBT news for the week, and then he is going to interview a local trans man named D. about “The Union,” a local resource for the trans male community. Then I shall interview local attorney Madeline Johnson about the rash of offensive “bathroom bills” that are popping up across the nation, including right here in Missouri. I will finish up with the Community Calendar update.

Please tune in if you can, as we hope this shall be a great show!

The Face of Evil: Florida Lawmaker Says Using Restroom Is A Choice For Transgender People

Dear readers, I don’t actually throw around the word “evil” very often. Or at least I try my best to avoid such. But I swear to you, some days it’s almost as if the bigots, fundamentalist religious zealots, and other Hamburglars of human rights are deliberately trolling me.

Such is the case with Florida State Representative and future Nobel prize-winner Frank Artiles, a Republican who has introduced a bathroom policing bill to:

“…restrict single-sex public facilities — including restrooms in restaurants, theaters, workplaces, and schools — to people of the corresponding “biological sex, either male or female, at birth.” Violators would be guilty of a misdemeanor, punishable by up to a year in jail.”

Furthermore, this budding 21st-century Thomas Jefferson has been quoted as saying:

“People are not forced to go the restroom. They choose to go to the restroom.”

When asked about how this bill would impact transgender persons, Artiles pontificated thusly:

“While I understand there are transgender people who want to use bathrooms however they want to feel, that is irrelevant to me,” Artiles explained. He said gender identity was “subjective” and the birth sex of a transgender person is the only factor that should dictate which restroom they use.

Transgender persons aside, Artiles apparently has never heard of intersex persons, medically documented over centuries of medical science and civilization. Then again, in his defense he’s probably been focused upon the more pressing problems of “why do secular humanists insist that the earth circles the sun” and “the war on Good Friday.”

Florida Lawmaker Says Using Restroom Is A Choice For Transgender People.

Several New Colorado Bills Are Attacking the LGBTQ Community

What bothers me, dear readers, is not so much the anti-transgender vehemence of some of the supporters of these bills, such as that of Toilet Policewoman Kim Ransom, pictured above. No, what bothers me more is that for the last several years Colorado has seen a strong pushback against treating transgender persons with dignity and respect. In this article which I’ve linked, the authors discuss three different bills introduced by arch-religious-conservatives, all of which could remove rights from transgender citizens of the state.

New Colorado Bills Attacking LGBTQ Community? | Westword.

Bonkers Bathroom Bounty Bill. Blech.

ToiletPaperMoney
A little bit of alliteration never hurt anyone, dear readers. As opposed to conservative hate, which does hurt people. It hurts in emotional and mental damage done, it hurts by creating unsafe places for minorities, and it hurts by working to set up a theocracy out of what was once a representative democracy.

Kentucky senator C.B. Embry has shown himself to be a Very Special little hobgoblin, who keeps popping up in the news with his capers. In 2013 he opposed an anti-bullying bill which would have protected students based on the gender identity and expression, as well as sexual orientation. But that was just the beginning.

You see, the honorable Mr. Embry has introduced a bill into the Kentucky legislature which would force schools to keep transgender students out of “improper” bathrooms and locker rooms. The method for his madness is to give any student allegedly traumatized by seeing a transgender person in those places $2,500 for their pain and suffering. It does not specify if a transgender person may see themselves in a mirror, they should also be awarded $2,500. Probably because Mr. Embry likely believes, like vampires, we don’t have a reflection.

Dear readers, I can actually see an upside to this policy. For example, one could get together 20 female students to “see” a transgender girl student in their locker room, then pool their $50,000 of winnings and donate them to a good cause transgender cause. And when they get tired of that, they could start building up some college funds, or even donate the legal largess to Mr. Embry’s political opponent in the next election.

Lawmaker Wants To Pay Students $2,500 If They See A Transgender Person In The ‘Wrong’ Bathroom | ThinkProgress.

South Park’s “Cissy” Episode was Actually Pretty Good on Trans Issues

I don’t often just share a link on Transas City without some commentary, but this writer at Slate essentially says what I would have about a recent South Park episode which focused on transgender issues. I saw the episode online and I agree with the summary from slate below almost 100%. I mean, I felt a little more sensitive to the aspect of making fun of transgender persons via Cartman as a vehicle (which is why is use the descriptor “pretty good” in lieu of “great” as per the original article), but really, after thinking about it for a while, it was a positive portrayal overall, and after the debacle of the plot with Mr. Garrison’s sex change (the reason I stopped watching the program), a pleasant surprise.

South Park’s “Cissy” episode was great on trans issues..

CBS Profiles Trans Youth, as Poll Shows Objections to Trans Accommodations

Transgender children were covered as a topic on CBS Sunday Morning in a fairly positive manner, but they did devote a bit of time to the haters, as well as focusing on a poll showing that a wide majority of Americans believe transgender students should not be allowed to use their gender-congruent bathrooms.

The CBS poll, conducted in March and released this week, found that only 26 percent of respondents believe trans students should be given access to restrooms and locker rooms that correspond with their gender identity, whereas 59 percent of those polled believe trans individuals should be forced to use facilities of their birth-assigned gender. Fifteen percent of poll respondents either did not know or did not answer the question.

Women were more likely than men to believe that trans students should be given access gender-appropriate facilities, with 29 percent of women in favor of transgender-affirmative public accommodations compared to 23 percent of men. Thirty-three percent of self-identified Democrats support trans students, compared to only 16 percent of Republicans.

Unfortunately, the Advocate concludes that the smear tactics of the Pacific Justice Institute and other hate groups may be working:

These tactics, often described as the “bathroom meme,” rely on thoroughly debunked myths involving a fear that people will claim to be transgender simply as a means to gain access to restrooms and locker rooms so that they can more easily assault unsuspecting women. But perhaps, as the poll indicates, the tactics are having some success.

WATCH: CBS Profiles Trans Youth, as Poll Shows Objections to Trans Accommodations | Advocate.com.

SHAME ON YOU, Maryland Conservatives! Group Seeks to Quash Transgender Rights Law

Camberwick_Shame
Some days I want to rage against the proverbial machine, and other days I just want to bury my face in my hands and give up. The newest transgender rights law in Maryland passed the Senate and House of Delegates, and hasn’t even been signed by the freaking governor yet – and a conservative Republican group is trying to force a referendum on the law for this year’s elections.

Among other things, the legislation protects transgender people against discrimination in employment and housing. It also upholds a transgender person’s right to use public bathrooms and locker rooms for the gender with which they identify.

Those provisions have prompted opponents to label the measure “the Bathroom Bill” and to warn that it would make it easier for sexual predators to gain access to women’s bathrooms and locker rooms.

Thirion said the law would apply only to people who have shown that they clearly identify with one gender, and not to a man who might put on a dress to sneak into a women’s bathroom. Supporters note that any illegal acts committed by a person in a bathroom remain illegal.

But don’t think for a minute that any reason is going to stop those who hate and fear transgender persons. These haters simply hate us for existing – for sharing their space. We’re the 21st-century version of witches. And these people cannot be placated, they cannot be reasoned with, and they cannot be happy until every last one of us either withdraws from the world and hides in our homes – or dies.

Group seeks referendum on transgender rights law – baltimoresun.com.