Rant #1,640: Whose Bathroom Is It Anyway?

In the world I grew up in, there was the women's bathroom, and there was the men's bathroom.

That was pretty much it.

If you were a man, you used a men's bathroom; if you were a woman, you used the women's bathroom.

Later, some places added bathrooms for those who are handicapped, or at least added stalls for those with these issues.

Even later, some places added larger bathrooms for families with children, so as to make it easier to take care of the little ones with some privacy.

Fine. I can go for all of that.

But of course in today's world, things are quite different, and not as black and white as the world that I grew up in.

We have transgender people, some of whom believe that they are being discriminated against, because they aren't allowed to use the bathroom of their new persona, but the bathroom of the sex that they were born with.

Or so says a new North Carolina law, which has gotten people all in a tizzy, that says that transgender people must use the public bathroom corresponding to the gender on their birth certificate.

People are in an uproar over this, and probably for the wrong reasons.

I am in an uproar over this, not for the same reasons.

Honestly, I don't care that transgender people are offended by this law.

What I do care about is that myself, and people like me, have to ask ourselves the following question: "Why is such a law necessary to begin with?"

It seems nobody cares about the majority anymore; all we care about is upsetting a very small minority's sensibilities.

Look, it is not as if transgender people have only been around the last year.

People under this unfortunate circumstance have been around since the 1950s, when Christine Jorgensen--who lived in my town on Long Island and who my mother knew when she worked the changing rooms at various department stores in our local Sunrise Mall in the 1970s and 1980s--took the plunge, the first person to change their sex entirely with their own consent.

What have these people done for decades? They go into the bathroom that they need to go into, and use the stall, which is not only more private, but affords them the luxury of doing what they need to do without anyone judging them.

If they are part way through their gender change, or all the way through, the stall affords them the luxury of doing what they have to do without anyone looking at them and judging them.

We needs a law for this?

Rabble rousers--those looking to overturn every tenet that this country stands for--certainly think we do, but I ask you--do think this law is discriminatory?

I don't feel it is discriminatory, I feel that it is insulting that we even need to waste our time on a law like this one.

But the state is evidently sick and tired of having to bend over backwards for every special interest group that demands ridiculous PC changes in this day and age, and thus, they feel that such a law is necessary to combat these rabble rousing hooligans, who want equal rights no matter what the cost or how stupid they look.

When one goes into a stall, it is for privacy, or because they have to do No. 2.

Who looks under the adjoining stall to see how the person does what he or she is doing?

I mean, Kaitlyn Jenner, who I assume uses the female bathroom now, isn't even a female, because this person has not gone all the way with the gender change, and has no intention of doing so. so even though this person is now living as a woman, this person continues to have male genitalia.

Since there are no standup urinals in female bathrooms, Jenner has go to the bathroom in a stall, anyway, so who is going to see how Jenner is relieving himself/herself?

This law is so absolutely stupid, because it offends the sensibilities of the majority.

Most people do not change their sexual identity, even though Jenner has said on record that his/her situation is "the new norm."

No it isn't. Period.

These people have every right to use the bathroom, but do they have a right to insult me?

No, I don't think so.

In the men's bathroom, a transgender person will go to the bathroom the same way I will, I would assume, either using the standup toilet or the sitdown toilet.

In a women's bathroom, where the choices are limited to one type of toilet, where is the problem?

We need laws for this? Is anybody checking one's birth certificate at the door of the bathroom to make sure what sex a person is?

Is a transgender man who hasn't committed entirely to his new sex going to take out his female private part to use the standup urinal toilet?

This is the most insipidly stupid legislation I can ever remember. I don't care how other people go to the bathroom, as long as I can take care of my own business without being insulted.

And this legislation is insulting, and completely unnecessary. Period.