Confusion reigns
I’m a little confused. I know that there are many of you who won’t be surprised to hear that but this is different. I’m trying my best to get my head round this gender neutral business but I’m struggling. Normally on issues like this I tend to say, live and let live and then I turn my mind to other matters.
I have sympathy for any minority group who feels excluded or disadvantaged and usually I would champion their cause and support them albeit from the comfort of my recliner. But there comes a time when you have to question whether the majority should always be moved to change to accommodate the few.
If the cap fits
For example, I can recall a time when the Irish Sikh Council called for Sikhs to be allowed to wear turbans instead of caps when they join the An Garda Siochana. This call was following a case where a Sikh who volunteered to join the Garda Reserve was refused permission to wear his turban as part of his uniform. The Garda Síochána rejected the call for any variation in the standard uniform.
The Irish Sikh Council claimed that Sikhs do not cut their hair for religious reasons and they are obliged to cover it with a turban and asking a Sikh community member to get rid of his turban “is like asking him to remove his head”. Well, An Garda Siochana too has a dress code and it requires its members to wear a cap not a turban. This is one of the requirements for membership of this particular organisation and if that doesn’t fit in with your personal beliefs or religious requirements then that’s too bad. You’ll just have to try an alternative organisation.
Our old friend from the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster would probably want to wear a colander on his head if he decided to become a policeman in Ireland and that would not be acceptable either.
How complicated is going for a pee?
I imagine that most people don’t put too much thought into what toilet they use. Unless they need a disabled facility, they either head for the men’s or women’s loos. They are usually easy enough to find and they are normally identified by signs like Men/Women or Fir/Mna or by male and female symbols. But apparently there is a growing number who don’t have such an easy decision to make, such as transgender and non-binary people, when they want to spend a penny.
So what exactly is a non-binary person? Those with non-binary genders can feel that they have an androgynous (both masculine and feminine) gender identity, such as androgyne. Have an identity between male and female, such as intergender. Have a neutral or non-existant gender identity, such as agender or neutrois. That’s the official definition and my understanding of it is that these people can be caught between two stools when they try to figure out whether they or male or female.
To pee or not to pee
To give an example, one guy told of the difficulties he faced when he changed from a female to a male and he said it was always a struggle to decide what toiled to use. While he was in the process of transitioning, he dressed and looked like a man but he wasn’t able to use a urinal. So he had to use a cubicle and if one wasn’t available he would have to wait. He felt awkward and felt that people were looking at him and he thought that this was unfair so he now wants gender neutral toilets to be available as well.
Now, you can call me old fashioned, but I don’t get this and I suspect he is being a bit super- sensitive or maybe even a little paranoid. If I use a public toilet in an airport or a pub and I want to use a cubicle then I wait until one becomes available. I don’t feel the eyes of the world on me while I’m standing there so why should he. If you want to use a cubicle and one isn’t immediately available then you have to wait for one. Surely there could be occasions when cubicles wouldn’t be available in a gender neutral loo either.
Making a case for extra loos
Another guy told a story of how he had been turned away from the women’s toilets only to be insulted in the men’s toilets. He said he would plan the entire day around it and sometimes he didn’t go to the bathroom all day and ended up with bladder infections from holding it in. This is why the trans gender community has been calling for more gender neutral toilets.
Now come on, if you want to make a serious case for these toilets you have to do better than that. I can’t imagine any situation where I would compromise my health for the want of a pee especially if I was to spend the day planning for it.
Some are suggesting that there should be four types of toilet to accommodate men, women, disabled and gender neutral and some believe there should just be gender neutral toilets for everyone. But using mixed bathrooms might be difficult for some people of certain faiths. It has also been suggested that there will be many trans people who will object to having to use a toilet for trans people as opposed to one of their required gender. This is giving me a headache.
Who can pee where?
In Florida, the ‘Bathroom Surveillance Bill’ would ban transgender people from using bathrooms and locker rooms except those designated for their gender at birth. Transgender advocates have attacked the laws as discriminatory and accused legislators in some states of “attacking the dignity and humanity of transgender and gender non-conforming people.
Who would have thought that taking a pee would be so complicated?