Meanwhile, in the wonderful public school system...
http://www.kdvr.com/news/kdvr-transgender-student-suspended-for-using-wrong-bathroom-20111117,0,5958937.story
Poudre School District Board of Education President Nancy Tellez says the staff bathrooms provide an equal opportunity for transgender students to use any of the seven staff bathrooms spread throughout the school.
Sounds a little... familiar...
I get it, I think it sucks, but on a side note, public school bathrooms are absolutely horrendous. If I'd been given a chance to use the staff bathrooms, I probably would have taken it.
Yeah, this is a problem. Transgenders are basically screwed in public. We really have no good options and this is yet another reason I just stay home. Heaven forbid I have to freaking pee....
Unfortunately there are urban legends about how some jerk throws on a dress to get into the ladies' room and do terrible things.... These are largely unfounded, though there might be one or two examples. Searching Ohio Casemaker (a legal search engine used by attorneys to look up cases) revealed not a damn case of criminal charges in the State of Ohio for this.
If I am in a dress, I am not going into a men's room for what should be obvious reasons. I don't want to get beaten the shit out of, which is certainly possible. I don't want to get embarrassed and outed, which is absolutely certain as an understatement.
This could all be avoided if society actually just, I dunno, wasn't a giant jerk about transgender people, actually accepted us (NOT lip service), and just issued you something so simple as a piece of paper saying you really are trans. Problem solved. If you are serious about becoming a female, you actually have no choice but to do some horrible torture called a "real life test." It is supposed to be designed to see if you could actually live as a woman for a year, and it's bullshit, because it doesn't test that. Rather it tests if you can live as a guy in drag for a year straight, which in our society, you really can't. It's a great way to lose nearly all of your friends and business contacts. Hearing, "O if they leave they were never your friends anyhow," does not help and isn't true anyhow. They were perfectly fine with me, except for that part they figured out I was trans.
Welcome to a slight hint of my nightmare.