How could it possibly matter which bathroom is used? (Please see details)

It won’t. No one, and nothing.

It’s simply an excuse for the GOP to pander to their hateful constituents.

The sad thing is that a passing trans-man will be just as reviled in a women’s restroom as a passing trans woman would in a men’s room. Either way, they’re likely to experience threats if not outright assault.

Because family values and Jesus and love and shit.

Agree with @Seek

This is another effort by the hateful right to stigmatize another group that they don’t understand.

What is bothersome to me is that the folks in South Dakota are stupid enough to support it.,

Yes, I know why and what motivates these people, but what reasons are they using to logically justify this? “Because I want to further marginalize some people” is not usually how it’s presented.

The right says that women should not have to go to the bathroom with a biological man, which is ridiculous!

Family values, peeing is scary, and fabled sexual predators are SO MUCH SCARIER than actual violent transphobic rednecks.

Part of the problem is the prudishness that seems to be culturally ingrained in most Americans, and has been for centuries.

I recall my first trip to Europe, when I used the men’s rest room at a German train station. I was surprised, but not alarmed, to find a woman working inside the active restroom on a semi-permanent basis. She was wearing a typical uniform for the custodial staff, handing out towels and doing light cleanup, and working for tips. She obviously “belonged” there and was not at all out of place.

Clearly no one else was upset or concerned about the fact, and I wouldn’t have been in any case, but I did think it was interesting. “This would never happen in the USA,” was my thought – and not in the best way.

But given that prudishness that so many of us do have, and given the scare stories that a lot of kids (and their parents) have been raised on regarding “molestation” – regardless of any gender or sexual preference issues to further roil the waters – it’s not altogether unexpected to find people concerned about “unusual” or “unexpected” people in their bathrooms. And not just in “their” bathrooms, but in bathrooms with their kids.

The way people sling around the “transgender” term I will not be at all surprised to find fully heterosexual men wandering into women’s bathrooms or locker rooms, claiming “transgender” status, just for the sake of whatever thrill that gives them. Or worse. People are not always what they seem, nor are they always what they claim.

Sure, deviants of any sex or sexual orientation can go into a restroom looking as if they fully belong there (cross-dressing men entering a women’s room, or masculine homosexual child-molesters not at all suggesting here that all or even a significant minority of homosexuals are child-molesters entering men’s rooms), and sexually assault children who do belong in those places. This just adds more to many people’s unreasoned and unreasonable – but still real – fears for their own and their children’s safety.

Given the fear that’s present in many people, we don’t have to go labeling them as “haters” just because their fears seem unfounded to some of us. That seems akin to the obliviousness that people are charged with for telling those with anxiety disorders that they “just need to calm down”. It ain’t that simple. A little understanding goes a long way – in both directions.

It’s a version of, “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”.
Translation: “We’re not going to check your ’equipment’ at the door, but if you’re going to flaunt a non-traditional sexuality, we reserve the right to regulate it.”
OR: “If you don’t tell, we won’t ask.”
People uncomfortable with transgender asking for the expediency of self denial.

I’m not a proponent or an apologist, I’m answering the question from here in Redneckville.

On the up-side, we have two brand new local not-for-profits. One has two Unisex bathrooms and the other has communal “Men”, and “Women” plus a private “Family” bathroom.

I peed in a women’s restroom once. Didn’t warp me, didn’t phase the ladies in the other stalls.

As far as I know no one was peeking through the cracks or over the top.

@CWOTUS has a good point about mislabeling the fearful as hateful.

I was going to ask if the GOP had gone from the “Party of No” to the “Party of Hate” but now I must consider if perhaps they are not just the “Party of Fear”.

In this case, I don’t know that it’s even fear, @rojo.
More like preservation of their willful ignorance.

Fear, I guess, as in an overall fear of change.
Resentment more so than fear, IMO.

It’s interesting that you can so cavalierly dismiss others’ concerns with that kind of “willful ignorance” othering, @ibstubro, as a way of refusing to engage what may very well be “real” concerns, no matter how incomprehensible or invalid to you. Hypocrite much?

Maybe some people – maybe even a significant minority – with those stated concerns are truly ignorant and wish to remain so, and that’s “all” they are. But if you listen to them, I doubt that. But dismissing them is far simpler than engaging; I’ll grant that.

The backwater hinterlands of the country can always be relied upon to mount that futile rear guard action in the battle already recognized as lost by all combatants elsewhere. The demographics enabling such silliness will continue to concentrate old fogeys in increasing numbers as the youth of such places abandon their birthplaces in droves, carrying any hope of idealism or progress away with them.

How do you know what’s comprehensible or valid to me, @CWOTUS?

I like it. I hope they do have a way to enforce it. I think there has to be a right and wrong answer to the question and I believe South Dakota hit it right.

Why do you feel it’s important, @MollyMcGuire?
PM is cool, if you want. I’m genuinely curious.

How do you feel about gender-neutral bathrooms?

I am genuinely curious as well, @MollyMcGuire, if you’re not comfortable answering on an open thread, I understand, but I would love to know what you think.

Matters not to me, I am a female that ducks into the mens room if needed, no problem.
I don’t care if men come into a soley designated womens restroom either, as long as they aren’t peeing in the sinks. lol There are already plenty of unisex public restrooms, what’s the BFD?

I’ve gone in men’s rooms, too. I could never understand why the big deal about not wanting men in women’s rooms, especially since we can’t see people other than their feet when theyare in the stall. Maybe the issue is that there may be young girls in the bathroom, solo, and then there may be perverted men? As long as the men are not at a urinal, I don’t see what the big deal is.

Maybe I can explain the concern that some people rightly have over the issue, but in another way.

In a lot of neighborhoods and regions of the country, people still go to sleep at night and leave their doors unlocked. The feeling is that “I trust my neighbors; they’re good people who would not invade my home or harm me while I’m sleeping. And if they need to enter my home for some reason, then I’m sure it’s a good reason, so I’ll let them in any time.” And that’s fine – for those people and their neighbors. I’m sure that they have earned the trust that they place in one another, and that’s a good thing. But if this is your attitude – as it seems to be with public restrooms – when you look around your neighborhood, are all of the people there always and only your trustworthy neighbors? How about you – do you live in a pretty safe place, but still lock the door to your house or apartment at night?

I live in a pretty safe neighborhood, and I do trust my neighbors. But they aren’t always the only people around. I lock my doors at night, even though I trust my neighbors. I don’t want to normalize the idea that it’s okay for anyone to enter my home at any time. I fully understand the concern that people have when unisex public restrooms are normalized: at that time, when it won’t raise a red flag to see a man (or an apparent man) walk into a restroom or other facility that is normally intended for use by women, then we should also not be surprised when sexual assaults occur more frequently in those places, too.

This is not to say that “every man who would use a women’s restroom is a rapist or a pervert” (or vice versa, please don’t misunderstand, and don’t think that I’m insensitive to the plight of the transgendered or fathers with small girls or mothers with growing boys), only “that would be a convenient cover for those (primarily men) who are rapists and have criminal intent, and who would act in such a way”.

This is an issue that doesn’t greatly concern me, but I can fully understand the issues that some people have with it, and I don’t dismiss those concerns – or those people as benighted troglodytes.

@CWOTUS I can understand the concerns about possible inappropriate behavior and am working on not trivializing these concerns but for me it is along the same line as banning all muslims from the US because an extremely small percentage might be intent on doing harm. The question for me is how do we weed out the bad without punishing or denying the rights and privileges of the many who have no evil intent? And I don’t have the answer to that.

@CWOTUS: where you live, are public restrooms locked if they’re not single stall? Nope? Didn’t think so. So this ruling would only keep out the gentlemanly rapists and perverts.
Yeah, that’ll make us women safer. A rapist dressed as a woman is still a rapist. A picture of a lady on an unlocked public rest room door won’t necessarily deter an evil doer.
When I have seen these bills come up in various places, they are not being presented as unisex bathrooms.
A trans person that is pre change tends to present as the sex they are transitioning to, and thus not obviously Male or Female. At least the trans people I know tend to use the restroom of their original biological sex until they are able to pass, or at least, not be obviously identified.

And how does one enforce this?

Actually, @canidmajor, since you raise a good point that most public non-single-use restrooms in this country and around the world, from the parts of the world that I have seen are typically unlocked – it would be a natural progression in things to add locks to those doors. (We didn’t always password-protect our personal computers as a matter of routine, either, until the attacks on them and through them didn’t become more ubiquitous.) As other-gender access to such areas becomes normalized, then I would expect more of those areas to be locked and only unlocked (for those who don’t have their own keys, as having been established that “they belong to the set that may use those facilities”) by some kind of monitor or custodian who makes a personal assessment.

Because you’re right; those kinds of things can happen already, but because the taboo on men using the girls’ bathroom is so strong in most places that most men – gentlemen – won’t even consider it, and would take some kind of corrective action, or at least raise an alarm, if they saw it happen. It’s the normalization of that activity that people are concerned with, I think.

@canidmajor hire a groper to stand at the front of each door and check. might help with unemployment too