Posted on 08/04/2013 12:20:28 AM PDT by servo1969
Sunday’s Washington Post Magazine has a regular column on “Work Advice,” and this week’s topic was “Potty clarity at the office.” A reader complained that “Bob” at the office had decided to become “Barbara,” and began using the women’s bathroom (after a year using a one-toilet unisex bathroom). Since “Barbara” can’t afford surgery, the reader wondered how much time before the federal agency they work for can “take the position she is legally only a cross-dresser and have her use the gender-appropriate bathroom? We are at our wits’ end.”
“Work Advice” columnist Karla L. Miller made a beeline for Mara Keisling of the National Center for Transgender Equality for a sneer at the reader: “We built a secret lab at NCTE, we’re trying to invent a transgender person who doesn’t have to use the bathroom.” Miller then lectured at the complainer to get over herself:
Are you sitting down? (Figuratively, I mean.) Under federal policy, Barbara is using the “gender-appropriate bathroom.”...In your federal workplace, your office should be following the guidelines set by the Office of Personnel Management (www.opm.gov): “Once [a transgender worker] has begun living and working full-time in the gender that reflects his or her gender identity, agencies should allow access to restrooms ... consistent with his or her gender identity.” Barbara is not Tootsie or Bugs Bunny or any other caricature of a male in drag trying to game the system; she is, in all respects relevant to her co-workers, a woman.
That’s true regardless of whether she goes under the knife; OPM adds that transitioning workers do not have to undergo surgery to gain access to the men’s or women’s room.
You seem comfortable referring to “Barbara” and “she/her” — kudos for that — so it’s not clear to me what she’s done to bring you to “wits’ end.” If it’s simply that some folks just can’t get past sharing a bathroom with her ... well, I understand there’s a private toilet at your office up for grabs.
If you were born with a p-nis and test-cles but are convinced you are actually a woman, there is something wrong with your brain.
If you were born with a v-gina and ovaries but are absolutely positive that you are, in fact, a man, there is something wrong with your brain.
No.
Stop it.
If you are actually willing to cut off your p-nis so that you can feel more like the woman you think you are, you need help. If you want to have your breasts removed and your v-gina surgically altered into a sort of male organ with the help of hormones, you are not well in the head.
It is not OK. It is not healthy. You are mentally ill.
Notice, I didn’t say you were a bad person or that you should harmed in some way. But you are what people used to refer to as “crazy.” (This apparently ended some time in the last 10 years. I think. I don't recall there being a memo or anything.) The fact that you do not believe that you are “crazy” does not make you any less “crazy.” And I don’t care how many health professionals disagree with my point of view. In fact, I find most of their enabling to border on criminal negligence.
Oh, and another thing...
Why doesn’t Karla L. Miller just come out and say what she really thinks:
“Dear reader,
I’m better than you because I’m cool with sharing a stall with a sexually confused man.
You’ll never be as awesome a person I am.”
So I can us the ladie’s room when the men’s room is busy and if someone has a problem with that I can sue them? Good to know.
I was in a training session the other day where the presenter was talking about automatic behavior (in a larger context). He asked everyone to write their name, and then noted that no one had to ask themselves, “Now which hand shall I use to write my name?” For almost everyone, the choice of writing hand is a well engrained habit, and requires no thought. Someone brought up people who were truly ambidextrous, and how left-handers often used to be forced to write right-handed in order to conform.
In this context, you know where I’m going here. Although I didn’t bring it up in the session, I was thinking that society (or at least California) is now in the situation where we have to give the same consideration to sexually confused six-year-olds as we do to six-year-old left-handers — i.e, it’s inhumane to try to convince a six-year-old boy that he’s not a girl.
“Bob” at the office had decided to become “Barbara,” and began using the women’s bathroom...
How in the world is “Bob” not considered to be mentally ill? Mentally ill people don’t accurately perceive the world around them. “Bob” doesn’t accurately perceive even himself. Why doesn’t the medical community actually try to help these people, instead of simply indulging their delusions?
Congratulations are in order for using ‘she/her’??? It would be much easier to just use the correct pronouns - ‘it/its’.
Astute.
I've had one of my own kids decide that he was a puppy. It's cute for a few hours, and I have no problem with a game, but it's easy to end when the time comes. Any sensible parent would eventually break out the ice cream for the other kids, and remind Fido that "dogs don't eat ice cream". The left would probably think I was trampling his personal expression and would instead encourage him to live as a dog forever. The sad part is what they do to kids who could have been saved when they embrace these passing whims and allow small children to make permanent adult decisions. Child abuse disgusts me, and most liberalism qualifies.
It is not sane to force society to treat a boy like a girl their whole life because he wanted to be a girl once when he was 6.
How in the world is “Bob” not considered to be mentally ill? Mentally ill people don’t accurately perceive the world around them. “Bob” doesn’t accurately perceive even himself. Why doesn’t the medical community actually try to help these people, instead of simply indulging their delusions?
Once [a transgender worker] has begun living and working full-time in the gender that reflects his or her gender identity
I assume “full time” means more than 30 hours a week. You can pretend to be a woman for 30 hours a week AND get insurance.
where did that image come from?
I don’t know what it is, I just search-imaged “escape pods.”
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