IT"S A TROLL!
Posted on 07/30/2008 5:16:30 PM PDT by LAforme2008
Karen Deamons wants to use the women's locker room, like a normal woman.
Deamons is transsexual - she presents herself and lives as a woman. But because she has not yet had sex-change surgery, Cleveland officials insist that she change clothes in the men's locker room of the indoor pool at Cudell Recreation Center, after they received complaints from a few women who said Deamons made them uncomfortable.
For more than a year, Deamons, 53, followed the mandate. But now, after an embarrassing question from a boy in the men's locker room, she's fighting the city.
She filed a gender discrimination complaint with the Ohio Civil Rights Commission and is urging the state legislature to pass an introduced bill that would bar cities from discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.
Twenty states have passed similar bills.
"I can't do it anymore," Deamons said. "Every time I go through there, it's tearing my insides out."
Cleveland Law Director Robert Triozzi said the city's decision does not constitute discrimination.
"We are being as accommodating as we possibly can, given the request that's being made, given her own personal situation, given where she's at in life," Triozzi said. "We're trying to be sensitive."
Women interviewed recently at Cudell said they understand the dilemma. But most said they would be uncomfortable with a transsexual woman changing, at least openly, in the women's locker room.
"I just don't want them seeing, you know," said Holly Workman, who had brought six children to the center earlier this month.
Deamons, like other transsexual people, has the mind, personality and behavioral characteristics of the opposite sex, Deamons' endocrinologist, Thomas Murphy, wrote in a letter that Deamons carries. Murphy believes transsexual men and women should live as the gender with which they identify.
And national advocacy groups say that means people should use the locker room that matches the outward expression of their gender.
"It's just kind of the common-sense approach," said Kristina Wertz, legal director for the California-based Transgender Law Center. "Someone should use the restroom that corresponds with their identity and their appearance."
Deamons said that initially, she changed in the private toilet stalls of the women's locker room for about five months without conflict. After the complaints were lodged against her, she met with city officials, who asked if she had had sex reassignment surgery. Since the answer was no, she agreed to use the men's locker room, which, according to the city, recreation center workers are supposed to empty for her use.
A gender-neutral locker room - the goal of college student groups from California to Massachusetts - is not being considered. And the city will not consider clearing the women's room for Deamons.
"I'm not sure that makes any practical difference," Triozzi said. "The idea here is to provide the element of privacy necessary in these circumstances."
But Deamons said that the bathroom stalls have no doors in the men's locker room and that rec center employees never clear the men's locker room. She has not pushed for that, though.
Last month, while she was dressing, a little boy asked why there was a woman in the men's room. Embarrassed, Deamons tried to change in an enclosed area in a separate women's restroom - a move for which pool workers banned her from the pool for a week.
Then, earlier this month, Cudell employees insisted she sign into the pool on the men's registration sheet.
Deamons said she fears gangs will beat her up after seeing her emerging from the men's room or signing the men's registration sheet.
"I'm opening myself to get beat up," said Deamons, who refuses to sign the men's sheet and so is not allowed to swim. "They're infringing on my rights."
Although she remembers feeling female as early as 10 or 11, Deamons lived for years as a man. As a man, she married twice and has three children. In 2000, she began hormone treatments to transition to a woman.
Deamons sees no real options.
She can't switch to another city pool, since the mandate applies to all of them.
She says she must swim. She suffered three strokes in 2003 and 2004, and doctors have prescribed water exercises to help keep mobility in her left arm and leg.
She uses a wheelchair and must take public transportation, so Cudell is the most convenient city pool from her Cleveland home.
And since she is on a limited budget of disability payments - her strokes forced her to give up her livelihood as an electrician - she can't afford to join a private club.
So she believes she must challenge the city and demand to change her clothes in the private stalls of the women's locker room or in an enclosed room in another women's restroom.
"I want the city to let me go through the ladies' room as a normal woman," she said. "That's who I am and what I am."
new sign needed for women’s locker rooms:
WOMEN’S LOCKER ROOM
(no penises allowed)
The simple pronoun “it” would take care of the situation.
Uh, dude, are you like, a girl or somethiing?
Perhaps it’s a combination of genetics and environment that predisposes someone to have transsexual/homosexual thoughts. Much like the genes the predispose someone to alcoholism, odds are increased but the individual maintains the freedom to choose. Isn’t it medical malpractice to encourage a disorder rather than work to cure it?
Well they’ll be tearing your outside parts off soon enough.
Freak job. A trannvestite is just a eunuch and the only thing eunuchs are good for is guarding your wife from male suitors.
I would love to see one of the women kick him in the balls.
Because he hasn't had sex change surgey--why the f**k does this article refer to him as "she"???
No.
Penis = Men's Room
Vagina = Women's Room
Why is this so hard to understand. Do you think they bother with this crap in China or Russia? This country is bunch of stupid pansies.
Why should someone be forced to accept transsexualism or any other deviant behavior? Do people doubt the behavior is deviant?
Here’s the definition: “One that differs from a norm, especially a person whose behavior and attitudes differ from accepted social standards.”
Transsexuals are, by definition, deviants. As such, they deserve our sympathy, but they have no right to demand our acceptance or force us to alter our behaviors to cater to their personal problems. Yet, the deviants will not be happy until all dissenting opinions are silenced (as though that will make them normal—it will not).
Hehehe...Wait to you get the surgury!
I suspect a penis is a more outward expression than her(sic) feelings.
What the h3ll is wrong with that freak?
“Do you think they bother with this crap in China or Russia?”
Actually they do:
Tianjin transsexual gets new Chinese ID card as a woman
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-04/16/content_7989997.htm
Or...and this is a crazy idea...he or she could come to the pool in the bathing suit already and wear it under some other clothes on the way home and then skip the locker room altogether.
I have Ethnic Identity Disorder and have changed my name to SleepandEat. I come to work in Black face and demand to use the Colored Only Rest Room. I expect my fellow African-Americans to cheer for me.
lol...Your understanding is widely inaccurate. If the average guy knew what happened to the average transgender on any average evening outing, no man would ever wear pants again.
True for homosexuals...not true for transexuals.
In the BSTc region of the brain, the hypothalamus of the male is different from the female and MTF transexual. The same is true of the stria terminalis.
Men have extra neuron clusters in the hypothalamus that woman - and every MTF trans who's had their brain studied after death - don't have. The same is true of the terminal stria: it's about 3 times larger in men than in women and FTM transexuals.
Under a microscope you can tell the difference between a male and a female BSTc region, but you can't tell the difference between a female and a MTF transexual.
You sure seem to be an expert on this homo crap.
You said you had no agenda.
Why don’t you just admit it that this is your world and apparently your only world.
IT"S A TROLL!
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