A Question Of Coed Restrooms
Wednesday - April 12, 2006
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Del.icio.usI’m comfortable sharing a public toilet with men, women or persons of undefined gender.
Sure, I’d rather have privacy. But public isn’t private.
When my daughter entered Wesleyan University I was shocked by its co-ed bathrooms, but it didn’t bother her so why bother me, heh?
Sex-specific bathrooms at public events and at local movie plexes create long lines for women who cannot simply walk up, unzip their flies and get it done. No wiping for men and often - to be honest - no hand-washing.
House Bill 1233 Senate Draft 1 to prohibit any “gender identity” in public places isn’t going anywhere. But you have to wonder what devils torment the leadership of the Hawaii Christian Coalition to make those folks call this “a very dangerous bill.”
In its own words: “This would include such places as showers at public parks and campsites (Ala Moana, Waikiki, Malaekahana, etc.); shower facilities at public swimming pools; spas and health clubs in hotels, resorts, and in the community. In addition, restrooms in all public accommodations would no longer be male or female but would be open to anyone regardless of the sex they were born with because under the gender identity or expression law you can choose to be whatever you want, whenever you want.”
Oh, mi’god! Be anything you want!
You know what the HCC is getting at. It cannot legally support discrimination against homosexuals, but this is only about transvestites, transgendered and transsexual people.
I don’t care who shares a public bathroom or a shower with me, but I guess back in college I’d have been mortified to make any rude sounds in Mr. Thomas Crapper’s plumbing device while a co-ed was brushing her teeth nearby.
We get over that - just as my daughter and the guys and gals in her dorm adjusted their bathroom cohabitation.
Obviously, women would use the public toilet stalls and most men the urinals.
Don’t go screaming in the streets that the end of our local civilization is near. We’re very conservative in Hawaii on other than race, labor and women’s rights. We won’t have a no-sex-bathroom law.
I’d like to see public toilet accommodation come by good sense rather than law. Some years down the road we’ll all laugh about this - those old times when toilets were marked Kane and Wahine.
Incidentally, this announcement from 100th Infantry Battalion Veterans Club president Robert Arakaki last week:
“The shower room at the Clubhouse, which was formerly for men only, will be coed hereafter. The entrance will be through the card room.”
A recent Advertiser editorial against the “three strikes” bill in the Legislature said such a law might “send people to prison for what otherwise would be, in context, a relatively minor crime.”
Pray tell me how anyone committing a third felony could be considered in any context a minor criminal.
Methinks the newspaper’s far removed from most of its readers on this one.
The three-times-and-you’re-gone-for-life is good law if we have the prison space and if we allow prosecutors to petition for leniency when one of those major criminals snitches on some other important police case.
Are you comfortable with TV stations and newspapers running those 911 emergency calls? Listening to distressed people?
I’m not. I support the right of news agencies to hear the tapes to make sure everything was properly handled.
I don’t need to listen to people screaming as they are dying.
What say you?
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