Trans People Poop Too

There's a lot of talk lately, especially on social media, about the law in North Carolina that mandates that people must use the bathroom of the gender on their birth certificate.  If you were born a man, you must go into the men's room.  If you were born a woman, you must go into the women's room.  For most of the population, this presents no problem at all.  But for transsexuals, it's not that simple.  You see, the title of the classic children's book "Everybody Poops" is also a fact.  Everybody pees as well.  Thus, regardless of what their genitalia looks like, transsexual people must also poop and pee.  But, because we have nothing better to do in America than literally have debates about shit, where transsexual people defecate and urinate is now a controversy.

Those who are in favor of the law are especially fond of pointing out that they do not want their daughters to see someone with a penis in the women's room, which seems like a perfectly reasonable concern to me.  They also point out that, without this law, predators can, under the guise of identifying with a different gender than they appear to be, and without any way to prove whether or not that is actually the case, take advantage of the situation and become legally-protected peeping toms.  This, also, is a reasonable concern.  However, it is NOT reasonable to say that transsexual people using the restroom of the opposite gender on their birth certificate ARE predators.  Very few people are making that argument though, although those who are could indeed be labelled as bigots.  But those who are not using that argument should not be put into the same category as those who are.

Those who are not in favor of the law are especially fond of pointing out that they do not want their daughters to see someone who looks like a man (apart from having a vagina) in the women's room, which seems like a perfectly reasonable concern.  They also point out that, with this law, transsexuals would not be able to use the bathroom they are most comfortable using, which is another reasonable concern.  Additionally, the law does not stop predators, as they can certainly prey on folks in locations other than restrooms, and predators who are attracted to the same sex rather than the opposite sex exist as well.

So, what both sides seem to agree on is that they do not want someone who is or appears to be a man using the women's room in front of their daughters.  Apparently, this is what makes the most people uncomfortable.  Of course, most restrooms have partitions, and no one ever sees genitalia.  In reality, it's locker rooms, where people shower and change in the open, where any of this would actually be an issue.  However, we can't modify the law to say that people can use the room of the gender that they most appear to be either, because this would offend transitioning folks, among others.  So what's the solution here?  Is there any way to please everyone?  Probably not, but I will offer my thoughts.

Home bathrooms are gender neutral, as was the bathroom in the hall of my college dorm.  That bathroom was used almost exclusively by horny college students, and I never heard of anything predatory occurring in there.  I never saw anyone's genitalia in there either.  So, personally, I don't have a problem with gender neutral bathrooms.  I wouldn't even have a problem if they were all gender neutral.  I really don't care whether I'm sharing a bathroom with a man, a woman, a transsexual, or all of the above.  But that's me.  If you're not like me, maybe you need to grow a pair (pun intended), or maybe you have a different way of thinking based on your own life experiences.  So I suggest that, in many places, we ought to have a men's room, a women's room, and a gender neutral room that anyone can use.  Men can use it, women can use it, those who were born a different gender than they now identify with can use it, and those who don't identify as either male or female can use it.

As far as people who use the men's room or the women's room, I really don't think anyone is inspecting genitalia.  At least I hope not.  So if a transsexual person uses a men's room or a women's room, let common sense and decency prevail.  If someone actually thinks a person is in there for a predatory reason or if they are deeply emotionally scarred by sharing a restroom with this person for some reason when there exists a gender neutral restroom option, then hopefully the authorities have wisdom when the case is reported.  I have a feeling this will be a pretty rare occurrence though.  Really, there are so many more important things to worry about in this world right now than where someone goes to the bathroom (human trafficking is one example, and also pretty much everything else).  Who cares, as long as it all makes it into the toilet, right?

Primary Concern

It took me until this year to figure out that the Presidential primaries in the United States are an absolute joke.  I knew very little about superdelegates, contested conventions, and a whole host of other obscure rules before 2016.  Now, this stuff is in the news every single day, because the Democrats and Republicans may both be heading to contested conventions for the nominations.

For the Democrats, you have Hillary Clinton leading Bernie Sanders by a slim margin among voters, and thus in regular delegates.  But, in part because Hillary Clinton is a corrupt career politician in everyone's pocket, she is destroying Bernie in the superdelegates.  Of course, superdelegates do not officially support a candidate until the convention, so if neither gets enough regular delegates outright, there will be a contested convention.  And if Bernie continues to win states and ends up winning the popular vote, it is very likely that many of the superdelegates will support him at the convention.  But they don't have to.  Actually, the whole reason superdelegates exist is so the party's elite can better control who the nominee is, just in case it's relatively close and the voters choose someone they don't like.  Some Democracy.

At least the Republicans don't have superdelegates, but don't worry, in a close enough election where no candidate gets the magic number of delegates, the party elite can still control who the nominee is at the convention.  And while Donald Trump may still win outright, he may not, and then we can end up with a whole lot of fun at the convention in Cleveland.  Ted Cruz and John Kasich will both try to wrestle the nomination away from Trump should a contested convention take place.  The funny thing about that is that it is almost impossible for Cruz to win the 1,237 delegates needed to secure the nomination ahead of the convention, and it IS impossible for Kasich, yet he's still hanging around anyway.  He knows the rules.  At a contested convention, Democracy be damned.

The funny thing here is, I am rooting against the will of the people in the Republican primary right now.  Let me take this moment to officially endorse John Kasich, the one person out of the five remaining candidates for President who actually has a shot at uniting this politically-divided nation.  I am not a fan of Trump or Cruz for a whole host of reasons, though I would vote for either over Hillary, but a great thing about Kasich is that he would almost certainly garner enough support from Independents, Republicans, and even some Democrats that he would handily win the presidency should he be nominated.  Trump and Cruz are almost certain to lose in a general election, barring the unlikely event of a Hillary Clinton indictment (I imagine enough of the right people are paid off to stop that from happening).  This is reason enough for Republicans to root for a Kasich nomination, but the man also speaks with common sense and conviction, and he has proven that he can govern and bring people together rather than tear them apart.

All of this being said, the primaries are an enormous scam.  If we truly want the people to decide the nominee, the rules should be changed to allow that.  Otherwise, why the fuck are we even voting in primaries?  Oh, WAIT, not all of us are.  In my particular state, Connecticut (yes, the one with possibly the worst Governor in the nation), I CAN'T vote in the primaries.  Why?  Well, like some other states, Connecticut voters who are registered as Independents can't vote in the primaries.  And I have, thus far, refused to change my affiliation to either the Democratic or the Republican party.  By exercising that freedom, I have disenfranchised myself during the primaries.  So, with all the rules varying by state and the strange delegate rules, it seems there exists the option to just do away with the broken primary voting altogether and let the party elite pick their nominees, and then the people can vote in the general election.  This, I believe, could also be the downfall of the two-party system, and I am perfectly fine with that.  Democracy in the primary process seems to make more sense though, but the rules have to be cleaned up and standardized.  We should do away with the electoral college too, but that's another topic...

I'm not even sure any of these things are even the most absurd thing about the primaries.  Did you know that Jeb Bush spent like $60 million on his campaign?  It was clearly doomed from the beginning.  I knew that, and just about everyone else knew that.  There is no way there was going to be another Bush in the White House at this point in history.  He never had a shot at the nomination, no matter how much money was poured into his campaign from wealthy donors and SuperPACs.  Add up all of the totals of all the losing campaigns when we finally have our nominees, and I am sure the number will be staggering.  Hundreds of millions.  Probably well over a billion dollars!  For what?  How many things could this money have been better spent on?  Feeding, sheltering, and clothing the poor?  Helping the sick?  I mean, just about anything else would have been a better use of that money, except for counterproductive things like donating to the ACLU.

I'll be over here hoping against all odds that John Kasich gets the Republican nomination.  And that Hillary goes to prison.  That has a nice ring to it, like a great title for a children's book.  Hillary Goes to Prison.  Yeah, I like that a lot.  But not nearly as much as I like the thought of President Kasich being sworn in.  It would be wonderful to see that page in a history book one day.