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Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, and Google Lobby Against Texas 'Bathroom' Bill (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Executives from some of the globe's leading technology firms are demanding that Texas not adopt "discriminatory" bathroom legislation. On the table in Texas is a law similar to one enacted -- and later partially repealed -- in North Carolina. The tech companies have aligned themselves with critics of the bill who believe the legislation is unfair to the transgender community. "As large employers in the state, we are gravely concerned that any such legislation would deeply tarnish Texas' reputation as open and friendly to businesses and families," the companies wrote Texas Gov. Greg Abbott. "Our ability to attract, recruit and retain top talent, encourage new business relocations, expansions and investment, and maintain our economic competitiveness would all be negatively affected." Pending Texas Senate legislation would prohibit transgender people in Texas from using restrooms matching their gender identities. The House on Sunday passed its own bill that would apply the bathroom limitations solely at schools. The tech companies, however, aren't threatening to pull out of Texas, like some did over the same issue in North Carolina. The letter sent to Gov. Abbott was signed by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, Apple CEO Tim Cook, Amazon chief Jeff Wilke, IBM head Ginni Rometty, Microsoft President Brad Smith, and Google's Sundar Pichai. There were 14 companies -- including Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Cisco, Silicon Labs, Celanese Corp., GSD&M, Salesforce, and Gearbox Software -- signing on to the letter. "Discrimination is wrong and it has no place in Texas or anywhere in our country," the companies wrote.
Yes, yes, let's have for-profit corporations serve special interests to undermine the actual public's will.
Seriously. Why is this an issue? The real issues involve transgender people being perceived as duplicitous and being treated as if they're perverted. The whole thing of asking if you'd like your child using the restroom with a transgender person who hasn't had the surgery yet is ridiculous. It portrays transgender people as perverts without regard that someone of the same gender of the child is just as likely to harm the child. It doesn't affect me if a transgender person is in a public restroom with me, rents from me, or is employed by me. Let them be, don't discriminate against them, and focus on the real issues. This might be surprising coming from a conservative like me, but let's worry about the economy and foreign policy, and let transgender people be.
- snruter rotsac
If you can pass for the opposite sex you will never get called out on going into the wrong bathroom anyways.
Be done with it and just make one occupant unisex restroom. Everyone wins. Unless it's all about having a whole bunch of folks in the restroom.
so they have no problem with gays being stoned to death apparently.
I used to go to a bar where a guy who had both a dick and tits was a customer every so often.
To me the presence of this person was visually revolting. I was not in the least afraid of this person,
however I go to a bar to enjoy myself and the presence of this person impinged on my ability
to enjoy myself. So I quit going to the bar. This was no loss for me, because there are other bars
where such freaks do not show up. Many people don't want to hang out with such weird shit, and if
you doubt this then you need to get some more real-world experience because you are living in a bubble.
Bottom Line Number 1: some ( many ) of us just don't want to be around seriously weird people. And don't even try to tell me a
person who has a dick and tits that were added later is not weird. No power on earth is going to make me decide I am ok with being
proximate to such shit.
Bottom Line Number 2 : The vast majority of people are not transsexuals or similar. Transsexuals etc. are a tiny fraction of
the population. There's no way in the real world that weird people who are a tiny minority of the population are going to have the
ability to compel the majority of the population to accept their weirdness. No law or regulation is going to force people to like stuff they
do not like. And only an idiot or a fool or a liar with a hidden agenda would attempt to claim otherwise.
Bottom Line Number 3 : Do what you like in the privacy of your own home. But when you go into public there are rules and laws
in place which we all have to follow. If you disregard those rules you're going to have a rough life.
Lastly - I am sick and tired of minority groups acting like they are entitled to special treatment. And I guarantee I am FAR from alone
in this sentiment. You want to be weird and flout convention ? Fine. Don't expect any sympathy from me if you find yourself in a bad situation,l
because quite frankly, you put yourself there. If you look weird, or act weird, you're asking for a difficult life. Don't be surprised when it happens.
The Texas legislature says the bathroom bill is about privacy . Aren't Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, and Google in favor of privacy????
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Forced group disrobement is obsolete because nobody can agree on what the groups should be. I have visited and participated in nude beaches, but group showers for men in a local community center frankly feel weird. Why should anyone watch me washing my junk? And for anyone with kids the preferable solution is to give them privacy from others of any gender.
Indeed. Your child could grow up to be a Republican baker and be triggered by a non-heterosexual couple buying a cake.
It's all about protecting such snowflakes.
Every once in a while females get raped and otherwise assaulted there. No, not by actual transgender lunatics — by "regular" perverts.
For security and/or police to be able to prevent such assaults, a law explicitly banning men in women's bathrooms may be necessary — without it, such people can not be removed from there preemptively.
Not "their" — the law is about public (and otherwise publicly accessible) bathrooms. You can still pee however you want in yours, even if — thanks to certain Democrats — you aren't free to properly flush afterwards.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
I'll tell you what this is:
This is about an issue that quietly gets handled appropriately by the few people it actually involves, without much fuss or muss, in the individual environments of schools, office buildings, businesses, etc. And nobody cares that much, until one side decides to make it a big political battle, trying to relate it to some big symbolic issue that it in reality has very little to do with. Or when some dumb suburban parent with more volume than common sense thinks their kids or "values" are at risk, no matter how distant or nebulous the chances.
And ultimately, because most of the time when someone paints something into a big symbolic picture, they're going to get smacked down because it turns out that the reality doesn't match the symbolism. Plus when it comes down to real $, businesses won't stand for stupidity that costs them money.
Honestly, I am constantly amazed how much of public discourse is consumed by symbolic issues that may evoke some weird opinion, but in reality concern an issue that's pretty much #47 on the list of important things for us to get done. How many transgender people have you even encountered on a daily basis? 0.1%? Is this even that order of magnitude a problem to deserve this level of attention and distration of a government?
Stop believing and worrying so much about symbols and symbolic issues, and deal with the 25 more important things that actually are killing our productivity and growth every day, you governing morons. Do your job - and govern!
The thing about the North Carolina bill was that the bathroom thing was just distraction - a clever way to get people talking about something trivial, while the real substance of the bill was about allowing for broader discriminatory practices. I'm not seeing that here. I've skimmed a few articles and as near as I can tell this one really does seem to be about bathrooms. Is that true?
If there's a better article which discusses exactly what this bill covers, could someone direct me to it?
As a Texan, I've been reading about this bill for almost a year now. Here's some context around it:
1) Texas still has some of the most molester-friendly groping laws in the nation (anything short of penetration is a class C misdemeanor, you won't even go to jail for it). This bill does nothing to address it.
2)The driving force behind the bill is revenge on the federal government for dictating that transgender students can use the restroom of their identified gender (a policy that is strongly supported by local school districts). That's why the bill only applies to government buildings (and a subset of those, at that!).
3)The bill's author, Lt. Governor Dan Patrick (not the sportscaster) got his start as a bargain-bin Rush Limbaugh. He realizes that the "social conservatives" lost the fight against gays, and he's using this to target a smaller, even more vulnerable minority.
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
In that case, why are there separate bathrooms for men & women? Just have 1 giant bathroom in every facility, w/ a few urinals and a few commodes, let people go in as they wish. Women can use the commodes, men can use either, and I wonder whether women will get to do their makeup in front of the men
Nobody wants government to monitor bathrooms. Just that Leftists want government to force every public organization to allow transgenders to use bathrooms of their choice. It's one thing if individual organizations choose to do that. But forcing organizations who don't recognize this to do that is what's at issue, but the SJWs have done a fine job equating that to Rosa Parks and other historical watersheds.
I see the people for and against open bathrooms just talking past each other, ignoring very real issues.
There is a answer so simple it stuns correctnesss.... the answer is this. You have a penis optional room, and a vagina mandatory room.
Now women who are concerned can feel safe, because they maintain the cherished separation of old.
Meanwhile, men do not care WHO is in the bathroom, as long as they are quick. Vagina room too full? Come on in. Transgender in flux? No-one cares anymore if you are dressed as a woman in the men's room because hey, penis optional.
This also finally legitimizes the bathroom for sex which people were doing anyway.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The upside is that they recognize that they lose much more by moving out of a very business-friendly state.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
I'm a transgender woman and I've never had trouble using the ladies' room anywhere in the world, because I'm a woman. I look like a woman, act like a woman, smell like a woman, walk like a woman and talk like one. Pass whatever laws you want, I will use the ladies' room and none of you will ever know.
But, I'm lucky. Some people are obviously transgender and I fear for those who live in the states of the old Confederacy, because this bigotry puts their lives at terrible risk.
Whenever I get a job opportunity from a former Confederate state, it goes right into the trash. I hope you all do the same and then maybe they will learn.
I suppose if Texas calls for Pro-AR15 laws in CA, Google, Apple et all would be just as happy to support said bills?
Actually, I speak as someone from North Carolina who saw the Charlotte school district say exactly what I stated, they wanted to let boys use the girls shower rooms and restrooms if they "identified" with the girls. They also have a lot of other crazy ideas and are busy teaching kids there that gender is a "choice", in spite of parents' objections. That is what started HB2 in N.C. in the first place. Perhaps you are the one who need to stop and think and find out what is really going on.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Oops...typo. Obviously 0.01% is 1 person in 10000
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
Instead of man and woman. Change to the sing of a Penis and a Vagina. No penis allowed in the vagina restroom.
would deeply tarnish Texas' reputation as open and friendly
Those are definitely not the two things that come to mind when I see 'Texas'.
I guess this means that the government has solved all the other problems it has if it has time to deal with the "problem" of transgender bathrooms.
That is my take away. Not only is this not really a "problem", but even if you could argue through some arcane way that it was, it certainly isn't a large problem. In fact it is in the grand scheme of things an infinitesimally small problem that only impacts very few people in society, and those impacts are pretty low.
Priorities seem to be a bit out of wack. I'm not trying to demean the importance of social issues, but many times they seem to get the ire and the coverage, and the time, when there seem to be so many much larger, more important, much more impact to not only more people, but in a much more significant way. But as I said, it is good they are finally dealing with the transgender bathroom issue, as surely it means they have solved all the other larger issued plaguing society.
This is a mainly a matter of political fodder or flann.
Really, if you are post op then you are female (or a male going the other way) and thus ladies room and pre-op you are really a male and so mens room.
If a pre-op enters the Ladies room and someone notices because he is exposing himself then there is a problem.
If there is a real concern it is that some non trans-gender chomo is going to use this to obscure his real intent but the chomo could jsut as easily have done this before.
Sorry for the confusion between male/female. Instead of putting a picture of a man or woman on the door, put an illustration of a penis or vagina. Done deal.
This isn't rocket science people.
Most of these legislators used to beat up geeks in High School. Tech firms lobbying against something is tantamount to support here. Republican attitude will be, "You don't like this, well I'm going to make you eat lots of it!"
This is a typical tactic used by you people.
"Where's the issue? It's NOT Happening!"
Well it's not happening now because there are laws, regulations, conventions, customs, that keep men from using women's facilities. (This is also a deception by you people...it's about ALL women's facilities, not just bathrooms).
If a guy goes into a woman's facility now, they will be chased out, the police might be called, and the guy possibly arrested for disorderly conduct or something.
Wit the laws that the Left is trying to pass, this could not happen. Further, they write the laws so poorly that ANY guy could simply declare he identifies as a woman and walk right in. There is no "Trans Card" or anything else to prevent that. Get that? Any Guy, Any Time, merely needs to declare, and it's an all access pass.
So the bottom line is you would be opening up a very target rich environment for perverts who could enter a women's facility, unquestioned, and if anyone is uncomfortable or even suspicious, they could not do anything absent some evidence like a camera, or inappropriate behavior.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Trans people, regardless of having actually had the surgery, or the supportive nature of their environment, have a incredible high rate of attempted suicide.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
" By the argument you're making, we should return to separate banks, separate train cars, separate waiting areas, etc.."
The argument you're making is that we should only ever have unisex bathrooms everywhere. That we should only have one locker room for the high-school football players and the cheerleaders.
Dressing rooms, they have been experiencing peeping tom/"upskirt" video incidents because the men in question can walk into the ladies dressing area without fear of being stopped or anything--so long as they can avoid actually getting caught in the act.
It is certainly possible such incidents happened before the policy change, but at least then sales people who noticed a man going into the ladies dressing room are would have been allowed to say something about it and have the man removed.
I found it ironic and silly that the companies signing a letter saying 'discrimination is wrong' are all companies that have been actively discriminating against old people and women and have made no headway in the ten years they've been called out for it.
Plus, a lot of public places don't have separate bathrooms for men & women. And guess what? There's been no spike in sex crimes in those bathrooms.
That's because most unisex restrooms are single-occupant, in turn because they're in establishments not busy enough to warrant more than two occupants' worth of restrooms.
Let's not be unscientific and bigoted, you're challenged enough as is.
Because it may affect the handful of delusional, who consider themselves one sex despite having the sex-organs of the other. Why should these people's preference be more important, than that of the rest of us?
Being transgender is not a delusion. It is actually a fairly normal part of human biology and gender expression. The article goes into a great deal of detail (with citations) about why the DSM classification is unhelpful, and about the origin and development of gender identity from a neurological perspective. Generally, gender identity is a product of hormonal influences on the brain, but the sex organs necessarily form before that happens, and the brain doesn't always set itself to the right gender when the hormones kick in.
This should be considered a normal part of human development. In denying fundamental biology, you create a systemic violence against the differently gendered. You deny transgender persons a right to their own identity, and teach them to be ashamed of themselves for being who they are. This results in mass suicide. But you still feel the need to defend yourself against these people.
What is it about trying to argue with biology and failing that makes the conservatives so eager to try it again? With the same arguments, even? If being transgender is a preference, maybe mi's thing is that they just haven't stumbled upon a skirt they really like. They could be one Prada bag away from a fabulous new lifestyle :)
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
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The reason we have gender separated bathrooms is far more complicated than prevention of sexual assault.
Bathrooms are not separated based on gender, they are separated based on sex!
I'm skeptical that these companies lobbying the government of Texas would cause them to change their mind. But if the NCAA does in Texas what they did in North Carolina, and announces that due to the actions of these government officials in supporting this bill that the seven (American) football bowl games currently scheduled to be held in various Texas stadiums in December 2017 would be moved to other venues, THAT would draw the attention of the citizens of Texas. Football is kind of a big thing in Texas.
So there are around 100K schools in US.. Schools spend about $12K/student/year, retrofit of each locker room should be doable for a simular one time fee. I would rate this as quite doable if public sensibilities have changed and this brings everyone comfort and greater focus on studies rather than students getting into fights after criticizing each others anatomic development.
This is about schools and the real fear that a girl with a penis or a boy with a vagina will want to shower with girls without penises and boys without vaginas.
And that is a problem in this age of single stall showers? Who is having the fear here and why? Seems like the Mrs Lovejoys seem to think of transpeople...even kids, as predators.
There's no need to have them gender specific.
This is the part that gender neutral bathroom advocates are totally clueless on. There is a HUGE need for bathrooms that only allow females, because many females DO NOT FEEL SAFE around men. Also MOST parents do not feel like having little girls using the same bathroom as grown men.
None of that is wrong or bad. All of it is logical because of physical differences between men and women. So let women have a specific room as they always have, which satisfies everyone since the Mens bathroom becomes gender neutral.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I mena, hell, we're talking about Texas here. If it was some third-world shithole ful of gun-nuts and shit running down the street then it'd have some sort of reputation which could be tarnished. But Texas, FFS? What are you going to do to dirty up it's reputation? House Dubya bush there, or something?
And in practical terms, the only consequence of this is that all new build (and any significant reconstruction) will only have unisex toilets installed. No urinals, no logos of people wearing pants or triangular skirts on the doors, just a logo of a shit can. Hand basins in the completely public areas, or hand basin in the individual stall. And no gabbling over the lipstick or whatever it is women-identifiers do in there. Because no building management wants to have to deal with the toxic shit that will come from both direction if the continue to have "gender-identified" toilets.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
Yet, these companies have no problem hiring cheap H1B visa holders over real Americans!
Self-importance and self-indulgence is the root of ALL evil.
Liar. You seem to think nobody here has been to Europe.
Coed bathrooms are only in places with single bathrooms that lock when you use them.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'