Cross dressing and library restrooms

On CALIX, a California library listserv, a librarian asked about which restrooms a cross dressing patron should use in the library.

Actually, this must be an issue in any public facility - does anyone know the answer?

Read on for some serious discussion that quickly degenerates into an embarassing story about Karen Dyer and me.

Subject: [CALIX:3261] RE: cross dressing and library restrooms
Date:    Thu, 9 Dec 2004 08:47:43 -0800
From:    K.G. Schneider"

> Just wondering if anyone had any suggestions about one of our patrons who is a cross dresser. Is there any reason he shouldn't be allowed to use whichever restroom he chooses?
> Loren

Well, there are so many facets to this. First, cross-dressers are not necessarily Transgendered. Second, there are people whose biological gender is different than the gender they identify with. Third, there are people who are intersexual, who are biologically or by preference identified somewhere else along the gender spectrum.

Then again, to get back to Loren's original question... there may be legal issues, but those aside, the advantage of letting him use the women's room is to get out of the "gender challenge" issue. I.e., if it walks like a duck, my gut feeling is let it use the duck's room. Of all the questions I don't ever want to have to ask a patron, "do you have a penis?" is pretty high up there.

On a practical note, in terms of patron safety, I don't think there are too many instances where cross-dressed men have been beaten up by women, or vice versa. On a personal note, I don't mind sharing a restroom with a person in a dress who may have a different chromosome lineup than the one I was born with. I would worry a little about the safety of male-identified women using men's restrooms in some areas.

This might be an interesting topic for an ALA program; it's something that could be referred to ALA's GLBTRT by our chapter councilor, if there were enough interest.

Note (inevitable LII tie-in) we have a new GLBT page on LII: http://lii.org/search/file/glbt

Library restrooms are not on there... yet...

So what does Mary Minow say?

Karen G. Schneider
--------

>Subject: "So what does Mary Minow say?" asks Karen S.
>Date:    Thu, 9 Dec 2004 14:55:49
>From:    KTDyer
>To:      [email protected]
>
>Probably, she would not say that one day she and I were attending a  workshop and left the room together to go get a bottle of water.  We walked  out with  a gentleman we both know and we were following him although he had not  said he was going for water.  She and I were talking and laughing so hard  that we followed this gentleman straight into the men's room.  He stood  there and said, "I'm not proceeding any farther".  We stopped talking and I  exclaimed, "Mary, look where we are!"  We simultaneously gasped and left  the men's room, pronto.  We laughed so hard that we were getting looks from  other workshop  participants and the leader letting us know our laughter was now inappropriate.
>          After this  "confession", I hope Mary still loves me.

Best, Karen  Dyer, speaking on  the lighter side of the bathroom issue
>
---------

Subject: on gender-appropriate bathrooms
Date:    10 Dec 2004 02:38:31 -0000
From:  Mary To: KTDyer, CALIX

Laughing out loud - yup, I probably wouldn't say that. But truly I remember that experience fondly and warn all readers to keep on their toes when walking and laughing with Karen Dyer.

From Mary who will always love KTDyer, wherever we end up!

postscript: Luckily, there were no other people in there at the time

Comments

[Mary]

More:

June 20, 2002

NCLR Applauds Rejection of Teacher's Lawsuit
Federal Appeals Court Rejects Attempt to Keep Transgender Woman from Using the Women's Restroom

SAN FRANCISCO, CA - The National Center for Lesbian Rights applauds a federal appeals court that said a Minneapolis public school did not discriminate against a female teacher by allowing a transsexual woman, also a teacher at the school, use the women's restroom.

After an unsuccessful attempt to pursue her claim through the state administrative agency, Southwest High School teacher Carla Cruzan filed suit in federal court arguing that permitting transgender library employee Debra Davis to use the women's bathroom violated Cruzan's religious freedom and created a hostile workplace based on sex. The district court rejected her claims, and she appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit, in St. Louis.

In opinion issued today, the 8th Circuit also rejected Cruzan's claims. The Court held that subjective personal opinions and sensitivities cannot form the basis of a hostile work environment claim, which must be based on conduct that a reasonable person would find hostile and offensive.

This holding, affirming a school's right to provide equal access to all of its employees, is important in other contexts as well. Recently in San Diego, a father complained to his daughter's school district claiming that his daughter was being discriminated against for having had to share a bathroom with other lesbian students. In a similar incident this year, another public school in northern California told an eighth grade girl that she could no longer attend gym class after she came out as a lesbian.

"This is a great victory for transgender employees, who wish merely to be treated with basic human dignity," said Shannon Minter, NCLR's Legal Director. "The Court made it clear that employers cannot discriminate against transgender people simply because some other employees don't like them."

NCLR filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the case, which argued that subjective personal opinions and sensitivities cannot form the basis of a hostile work environment claim, which must be based on conduct that a reasonable person would find hostile and offensive.

http://www.nclrights.org/releases/teachers062002.htm

[Mary]

Thanks - I see that Michael Dorf has now written a FindLaw Writ on this as well - April 11, 2005 at
http://writ.news.findlaw.com/dorf/20050411.html

[Raizel]

Ann Althouse discusses the issue of gendered restrooms in light of a recent decision by a New York Appellate Court:
http://althouse.blogspot.com/2005/03/single-sex-bathroom-issue-again.html
http://althouse.blogspot.com/2005/03/is-this-sex-discrimination.html
http://althouse.blogspot.com/2005/04/in-search-of-right-bathroom.html

[Steve]

I do not think that a person's genetalia should dictate their gender or gender preference. If Jack dresses in drag, then Jack is a woman, and so being, she has a right to use whatever restroom or locker room she wishes to use. This is a basic human rights issue. Furthermore, no-one having a restroom emergency should ever be excluded from using a restroom on account of their gender. Again, this is a basic human rights issue.

[Norma]

A man wearing a woman's full length fur coat, a pony tail and heavy make-up, like the one standing next to me at the cashier in the dept. store this week, is still a man, and he belongs in the men's restroom when nature calls. Or, for libraries, in the unisex/handicapped restroom (a far better reason to have this) for which one requests a key.

[Peter]

I have been told that at one library the university's diversity officer told officials that there had to be one unisex bathroom (so labelled) precisely to address the issue of people who fall somewhere between the more traditional male and female definitions.