Review

ELM-330

Rough Draft

December 20, 2018

The controversy of transgender bathrooms all started in 2012-2013 when a growing movement started to have gender neutral bathrooms at university campuses. One of the earliest gender inclusive bathrooms in public areas started as early as 2009 in Vermont. In 2014 a law was passed saying single use bathroom signs need to be gender neutral. Late 2014 - early 2015 many states passed a bill called “bathroom surveillance” bill that made transgender people to use their birth gender associated bathroom. Well in March Some arguments are that we as a society are not addressing the persons choice in sex identification, some say that by offering single stall transgender stalls that it isn’t enough. “As of June 2018, according to the American Civil Liberties Union, 19 jurisdictions (18 states plus Washington, D.C.) had adopted laws prohibiting discrimination against transgender individuals in employment, housing and public accommodations” (Ballet Pedia, 2018). Some arguments presented for transgender bathrooms for their rights, and discrimination if not allowed to pick their associating restroom. Some arguments against this issue are people worry about the risk of predators, and letting children identify as transgender is harmful. The risk of predators in a transgender bathroom is they will take advantage of the law protecting transgenders rights. Protection covering gender identity has been around for years and there is no evidence that they lead to attacks in public restrooms. “Transgender-inclusive policies do allow for men’s and women’s rooms, and do not require gender-neutral bathrooms. Instead, transgender-inclusive policies allow all people—including transgender people—to use the bathroom that best matches their gender identity” (NCTE, 2016).

Some solutions to the controversy of transgender bathrooms include things as adding a gender-neutral bathroom, changing signs to gender neutral restrooms and even changing bathrooms to all gender restrooms by making stalls individual with locking mechanisms. A solution to the controversy of having transgender bathrooms has been the use of single stall bathrooms with gender neutral signs but some people do not see that as a solution, they feel that it is still not the solution they want. The solution a lot of people would like to have is the use of whichever restroom they identify with without predigest or judging of their personal gender identification. The issue arises with sexual discrimination all for the use of a bathroom where one feels more comfortable well using.

An associated injustice that is arising from this issue is that states such as North Carolina passed laws stopping transgenders from using a restroom different than the gender on their birth certificate. Students and teachers are affected by the cultural identifiers such as gender, same sex relationships and sexual orientation because of the transgender bathroom issues. In today’s schools especially, a K-12 school we do not offer a transgender bathroom for students. Teachers restrooms are not gender specific but single stalls. The huge question arises that are our schools equipped to handle transgender bathroom request. Articles have come out with younger students beginning to identify with the opposite sex. Sex discriminations is a huge factor in transgender bathroom debates, some people feel that they are taking away the rights of transgenders.

My placement on transgender restrooms is that I personally feel whatever body parts you have or whatever you may look like or associate with is the restroom you can use. If a male has made almost all physical changes to be a woman who am I to even know if they are male or female. A person uses a stall, its not like I can see how they’re urinating in the private stall. I feel that we all need to just make sure ourselves and our families are taken care of and mind our own. Some factors throughout my life that resulted in my place on this continuum is the time and era I grew up in. I am a firm believer that we must change with the times, life, technology and everyday factors change and we should adjust to them. I don’t feel we need to accept them all just respect others that are changing with the times. I also have met people throughout my life that are transgender, and I personally have learned to respect their life choices. I feel these factors are the reason I stand where I do on this continuum. To be an effective teacher I plan to follow school policies and If I have a student who associates with another gender then I will respect that. The effect of the controversial issue of transgender bathrooms may have on me as a future teacher and my future students is that I plan to teach elementary and the average age with identifying as transgender I believe to be older than elementary. If I had a student identifying as a transgender, I would hope that the parents would relay that to me as the teacher so that I can make sure I was respecting my student’s needs. I wouldn’t bring it up to the students I would just go about our days as normal well respecting all my students identifying roles. Some potential solutions for the issues I identified that I could implement in my future classroom would be making sure I know what my students identify with and educating that student on the bathroom they can choose to use. Also, I would make sure my students need were met in the classroom as per what they identified with.

References

Ballotpedia. (2018). Transgender bathroom access laws in the United States. Retrieved from