North Carolina Loses 400 Jobs as PayPal Pulls Facility over ‘Bathroom Bill’

originally posted by: ketsuko
a reply to: Annee

Oh you mean like Melissa Harris Perry and her stupid earrings?

I suppose they could be chanting Hail Satan!

And if no one cows to that, perhaps throwing some jars of the poop and pee in question will get their point across? They've thought about it at various protests before and it has a grand tradition all around the world.

Do I need to repeat there are EXTREMISTS in every thing?

Do you really think she/they represents a wide audience?

Does the Westboro Church represent a large percentage of Christians?

If you have to resort to Extremism to make your point - - - it only shows your own desperation.

originally posted by: ketsuko
a reply to: Annee

Oh you mean like Melissa Harris Perry and her stupid earrings?

I suppose they could be chanting Hail Satan!

And if no one cows to that, perhaps throwing some jars of the poop and pee in question will get their point across? They've thought about it at various protests before and it has a grand tradition all around the world.

*blink* *blink*

Dear Liberal Democrats: Stop acting like donkeys. Feminine Hygiene products do not a fashion statement make. Take them off your ears and for heaven's sake (hell's sake if you prefer) don't throw used ones at ANYONE...or make art with menstrual because that's seriously nasty. And, no, yelling Hail Satan will not win the argument. It mostly just makes you look like an overgrown highschool emo kid. You're all special, wonderful snowflakes...now if we give you a gold star, some free-trade chocolate and a promise that, yes, we do notice you...will you please stop with the rage quits? Please? We're burnt out on the outrage. How about showing some other emotion for a while?


Dear Conservative Republicans: Stop bothering people who disagree with you. Don't poke the LGBTQ community with a stick just because you feel like avoiding the real issues for a bit. FYI, there were gays, transgenders, and Swingers parties as far back as your coveted post-war years...and long before that. No, you don't have to agree with them, but just don't bother them. Also, your hair looks weird. Not spiked and blue weird...a whole different level of weird. Like body-snatching plastic people weird. Why does conservative hair look so weird? It's like Woody's from Toy Story. How? Why?

a reply to: dawnstar

Uh, oh. 400. FOUR HUNDRED liberal activist jobs! Ha ha. That is laughable.

Now we've got activist mainstream media, activist judges and activist corporations trying to tell Americans how to live their lives. Don't trust your parents. Don't trust your religion. Don't trust your pants.

originally posted by: Generation9
Don't trust your parents. Don't trust your religion. Don't trust your pants.

Didn't we learn anything from the X-Files? Trust no one!

Seriously, what some see as corporate activism or manipulation, I see as corporate responsibility to equality, fairness and dignity for all people. It's about damn time these organizations that have taken so much from people and exist because of people to actually do something FOR people.

I'd like to interject a thought that to me is somewhat sad in a way. There has been something like 49 anti-trans bills proposed across the country as part of the official RNC platform and several made their way to their governor's desk and have been wisely vetoed.

Vetoed under the threat of economic impact and threat of loss of Federal funds for education NOT out of one bit of consideration of the lives and for people negatively affected by this legalized bigotry or for the public outrage and backlash this has caused. Vetoed because of money, not because it just the right thing to do.

North Carolina stands to lose $4.5B in Federal education funding alone but then again, they've held up the stereotype of being a bunch of dumb hicks pretty well in the eyes of most folks so maybe they don't need no edjumacation?

Let the lawsuits commence. When the voices of good Americans all across the country that believe in equal rights and equality for all and not just for some is heard, the sooner all this hateful crap can be put to bed.

Who is Bathroom Bill?

originally posted by: Phage
Who is Bathroom Bill?

And why does he care about your genitals?

(Sorry mods. A little humor doesn't hurt once and a while.)

originally posted by: Freija

originally posted by: Phage
Who is Bathroom Bill?

And why does he care about your genitals?

(Sorry mods. A little humor doesn't hurt once and a while.)

That made my night.

U2

We have a unisex bathroom at my workplace. However, I (being a straight male whom identifies as a male) tend to use that bathroom over the men's room because I suffer from "stage fright" and cant seem to urinate when someone is standing right next to me. I know it bothers those who feel that room is designed for their interests but I feel I have a right as well cuzz, don't we both have a "condition" of sorts. We have many other people who identify with a gender (and only one unisex bathroom) other than their birth one but yet I feel they discriminate against my situation with nasty looks and under breath comments. It seems that no-one is exempt from discrimination these days, eh.

Reading through replies, I just find it mind blowing how many feel it important to separate bathrooms by gender!

We don't always have gender specific bathrooms here. Stalls are not generally "open"- they have walls that go all the way to the ceiling, doors that close completely... no one can see you. (I just always liked that no one can hear you )

But yeah, washing my hands next to a man doesn't bother me- I've seen lots of male hands and don't care if he sees mine.
When I had young kids, I didn't send them to the bathroom alone either here nor in the US, so that was not a concern.

Even if it is illegal for men to be in the women's bathroom, that wouldn't actually stop one if he was a pedophile looking to grab a little girl!!! It is not because it is illegal that you should assume you can send your five year old in alone and not have a second thought!

I wonder if, ironically, that argument (we can't send our small children to the bathroom alone if there isn't such a law)
is used by the same people that argue gun control will not keep guns out of the hands of criminals....?

a reply to: Bluesma

The issue isn't having men in the woman's bathroom unless you are talking about transgender men. The issue is having transgender women in the women's bathroom. Transgender women are not men and unless everybody has to be policed on what genitals they have or what birth certificate they carry or how attractive and passable they are according to some subjective standard, it isn't fair. They still have to pee and what's between their legs or not between their legs and what they do in the privacy of a stall with the door closed is really nobody's business.

The unfounded and unsupported fear mongering behind these laws is based on the idea that predatory men will dress up and claim to be transgender women so they can gain access to the women's bathroom to do lewd and lascivious things, expose themselves, molest, rape etc., even though this sort of behavior is already illegal anywhere.

In the 17 states and 255 cities that do afford the courtesy and right of transgender people to use the bathroom that aligns with their gender identity and who they are as people, no increase in this type of alleged predatory behavior has been noted or documented. This is a made up fantasy that is an affront to all women that are being used as pawns in this anti-transgender jihad.

Here is an interesting article on that perspective:

Not in the Name of My “Protection”

A remarkable number of ‘bathroom bills’ have cropped up in state legislatures in 2016: so far 44 anti-trans bills have been introduced in 16 states. In all of these contexts, strategists rely on a bigoted myth that sexual predators pretend to be trans women to gain access to women’s bathrooms to invade, harass and rape them. This myth is based on bigots’ party line, which we unequivocally reject: that trans women are not “real” women but instead dangerous men.

These untruths endure in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. There are no documented cases like that Senator Berger describes. Instead, trans women are the ones at tremendous risk for sexual victimization. Just this weekend, in the wake of H.B.2.’s passage, a trans woman was raped in the bathroom at New York’s Stonewall Inn. Trans women forced by laws like North Carolina’s to use men’s bathrooms are often met with violence and harassment.

While “bathroom bills” put more women at risk, their proponents’ pretend they advocate for them to protect us. Now, more than ever, women need to make sure state legislatures hear loud and clear that we refuse to be used as props to support transphobic and bigoted bills that hurt our trans sisters and deflect energy from real work to end gender violence. This is a feminist issue that requires our anger and our advocacy.

originally posted by: Freija
a reply to: Bluesma

The issue isn't having men in the woman's bathroom unless you are talking about transgender men. The issue is having transgender women in the women's bathroom.

I was referring to this -

Because some of us sane folks don't want pedos to decide they identify as a woman today so they can peep on young girls?

In my daughter's college (Hampshire College in Amherst, Mass.), it isn't just transgendered who are allowed to use any restroom, EVERYONE uses ANY restroom. All of the public restrooms on campus (most are multi-stalled) are 100% unisex, including in the dorms. All public and dorm restrooms are simply marked "restroom", not "Men's" or "Women's".

It's been that was for several years, and nobody really makes a big deal of it. Maybe some parents are a bit taken back at first, but I think it becomes no big deal to them after a while.

Freija: thank you for your many informative posts. I know zip about this topic so they are helpful for context and edu.

Off-topic: totally and I'm sorry but one of your posts with all the schoolgirl pics brought it up: how does a small child / young girl get 'transgendered'? Honestly six year olds don't make a decision followed by surgery do they? Or is it merely that the child feels like a girl, generally looks like a girl (hopefully or she's in for some real social grief), dresses and hangs with the girls and so is considered such?

(I don't mean to be insensitive. One of the most difficult things with controversial topics like this is that people uninvolved but well intentioned don't know the right terms or even the right fundamentals and tend to accidentally cause offense in the sometimes hypersensitive sorts on the other side.)

So there are federal laws.
Which trump state laws.
Which trump county laws.
Which trump city laws.

Maybe I'm wrong about that. But if as noted there's already higher laws contradicting this, then it's little more than political grandstanding and sure to be overturned. I suppose the larger concern in a way is the precedent, even if it doesn't stand, and is in the insight it gives into what culturally we are reacting to as a larger population.


I'm actually a constructionist and pretty fond of the independence of nation-states, so I used to think if Georgia wants to ban slow dancing and California wants to have drive-through abortion that local humans in that state ought to make the laws instead of a few people in robes making laws for the entire collective, e.g. federalism. On the other hand now it's a lot more unworkable because there is no real division between the states anymore, and most of us tend to think that fundamental laws like whether a young person should do years in prison for a $30 bag of pretty harmless weed, or whether a woman should be forced bear even a rapist's child, or whether it should be a crime for two people to become a family if their chromosomes are not deemed appropriate, are something that ought to be addressed everywhere the same for the sake of humanity and sanity.

I'm not sure how to feel about that. Maybe it's none of my business what people do in North Carolina unless I live there. Maybe "voting with your wallet" as a business or individual is the best way of influencing anything in a semi-capitalist country and we should let that be the solution -- but that seems a bit unfair since it means a real solution would end up 60 years away and I'm pretty sure everyone living now and in the next decades would prefer a sane environment sooner.

As far as 'public' businesses with a retail location go, I do feel they should be legislated by government, and I do feel government should be fundamentally as "unbiased" as possible -- basically, agnostic in every way that word can be applied. So a public bakery should not have the right to not make a cake for gays, for example.

But anything private -- for me that means independent contractors (home or PObox locations), and religions, for example -- I do feel they should have the right to forego the money. The thing is, this is already the case unofficially. As a contractor if I don't like someone I don't have to work with them, I don't have to agree to paint their sign or design their website or anything else -- I can say, "Sorry, I'm busy," or "Sorry, this month I'm focusing on work that features Africa and not taking much of anything else, try my neighbor Jake" or whatever. It would be inappropriate for me to say, "I don't want to paint your sign because you're a greasy lascivious perv who didn't look up from my chest during our initial conversation" even though that might be the real reason. If I were in a starbucks though, I'd have to serve that guy coffee no matter what. I am not sure whether my way of thinking is contradictory (that all business should operate the same) (and I think religious exemption re: taxes/privacy should be immediately pulled period but that's another topic), or not. I mean, I do not believe in institutionalizing prejudice but I also don't believe in overriding the individual rights of a human being to have and act upon their personal feelings about things. If they want to work for the country granting marriage licenses, they'll have to, same as if they work at starbucks. But if they're a preacher for a church with a belief system against gay marriage I think they should have the right to not-marry someone.

(...and honestly I tend to consider anybody pushing on that to be solely manipulative, harrassing, trying to set precedent and force laws injustly, because why would you want someone who doesn't believe in gay marriage to marry you and your partner anyway. I do believe that individuals and churches ought to have the right to have and act on their own opinions.)

Companies have their own policies. One of my corp's HQ's is in San Francisco and I'm pretty sure our policies, although we are somewhat global, would prevent operating in any state that contradicted them. I see PayPal as doing what is right by them and their people and if that doesn't suit NC, then NC is well rid of them, and some other state would be happy to get their jobs and taxes I imagine. NC would have no right to complain. Making a welcoming environment for business is about more than their tax rate.

As for bathrooms, geez. I must have had a little warping -- when young I couldn't make a sound others could hear in a public restroom, I was hugely neurotic. Still just a bit. I have experienced that this is very common (often worse) with other women I've known whereas it's more uncommon with men I've known so there must be something cultural that is under the radar, nothing I recall consciously (but probably related to the fact that I've had men tell me with a straight face that women don't fart, or not like men, and believe this; women go to immense lengths not to be heard doing so; men often find it unembarrassing and as funny as if they're still 12). "Blending" the genders in the bathroom is quite a big deal for cultural reasons -- the discomfort is a very real and serious thing. It's also a big deal for other (violence) reasons.

Of course the law in this thread does the worst, not the best. In a perfect world people use whatever bathroom they most match (dress like generally) and if someone were uncomfortable with them and said so they'd leave and use the other. I would never want anybody to be harrassed, humiliated or assaulted for any reason, let alone something incredibly stupid like "you look too feminine to be a man" or "you look too masculine to be a woman." I thought our culture had (alas) decided to collectively hate fat people since we aren't allowed to hate anybody else officially (that's a corporatism thing, the fat thing, nobody seems to realize), but now I realize there actually isn't any prohibition on bias against the LGBTQOhowmanylettersdoesthisacronymhaveanyway -- I hadn't realized.

It's good this gets attention. Let it blow up and maybe it'll be addressed better, sooner, than it would have been as a result.

RC

originally posted by: Generation9
a reply to: dawnstar

Uh, oh. 400. FOUR HUNDRED liberal activist jobs! Ha ha. That is laughable.

Now we've got activist mainstream media, activist judges and activist corporations trying to tell Americans how to live their lives. Don't trust your parents. Don't trust your religion. Don't trust your pants.

Yet it is the Republicans who are telling people where to hoo haa.

So much for "small government " when you pass a state law forbidding local governments from passing their own laws.......

originally posted by: Bluesma
I was referring to this ----

"Because some of us sane folks don't want pedos to decide they identify as a woman today so they can peep on young girls"

Okay, I think I got it?

To the poster that wrote that - transgender women are pedos now? You've bought into hysteria and politicized BS that simply hasn't been proven to be true and have a pretty warped idea of what trans women are. See what I wrote above about hypothetical imposter transgender women and how this whole notion is nothing but a myth made up to scare everyone by Republicans with an official anti-LGB and particularly T agenda as part of their party platform.

This is simply very thinly disguised bigotry, hatred and fear and all this anti-transgender business is backlash or retribution for marriage equality they can do nothing about. It's pretty chickensh** to pick on the most marginalized, most discriminated against and least visible and organized and most poorly understood segment of the LGBT demographic just because you lost the war over gay people getting married and in my own opinion, this makes you nothing but assholes for the total disregard for the safety and dignity of the already difficult lives of transgender children.

originally posted by: network dude

originally posted by: Krazysh0t

originally posted by: tadaman
a reply to: kaylaluv

Yet there is a real danger where kids undress in front of adults attracted to their gender for them to be molested.

I will not let a man be alone with my daughter in the bathroom. If she is, I will tell her to treat him like a rapist and F him up. Maybe he can cry about gender violence after. I wonder how often that happens for this simple reason.

No one is risking themselves over this mess.

Sorry. Common sense and the real world.

Show an example of this being a widespread problem, and then maybe you'll have a point. Right now, you appear to be heavily speculating based on fear and ignorance though.

first, show the unavailability of bathrooms to be a widespread problem.

Will you spend the extra $15000 to renovate your business and build a bathroom for the 1% of people who are transgender and somehow cannot deal with bathrooms the way they have been for the last 80 years?

Perhaps there can be a government subsidy for this, paid for by those rich folk.

Then maybe just stop asking questions about who is using what bathroom. And let the people decide. If a transgender person feels safer in a the newly assigned sex they are, then let them go in that bathroom. The stalls provide privacy anyways.

originally posted by: Krazysh0t

originally posted by: network dude

originally posted by: Krazysh0t

originally posted by: tadaman
a reply to: kaylaluv

Yet there is a real danger where kids undress in front of adults attracted to their gender for them to be molested.

I will not let a man be alone with my daughter in the bathroom. If she is, I will tell her to treat him like a rapist and F him up. Maybe he can cry about gender violence after. I wonder how often that happens for this simple reason.

No one is risking themselves over this mess.

Sorry. Common sense and the real world.

Show an example of this being a widespread problem, and then maybe you'll have a point. Right now, you appear to be heavily speculating based on fear and ignorance though.

first, show the unavailability of bathrooms to be a widespread problem.

Will you spend the extra $15000 to renovate your business and build a bathroom for the 1% of people who are transgender and somehow cannot deal with bathrooms the way they have been for the last 80 years?

Perhaps there can be a government subsidy for this, paid for by those rich folk.

Then maybe just stop asking questions about who is using what bathroom. And let the people decide. If a transgender person feels safer in a the newly assigned sex they are, then let them go in that bathroom. The stalls provide privacy anyways.

Shush with your common sense and belief in freedom and rights! lol

These people won't agree to that, because this is not about that, it's about the Christian fundamentalist feeling as though their stranglehold on the nation is slipping away and they're becoming more and more desperate to seize control for as long as possible in any state they can.

This is made clear by both the laws in NC and the new passing of similar in Mississippi, these laws are not *just* about the whole bathroom fiasco, these laws are stripping LGBT of all their rights under law. They can now be discriminated against across business, education, housing, medical care...

If this were about the bathrooms, the only law they would have passed is one mandating that everyone is legally required to only use the bathroom of the gender identified on their birth certificate. They didn't pass that law, they passed a whole new raft of laws allowing specifically CHRISTIANS to refuse service, to fire, to make homeless anyone who they do not like based on their ignorant religious beliefs.

People need to stop claiming that this is about bathrooms and transgender people, this is about the fanatical Christians imposing their disgusting ignorance on entire states and using their political power in the ignorant leaders of these states to pass hateful and ignorant laws attacking entire sections of the population.

I look forward to seeing businesses leaving these states and their economies crumbling over the next couple of years. If the moderate, sensible, rational and decent people of these states have any common sense they would be looking to move to a better state as soon as possible.

originally posted by: RedCairo
Freija: thank you for your many informative posts. I know zip about this topic so they are helpful for context and edu.

Off-topic: totally and I'm sorry but one of your posts with all the schoolgirl pics brought it up: how does a small child / young girl get 'transgendered'? Honestly six year olds don't make a decision followed by surgery do they? Or is it merely that the child feels like a girl, generally looks like a girl (hopefully or she's in for some real social grief), dresses and hangs with the girls and so is considered such?

(I don't mean to be insensitive. One of the most difficult things with controversial topics like this is that people uninvolved but well intentioned don't know the right terms or even the right fundamentals and tend to accidentally cause offense in the sometimes hypersensitive sorts on the other side.)

Thank you! I consider myself and advocate for and ally to transgender youth and their families and am well versed and well studied in all aspects of this. It is a very confusing and difficult thing for most people to comprehend or rationalize and I have spoken many times on this issue. You've made an excellent post with lots to respond to but space is limited (and it is 4:30 AM) so I'll have to leave the explanation for another time/thread.

It doesn't really discuss the scientific and medical understanding of juvenile gender dysphoria but the PBS Frontline Documentary: Growing up Trans is well done and covers many issues and perspectives. (and no, 6-year olds do not have any medical procedures)

Maybe I'm wrong about that. But if as noted there's already higher laws contradicting this, then it's little more than political grandstanding and sure to be overturned. I suppose the larger concern in a way is the precedent, even if it doesn't stand, and is in the insight it gives into what culturally we are reacting to as a larger population.

Unfortunately, sexual orientation and gender identity/gender expression are not a federally protected classes. There is a complete mismash of various state and local anti-discrimination laws or now in some cases like in North Carolina and Mississippi, laws that permit legalized and institutionalized bigotry, hate and discrimination. To me, this is socially regressive and hardly exemplifies the liberty and justice for all thing I thought this country was supposed to be about.

Maybe "voting with your wallet" as a business or individual is the best way of influencing anything in a semi-capitalist country and we should let that be the solution -- but that seems a bit unfair since it means a real solution would end up 60 years away and I'm pretty sure everyone living now and in the next decades would prefer a sane environment sooner.

Unfair? Yes. I recently watched a top motorcycle racer that had won a race due to the misfortune of others ahead of him dropping out. Having much preferred to win on his own strengths and performance, when interviewed, he shrugged his shoulders and said it wasn't the way he wanted to win but it was a win and he would take it. That's kind of how I feel about these laws that do get vetoed for financial reasons rather than for the needs of the people affected but with any win at this point, I'll take it.

As far as 'public' businesses with a retail location go, I do feel they should be legislated by government, and I do feel government should be fundamentally as "unbiased" as possible -- basically, agnostic in every way that word can be applied. So a public bakery should not have the right to not make a cake for gays, for example.

I think we agree on many issues.

But if they're a preacher for a church with a belief system against gay marriage I think they should have the right to not-marry someone.

And in a church or religious scenario, nobody is forcing them to and there is some merit in the concept of religious freedom except when in the name of religious freedom their beliefs and morals are imposed on others outside of this context or as influence to legislation.

Of course the law in this thread does the worst, not the best. In a perfect world people use whatever bathroom they most match (dress like generally) and if someone were uncomfortable with them and said so they'd leave and use the other. I would never want anybody to be harrassed, humiliated or assaulted for any reason, let alone something incredibly stupid like "you look too feminine to be a man" or "you look too masculine to be a woman." I thought our culture had (alas) decided to collectively hate fat people since we aren't allowed to hate anybody else officially (that's a corporatism thing, the fat thing, nobody seems to realize), but now I realize there actually isn't any prohibition on bias against the LGBTQOhowmanylettersdoesthisacronymhaveanyway -- I hadn't realized.

Most people don't even care or fail to recognize there even is bias, prejudice, discrimination or heck, even racism it seems? I'm in my 60's and have seen a lot of social change and upheaval resulting in the positive progression of humanity and as us as a culture and society. I don't believe this stepping backward is the way to move forward.

Thank you again for your well spoken comments. When time and space permits and even though it makes people's brain melt down, hopefully there will be opportunity for me to help raise your understanding and awareness on the issues of transgender youth.

a reply to: Rocker2013

Rocker2013 - YOU ROCK!

originally posted by: Freija
a reply to: Rocker2013

Rocker2013 - YOU ROCK!

So do you!