Perhaps they are more liberal in Europe, when staying in Belgium I have had to use a communal toilet, it's a case of when you've gotta go you've gotta go:bigwink:................having said that there are separate toilets for men and women in the majority of places that I have visited.
Canada Stands Up for LGBT People!
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Perhaps they are more liberal in Europe, when staying in Belgium I have had to use a communal toilet, it's a case of when you've gotta go you've gotta go:bigwink:................having said that there are separate toilets for men and women in the majority of places that I have visited.
Bob was trying to show how superior American public toilets are by showing that Europe (and China and all the other countries featured in his link) are primitive.
Some Americans are horrified that in Europe the 'restrooms' are called toilets and don't realize it refers to the room not the toilet itself.
I am co-chair of our local PFLAG, have a gay son and was President for two years of our local Pride celebration, needless to say I applaud every step any country takes toward achieving equality. And, on another note, it really makes me proud to be part of a forum with so many lgbt supportive members. So, thanks guys for making me tear up before I head off to work.
Thanks for posting this thread and also this article, Debby. I would give anything if the USA (especially Tennessee) was liberal as Canada.
....and the UK.
I know it's pointless to try to argue with you, however.... If you don't believe anyone is transgendered what did this post of yours mean?:
Transgendered (which has now been expanded to include not only legitimately transgendered people but deluded ones who "identify" as the sex they are not
Bob was trying to show how superior American public toilets are by showing that Europe (and China and all the other countries featured in his link) are primitive.
That was not 'my link' as the one I was looking for I could not find and just posted what came up. I was looking for one that had like a small wall along the sidewalk near a corner. Behind the wall was a row of sit downs showing a couple men sitting down and a lady also part of the group. Another photo I did not find was just on a public walk in what looked like a business district where a lady was squatting down and doing her thing right on the sidewalk. Folks just walking past and not bothering about what was happening.
Does that make the US public toilets superior to others as one person has posted? Not at all as superiority will be decided by the observers and users and not what I have posted. Different? For sure.
For some parts of the world there seems to be very little consideration for privacy, or even a need for privacy. Somewhat different for the way folks seem to think in the US and other areas where privacy between the sexes seems to prevail.
You would see that in China or elsewhere, but not in western Europe.
Even in Uganda all toilets are private, none in the open. They have mostly toilet pits, but all are private.
Canada is doing more than other countries. Muslim states block LGBT groups at UN conference.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/may/17/muslim-states-united-nations-lgbt-groups-aids-meeting
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/may/17/muslim-states-united-nations-lgbt-groups-aids-meeting
Debby
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Yes, I read a book about him! What an amazing boy and he and his brother have gone on to do great things too, to help kids. I'm always awestruck by kids that seem to much braver and committed than I am (especially the braver part!).
Debby
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But that's exactly the problem for them. Their brains are not 'female' brains or 'male' brains. They are both, female/male brains inside one head and the sex organs apparently develop after the brain structure and due to some fluke, don't match the 'stronger' aspects of their brains. Who knows, maybe there are women/men who have this female/male dichotomy in the actual structures but in their cases, the body did develop to match that 'dual brain'? Lucky them wouldn't you say?
As you've identified yourself as a woman, the question would be, do you 'feel' in your whole being that you are a woman? Are your thoughts a woman's thoughts? Are you actions and reactions those of a woman? For someone like the ten year old girl who was at the side of our Justice Minister, her thoughts and feelings and reactions are those of a little girl(future woman) but her body doesn't match the 'female' aspects of her brain. So she isn't deluded, she's responding to the aspects of her brain that tell her she's female.
So when her 'brain' is telling her to think like a girl because it is more a 'female' brain than 'male', how is she deluded? If you choose to believe that we are who our brains tell us we are, and hers is saying 'hey, you're a girl kiddo', how is she deluded if she identifies as a girl? And her brain will activate the sex hormones and the hormones that will make 'the body' grow, and whatever body is there will grow, but her/his brain will still identify as the sex that is the opposite of the body that they got stuck with.
If you look up the word delusion this is the definition:
de·lu·sion
dəˈlo͞oZHən/
noun
[COLOR=#878787 !important][/COLOR]
- an idiosyncratic belief or impression that is firmly maintained despite being contradicted by what is generally accepted as reality or rational argument, typically a symptom of mental disorder.
The problem with assigning their belief to being a delusion is that their brains are physically different than yours or mine or our husbands. It's not that their brain isn't working right (and therefore creating a delusion), their brains are different. So if their brain is physically different, you can't call it a mental disorder. If anything, maybe you could call it a 'physical disorder'. Their physical body is not 'ordered' to match their brain.
(if you're interested, in comment 29, there is an excerpt from an article on the research that states ' Surprisingly, in each transsexual person’s brain the structure of the white matter in the four regions was halfway between that of the males and females (Journal of Psychiatric Research, DOI: 10.1016/j.jpsychires.2010.11.007)....and the link is also there)
One thing I noticed in your link Thomas was where it said : Fetal gonads develop primarily based on the presence or absence of androgen hormones, mainly testosterone, dihydrotestosterone (DHT) and androstenedione; production of testosterone and conversion into dihydrotestosterone during weeks 6 to 12 of pregnancy are key factors in the production of a male fetus’ *****, scrotum and prostate.[SUP][6][/SUP] In a female, on the other hand, absence of these levels of androgens results in development of typically female *******s.[SUP][6][/SUP] Following this, sexual differentiation of the brain occurs; sex hormones exert organizational effects on the brain that will be activated in puberty.[SUP][6][/SUP] As a result of these two processes occurring separately, the degree of ******* masculinization does not necessarily relate to the masculinization of the brain
So the 'brain' orientation happens at a different moment than the 'body' orientation is what I got from that link and I believe I read the same thing in one of the articles that I read to learn more about the issue of transgender people. I don't know, maybe it's a case of messages going astray or not making it through incomplete 'wiring' or whatever.
I think the whole discussion is actually quite fascinating and exemplifies that biology and biological functions don't always follow the 'normal' route but that really, it's all a crap-shoot. Any one of us could have turned out so different than we are and if we had, how would we want to be treated by our fellow human beings who are 'different' from us? Isn't that really what it all boils down to? Do unto others as you would have done to you?
Butterfly
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Agree. I lived in Europe for almost 10 years (thanks to the US Army), traveled all over, and never saw such a thing. Western Europeans would be horrified at this.
Thank you for your post. I am accepting of LGBT but haven't really understood the transgendered until you explained that.
My only personal experience with the LGBT community was a very close friend when I was a teen who was a lesbian. She confided in me that since she was a young child she felt more like a boy than a girl. She always dressed in a basic jeans and t-shirt way (same as me), but definitely appeared and acted differently than I did.
To add to the complexity of her sexual preference, her father always wanted a boy and treated her like one when she was young, and her father was a very mean and abusive man to her mother. She loved animals and was the most giving and kind-hearted person you'd ever want to know. I was proud to be her friend, in high school some kids were very cruel to her.
I've been both friends and co-worker with several other homosexual people over the years, they were all very nice folks and honestly I never thought much about what they did in the privacy of their bedrooms. I never took issue at all with people who were different than me in any respect.
I think the United States is slowly taking steps to be more accepting and tolerant of all of our citizens. I think the gay community, like other minorities have been through a lot of discrimination and abuse in many countries, and I'm glad to see their suffering coming to an end. Realistically, it won't happen overnight, but slowly is better than not at all. I don't know much about transgender people, but if someone identifies as a woman, I have no problem at all sharing a restroom with them. https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/docs/lgbt_record.pdf
To add to the complexity of her sexual preference, her father always wanted a boy and treated her like one when she was young, and her father was a very mean and abusive man to her mother. She loved animals and was the most giving and kind-hearted person you'd ever want to know. I was proud to be her friend, in high school some kids were very cruel to her.
I've been both friends and co-worker with several other homosexual people over the years, they were all very nice folks and honestly I never thought much about what they did in the privacy of their bedrooms. I never took issue at all with people who were different than me in any respect.
I think the United States is slowly taking steps to be more accepting and tolerant of all of our citizens. I think the gay community, like other minorities have been through a lot of discrimination and abuse in many countries, and I'm glad to see their suffering coming to an end. Realistically, it won't happen overnight, but slowly is better than not at all. I don't know much about transgender people, but if someone identifies as a woman, I have no problem at all sharing a restroom with them. https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/docs/lgbt_record.pdf
Debby
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You're quite welcome Ruthanne. If I hadn't seen that short documentary a few years ago, I wouldn't have known about this either.
Years ago, when I was a Christian still, my turning point came one time when I went to Ikea one afternoon. A young man was in the stores lobby (an employee) and he appeared to be obviously gay because he was the stereotype in that his demeanour was significantly effeminate. As I watched him, I was suddenly struck by the thought that presenting the kind of 'target' that he did would surely not be a choice that anyone would make and that's where I began to understand the differences between chosing a lifestyle and being born to it. Now maybe he wasn't a gay man and I'm erroneously making an assumption, but his appearance was enough to make me question my beliefs and for that I'm grateful. It was a first step in my journey to understanding.
And the moral of the story is that we never know where our life lessons are going to come from do we? Sometimes our complacency is accosted by shocking belligerence and sometimes a chance meeting and occasionally I think that a quiet whisper of an epiphany in private.
Actually some of those toilets were in Europe and I have seen a lot of them myself both in France and Belgium.
One restaurant I visited just this last February in Belgium had the same initial door for both sexes to enter and just to the right of me was a ladies cubicle but when I looked to my left I saw nothing but a row of men's urinals.
If you scroll your mouse over the pictures it tells where the toilets are.