The brewing issue is that since transgender people see themselves as the opposite sex, they want to use the restrooms of the opposite sex. The question is, would anyone share a restroom with the opposite sex who see themselves as the opposite sex?
A transgender who was denied the use of a woman’s restroom in a mall has sparked this debate. There are currently no laws which explicitly protect transgender people in the Philippines. Until the proposed Anti
Discrimination Bill or H.B. 4982 and the sexual orientation, gender identity, or expression more popularly known as the SOGIE Equality Bill (Senate Bill 1271), there is no specific law that embraces the subject matter. For now, they must rely on the sex discrimination protection principles found in other laws. However, until discrimination based on sex change is defined as sex discrimination, it is not.
The issue on allowing a man who believes he is a woman or has undergone sex change is a complex issue. It is definitely not toilet humor. But while the world is slowly adapting to the emergence of a new class in the LGBT community, some things purely physiological and psychological never change. Like toilets, a man uses urinals and pees standing up or on a toilet bowl with the stall raised up. On the other hand, a woman sits down on the toilet with the stall down. And even when there have been ‘adaptations’ invented by medical science to change the way people pass their urine, still many people believe that a person’s physical makeup at birth determines sex, not the person’s beliefs about his or her sex. These groups of people are uncomfortable with having someone of the opposite sex in a restroom typically used by one gender only. For them, the right of privacy in a restroom must be respected.
And then there is also the danger of opening the door for the pervs to dress in a manner allowing them access to young girls and women for exposure.
Gender-specific restrooms are not monuments of discrimination but are merely reminders that people are still different sexes.
