Elinda wrote:
Belkira wrote:
[quote=His Excellency Aethien]
No, but in my perfect world with "one bathroom to rule them," urinals wouldn't be installed because there would be no need. Men can pee in toilets just as easily inside a stall.
With the current design of the toilet, I'd want to minimize men having to pee into the same public toilet that I have to sit down on. Two separate peeing set-ups is really convenient considering the anatomical differences and probably more hygienic. Which leads me to wonder why we even have toilet seats anymore. Why has no designed a toilet for the 21st century?
Individual isolated rooms would be the ideal, but impractical in many situations. No one seems to have problems deciding with porta-potty to line up at during crowded events.
I'm curious how legal gender status works. Obviously we're given a legal gender on our birth certificates. What's the process for changing that - is there physical criteria you have to meet, or can you change it just like changing your name?
It's a state issue. One state (Mississippi, surprisingly) doesn't require anything but a request to change it. Most states require a court order to change it, and most of those will not issue that order unless the person has undergone reassignment surgery. Then there are states that only require reassignment surgery, and will change it upon request after that. Then, of course, you have the states that won't change it at all--I'm inclined to say this
is a minority now, though.
As far as I know, most states just match your birth certificate for any laws with gender distinctions. And to the best of my knowledge, the federal government does too. Though, as Joph noted, some do not use that for everything--marriage is the biggest one. Because obviously the gays would reassign their sexes just to get married.
This process is actually one of the biggest political issues for trans peoples, though. Because it doesn't reflect the trans experience. The vast majority of trans peoples don't reassign their genitalia. For many, it's because it's a painful and cost-intensive process, and you lose a LOT of the nerves in the area. Sexual males are more likely to reassign than sexual females, because far more of the nerves are preserved. And few people want to give up sexual pleasure down yonder.
There's also the birth issue. Reassignment surgery renders you infertile, so anyone who wants biological children is unlikely to reassign.
And there are also people who just don't want to. Maybe they don't hold a gender identity that's 100% one or the other, or maybe they're happy to keep the genitals they were born with as long as they're allowed to live as the gender they identify as. Bodily changes to "pass" is often
far more important to non-trans peoples than it is to them. Not that this is universal, by any means, I'm talking about statistics not individual feelings on an issue.
Even in states where you don't need to have surgery to reassign your legal gender, it's still generally very expensive to go through the legal process of changing it.
Hence, big political issue.
[EDIT]
You know, if you're too lazy to click Joph's link.
Edited, Mar 10th 2013 12:24pm by idiggory