In 2009, there was a plan to make public bathrooms for transgender people in Chennai, India. According to the local authorities, the purpose of the plan is to broaden understanding of transgender people in society. The new brought on active debate over its pros and cons among transgender people.When I read the news, I became concerned that having bathrooms for transgender people would stimulate discrimination against transgender. Recently, the acceptance of transgender people is becoming widespread. However there are still many people who believe that there are only men and women in the world, and consider people who are between men and women as unnatural. Therefore, those people would oppose bathroom for transgender people.
Moreover, I think that people who had surgery or who try to look like men or women want to be treated as the sex which they believe themselves to be. They don't want to be distinguished as transgender. So I don't think bathroom for transgender is needed.
The bathroom issue is important to transgender people. They struggle which bathroom (men's or women's) they should use. For people who are under the process of changing sex, the bathroom issue is especially serious. There was a case that a transgender person who was receiving surgical process was arrested three times for using women's bathroom. For these people, having bathroom for transgenders is helpful.
Therefore, I don't know the plan of making bathroom for transgender people is really a good idea or not. It can cause discrimination. On the other hand, there are transgender people who need it. I learned the gender can include many things about men and women from my class. Gender should be more fluid thing. Therefore I haven't decided whether there should be the bathrooms for gender people. At least, I don't agree about dividing bathroom by labeling because I don't think people need to be distinguished by means of sex.
http://www.indianexpress.com/news/chennai-move-on-separate-toilets-for-tra.../432575/
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0CE4DD1731F932A35750C0A9609C8B63&scp=1&sq=transgender%202006%20march&st=cse
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