"[A]ny male at any time will be permitted in girls’ bathrooms, showers and change rooms as long as they have an ‘innate feeling’ of being female..."

That's what opponents say about Bill C-389 would amend the Canadian Human Rights Act to forbid discrimination on the basis of "gender identity" or "gender expression."

The bill probably won't pass, but here's a column favoring it. Excerpt:

Society takes for granted that there are two distinct sexes, with two corresponding ways of expressing gender identity. And we have concocted a range of stereotypes to reinforce the supposed chasms of difference between men and women, boys and girls.
Despite the fact that biologists such as Brown University professor Anne Fausto-Sterling have demonstrated that “nature” itself yields not two distinct sexes but as many as five in a small but still significant number of cases, we still think male or female is something constant and unchanging. Sex is not only something viewed as uncomplicated and self-evident, but masculinity and femininity are tied to one’s birth-assigned sex.

Transsexual and transgendered individuals expose the shortcomings of our narrow categories. Because they trouble this vision of male and female, they have been “socially erased,” to borrow a term from Concordia Professor Viviane Namaste...

As faculty members teaching in the sexual studies minor program at Carleton University, we are not surprised by the comments offered by Charles McVety, president of the Canada Christian College in Toronto in The Globe. [see blog post title, above.] Mr. McVety’s use of the language of pedophilia, and other forms of sexual predation, criminal opportunism and violence within female-specific spaces serves as a perfect example of the pathologization, criminalization and fear-mongering that continues to mark the lives of those within the trans communities.

Pink...

... bathrooms.

The locally owned BP gas station pleads for your love...

... via the door of the ladies' john:

"Why is there ice in the lobby men’s room urinals?" asks the NY Times.

In this (possibly useful) article about (relatively) cheap but (somehow) stylish hotels in New York City. I don't go — no pun intended — in the bathrooms where one finds urinals, but if I were writing that article, I would at the very least Google the phrase "ice in urinals" before leaving it in an article. I would know that some readers would Google "ice in urinals" and I wouldn't want to be embarrassed if the answer was something it would be embarrassing not to know. And once I'd done that, I'd know the answer, because "ice in urinals" gets "about 231,000 results" in Google, beginning with "Why Ice in the Urinals?" in AskMetafilter. You see this right away:

There's a discussion of this in The Straight Dope Tells All. The leading theories are:

• The melting ice acts as a slow, continuous flush
• Ice cools the air around the urinal. Cool air sinks, which serves to contain the smell
• Cold discourages drain flies
• Fun to melt, helps users aim better, compensates for poor male sanitary habits

New York Times, you seem to need a little help, so... let me Google that for you.

"Arctic air blast."

"40°."

"Should we be freaking out?"

Conversation overheard in the men's room at the Alamo Drafthouse on South Lamar, here in Austin, last night.



Actually, it's 31° here right now, and we're still telling ourselves this is an effective winter getaway, because we were getting away from Madison, Wisconsin. And, no, I didn't go in the men's room. The conversation was quoted to me.

What movie did we see? "The Fantastic Mr. Fox." Good? Yeah, pretty good, especially the first third. It was more interesting meeting the characters and getting involved in the details of their world than seeing their problems worked out in a series of adventures. But I'd probably say that about most any movie. It's not so much a special "Mr. Fox" criticism. And maybe I think that about life too most of the time. I love normal days. I don't need a series of adventures.

Ah, whenever I go on vacation, I get homesick. Back in Madison, it's 16°. Snow. We could go skiing. But we're here, spending the morning in much the same way we would back home. The chairs and table are a little different. The coffee is a little different. The temperature is a little different.



The computer fits nicely. And you're all here to talk to. How are you?

Are you able to deal with The Great Arctic Blast of 2010?

"Their description of me made me sound like an arrogant prick."

John Horgan talks about the science of and his experience with eHarmony, in a Bloggingheads episode that begins with his revelation that he is separated from his wife and headed toward divorce. He doesn't talk about why he is getting divorced — that would be even more inappropriate than all this openness about dating while one is actually still married. But we wondered about his marriage. His wife is Suzie Gilbert, and here's an article about what she's been doing in recent years:

Gilbert floundered before landing work in a nearby Hudson Valley animal hospital and later volunteering at a raptor center. Hooked, she opened her own rehab operation, Flyaway, Inc.

I love the use of the verb "floundered." Before she found birds, she was like a fish.

“Some people are drawn to cuddly things,” she notes. “But I’m in awe of these creatures that can hurt you. I can’t get over their strength and nobility. It’s a force of nature.”

And here's a description of her book:

In this captivating memoir, Suzie Gilbert tells the rollicking story of how she turned her family life upside down to pursue her unusual passion for rehabilitating wild birds....

She began bringing abused and unwanted parrots home and volunteering at a local raptor rehabilitation center, activities she continued for the next eleven years, even as she started a family. Then came the ultimate commitment to her cause: turning her home into Flyaway, Inc., a nonprofit wild bird rehabilitation center.

Gilbert chronicles the years of her chaotic household-cum-bird-hospital with delightful wit, recounting the confusion that ensued as her husband and two young children struggled to live in a house where parrots shrieked Motown songs, nestling robins required food every twenty minutes, and recuperating herons took over the spare bathroom. Gradually, however, the birds came to represent the value of compassion and the importance of pursuing even the most unlikely of dreams.

Compassion and dreams... and a whole lot of birds. But eHarmony thinks the husband is an arrogant prick. Well, Horgan has quite a sense of humor about himself, I think. He's smiling and laughing there, isn't he? Or is that a grimace, a rictus?

In any event, good luck to all, human and bird. I know the human being and bird can coexist peacefully.

Stopping at the Pennsylvania welcome center at the New York end of I-90.

It's eerie late at night...



At the foot of the "Pennsylvania Wineries" column, lies inebriated Santa:



But don't worry....



"You can't make a wrong turn in Pennsylvania."

IN THE COMMENTS: Palladian yells: "FROSTY THE SNOWMAN NOT SANTA." Oh, yeah! Good point. Ha ha. I need to get my American iconography straight. 

Don't take a shower. Take a bath.

"Levels of Mycobacterium avium were 100 times higher [in shower heads] than those found in typical household water supplies. M. avium forms a biofilm that clings to the inside of the shower head... [This] might explain why there have been more cases of these lung infections in recent years, linked with people tending to take more showers and fewer baths. Water spurting from shower heads can distribute bacteria-filled droplets that suspend themselves in the air and can easily be inhaled into the deepest parts of the lungs..."

On the road. (Yesterday.)

Blogging from the road:



Yes, I always wash my hands, but I also always look everywhere for a fish-eye effect, and I have my camera ready to bring it back to you:



I even did a re-take of this post to... change the focal point.

At the next stop... hey, what do you want? Onion rings? French toast?

Transgender bathroom rights in New England.

The Act Relative to Gender Based Discrimination and Hate Crimes bill.

It is one thing for a person born as a man who has been surgically altered to become a woman to be allowed to use the women's bathroom. It is something else entirely to allow a man who has had nothing altered, but simply claims he "identifies" as a woman, to use the women's bathroom.

That is a recipe for embarrassment, fear and even confrontation — the kind of things most legislators would probably say they want to prevent. The New Hampshire House of Representatives, which passed a similar law recently, may find it has been hasty....

[T[he various definitions of transgender are so amorphous and broad. According to one, it is "a general term applied to a variety of individuals, behaviors, and groups involving tendencies that diverge from the normative role (man or woman) commonly, but not always, assigned at birth, as well as the role traditionally held by society."...

In short, it can mean virtually anything that doesn't fit so-called "normative" gender roles....