Ignorance in the face of victory

Today, the New York Transit Authority settled a lawsuit with a transgendered woman. She had been arrested three times for using the women's bathroom in the subway (she works for Verizon and was repairing payphones in the subway).

When I heard this story on the morning news, they chose to devote a lot of airtime to some "woman in the street" interview spewing a lot of ignorance. Seriously, they give major news ten seconds and this woman was quoted twice, for a total that must have approached a half a minute.

First, she blathered about how "they" shouldn't be in the "wrong" bathroom and so on and just basically expressed her discomfort with the whole notion of transgender. And then she said how the obvious solution was to have them use the bathroom for their "real" gender.

Right. Because it would be so much more welcome for a woman to show up in the men's room. That would definitely go over better. Geez Pete, even if you insist that a transgendered woman is "really" a man, how thoughtless do you have to be not to envision the kind of problems, including violence, that would ensue?

(This cross-post is really a woman.)

[That's all, folks]