Once upon a time, pants were created. After a while, women were allowed to wear them too. This has made a lot of people happy and been widely regarded as a good thing. There is a problem, however – bathroom signage is largely predicated on the idea that there are two rigid genders which all humans must be sorted into, and they’re defined by whether you’re wearing pants or a dress. [Robb Godshaw], among others, disagrees with this, and set about building a gender fluid bathroom sign.
The project seeks to exploit the traditional symbols of “male” and “female” – the human figures wearing pants or a dress – by creating a sign that switches between the two every 15 seconds. This is likely to initially confuse – one might imagine the bathroom is actually changing its gender designation rapidly, forcing users to complete their business in an incredibly short timeframe. However, the message behind the project is to highlight the absurdity of defining gender by pants, colours, or indeed in a binary nature at all. [Robb] also helpfully points out that all humans have to pass waste, regardless of gender.
The sign is built with 3D-printed components, using a crank mechanism to actuate the moving parts. The mechanism is designed to give equal time to the pants and dress configurations. [Robb] shares the important details necessary to replicate the build, such as how to assemble the metal crank pin insert with a paperclip and a lighter. It’s particularly tidy the way the mechanism is integrated into the parts themselves. In true hacker style, the motor is a standard microwave oven turntable motor, which can be harvested easily from a junk appliance and can be plugged straight into mains power to operate, if you know what you’re doing. If you don’t, check out our primer on the topic.
Overall, the project is a great use of hacker techniques, like 3D printing and harvesting parts, to make a statement and start a conversation, while being fun, to boot. We’ve also seen some of [Robb]’s work before, like this giant hamster wheel for people. Video after the break.
I remember seeing a video of a place that had variable gender signs for the bathrooms and of course somebody would change the sign at “appropriate ” moments for comic effect.
“…bathroom signage is largely predicated on the idea that there are two rigid genders…”
Bathroom signage is trying (however ham-handedly) to portray for which sex the bathroom was designed. (FIFY)
Gender can be fluid, but you either have a p***s or you don’t have a p***s. Bathrooms were built for people plumbing, not for keeping the masses in line with societal norms…
I’ve never encountered a bathroom that wasn’t penis-friendly. I’ve also never seen a home bathroom with a urinal.
urinals are a piece of infrastructure for a specific problem, there is no reason at all to have one in a home bathroom, a large throughput piss disposal only makes sense where there are a lot of people in need in a fairly short period.
I’m just saying, urinals are the only distinctive facility of a public men’s restroom, but they aren’t required by male anatomy.
nobody said they were, the reason you see them in more high traffic areas is that they are more efficient in terms of space.
False. They are more efficient in terms of water usage.
If it’s yellow, let it mellow. If it’s brown, flush it down.
I have already seen home “bath”rooms (we call this kind of facility “toilette” as we don’t take a bath in there :-) ) with urinals. Although it’s not very common it’s comfortable as you don’t have to aim so precisely :-)
I think that’s also an important point in public installations as the cleaning effort is reduced.
> I’ve also never seen a home bathroom with a urinal.
I have, and it was awesome.
I can see that.
me too, faster, cleaner and uses far less water
many of them don’t use water at all
@fgf5:
Yes, that is an unfortunate trend. The waterless urinals would require much more frequent cleaning, which is often not done and results in stinking bathrooms. They should only be used in places where water is really scarce.
Otherwise intelligent automatic flushing would be the better solution. E.g. at high use frequency flushing could be delayed some minutes.
here, fixed that for you: https://www.google.com/search?q=home+bathroom+with+a+urinal.&num=100&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&biw=1600&bih=768
Our home bathroom has a urinal…
“ham-handedly” — haaah. i see what u did there :))
ok. why do the girls scream when a boy enters their bathroom?
When a boy enters while the girls are “working” on it? :D :D :D
You can buy an standin penis: https://go-girl.com/ I think urinals are nasty anyway. I still dont see the problem of sharing the bathroom anyway.
Even sex isn’t that simple.
There are all sorts of variants of plumbing, including those with both stereotypically male
and female parts. And those who have something inbetween.
It has been common to do surgical assignment operations in some places (e.g. the US).
(Of course what the exterior plumbing looks like and what the genes say are also
not always consonant either.)
While sex is probably simpler than gender (only 3 main values for sex (Male, Female, Asexual), whereas there are all sorts of variants of gender), it still isn’t always simple.
There are 3 main sexes because there are still doctors who will forcibly reassign people born with “irregular” parts. I’ve been told that in the darkest days there were “presumed lengths” appropriate for each gender. A baby girl born with too much erectile tissue? “Just trim it down.” A baby boy with too little? “Congratulations on your baby girl.”
Besides the penis/no-penis are other nearby parts far more important. Far more productive (hormone wise).
Sounds overly simplistic and ignoring the other parts of genitalia.
I’m not of the opinion that we should rewrite society to accommodate the .05% of the population with ambiguous genitalia, especially when the vast majority of those people don’t want accommodations, and they generally don’t think their organs are society’s business.
More importantly, we shouldn’t let the mentally ill foist their illness onto society on the sympathy generated by those with physical medical conditions.
Society and culture isn’t static. You can resist change, but eventually it will change, and perhaps in ways you do not expect.
Hacking the assumptions we make, and pushing against social conventions has always been normal throughout history for the sort of outcasts that intersects with groups like hackaday.
If you choose to bill those you find disagreeable as “mentally ill”, nine times out of ten you’ll find yourself on the wrong side of history.
You should take another look at history. The mentally ill always self-immolate.
Wow this world has going so far down, sjw’s on the hacking site.
You must be new to hacking! Hello friend! We are the benders of social norms and the mockers of established protocols. Pull up a beanbag chair and stay for a while! Can I suggest you peek at the jargon file and the hacker howto before lumping us together with whatever is politically bothering you, please?
How does fitting the new status quo constitute bending of societal norms or mocking established protocols? If you haven’t noticed the left is in “social power”, has been for a while.
Thank you. While I think we should all be respectful and treat the other person as a fellow human being (because they in fact *are* a human being, as opposed to an alien for example), I don’t think that being politically correct is the right way to go. Hack a Day should not concern itself with being conformed to that trend. PC should mean Personal Computer, not Politically Correct.
there is no counter culture here, the moment big money and branding got involved that aspect essentially died.
being a rebel for the sake of being a rebel isn’t profitable. or particularly useful for that matter…
I for one am not pleased with any kind of agenda pushing. Keep politics out of hacking, it’s bad enough with the systemd borg in linux land and the so called “contributor covenant” nonsense on github.
Surprised there were so many “practical” posts before yours. Maybe just trying hard not to make a huff?
But yea! So an idiotic (and false) premise inspires a (presumed) guy to design a sign that, in operation, tells one at best that “bathroom plumbing exists inside”… yaaaaay?
The motor controlling a pop-up book mechanism creates a “new” icon. Useless and reflective of an ill-conceived SJW meme du jour, But yea, I personally haven’t seen the like before today. Meh. It would be better-placed on some art design site. The “hack” itself is something I’ve seen at purdy much every existing convenience store counter signage for the past 30 years. So the mechanism obviously isn’t the hack.
… “a great use of hacker techniques… and start a conversation” … about what? Might as well start a conversation illuminating both sides of the argument whether the earth is flat or not! Thus this post does apparently attempt to say that the hack is the new (erroneous) way of thinking about gender. Maybe an intentional troll article, maybe not. My rant comes from a place that is just so sick of hearing the issue presented as if it had any validity I had to respond. I’m tired of being reminded how ignorant and/or intellectually lazy so many fellow humans can be, and not very optimistic about our future with this kind of thinking being glued to the wall in every direction. I’d much prefer the squeaky wheel of ignorance be allowed to suffocate and die then some morsel of knowledge may replace it.
I predict that moving .gif file memes of orb-like flowing gender icons, maybe inspired by Robb G., are in our future. Just as meaningless, useless and incorrect. Gender is a bimodal distribution, NOT a “fluid” condition AT ALL. Lately it seems maybe it’s a bipolar distribution.
Can I just say… Amen, Brother.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
How about we just have no door on bathrooms, and full-height doors on stalls. Put the urinals in stalls and then just have one bathroom for everyone.
Don’t expect people to choose the most simple and comfortable solution for every gender.
But yes, your suggestion would be the ideal solution.
“… every gender.” That implies that there are more than two. Can you give the scientific names – not the social justice warrior names – for these other genders?
Intersex. Hermaphoditic. Any number of individuals in the medical literature. Just because they are outside the norm does not make them invalid or any less human.
No. But with such a SMALL percentage of the human population born both/neither gender, does it make sense to set up “non-gender” facilities or other factions of life? The issue isn’t those who truly are born both/neither. The problem is the growing minority of mentally ill people who “feel” like one sex or the other. You may “feel” like a girl, but you are still a biological male – or vice versa. And even that percentage is too low to even entertain kowtowing to the whims of a few over the majority.
@Derek As someone born outside the “binary norm” the reason for “those mentally ill people” using the bathroom of the gender they think they are is to avoid getting the shit kicked out of them by people who think they are “mentally ill”.
Also, most of the trans-men I’ve met would have the police called on them if they went into the women’s restroom.
The very first sentence in the link you posted:
“Gender refers to the distinction between male and female.”
Male and Female. Two.
costs, ease of cleaning, space efficiency.
Not to mention cases where the bathroom is also a changing room/locker room/shower facility
Feel free to do whatever you want in your buildings, but why should other people have to comply with your biases? And why should existing buildings be forced to retrofit working facilities to comply with your biases?
I like the simplicity of the movement, with the single motor moving at a constant speed. No fancy programming or anything. The only ‘problem’ seems to be this red image on a white wall doesn’t really stand out that much, making the difference a bit hard to see. Maybe a black version will stand out a bit more?
Offtopic: the best bathroom types I’ve seen so far were for “standing” and “sitting”. Just pick the one you want/need to use: done.
so if you have each stall separate, with a door that has no gaps that can be looked through, how good is the ventilation in each stall?
This is a solution in search of a problem (or more precisely, trying to make a political point, not actually solve a problem). It’s common for single stalls (usually handicapped or ‘family’ units to be labeled with both symbols. So if there really is a need to indicate ‘both’, it’s trivially, and already solved.
An office I worked in had a unisex bathroom. The ~4 cubicles were each a small room, with a louvred ventilation hole on the door, and an extraction point in the ceiling.
Most toilets I have seen has “WC” written on them aka. Unisex.
you know, nowadays its all about the overcomplacation of easy things for the sake of making other epeople scratch their head
I self identify as a puppy and expect all public restrooms to include a fire hydrant for my use. I think you should all sign this petition demanding that public funds (taken from the people by force by a tyrannical out of control government) be used to install such facilities to meet my demands. This is much easier than hurting my feelings by addressing my obvious mental health issues.
way to miss the point, not only the point of this article sadly…
Please explain to us to the point of this article.
which of them?
a person tried to highlight an issue through a creative project, not solve the issue of gendered bathrooms outright, yet the person i replied to seem to think this was a direct argument against gendered bathrooms.
or the point of the original creator that all humans pass waste and that we, in that regard at least really arent that different.
there are more and we can always discuss their validity, but it does require reading the actual article and not making a knee jerk anti-whatever post like the person above i replied to.
why are gendered bathrooms a problem? (other than if you think that there are dozens of genders and each needs it’s own)
Gendered bathrooms are just silly, for one thing. Why would I care if the person in the next stall has the same bits as I do? Makes no Athena damned difference to my ability to urinate or defecate. Also, it’s just inefficient: why force all the women to go into one room that’s backed up when the other room has no line and is half empty?
@clay
you may not care what bits the person in the next stall has, but I guarantee you teenage boys will be very interested if it’s a teenage girl in the next stall, and they will do whatever they can to see into that next stall.
so you would need to have much more extensive (and expensive) separation between the stalls, which will make it harder to clean, harder to ventilate, and still cause other grief.
Not being an eyewitness I can’t say for sure, but given the complexity of many female outfits, I would bet a fair bit that girls frequently need to help each other out of (or at least partially out of) their outfits before entering a stall.
@davidelang Maybe those teenage boys shouldn’t be taught that “those are dirty thoughts, repress them” and that “those girl-parts they want to sneak a look at are attached to a human being with feelings; how would you feel if some girls snuck into your locker room and giggled about your parts?”.
Don’t mystify sex and gender, and acknowledge that hormones make desire normal; but teach them not to be pervy rapists. Cause experience taught me that teenage girls would also gladly sneak a peak and objectify guys if they are only taught the bare minimum and expected to “just ignore those teenage emotions.”
You have issues alright…
Personally I identify as a firetruck and therefor I want my bathroom to be set ablaze so that I can piss the fire out.
You think you can piss it out but remember what happenend to the kindergarden-teacher of the southpark-boys.
As a puppy? So, since you seem a bit aggressive towards people you don’t like, and are acting antisocial, can I call the Humane Society to come lock you up? They might decide that you need to be put down, just so you know.
Unlike SJWs, the Humane Society supports less killing.
Pupper may identify puppself as Puppykin, but that is simply pupper gender. They are still a human being.
The important thing is that puppe needs a “Puppy” option on all data entry forms that ask for gender, and a “Puppies-only” restroom.
Everyone knows that fluid, non-spectrum gender identity only exists while convenient for the purpose for getting special treatment.
I was working on a webpage that needed to ask people their gender. A friend and I agreed that an “other” textbox would be undesireable because we can’t expect people to spell things correctly. After a few hours, we’d come up with a UI that offered two modified color-picker controls, a series of textboxes for entering in pronouns, and a handful of checkboxes.
Of course, that still only fits people with a single gender, which means it oppresses people with headmates. The conclusion was that properly tracking genders would require an interface where people can define a list of custom genders and identify them with criteria of when they are active, such as people who shift gender based on time of day, day of week, phase of moon, or season.
We concluded that implementing all that would be much worse than normalizing spelling of different genders, and excluding multi-gendered people who couldn’t fit their gender within 255 chars.
The PC version of “a schizophrenic who hears voices in their head.”
What the fuck was that post, though. The “other” checkbox works great and the reason you couldn’t pick it is quite hard to understand.
The non-snark reply is that none of the many people who find this art piece amusing are asking for bathrooms to be changed. We, those you say are mentally ill, just want to use the bathroom that already exists. Without people standing at the door asking to look inside our pants before/after we pee.
And the non-snark surreply is that if you were actually enough of a gender to use that bathroom, no one would even guess that there was anything amiss.
I like you :D
Obvious next step in the development is a worm hole type portal that auto redirects depending on what the sign is displaying.
This is too lame for words.
agree :D
I keep waiting for someone to make up some Lenticular signs.
Oh You know…. Sort of plays on seeing things from a different viewpoint or perspective changes what you see!
Hey Hackaday, no articles on homemade Lenticular prints!
http://www.instructables.com/id/3D-lenticular-printing-using-Photoshop-and-inkjet-/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Female_urination_device
… just saying…
… does that thing flap its arms up and down to warn you to keep out, following a particularly whiffy curry misadventure?
I’ve personally seen women pee standing up in rural Tanzania, on a long distance bus and hitchhiking trip. They didn’t seem to think it was too strange, even the fact that it was “at the side of the road” where others could see. So I guess everything above and beyond flat ground is just decorum, or a “nice-to have”.Even a tree is a luxury for us men :)
What’s absurd? Thinking you are something you are not… so when do we start pandering to pedophiles because that is just the way they “feel” ? Baby steps…that’s exactly how it happens. Like a frog in boiling water…
Congratulations, you’ve demonstrated your ignorance.
We are hackers. Everything is something it’s not! Please take a peek at the hacker how-to and report back. Thanks!
https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/slippery-slope
You should get a new parable, perhaps one that is based in reality.
http://www.conservationmagazine.org/2011/03/frog-fable-brought-to-boil/
It’s a convenient mental shortcut, and it’s not like people often need accurate information on how to boil frogs alive . I say we keep that parable.
It looks like that’s the bathroom for flashers.
I can’t believe people are offended by this. Hackers have been mocking gender since BEFORE it was cool!
Only in (your) small isolated circles. I’ve never heard of that
Small?
“A vocal minority is not a majority”
Or maybe better phrased as “just because you’re making a lot of noise does not mean you’re big”
excellent example of hypocrisy above…
How does one make everyone feel welcome? All inclusive toilets might make some people feel unsafe whereas toilets assigned to specific genders might make some people feel excluded.
Let’s be honest, there are most likely no right answers without making someone uncomfortable.
The only question is who draws the short end of the stick.
My vote goes out to the solution that makes the least amount of people uncomfortable..
While we are at it, separate drinking fountains would help a lot too. /s
And how about some separation in public transport? That would certainly be a step in the (extreme)right direction.
you really don’t get that people may care more about who could see them or get to them when their pants are down than when they are fully dressed in public do you.
sad
Your sarcastic comment seems to suggest that exclusion would make the least amount of people uncomfortable yet would be unpreferable due to similarities with segregation.
Am I correct in saying that you deem human comfortableness not as the most important quality in this debate? I am genuinely interested.
When I said ‘..least amount of people uncomfortable’ I literally meant just that. I am unsure what would make people the least uncomfortable but if that meant mixed toilets, three different toilets or anything else I would be fine with it.
The hostility in your reaction suggests that you automatically assumed my position which slightly amuses me :’)
There’s no one with MLK’s class in the gender-destruction movement.
Augmented Reality bathroomes.
Put on a set of glasses, and select what one wants to see!
This is for the people who have an issue with unisex bathrooms of course.
Or, the bathrom uses LaserKids’s idea of blinding people with lasers if they look at anyone.
I assure you that most women/sentient-life do not what to be in the blast radius of my bowl movement after a night of East Indian Barbecue. Also, most men do not want to be around the bloodied-stench remains of natures cruel joke.
The people who define themselves by what they are not are certainly dangerous. As these same individuals are often unable to regulate their own emotional state, and will instead focus on manipulating people in their proximity.
Sound familiar?
Be it fantasy or biology… one can choose whatever they like, but you can’t ethically choose for the rest of society.
I identify as having 3 penises like any decent abomination… does that mean I get my own triple urinal and right to harass other people for their ideals? what if one penis is gay, the other bi, and the other strait? Can I sue you for nonconformity with my political views?
The jokes are endless, but people have the right to not accept mental-health problems as normal.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/40/Ghidorah_the_Three-Headed_Monster_1965.jpg
Now see, that wouldn’t work because that involves logic. And in this topsy turvy world, it is no longer acceptable to cater to the majority of the population. We are only allowed to cater to the whims of the FEW and to hell with the rest of society.
If you really think the ‘rest of society’ suffers because of some consideration given to the needs of ‘the few’ then you really are one paranoid mofo. Maybe quit watching Fox? Next time I can’t find a parking space because the number of spaces has been reduced to accommodate ridiculously big pickups and SUVs I’ll remember this, pandering to the big vehicle brigade and whatever it is they need to compensate for.
Least Hackaday worthy article I have read in a while. Sorry to see its come to this.
Nah, that’s just the comments (or maybe, you’re looking deeper into this article than necessary).
Personally, I like the “we don’t care” sign.
Finally a toilet sign that also includes people wearing kilts. Scots will be happy…
I’ve seen some restrooms exchange the signs for just listing the available facilities.
ughh.. can we just skip the political correctness argument and discuss the device?
Franky, I think it’s poorly executed. Spends far too much of it’s time in transitional states. Needs a redesign with a variation of a Geneva mechanism to execute a “snap” action between states.
Also can’t say I’m fond of the barely covered mains wiring….
GCFI outlet probably, but yeah it needs shrink tubing and a case.
Well, discussing the device, the ‘skirt’ is too high, it doesn’t match the standardized symbol. The standard ‘women’ symbol the skirt is covering the legs. This looks like a man taking off his jacket.
The skirts seem to get shorter every year…
Could be a woman in a jacket and pants. Or a guy in a jacket and pants.
I feel like there are better ways of getting the point across.
Either way it still doesn’t match the standardized symbol for women, any point in the cycle it still looks like the standard ‘man’ symbol so it failed to get the point across altogether.
BTW this is not a hack :)
Without the SJW Participation Award, there’s no other reason for this to have made it on the site.
I for one welcome our future, the eusocial huwoman!
Facts and science are hate! Only feelings matter!
If it weren’t for the legislation enacted in many western countries codifying this insanity (or irrational wishing, if you prefer) into laws, this would be hilarous. As it is, it is proof of the descent of mankind into an eusocial hive-mind.
Eff you all, I’m going back to the caves, myself. You can pry my two genders from my dead, science-wielding, emotionless hands. Get off my lawn!
Your science is out of date.
You are confusing democracy with science.
Would you like LMGTFY links to scholarly, peer-reviewed papers, or would that trigger you?
Peer reviewed is useless in social sciences, because they aren’t scholarly. If you have something written by an MD, I’ll consider it.
Way to set your goal posts; making me check not just the journal but finding the education of the authors. Wouldn’t want to throw you someone’s dissertation, they weren’t an MD when they wrote it so you might shrug it off.
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.3109/09540261.2015.1106446
That’s one of the easier ones to find with your strange criteria. But since you wouldn’t believe that indigenous Americans had multiple genders before Christian invaders took over “because social sciences”, maybe you’ll believe it when an MD says about non-binary people:
“While such genders have been extant historically and globally, they remain marginalized, and as such – while not being disorders or pathological in themselves – people with such genders remain at risk of victimization and of minority or marginalization stress as a result of discrimination.”
You truly mean to consider it, you have a starting point.
I’ll accept that life is harder with a mental illness. That’s not a huge leap.
I don’t give a flying fig what Indians thought about gender — they also thought you could heal illnesses with crystals, so I don’t count them as medical geniuses.
Two gender toilets work just fine. The gender neutral among us just have to choose which to take a shit in and that’s it. Either that or save it up till they get home.
i for one loved the futurama solution.
one poop removal please.
Farnsworth: “What I love most about the tentacle is that i don’t need to move my bowels anymore. It’s all handled by that family in Evanston.”
— Futurama : The Beast with a Billion Backs (2008)
So I’m going to have to be the person to say it? FINE! Not a hack. ;)
I’m disappointed that only red people are allowed to use that bathroom; racist!
Blue people don’t deserve restrooms of their own, they can do their business outside like the rest of the animals.
From what I have heard, women’s bathrooms can get way more disgusting then the men’s. Was talking to the owner of a antique mall and one of the biggest expense is cleaning supplies for the bathrooms and they had some horror stories.
I have just bought a motor just like this for a automaton project I am working on. Does the motor get hot running such a small load?
That motor wont get hot at all. Made to spin burritos and instant noodles.
Author here. Motor gets blazingly hot. I would guess 150F.
I think synchronous motors are intrinsically inefficient, but I don’t know why.
No, synchronous machines (motors) can be incredibly efficient. Especially the big generators in the power stations. It all depends on size and construction. This small motors have to fulfill only one primary design goal (except the motion function): to be cheap.
But I would not consider 65°C as “blazing hot” anyway.
Author here.
Perhaps it is the gearing? I imagine it is being geared down at least 1000x. Either way, the next version is going to be a dual pendulum design with a solar circuit that gives EM impulses to keep the motion going perpetually, like the solar waving cats. I will post a link here when it is up. It feels hot enough to burn skin if you touch it for more than 30 seconds. I have not done that, but I also don’t have a thermocouple. This version was designed and built during a very short time and I hope to build a nicer one soon. The skirt is too short due to the constraint of having the cleave along the centerline. The next version may have a longer skirt to satisfy all the lovely pedants of the internet. :-)
“I guess…”
“I think…”
If you’re here for legitimate reasons, please continue, however, many here will call you out if you are perceived to have an agenda that is political in nature.
I’ve seen the attack on video games and the players themselves, we fall back, systemd gets pushed on linux distros via the same kind of tactics, we fall back, they infiltrate entire communities and lay waste to them with covenants and codes of conduct.
Remember Atheism+?
The line must be drawn here, this far and no further. Hackaday has remained relatively apolitical until now, let’s keep it that way please.
Oh what the fuck man, that was uncalled for – it wasn’t him that organized this shitshow of comments, and you’re in no position to warn anybody.
Went to Instructables comments to see some *discussion*, wasn’t disappointed.
Now this comment section is great, too!
Rest assured — when you see something on this site that isn’t a hack, it pushes a leftist agenda.
lefties everywhere! coming for your wife and daughters with their strange inclusive points of view!
arse.
And how are current bathroom sings exclusive?
You are only inclusive of the people who think like you.
It’s a thorny philosophical question; do you ‘include’ people who are opposed to your values (allowing the free speech of people who would shut down free speech if they could etc). And, believe it or not, there isn’t a ‘lefist’ rule book from which I’m quoting but, yes, all should be included. That doesn’t mean views can’t be challenged (the very nature of a true democracy, free speech etc). But, again, yes, no one should be excluded and I’ve yet to see evidence of who exactly of the ‘normal majority’ has been excluded by some consideration to the needs (whatever…) of trans folk etc. Aren’t we big enough for it not to be an issue?
And, for the record, I don’t really get this hack or what it’s trying to say.
If they were everywhere, you wouldn’t see these complaints. They aren’t everywhere.
They’re just running this site. Poorly.
Well HaD…that went horribly, horribly wrong. This dumpster fire of a reply thread makes me feel like I’m reading the comments on YouTube. You made “binary” sound like an insult, you condone throwing logic out the window to instead pander to a fringe demographic with a mediocre (at best) middle school level electronics project and you probably can’t figure out why the entire thread of discussion is overly-politicized refuse.
I don’t come to HaD for this garbage…that’s what facebook is for.
so comforting to know that even in this supposed “counter-culture” community, this bigoted comment thread pops up.
Bigotry IS counter-culture. When was the last time you saw someone Establishment (a professor, a CEO, a politician) expressing views like this?
I don’t know, I see it all the time. It’s beautiful how each side sees itself as outnumbered and endangered.
the endless victim complex of fundamentalists, of every creed.
including the ones who claim to have no creed
are there any of those?
The progressive foundations (usual suspects) generously fund many hacker-spaces. In return, all they ask is for us to shut up while they promote their agenda, and we get to play with all the cool tools they pay for. So just shut up and nod, and get back to work.
When you stop and look at how successful they’ve been, well heck. Obama was the nations #1 gun salesman. I bet many gun dealers were very sad to see him go. It will take several generations more at best to nudge folks into Idiocracy, a Brave New World, or 1984. By then, technology will have made the uniquely human intelligence (with concomitant ability to recognize and act on the self-evident obvious) too valuable a commodity to dumb or drug away. Intelligence and servility are mutually exclusive.
Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed. So laugh at fools, shut up and take their money.
Or maybe the absurdity lies in being completely convinced that we define gender based on toilet signs. They’re not supposed to mean that men must wear pants and women most wear dresses. And in case you haven’t noticed, no one is going around telling women to wear dresses cause they don’t match the toilet figures.
Why does everything have to be about gender these days?
Personally I find this bathroom discussion horribly selfish. Due to society (debate this how you like) most people in the western world prefer to use communal bathrooms with members of the same gender. The gender of their fellow bathroom users is determined by appearance (not just by “equipment”). So if you look like a guy use the male bathroom, and if you look like a girl use the female bathroom. It isn’t about what makes you comfortable, but what makes everyone else less uncomfortable.
You’re right, and that way worked for 100 years. The problems came about when there were people who insisted that, despite having obvious sexual markers indicating fraud (i.e. big men with full beards wearing obvious wigs insisting they had a right to use the women’s bathroom) that this came to a head.
All of the actual transexuals I know don’t want any of this. They don’t want 31 genders — they just want to use the other one. They work very, very hard to get rid of any indicators of their undesired sex. They’ve never had problems with being called about being in the “wrong” bathroom because they don’t look like they are in the wrong bathroom.
This isn’t about them. This is about freaks who insist on looking like freaks, but being unwilling to pay the costs that come with being a freak like we did when we were younger, because they are soft and weak.
Something obviously went very wrong with this generation’s potty training.
I was going to back away slowly, but instead would like to raise the spectre of arch-conspiracy-theorizing.
I believe this entire debate was designed by marketing firms, social engineering professionals, and some group of international banking funded operatives bent on providing endless discussion material that does not involve incomes, the rights of workers, the nature of our social contract as it applies to how our tax supported infrastructure is opened to those who didnt contribute taxes to it’s creation, and so on.
In other words, this is bait to prevent something like a new Occupy Wallstreet movement.
There’s the old technique, of claiming the loonies represent mainstream Leftist thinking. So ordinary people, who are probably fairly decent, support their fellow man, and expect a fair day’s wage, paid holidays, and weekends off, see the Left as nothing but a bunch of spoiled, entitled children.
Meanwhile, the Labour Movement and Left wing social improvements have succeeded so well, that people see the things they got us, as “normal”, as how life has always been. They don’t recognise the left-wing values that they hold.
Depending on how you phrase things, there isn’t a huge amount of difference between “left” and “right” wing ordinary people, on issues that actually affect lives. The problem is the ludicrously partisan nature of modern politics. Each side stereotypes and demonises the other, and immediately puts up the barricades and fires up the slogan launchers. Both sides use rhetoric exclusively, instead of just saying what they fucking MEAN!
Meanwhile society’s being taken for a ride by a few rich and powerful people, running the world for their own benefit. And nobody notices it, because the News concentrates on stupid shit, and nobody actually does any investigative journalism any more.
Will the Left ever declare that they have succeeded? or will they move the goalposts yet again and claim that the new problem (gender segregated bathrooms) is just as bad as the old problem (racially segregated housing and services)?
note that it’s now the Left who is demanding racially segregated housing and graduations at colleges.
I think you might be on to something mate.
Interesting. I think it may be also because the young in the West (I think USA specifically, maybe) simply have too little to do, so they invent unimportant diversions to keep themselves occupied. All the while, terrorism and actual economic inequality rage.
Maybe, but I think there’s something else at work too. The real problems are so complex (or at least appear to be, because of what’s in the media) that the human mind cannot get a handle on them. At some point a mind adrift grabs onto a problem they can “understand”. The net result is a lot of people worried about some Kardashian’s back side and the sign on a bathroom door, all while the world burns.
Funny comment section. I learned long ago that knowing how to do something typically done by intelligent people doesn’t automatically make you intelligent. Nor does being intelligent guarantee that you apply that intelligence equally throughout all of your life and opinions. Change happens regardless of your opinion, embrace it or hate life. Change doesn’t care.
Yes, but can it administer Zyklon B?
Gender is binary in humans., regardless of what ultra-lefties want to believe. This article is lame and this is not worrthy of Hackaday. This is just ultra-lefty Huffington Post stupidity.
Depends on if you mean biological gender, which is pretty straight forward, or the complicated social construct we all typically think of as gender.
The social construct is also binary. The psudoconstructs created outside the social compact are inherently anti-social.
“bathroom signage is largely predicated on the idea that there are two rigid genders which all humans must be sorted into, and they’re defined by whether you’re wearing pants or a dress”
This is what’s known as “lying for effect”.