With Alaskans and the rest of America confused, sometimes angry and arguing over humans with penises being allowed to use spaces once reserved for humans without penises, maybe it’s time to update the old standards for designating facilities for use by males or females.

The issue here isn’t really one of sex or gender, though that is how some have tried to define it. The issue here is one of equipment.

Some women, possibly many women, do not like having penises in their restrooms, locker rooms or bathing areas and understandably so. Humans with penises have a bad reputation for, at best, leering at humans without penises and, at worst, sexually assaulting humans without penises.

This serves to leave many of the people without penises uncomfortable if not actually afraid of being naked, semi-naked or otherwise exposed in spaces shared with people with penises.

On the other hand, this is rarely the case for the people with penises. Most of them don’t seem to care all that much about the genitalia of the people sharing their restrooms, locker rooms or bathing areas, and some might well welcome those lacking penises to these spaces except maybe on the rare occasions when all the stalls are full and they really need the use of a toilet.

Whatever the case, it seems the penis problem of these times could largely be solved by changing the labels on segregated facilities from those nice international symbols for and   to symbols for   and .

This might leave unhappy the minority of people with penises who wish to fully identify at all times as people without penises,  but sending them to facilities used by people both with and without penises would provide them at least some opportunity to feel loved by everyone.

Theoretically, there should be enough fully liberated and trans-community-loving people without penises using the any-sex facilities that the people with penises who want to be accepted as people without penises would feel their desires protected without having to invade the space reserved for people uncomfortable with penises.

Common courtesy

And this relabeling could put at ease those without penises looking for penis-free places to take a shower, do their business, change clothes or do any of the other things they have long done in what were once considered women-only spaces.

That there is a debate about this desire for privacy in the wake of Patricia Silva’s outrage at finding a man shaving in the women’s locker room at the Fairbanks Planet Fitness is no more than a sign of how confused the situation has become.

Take it from the “fact checkers” at Snopes:

“Planet Fitness does not allow men to use women’s facilities such as bathrooms and locker rooms, and vice versa.

“The gym, however, does allow transgender women to use the women’s locker room and bathroom and transgender men to use the men’s facilities. And like many other businesses, it has a corporate policy that prohibits discrimination based on gender identity and gender expression. According to the gym’s policies, members are allowed to use facilities that correspond with their self-identified gender.”

Snopes, which has helped to make a joke of journalistic “fact checking” with its abandonment of logic, does not even attempt to explain how men can be prohibited from using the women’s locker room and bathroom if anyone with “junk in the trunk,” as it used to be said, can pull on a wig and claim to be a “transgender woman.”

The writers at Snopes clearly don’t understand the problem, which is a fundamental clash between facts and feelings. Sexual identification is based on the former. Humans are born with male sex organs or female sex organs with the exception of rare individuals who are born with both and that is usually surgically changed in early childhood.

This is how nature expresses its view on the procreation of all species of mammalian life, and without these factual differences, none of us would exist.

But then there are feelings. We all have them, and for whatever reason they are not always in line with the sex organs with which people are born. Ask one-time Olympic hero Bruce Jenner who underwent sex change surgery to become the now-penis free Caitlyn Jenner. 

No one should have any problem with Jenner now using a facility reserved for people without penises given that his was removed. And everyone should have sympathy for those in the position Bruce found himself trapped while longing to be Caitlyn.

Thankfully, this is something that can now be fixed thanks to the miracle of modern medicine.

One problem, however, remains. Not everyone with a penis wants to transition from male to female in order to be treated as a person without a penis. Some want to hang onto their male equipment and only act like they are female some or all of the time.

“Possible steps in a gender transition may or may not (emphasis added) include changing your clothing, appearance, name, or the pronoun people use to refer to you (like ‘she,’ ‘he,’ or ‘they’). If they can, some people change their identification documents, like their driver’s license or passport, to better reflect their gender. And some people undergo hormone therapy or other medical procedures to change their physical characteristics and make their body match the gender they know themselves to be,” according to the National Center for Transgender Equality “(But) all transgender people are entitled to the same dignity and respect, regardless of whether or not they have been able to take any legal or medical steps.

“Some transgender people identify as neither a man nor a woman, or as a combination of male and female, and may use terms like nonbinary or genderqueer to describe their gender identity. Those who are nonbinary often prefer to be referred to as ‘they’ and them.'”

Who “they”

No one can know what is going on in the minds of those “they.” Someone identifying “as a combination of male and female” could one day be in the women’s locker room or bathroom identifying as a woman and the next day be there identifying as a man wanting to ogle naked or half-naked women.

The latter possibility is sure to raise the anxieties of some natural-born females like Silva, who found herself in a “women’s” locker room with a human with a penis, because there is no way to know what is going on in the mind of the person with the penis.

This person might be a man who feels trapped in a woman’s body, a “they” who identifies as both male or female, or even what used to be called simply a “pervert.” And there is little doubt that there natural-born males with no interest in transitioning to females, or actually spending much time acting as females, who would enjoy hanging out in a women’s locker room or visiting a woman’s restroom.

That those with penises like to peer at those without penises is well documented by the many businesses that have made money providing men the opportunity to look at naked and half-naked females. And there is a notable lack of such businesses catering to those without penises who want to peer at naked or half-naked males.

Silva, to return to what happened with a person with a penis in a Planet Fitness in Fairbanks, ended up in trouble for taking a picture of him shaving in front of a mirror. Some among the Progressive crowd, who like to claim to be open-minded while being among the most close-minded people in the country, appear to think this is fine.

Except it’s not. Anyone who understands reflection can recognize that a mirror provides the perfect opportunity to observe everything behind while appearing to be paying attention to what is in front.

A person with a penis standing in front of a mirror could be fully involved in shaving, or he could be using the mirror to eye others in the locker room behind him.

Silva, of course, broke club rules when she took his photo in a space where photography is prohibited, Planet Fitness having yet to modify its rules to prevent discrimination against those wishing to capture photographs wherever they want to capture photographs.

The great irony there is that Planet Fitness thinks the “privacy” of a clothed person with a penis in an area theoretically reserved for those people without penises should be protected while ignoring the standards that led to the creation of male and female locker rooms in the first place, the protection of privacy for people without penises who don’t like to risk exposing themselves to people with penises.

Now granted, changing the designations of locker rooms, restrooms and bathrooms from male and female to “either sex” or “no penises” won’t satisfy everyone. There is no perfect solution because life, unfortunately, isn’t fair.

Just ask any of the natural-born males who in their minds wanted to be the next Bruce (not Caitlyn) Jenner, but were not genetically gifted the athletic skills necessary to achieve that burning desire, or the very average American student who could never become the scholar she longed to be because she wasn’t genetically gifted the intelligence.

Few people in this world get to be what they in their mind’s eye want to be and the transgendered among us might do well to recognize this. Male- and female-designated spaces are not about you in a democratic society; they are about creating what works best for the vast majority of members of that society.

And that, sadly, is an idea too many in this country seem to have forgotten.