I know that North Carolina is the State of Hate (TM) while Massachusetts is all about love, but I went for my annual workout and found this sign at the Boston Sports Club in Waltham:
How is this different from the North Carolina law that marks the Ignorant Southerners as haters? (And, as is well-established, haters are going to hate.)
One of my Facebook friends resolved the apparent contradiction by saying that the Massachusetts lovers who put up the sign meant to write “gender” rather than the biological or birth certificate-derived “sex.” Massachusetts lovers and North Carolina haters have more or less the same laws regarding amending the sex designation on a birth certificate. If we put up this sign are we actually distinguishable from the haters of North Carolina?
[Separately, will they have to take down this sign if the new transgender bill becomes law? (The governor says that it will.)]
Related:
The reason it’s hate in NC but simply creating a safe space for women and girls in MA is because shut up.
1. Perhaps you should ask the Boston Sports Club?
2. Regardless, that’s a decision of a private business versus a part of a bigger law (“Religious Liberty”) that applied to public restrooms
3. You can look at it either way I suppose. Your Facebook friend had an alternative view. Maybe the sign is as simple as they believe 5 year olds are old enough to use the appropriate locker and no longer need their parent to escort/help them and they weren’t think about transgender people at all.
Please have mercy on readers with dial-up connections and don’t post huge images that take fifteen minutes to load, if they load at all. Thanks.
agree with Jitesh, as it’s the same policy as YMCA near me — although the YMCA doesn’t think children are as self-reliant as does BSC since the age cut-off is six years old (must be below age 6). More a convenience for parents than anything else, but anytime my husband was there with us during our kids’ pre-school/kindergarten years, thank God Philip’s nephews went with him so I could take my shower in peace. More to do with young kids wrecking havoc in the locker room, and therefore needing supervision until about age 6 (having stepped on soggy goldfish crackers, never mind that food is prohibited in the locker rooms at the Y). Happy to be in a spin studio & locker room which is bereft of children now that mine are mostly grown-up. I think minimum age is 16 in Montgomery County to use fitness equipment, and that therefore there aren’t kids on the premises in many gyms in my area. YMCA was more child-friendly:-) Actually hats off to BSC for welcoming young children at all although some of the higher end clubs near me, e.g., Equinox, Sport & Health, offer children’s fitness programs.
‘Massachusetts Lovers’ — The most racist people I ever met were folks in South Boston.
So there still are dial-up connections these days … Since the average web page nowadays is 2.3 MB (see below), I assume you are normally a very patient person. Too bad Phil’s rather modest image was the straw that broke the camel’s back.
http://www.wired.com/2016/04/average-webpage-now-size-original-doom/
http://httparchive.org/trends.php