Alan Grayson - The Great Transgender bathroom issue Well worth watching

http://samuel-warde.com/2016/05/alan-grayson-gop-bathroom-bill/

Watch Rep. Alan Grayson take to the House floor to eviscerate the GOP over NC’s “Bathroom Bill.”

“I rise today to address the great American bathroom controversy,” Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL) declared from the House floor. CSPAN then caught the fiery progressive in fine fettle as he proceeded to eviscerate his GOP colleagues for their support of North Carolina’s “Bathroom Bill.”

Alan Grayson motioned towards a blown-up photo next to him and introduced the late Christine Jorgensen, the first widely-known transgender woman. Born in 1926 as George, she grew up in the Bronx like Alan Grayson did, went to the public school where his father taught and was drafted into the US Army for World War II in 1945. She’d always struggled with having the wrong gender identity and travelled to Denmark for estrogen treatments and gender reassignment surgery. In 1953 she made her full transition to her true identity as Christine Jorgensen, made big headlines in the news, and went on to become an entertainer with a popular stage act.

Alan Grayson explained that back in the day, “she was the most famous, if you will, transgender person in America.”

“Christine Jorgensen was out, she was well-known in America as someone who was transgender, I knew about her story when I was growing up in the 1960’s and 1970’s. She made no effort to hide, she didn’t feel any shame about it. In fact, she’s proud of the fact that she’s been able to take advantage of what medicine had to offer, and lived the life that she felt she would have been able to live from the beginning if she’d had the proper gender.”

Of course it may have been easier for Americans to accept her back when it was still seen as okay to make lame transgender jokes. It probably helped that gender conforming folks felt less threatened since LGBT people very kindly and conveniently stayed in the closet. Still, Alan Grayson pointedly mentioned that never once did he ever hear anyone try to dictate what bathroom Christine Jorgensen could use.

“Now, I have to tell you, I don’t know exactly where she went when she had to go. I don’t know exactly whether she went into a men’s room or a ladies’ room, but here’s the interesting thing […] No one even bothered to ask. I don’t remember anybody saying ‘Christine Jorgensen, she ought to go to the men’s room, she was born a male.'”