This ‘male’ ‘female’ and ‘gay’ toilet sign has got people a little confused
A toilet sign in Italy which separates ‘gay’ from ‘male’ and ‘female’ loo-users has baffled LGBT activists in the country.
The bed and breakfast inCavallino, in the Lecce region of Italy, put up a bathroom sign with ‘gay’ as a separate symbol to male and female.
The sign was reported by Nuovo Quotidiano di Puglia, and shows the typical male and female symbols, along with the third symbol for ‘gay’, with a figure scratching its head.
LGBT rights groups in the country have denounced the sign, saying it seems to be a confusion between sexual orientation and gender identity.
Gianluca Rollow from the LGBT organiastion LEA said the sign is “homophobic”, and that it is “misleading”.
He said: “It’s shocking that in 2017 there are still cases like this, where there’s great confusion between gender identity and sexual orientation, and it’s flaunted in such misleading and homophobic signs in public places, which are demeaning and do much harm.”
According to Ansa, the bed and breakfast has agreed to take down the sign.
Bathrooms and trans bathroom usage are a big issue globally in the fight for trans equality.
An anti-bathroom bill group has launched a biting campaign against the Texas bathroom bill legislation which would see transgender people forced to use bathrooms that do not correspond to their gender identity.
Senate Bill 3 (SB 3) is identical to anti-trans legislation in North Carolina.
Senate Bill 91 was passed. The two pieces of legislature are almost identical.
It was passed despite ten hours of testimonies from people opposing it.
Those who testified explained that the Bill was likely to have a negative impact on mental health and that suicide rates may go up among the trans community if their rights were rolled back.
A Republican Senator who supported the bill, Craig Estes, said that the Bill would not be at fault if this were the case.
“I’m hearing that it’s somehow our fault that people are committing suicide. Another explanation could be that people are depressed,” he said.
He added that he is sure that “it would be depressing to be trying to figure out which gender you are,” but that suicide rates could not be solely accounted to that.
SB 6 was a similar bill that was passed earlier this year in the Senate, but it failed in the house.
Senator Lois Kolkhorst, who authored all three pieces of legislature, said in the opening of the hearing for SB 3 that it was a “Texan tradition” to “take care of these issues”.
Business owners in Texas have condemned the Bill and the financial impact that it may have as HB2 cost North Carolina more than $3.76 billion.
The family of a transgender 8-year-old is suing a private school for “intentional infliction of emotional distress” after the school allegedly refused to use female pronouns or let her use the female restroom.
Several similar cases in the US have reached court in the past year.
Cases in Florida, Maine, Colorado and Wisconsin are generally centred around bathroom access and locker rooms.
Some states have also moved to attempt to block the use of public and school restrooms by transgender people.
