I guess I don't get it. Why do we even have men's and women's bathrooms? I understand that urinals are more efficient so why not just section off the urinals and the stalls and call it a day. Things would be more efficient that way. Dressing rooms and showers are still a problem and should be according to birth or legal gender because otherwise you leave a voyerism loophole where a guy can just hang out in the ladies shower and say he self identified as female. As for the boycott it's probably not actually related but just an excuse to cover up financial issues/risks without spooking the investors. DB is in big financial trouble and this is just an excuse to cut their losses
There has been a surprising amount of boycotting as a result of this law. I'm surprised. Where was this during the gay rights fight? Was I just not paying attention? Possibly it wasn't focused enough. Easy to boycott NC, hard to boycott 31 separate states. But transgender rights seems like an odd place for a lot of random businesses to suddenly make a stand. I was honestly under the impression that mainstream activists of the sort who ballooned the gay rights movement hadn't really "heard of" transgender rights yet.
Could be that until the SCOTUS decision, gay marriage went unrecognized on a federal level, with state exceptions. To boycott the states that didn't individually recognize gay marriage would be hypocritical without boycotting the federal policy that allowed those states to function that way. Now the mandate is reversed. Nothing in federal law or the constitution suggests that trans people ought to be discriminated against in this way or any way- nothing exempts them from enjoying the same civil rights as everybody else. So if a state chooses to craft a law as NC has done, it stands counter to current federal policy. Much easier to boycott un-hypocritically. Could also be that gay marriage sent a clear signal re. popular opinion. Polls are pretty unambiguous- a majority of folks support gay marriage; support from the right is behind, but growing. Public response after Obergefell demonstrated that more tangibly. In the aftermath, businesses as well as other political actors may feel more comfortable signalling support on a range of LGBT issues (I know "gay" and "trans" issues ought not not always be conflated, but I'm not sure how that nuance translates in the larger political climate). And- totally speculating- but could be something about the nature of this law in regards to state policy countermanding local policy...? Maybe if a company sees that a state is willing to shit on local ordinance, that gives them reason to believe that future application of such policy could further hurt local operation of business. Dunno. Could also be that businesses have used their clout to boycott similar issues in the past, but didn't get as much publicity. Could probably be looked up, but I'm on my phone and anyways it's time to get off the toilet and make a sandwich and study.