This might be old news for some of you, but I just accidentally stumbled across this gem. (Yeah, I do not diligently follow the news, thus I often miss things.) In order to promote social distancing, Colombia had to come up with a rather transphobic idea.
Bogota is making it easier for police to make sure citizens are complying with a lockdown: on even days women can go out to buy basic necessities such as food and medicine, on odd days just men…
The new gender restrictions… make it easier for police to identify who is violating the lockdown.
For transgender people, the restriction is determined by the gender they identify with, according to the decree published by Lopez’s office.
Peru and Panama imposed similar gender limits to stem the spread of Covid-19.
Police officers sure can just glance at some person and correctly identify their gender identity. This is especially simple for non-binary people and people who cannot pass for their preferred gender. There’s no way a person’s gender identity might possibly differ from how their body looks like. /sarcasm tag
If this kind of shit happened in a city where I live, it would become impossible for me to leave the house on any day at all. I am agender, but I prefer to live as male. I feel more comfortable with what other people consider a stereotypically masculine gender performance/gender expression. Nonetheless, I cannot visually pass for a man. On top of that, my passport states that I am female. Result: I could not go out at all, neither with men nor with women. If I went grocery shopping together with women, that would cause me emotional pain. If I went grocery shopping with men, I would turn into a nervous wreck constantly looking around myself, waiting for some kind of attack—I’d expect either somebody to harass me or the police to arrest me for not following the law.
Gender segregated spaces are a terrible idea. It’s already a problem that people who cannot visually pass for their preferred gender routinely get harassed in public restrooms. Experiencing this whenever they leave the house… Holy shit!
Besides, some people are non-binary, they are neither male nor female. Even if transphobia didn’t exist and nobody got harassed in public places for being visibly trans, forcing non-binary people to pick one gender would still remain immoral.
If they wanted to limit the population going out by half, they could said even and off last digits on ID. Taiwan allows the purchase of masks at pharmacies based on your government ID number – people with odd last digits buy on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, even numbers the other days. They’re not sold on Sundays.
or month of birth, or even/odd house or apartment number. which actually might be more effective, as it’s more likely to reduce transmission between households in addition to just reducing the number of people about.
I wonder if this is even necessary. Are people really so unwilling to comply unless you police them?
Nobody is policing my daily movements, but I do not go shopping every day anyway. Where I live, the government politely told people to stay at home as much as possible and to go grocery shopping as rarely as they can and buy more food every time they visit a grocery store. My impression is that most people are complying without any surveillance and policing. Grocery stores have published statistics about how nowadays the average size of a shopping basket has increased a lot and that there are also fewer customers in stores. My own observation is also that nowadays most shoppers buy full baskets of groceries rather than just a few items.
In my case, whenever I enter a store, I always buy as much food as I can carry. I don’t have a car, thus I cannot possibly buy enough food to last my family for two weeks, but I still try to go shopping as rarely as I can given my limited muscle mass.
Taiwan limits people’s purchase of masks because of production limitations (those for domestic use, and those being exported to dozens of countries). Even when people are allowed to buy, they’re limited to a certain number. How many you buy is entered into the medicare system so no one can buy at multiple places and hoard them.
I have bus and subway stops less than 200m from home, so lugging heavy items isn’t an issue. For larger shopping trips, I take my folding metal shopping cart. I may look like somebody’s grandmother, but I’d rather pull 15-20kg on wheels than carry it.
Excuse the typos and grammatical errors in the earlier comment. Typing and editing on a phone is terrible.
Well, that makes sense.
Depending on where I go shopping, I have to carry my groceries anywhere between one and three kilometers. Public transport exists here, but I don’t have enough money to pay 1.15 euros for the luxury of riding one or two kilometers. I pay for transport only when the distances are so long that I cannot walk.
The result is that I can buy maybe 8 kilograms of groceries. 10 at most. I’m not sure if I can even lift 20 kg bags let alone carry them.
Obviously, I have considered a shopping bag with wheels, but I live on the fifth floor in a home without an elevator. Even if I could get heavier shopping bags home by putting them on wheels, I would still hate having to carry the whole thing up the stars.
A few years ago I used to buy 50 kg of cabbage in order to make my own sauerkraut for the winter. Putting the whole thing on wheels and rolling it home was easy. Getting the cabbage up the stairs was the real pain. Lately I have started to just buy ready-made sauerkraut. It costs more, but damn, carrying cabbage up the stairs is no fun. Problems like these make me wish I could get testosterone.
You don’t need to carry the cart up the stairs, pull it up one step at a time. The wheels will roll up the riser (the flat vertical part) without any friction. Think of it like using a rope pulley: It takes twice as long, but requires half the effort.
If you need a break, you can stop at a landing. As long as you don’t let go (and you don’t have steps with a weird camber), the cart won’t fall back down.
@Intransitive, #1: That would require people to be carrying official ID with them at all times. And no government would ever abuse that, would they?
Because things can’t just be bad enough that some scum can’t make them worse.
With apologies to useful and harmless algal / bacterial and other natural “scums”.