You know, those of you in Gainesville, Florida or Montgomery County, Maryland or elsewhere, you lost.  Here’s a new crusade (remember $4 gasoline?) you can embark on (leave, go, and just let transgender people pee in peace) …

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (AP) — Before her wedding last year, Huda Batterjee went abroad to buy her bridal lingerie — she just couldn’t bear the humiliation of discussing her most intimate apparel with a man.

She had little choice: there are almost no saleswomen in Saudi Arabia.

Now a group of Saudi women — sick of having to deal with male sales staff when buying bras or panties, not to mention frilly negligees or thongs — have launched a campaign this week to boycott lingerie stores until they employ women.

It’s an irony of the kingdom’s strict segregation of the sexes. Only men are employed as sales staff to keep women from having to deal with male customers or work around men.

But in lingerie stores, that means men are talking to women about bras or thongs, looking them up and down to determine their cup sizes, even rubbing the underwear to show how stains can be washed out.

The result is mortifying for everyone involved — shoppers, salesmen, even the male relatives who accompany the women.

“When I buy underwear in Saudi, some salesmen say, ‘This is not the right size for you,’” said Batterjee. “You feel almost taken advantage of. Why is he looking at me in this way?”

So for her wedding trousseau, the 26-year-old went to neighboring Dubai to shop. She now lives in Virginia with her husband.

Heba al-Akki, a businesswoman who supports the boycott, said when she shops for underwear, “I go to a store, pick this, this and that and leave quickly. It’s as if I’m buying illegal stuff.”

It’s not easy on the salesmen either.

At one lingerie boutique in a Riyadh mall Wednesday, salesmen blushed when asked about their jobs. All said they back the campaign to hire female sales staff.

“Even in such open regions as the U.S. and Europe, men do not sell underwear to women,” said store manager Husam al-Mutayim, a 27-year-old Egyptian. “I don’t let any of my female relatives buy underwear from men. It’s just too embarrassing.”

Mannequins — headless in keeping with a ban on realistic depictions of women — were displayed in the shop window dressed in modest pajamas. Inside, racks held an array of colorful bras, lacy panties and sexy nighties — along with more day-to-day undergarments.

Under Saudi Arabia’s strict interpretation of Islamic law, women are required to cover themselves head-to-toe in black robes in public. But in the privacy of their own homes — and bedrooms — they can wear whatever they want, and sexy undergarments are popular.

But buying them is another story. Fitting rooms are banned in the kingdom — the idea of a woman undressing in a public place with men just outside is unthinkable. So a woman is never sure she has chosen the right size until she gets it home.

“I have bras with sizes ranging from 32 to 38 because I can’t get to try them on,” said Modie Batterjee, Huda’s sister and one of the boycott organizers.

Even male relatives get dragged into the embarrassment. Women are allowed to shop without a male relative, but husbands or brothers sometimes insist on coming along — or the women want them there — to ensure salesmen stay respectful.

Modie Batterjee recalls how her husband fled a lingerie store because he could not bear to hear her explain to a salesman that she wanted high-waisted underwear to hold in her tummy after their daughter’s birth.

The boycott was launched on Tuesday by about 50 women who gathered in the Red Sea port of Jiddah at the Al-Bidaya Breast-feeding Resource and Women’s Awareness Center, which is run by Modie Batterjee.

The aim is to push for implementation of a law that has been on the books since 2006 which says only female staff can be employed in women’s apparel stores.

The law has never been put into effect, partly due to hard-liners in the religious establishment who oppose employing women in mixed environments like malls, where religious police are always on the lookout to keep men and women from interacting.

Hiring women would also deprive men of jobs in a country where more than 10 percent of men are unemployed.

“We are raising awareness and calling for the implementation of the law,” said Reem Asaad, a finance lecturer at Dar al-Hikma Women’s College in Jiddah, who supports the boycott.

The campaign calls on women to shop at the country’s few women-only lingerie stores. Usually stand-alone boutiques or located in malls that have women-only sections, these shops have no windows to ensure passing men cannot look in — and giving women the freedom to actually try things on.

How much impact the boycott call will have is unclear. Almost 1,700 people signed an online petition posted by Asaad on the social networking Web site Facebook. A few Saudi papers have written about it, but the campaign depends mostly on word of mouth.

Not all women support the idea. At the Riyadh lingerie shop on Wednesday, one woman — only her eyes visible through the black veil covering her face — said she is suspicious of women-only lingerie shops.

“Bad things happen there,” she said.

What might that be?

Women can sneak a picture of you changing with their mobile phones, she replied and refused to give her name.

Saudi woman launch lingerie shop boycott

An interesting story in the news today from Uganda via All.Africa.com.  It sounds like transgender Georgina has been re-educated, and it reads like a parody propaganda piece.

Sadly, whenever some progress regarding GLBT rights is glimpsed on the civil level (not just in Uganda), you can generally count on a response like this from fundamentalist religionists.  Kampala today, Gainesville (ought to be some wicked sermons next Sunday) tomorrow?

A man shocked parents on Sunday when he confessed to recruiting school children into homosexuality as part of a programme to promote the practice in Ugandan schools.

George Oundo said funders gave them “much money” and training abroad and that he would target mostly the needy children who had problems of tuition and pocket money and “others who like outings.”

Oundo warned parents to know their children’s friends. Homosexuals, he added, were targeting mostly children “because they are easy to initiate and they like easy things”.

Oundo said he got seriously involved in promoting homosexuality in 2003. “I was taken to Nairobi for training,” he said. “I used to supply pornographic materials in form of books and compact discs showing homosexuality to young boys in many schools,” he explained.

The training, he said, was facilitated by Gay and Lesbian Coalition. “I also got the pupils’ telephone contacts. We used to meet with both girls and boys in schools during ceremonial parties,” he asserted.

He said he only stopped his activities after becoming a Born-again Christian. He told all this to about 50 parents attending a seminar at Hotel Triangle, Kampala on Sunday. It was organised by Family Life Network, a local charity which promotes family values.

Oundo said he got saved at Pastor Martin Sempa’s church, the Inter-Faith Rainbow Coalition against Homosexuality, based at Makerere University Kampala.

Oundo asserted that he had been a renown gay and lesbian activist for five years and had operated under the umbrella group, Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG). He said he had taken on the female role and his name was Georgina.

“Praise God. Recently I realised that I have been victimising young people into devilish ways,” Oundo said. “I confess before the parents of the victimised children and they should forgive me.”

He hoped to go back to his former school, Muyenga High (Jinja), where he recruited many students and repent.

He said he was initiated into the vice at 12 by friends like Victor Mukasa, a gay activist, after his parents separated and he was being raised by a single mother.

“I was brought up in a poor family. Lack of parental care, love and the loneliness may have led me to join gay activities,” he added.

Oundo said he experienced a transgender transition because he “wanted to be a woman”. “Just go to the Internet and Google the name Georgina and you will see how I have been defending gay activism,” he explained.

Oundo said homosexuality was spread by international human rights organisations. He said after he denounced the gay activities, he received threats from a gay activist who accused him of betrayal.

George ‘Georgina’ Oundo and another gay activist, “Brenda” Kiiza, were arrested on September 10, 2008, for “recruiting homosexuals”. But they were released on September 18, 2008 after their lawyer and the international human rights organisation, Human Rights Watch, protested.

In July 2005, local government officers raided the home of Juliet Victor Mukasa, the former chairperson of SMUG. They seized documents and arrested another lesbian activist. Mukasa sued for torture and court awarded her damages.

Gay rights activists have become more vocal in their campaign for recognition and have featured prominently at international conferences, particularly relating to HIV/AIDS.

Last year, education minister Namirembe Bitamazire announced an investigation into homosexuality in schools following complaints by MPs that the illegal activity was rampant in schools.

The Uganda AIDS Commission chief, Kihumuro Apuuli, also noted at the time that schools had become a breeding ground for the vice, which targets youth aged between 15 and 24. He said parents and guardians had a big responsibility to inculcate African values into their children.

Sodomy is a crime under the penal code and the Constitution prohibits “marriage between persons of the same sex”.

Pastors of Pentecostal churches last week called for a commission of inquiry into allegations of sodomy and homosexuality in churches.

Other pastors yesterday told journalists in Kampala the war against sodomy would be long and challenging but must be fought.

Uganda: Homosexual Admits Recruiting Students

It seems I’m always posting “bathroom news” at Transgender News, most recently various news and commentary on the flap involving the women-only gym in St. Catharines, Ontario.

Well, we should be seeing quite a bit more “bathroom news” shortly.

Coming up on March 24th, voters in Gainesville, Florida will decide whether “sexual orientation” and “gender identity or expression” remain protected in the city’s anti-discrimination ordinance.

A while back, as a means to convince (flimflam) the citizens of Gainesville that they should strip gay and transgender citizens of their civil rights, Citizens for Good Public Policy chose to turn this into a “Keep Men out of Women’s Restrooms” fight and aired their now infamous television commercial, “The Pervert.”

“The Pervert” is longer available on YouTube (you can see that if you try to play it here).  The other day though a reader of Transgender News pointed out to me a “commercial” (by Ed) that is available on YouTube, one which seems timely and topical …