Being in Australia where things are nowhere near as puzzling as they appear to be in US in regards to the bathroom issue, I can only sit back and scratch my head in perplexed befuddlement. I would say it was "perplexed bemusement" except, with threats of assault and worse being levelled against trans women just needing somewhere safe in public to pee or do their make-up (or, as I like to call it... "#peedom"), it is sadly no laughing matter.
But what really confuses me is, other than the rancourous transphobia, what is really at the core of this? There's a massive elephant in the room that none of the mouth frothing lunatics advocating for legal restrictions/violence against #peedom seem prepared to countenance even though they obliquely acknowledge it exists.
I know in their sad little minds they refuse to see us as women, that they don't care what we look like or how we present or how be behave... to them we are "men". It seems that we can post as many pictures like
this or
this but the end result is some jerk off who thinks
this because they don't/can't/won't see us as women. (Also, posting those kind of "very feminine and beautiful trans woman" pictures in relation to the issue potentially marginalises trans women who might be struggling to pass.) So, bearing that in mind... when the rabid haters talk about "men" out of women's bathrooms what are they really saying?
Most arguments against trans women using a gender appropriate bathroom boils down to "it will allow perverts a loophole to get into the lady's and all manner of sexual deviancies and atrocities shall then ensue." And by "perverts" they are of course really talking about cis gender hetro men who have no sexual respect for women - misogynistic cis hetro men who would indeed love to get into a women's bathroom for who knows what reason.
The real issue isn't really about trans women using cis women bathrooms, it is, at is has always been, about those cis hetro men who definitely would get up to some bad, weird and potentially dangerous behaviour if they were able to access female only spaces (bathrooms, locker rooms, showers), especially one where those women may be engaging in personal activities that make them vulnerable or open to exploitation (eg, sexual attack, spy cameras, etc). And, by virtue of us being labelled as "men" by boneheaded trans haters we are effectively tarred with the same brush.
Other than admitting trans women are women, what the anti-trans bathroom bill brigade should be saying is: "Yes, we have a huge cultural problem in our society with a certain percentage of cis hetro men, they are misogynists, they can be dangerous sexual predators for women and we really, really, really need to do something about them. We need to teach those men to stop treating women as sexual objects and to start treating them with respect. We need for all women and girls, cis and trans, to not only feel safe about their personal space and about their body, regardless of where they are, but to actually be safe from the threat of physical and sexual assault/intimidation/exploitation at all time. That's not going to happen until we do something about those cis hetro men who, for whatever reason, just do not respect women as fellow human beings."
But instead all they can say is "We're not going to acknowledge that, that's too hard, it can't be done. Boys will be boys. Boo on transsexuals, they can't use women's toilets."
Sorry, just needed to rant.
Of course there are many other issues (and transphobia is obviously a biggie) but what to do about it??
(And trans guys, I didn't really mention you in the above since most of the social vitriol seems exclusively directed at trans women... but feel free to join in!)
