To Fix the Bathroom Issue…

You know, the “bathroom issue.”

Where should transgender people pee? It’s an issue, you see (as I have been told time and time again) not with the transgender folks themselves, but with the potential for a “sexual predator to dress up as a woman” and enter the women’s restroom or locker room, whereupon he would be able to freely prey upon girls.

Or so the argument goes. (Never mind that most sexual predators know their victims and groom them before the assault — it’s almost never a stranger preying on a random child in a public space.)

If I agreed with you (I don’t) that this was a potential concern if transgender individuals were legally protected, allowed to use the restroom corresponding to their self-identified gender, the trans people are still not the problem.

If you were TRULY concerned with the possibility of cisgender, heterosexual men using transgender protection laws to do heinous things…well…

Wouldn’t you legislate against cisgender, heterosexual men?? Maybe they shouldn’t be allowed in any public restrooms at all — everyone wins! Your concerns that they would dress up and molest random people in bathrooms are addressed, and everyone else, transgender people included, may pee in safety. All of the potential predators in your scenario would have been legislated away from public restrooms. Ta-da!!

Wait, you’re not happy with that idea, Mr. Heterosexual Manly Man who would never dream of committing such a heinous act? It’s not right to denounce a huge portion of the populace and penalize them in advance for something one of them might eventually do? (Imagine how Muslims feel these days.) But you just argued that it’s non-trans males, presumably heterosexual if they’re preying on girls, who have you scared and are the reason you don’t want to extend protections to trans people in public bathrooms.

Oh, I get it. You don’t ACTUALLY believe that those men are just waiting for an excuse to sneak into women’s bathrooms and locker rooms to do awful things.

You fear and/or hate trans people and want to deny them equal protection and equal rights under the law.

Oh.

That’s different. Do not pretend your concerns are moral or protective in nature. This cishet female (who has probably peed in stalls next to transgender women dozens of times — hell, I’ve snuck into the men’s restroom when I really had to go and the women’s was full; I really do not care who pees next to me) is not buying that bullshit.

I look forward to the day when transgender people don’t have to essentially live with their legs spread on demand, vulnerable to politicians’ cringing fears and bigotry affecting how they can live their lives. Telling someone they’re wrong for wanting to be treated with equal dignity and respect is a form of assault, one that leaves deep scars.

Keep your laws out of their pants.

Let them pee in peace.

It really is that simple.