Policies

Ok so I am a little late into the conversation with this one so let me recap.

In April this year (2016) Target announced that everyone can use the bathroom whose gender they identify with. This policy was essentially created so that transgender people can be more comfortable using a public restroom.

Honestly I have no problem with this although I think the real solution would be to just make all bathrooms those uni-sex single person ones with the door locked because I don’t know about you but I suffer from some serious stage fright in a bathroom full of people, regardless of the genitalia they were born with.

Quite a few countries, such as Germany, have public bathrooms that are completely unisex and it doesn’t matter who you are; everyone uses the same bathroom.

I have several transgender friends and I honestly don’t see a problem with them using the same bathroom as me. It doesn’t bother me.

A lot of people are saying that it bothers them out of worry for their children. I have no children so I can’t understand this part but I do understand that a transgender who was born a man and now fully looks like a woman is never going to feel safe in a men’s bathroom and is at a much higher risk for violence and sexual assault and that is terrifying. The same goes for a woman who was born a man and has to use the women’s bathroom even though their appearance and often body is completely male.

What is going to disturb you or your children more? A person who is completely male in body and appearance but was born a woman using the bathroom with them or a person who looks like a woman and you’d never be able to tell otherwise but who was born a man?

Alright so now I’m going to throw a whole other element into the mix, as if some people aren’t mad enough at me.

You take your kids or you go yourself to Old Navy and Walmart all the time. Just the other day I was at Old Navy and Walmart.

I first noticed this at Walmart. We were getting a pair of pants for my boyfriend to wear to work that he didn’t have to worry about ruining. He went to try them on in the fitting rooms. When we first got to the fitting rooms he was the only one there.

Then a mother and her daughter showed up. Her daughter was perhaps six. The little girl gets a fitting room right next to my boyfriend, a fully grown man (who would never harm anyone but that isn’t the point) and then the mom walks away to continue shopping.

Then another man, probably a few decades older than my boyfriend, gets the fitting room on the other side of this child.

Then there was a middle-aged woman in the next one, a teenage boy next to her, and two little girls whose mother stayed outside of the fitting rooms in the next one.

So here we have multiple situations that could go very wrong.

One of the men on either side of that little girl could do something but her mom isn’t there nor does she care. (I doubt they would but I am making a point).

The teenage boy could do something to either the woman on one side of him or the two little girls on the other side.

Or the woman could do something to the boy.

Or any other number of situations.

However no one is up in arms about this. No one seems to care or notice. But how is it any different? If anything it is far worse.

So we went to Old Navy then and I wanted to try on a dress. Well come to find out they have the same type of fitting room policy.

But now from reading all of the negative comments about Target’s bathroom policy and having noticed the Walmart bathrooms I am now very conscious. I go into a fitting room and then change my mind about evening trying anything on and leave.

Normally I don’t react like this to this type of situation and I have since used their fitting rooms but it made me think.

Here I was about to change right next door to a man or maybe another woman or a child but still. It doesn’t matter. They are all right there and any one of them very well could do something to me.

Yet we are worried about people who simply want to use the bathroom that their gender is because they fear the same thing?

As always I welcome comments and ideas and opinions. So answer this:

Why does everyone care about the bathroom policy when you could be changing at a Walmart or Old Navy next to just about anyone?