LIVING YOUR TRUTH: Transgender bathroom repeal isn’t about safety – it’s about alienating others
It would appear that, so far, Donald Trump is doing exactly what he said he would and making good on his campaign promises. Promises such as the promise to defund Planned Parenthood; the promise to repeal the Affordable Care Act; the promise to tear families apart and make life a living hell for Muslims and immigrants; the promise to undo more than 50 years of civil rights victories while increasing racism and hatred. It seems the only things he doesn’t lie about are the really awful, terrible ideas he dreamed up while running for the position of president and fulfilling the dreams of everyone’s drunken, angry, bigoted, racist uncle.
And then, as expected, Comrade Cheeto (or, rather, his gang of rat bastards) came after a target extremely close to my heart: transgender children. Does this fascist toupee have no sense decency?
Of course he doesn’t, as protections for transgender students are repealed, leaving the most vulnerable among us open for attack.
Now, I don’t want to sound divisive. Obviously, my identity politics are what led to this situation, costing Hillary Clinton the presidency and putting us where we are now. If only I weren’t so adamant about things like equal rights, doing away with the gender wage gap, and all that other feminism stuff I was into, causing wives to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians – as Pat Robertson so poignantly illustrated with his opinion on feminism – maybe all of this could have been avoided? Right, then – divisiveness. It’s clearly time we came together to work across the aisle, rally behind the president, and become one nation, again… which is never, ever, EVER gonna happen, as long as the GOP continues to push an agenda of invalidating and erasing trans existence, which is almost assuredly what this is about.
Let’s get one thing straight clear: stripping away transgender students’ rights to use the facilities of their gender identity is a sure way to ensure their self-destruction.
Statistics have shown, undoubtedly, that the passage of marriage equality in June 2015 sent LGBT suicide rates to their lowest in years. It seems that, when homosexual young people got the message that they were equal to their peers, and that they could marry just like anyone else, it did a world of good for them. Given this trend, what do you think will happen to suicide rates when transgender students get the message that their lives are worth less than the lives of cisgender students? I don’t think the outlook is very good.
Transgender children, like any children, need to be allowed to form their own identity. To grow up to become who they are, they must be encouraged to take risks, to reach out and grow into the world around them. When you limit or oppress this natural process, it can only result in harm for the child, who will grow into a damaged adult – if they are fortunate enough to grow up at all. By repealing these protections, the message to transgender students is that their lives are worth less than cisgender students’ lives.
I mean, I might be a child-hating dyke (or a dude in a dress, depending on how much of an ignorant jerk you are), but even I get this. They need guidance, protection, nurturing, and love. They do not need some government official (who is likely a white, cisgender, heterosexual male) who thinks it’s cool to elect a president who advocates sexual assault telling them they aren’t who they are because “chromosomes” and “penises” and stuff. (And, seriously, when did these morons suddenly decide they were experts on genetics?)
The problem is, you have these “special snowflakes” out there (a.k.a. cisgender men and women – but mostly men) who need to establish “safe spaces” (a.k.a. the ladies’ room) so that their wives and daughters can be far away from the scary transgenders out there who threaten their safety. And you can tell that this is a huge societal problem we need to solve because of the fact that it almost never happens. In fact, just the opposite is much more true.
These “social justice warriors,” if you will, are determined to make women’s rooms safe by following transgender women (or alleged transgender women) into the women’s room and harassing and assaulting them. Indeed, they’ll even go after cisgender women who just happen to look masculine or prefer an androgynous or masculine dress style.
As we mourn the death of the seventh transgender woman of color this year (in only two months), the evidence that transgender women and men are in far more danger of assault and murder from cisgender men is all around us because, somehow, cisgender men assaulting and harassing women is the best way to keep women safe from assault and harassment. Figure that out… I mean, it’s almost like transgender women aren’t the problem. And these cis dudes just won’t let this issue go, which is why we’re in the mess we are in.
The truth is, we’ve been peeing next to each other for hundreds of years, but it’s only now a big deal because these cis guys, who also just so happen to be conservative Christians – as hypocritical as they are – just can’t stop judging people. People like Ally Young, who I’ve written about in the past. People like Ari Bowman, a brave young man I had the pleasure of meeting when he addressed the Emmaus School District last year, which ruled to allow transgender students to use the bathroom of their identity. People like Juliet Evancho, whose case went to the federal court, where it was ruled that the students would likely prevail on their claims that the rule denied their equal protection rights under the equal protection guarantee of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. People like Gavin Grimm, taking his role in the “bathroom debate” all the way to the Supreme Court. And, finally, people like the Egg Harbor Township High School students, who staged a small sit-in demonstration for transgender rights. Clearly, these kids get it, and they aren’t afraid of the lie of boogeymen wearing dresses and wigs just waiting to molest them once they get inside the restroom.
These are the scary transgender kids you were warned about. This is what the big deal has been all along. Cisgender adults have been preying on transgender children while using their wives, daughters, and sisters as scapegoats to make life a living hell for these kids. No child should have to go through the nightmare of explaining their identity to total fuckwits and perfect strangers. What is in their pants is no one’s business but their own.
As U.S. District Court Judge Mark R. Hornak observed in an order Monday, “The Plaintiffs appear to the Court to be young people seeking to do what young people try to do every day – go to school, obtain an education, and interact as equals with their peers.”
Seriously. The kids are all right. Let them be who they are. Stop policing our bodies and telling us who you think we are.
