Ask This 13-Year-Old Girl If Transgender Bathrooms Pose a Threat
In the midst of outcries from the transgender community that women don’t face threats in public bathrooms, police in England are looking for a man who allegedly took photos of a 13-year-old girl while she used the bathroom at a McDonalds in Berkshire.
According to police reports, while using the bathroom in an individual stall, the girl heard a click over her head, looked up and saw someone hovering over the cubicle wall. Police say the girl was very upset by the incident, and her family is concerned about what’s going to happen to the photographs and where they might be published.
Police have released photos of the suspect in hopes that someone will be able to identify him. They have asked anyone who recognizes the man to contact them immediately.
This incident has occurred at the same time that transgender activists in America are saying there are no threats to women should transgendered women (i.e., men) be allowed in their bathrooms. The LGBT lobby has been releasing ads in North Carolina that voice opposition to the state’s law requiring people to use public restrooms that match their biological sex. HB2, as the law is known, was designed to help protect the privacy and security of women.
North Carolina has been boycotted by companies and celebrities, who have called the privacy and security law discriminatory against transgender people. Most recently, Elton John wrote an article for The Hill, admonishing N.C. Governor Pat McCrory for being insensitive to transgender people.
Forcing transgender people to use the bathroom of a gender with which they don’t identify isn’t just inconvenient or impractical. For many, especially young students still grappling with their transition, it can be traumatic, and at worse, un safe. The failure of McCrory and other lawmakers to see this is a failure of compassion, a failure to recognize the difficult and frequently unwelcoming world transgender people must navigate every day, stigmatized by the fear and ignorance of others.
John says McCrory and others who oppose letting people use the bathroom according to their perceived, not actual, gender “need a lesson in compassion.” If only they could get to know transgender people on a personal level, they would understand, John says.
Those who support privacy and security laws “need to recognize the existence of trans people,” John writes, “and they need to acknowledge that all people have a fundamental desire — and a fundamental right — to be treated fairly.”
Here’s the thing. Does the 13-year-old girl in England have a fundamental right to privacy? Do all the girls in America who don’t want to shower with boys and men or have them in their bathrooms desire the fundamental right to privacy and security as well? Or do only the desires of mentally ill people, who suffer from a dissonance between their mental state and their physical reality, take precedence over 99.7 percent of the population who aren’t confused about their genitalia?
John and others say laws that require people to use public bathrooms that match their biological sex are somehow unfair. How? Everyone has a bathroom to use that correlates with their biology — the parts that are relevant when using a bathroom. There is no such thing as a third sex. Despite this fact, HB2 takes the compassionate step to accommodate those who are confused about their gender, allowing public agencies to create a third bathroom or shower for this tiny minority.
Clearly, the ones who are compassionate in this scenario are those who are supporting laws like HB2 — laws that won’t make it easier for perverts like the one in England to have free rein in women’s restrooms. Yes, this kind of thing obviously happens even with bathrooms being separated by sex, but what will happen if we throw open the doors to these perverts who make up a larger percentage of the population than transgender people?
Media outlets like the Charlotte Observer have tried to make the case that there have been no statistics of sexual predators benefiting from transgender bathroom policies, but this is nonsensical because the practice hasn’t been in effect for very long. It also flies in the face of common sense that there are predators out there — predators like the one in England — who do prey on women and young girls. Why do we want to put them at greater risk?
The law in Charlotte that forced the North Carolina General Assembly to step in and enact HB2 forced all organizations — public and private — to open their bathrooms to men. A man doesn’t have to dress like a woman or even have surgery to make him externally a woman; all he has to do is “identify as a woman” to use the showers, locker rooms, and restrooms reserved for women.
HB2 says that if someone has had an actual sex change and it’s recorded on their birth certificate, then they can use the bathroom that matches that sex. The original Charlotte law just threw open the bathrooms to everyone, whether they’ve actually had a change or not.
In addition, HB2 does not impose its will on private entities, allowing them to decide for themselves what they want to do with their own bathrooms. Those who oppose the North Carolina law want to dictate to private citizens what they can and cannot do with their bathrooms, threatening lawsuits if they don’t comply.
Elton John and other celebrities are presenting themselves as the truly “compassionate” ones, but this is hardly the case. Compassion extends to private entities that have the right to exercise freedom of choice — a choice people like John want to take away. Compassion also extends to women and girls who don’t want their privacy violated or boundaries removed so predators can take advantage of transgender policies.
I would also like to point out that when it comes to transgender people themselves, the compassionate approach is to refuse to accommodate their body dysphoria and delusions. The help they really need is psychological, not legal or political.
If you want to show transgender people compassion, stand by their side as they work through the difficult journey of treating hormone and neuro-chemical dysfunctions as well as psychological disorders that lead to a crisis of identity. Don’t put other people at risk, infringe on their freedoms, or violate the privacy of young girls and women just to advance a political agenda that really does nothing to help gender-confused people in the long run. That’s the opposite of compassion. That’s cruel. (For more from the author of “Ask This 13-Year-Old Girl If Transgender Bathrooms Pose a Threat” please click HERE)
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