People seem to have the incorrect idea that places such as Target, which have trans friendly bathroom policies, are now allowing adult men to go in to bathrooms with little girls. Someone who says and believes this is not only making a ridiculously harsh exaggeration, but is also drawing an equally idiotic conclusion from that same poor reasoning.
The world simply isn’t as simple as the simplest of people would like it to be. Things are neither this nor that. This is a mere fact of reality. It is only another part of growing up; people understanding that the world is far more complicated and far less concrete than they believed it was in the days of their childhood. Santa stops delivering presents, there are more religions than your own — all of which are of exactly the same credibility — and not everyone celebrates the same holidays as you. Why, then, is it that people accept all of these matters, yet refuse to cede any ground to the matter of human sexuality? Why do they simply stop growing up?
This immature refusal to empathize with or understand that which one can’t personally relate to or identify with is exactly the reason why trans individuals are so marginalized today. Too many people refuse to accept that there is anything out there, which makes them feel slightly uncomfortable, that can still be a valid and acceptable means of going about the living of one’s life.
Take, for example, the ultra-masculine who just can’t wait to get the chance to “protect” others from “danger”; those who simply can’t wait to choke someone different. There is no faculty within the being of these individuals which can possibly begin to understand the necessity by which many people are moved to considering and undertaking a sexual transition.
Because of this, their limited capacities of reasoning only take them so far as to concluding that such a desire must be wrong, unnatural — or even disgusting. What is easier for them to relate to, as it doesn’t force them to abandon their sense of masculinity to connect with, is the desire to pursue women. They realize that some men do, in fact, take these desires to the extreme point of invading the privacy of others. This, in the end, is easier for them to understand. This is an intention which makes sense to them. They paste this intention onto individuals whose “motives” they cannot understand, and instantly create enemies where none exist. This same fallacy is committed by cis-women just as often.
Trans individuals are by no means motivated by perversion. These are people simply being people. The only danger any trans person poses in choosing the lavatory of the gender by which they identify is increasing the rate at which the toilet paper needs to be replaced.
Nothing else changes. Bathrooms will not be made safer; bathrooms will not be made worse. They will be exactly the same.
A trans woman is a woman, a trans man a man. What on Earth gives people the idea that it would be more logical to send people to the restrooms of the gender they were assigned at birth? There would be nothing more complicated than forcing them to go into the restrooms opposite of the genders they identify as.
Imagine if you wished to go use a toilet. This is all you wanted, and it is all you plan on doing. Yet, people always seem to put in their two cents about where you have the right to pee or not simply because you make them uncomfortable. You are not doing anything wrong. You are entering the bathroom of your own sex, but people just can’t stand it. They threaten to boycott the places where you can go with the comfort of knowing that you can relieve yourself, swear to arm themselves if they go into restrooms where you might be and even threaten you with physical harm if you were to be found in a place where you are allowed to be. I’m quite sure you wouldn’t enjoy such treatment.
For those who stoop to the level of threats and implied violence and vehement support for arming oneself, when one previously wouldn’t have before, such judgements are — as I have said time and time again — ignorant, a sign of little maturity, a reflection of the limited capacities of reasoning one holds, and often a valid way to estimate your lack of intelligence and common sense.
And for those of you who do choose to continue your ill-informed boycott adventures — you very selfsame folk who have known only privilege and cry endlessly when you can’t get your childish way. You who lack all maturity, you devoid of reason or empathy, you who apparently do not do your research, you who have to fabricate problems worth standing up for because you have no real ones and cannot understand what it is like to be marginalized — just know that you are going to have a far more difficult time practicing your childish pettiness than simply shopping somewhere other than Target.
In a recent article published by The Daily Beast, writer Samantha Allen calls out the bluff of boycotters with facts galore. Put simply, you would have to boycott much more than Target. Don’t Google anything anymore, don’t visit Facebook or Twitter, don’t use an iPhone, don’t drink Coke, don’t drive a Volkswagen or Toyota or Nissan or GM or Ford, don’t use any credit cards, sell your Nikes, don’t fly JetBlue or Southwest or United or Alaska Airlines or any planes made by Boeing and avoid banking with Citi or Wells Fargo or Bank of America or Chase.
You’ll also have quite a quest on your hands looking for groceries or furniture, as many businesses in these industries also support trans friendly bathroom policies. Most of you will also have to get off of the internet and stop watching major motion pictures. In fact, 407 businesses that you most likely use on a regular basis support that same policy which Target does. So, be my guest, I challenge you to commit to your little boycott.
Jordan Marcell is a 20-year-old English and studio art sophomore from Geismar, Louisiana.