The new bathroom diktat
So what's the Big Deal about letting any Thomasina, Dickilla, and Harrieta into the women’s room?
A correspondent asks if the worry is that these “transitional” people might maliciously leave the door open.
That’s not the trickiest problem by half.
A moment of thought dismisses the sillier objections to tackle the more enduring issues. And threats.
Failure to close the bathroom stall door is not a problem; it's automatic even for men, who have all become acquainted with doors, and stalls, since they were out of knickers. And if someone accidentally leaves a door open, most people either alert the “inhabitant” or avert their eyes, thinking the latch broken.
The problem is harassment, attacks, mirroring under stalls, skulking in wait for unsuspecting females to arrive, or overcoming a slighter woman with superior male strength, then raping her. As for all of history, women repair to the bathroom without fear of compromise or interference, women are unprepared for finding lurkers in a place they regard as relatively sacrosanct for the few minutes they are employed.
Next, although the word has fallen out of favor for decades, exhibitionism. Men displaying themselves is another favorite activity women are acquainted with from various quick assaults in the street or parking lots or lonely roads at night. The displayers may not mean ill, but the encounter is upsetting and disturbing and leaves residue in a woman’s mind. Exhibitionism is not fatal, but it is disorienting if unwanted and unexpected. And in my experience, it’s rare for a normal female to welcome unexpected weirdos exposing themselves.
Ultimately, it threatens a woman, too, as the men are unknowable as to their next act – will they be infuriated? Crazed? Manic? Seek to grope or perpetrate further unwarranted and unwanted acts of intimacy and intrusiveness? Disappointed in her reactions, would such a man become angry? Start to yell, curse, blubber, or in general weird out?
Women and men transitioning to women in men’s rooms do none of these things. Furthermore, men’s rooms are often notably less hygienic and inviting, often smell, and are not places to linger. So the problem is heavily overweighted on the women in the women’s rooms.
Beyond these, men and women have rights to privacy, which is blatantly affronted by the blurring of gender definitions and types. In earlier times, under Stalinist, Soviet, and East German spy networks and regimes, privacy was unavailable, a luxury found only in the free West. Under the Stasi, the terrifying East German secret police, homes could be invaded at whim. Drawers, closets, and furnishings were regularly exposed and, if found problematic, removed and sequestered. The right to personal space was unheard of. The populace even cooperated with the State, frightened of not complying with the decrees from the regime.
How similar is the country today under the Obamaesque radical muddying of the Constitution? And lest you consider this an over-the-top concern, we have seen the rapid and deliberate erosion of so many other traditions we once considered inalienable, now simply gone forever. This one, the right to one’s own lavatory, is on the bloody chopping block.
If a woman wants to change her underwear, fix her clothing, or get into swimwear or something casual, she will feel constrained. Faced with an amalgam person of indeterminate agenda, she will leave, rattled, without doing what she had intended or needed to do.
Is a man wearing women’s garments to be understood as a woman in training or a nutjob? Why do we have to battle everything we already fight, plus this exhausting quest for the tender accommodations of an infinitesimal percentage of people who undergo this alteration?
Don’t women – and men, too – have any right to privacy, security, and peace of mind – even when they repair to the loo?
The law of unexpected consequences is sure to kick in, too. What egregious mess will be happening that we're not now even thinking about?