Not literally, of course, but figuratively; I'm going to end up on the wrong side from where most everyone I know and respect have landed, and likely will be relegated to that " crazy fringe" section on Facebook...
Again...
I've landed here before.
This time is a tad bit different. Hope upon hope and try upon try, I attempted to dodge this fray. I ducked, bobbed and weaved, to no avail.
But here I am and here it is....
I remember being 4 or 5 years old and wanting to go to the men's room alone at Jamesways in Saratoga, and my mother throwing a panicked fit. She screamed stories of children being hurt by " bad men", sparing me the inappropriate details that I couldn't understand at the time. Never in my childhood was a public men's room ever remotely inferred to as a safe place. Always someone waited outside for us, listening for I didn't know what...
I'm older today and sadly, have found myself stationed outside those doors as each of my three male children used public restrooms on the few occasions that I didn't accompany them inside.
If you're a parent, I bet this sounds vaguely familiar to you...
Women have always been smarter than men at bathroom safety. We men would laugh as ladies traveled en mass toward the bathroom and joked about how many women it took to flush a toilet. Never would we think of asking another man to accompany us to a urinal visit...
96% of those who sexually assault children are male.
Until recently, all of them have been relegated to a men's room to do their business. If you do the math, you will see a very disproportionate risk factor for victimization occurs in the place our young boys often go alone...
Now, people with daughters are facing the same possibilities, with the same people, possibly using a toilet directly beside their child...
It is not so much the transgender person that terrifies them, but the predators that up until this point has been excluded by law, from the ladies room.
Not knowing; having the fear...
I understand their new found concern.
They are losing a reasonably safe area for their female children.
It is a normal days worry for a father of boys...
.
If a child is lost, one of the best and safest pieces of advice is for them to find a woman with kids and ask for help. Women travel together and look out for each other and each others children as a matter of course; most moms I know instinctively feel safer leaving their kids with an acquaintance woman than an acquaintance man...
I know I do...
So this whole bathroom issue seems to break down into something much deeper than where some confused teen transgender boy needs to pee.
I find myself needing to step back from " the issue" today and instead, step closer to the real heart of this dilemma. I mess up on issues, most every single time, but if we talk about the emotions, emotions on either side of the aisles, I can do that...
If we talk about the confusion, feeling of disconnection and outright terror of a young and fragile transgender boy, not feeling safe and not being safe, using a public men's room, I can understand a little, why he might rather force himself to "hold it" than make himself a target for abuse. He not only must fear the "bad men", but the other ones, the average ones, that will at best make an inappropriate comment and at worst might physically harm him because he's a " fairy"...
I do not understand how someone can identify as the opposite sex, but I do know that their lives would be unfathomly easier if it was a simple matter of changing their minds. For some reason, probably just as puzzling to themselves, as everyone else, it is not a simple choice, but an inescapable identity...
I know nothing about that, but I do know a little about powerlessness and the inability to choose differently, of my own willpower. I'm not comparing or classifying transgender as an addiction, but not being able to willfully change, when I want to, I certainly can relate to that...
I also understand a parents wish, a parents need, for privacy and safety of their daughters. I understand the anger of being forced to allow men into a place that they know deep in their hearts should be exclusive to a daughter or wives gender...
Maybe it's time to change our description of this into Bathroom Safety, instead of a fight over human plumbing...
Maybe expecting the same level of safety for our boys in the bathroom as the girls have been experiencing for over a century, might be reasonable?
Perhaps requiring single stall/ single occupant restrooms from corporations like Target and McDonalds might make all parents, children and transgender breath easier and feel safer?
Workplaces are mandated to provide safe facilities for their patrons and workers. It is law. Small businesses like Stewart's and Cumberland Farms already have single bathrooms for only one person and maybe a few family members.
Corporations change their layouts all the time; it is not cost prohibitive. By providing a safe place for everyone to poop and pee, the legal savings themselves would probably absorb any cost. Finding a fair answer for everyone while making everyone feel safer is a win/win that can only make companies appearances better.
So, I'm not saying that everyone should pee defined by how God made their plumbing...
I'm not saying you should be able to pee next to another gender that might be made uncomfortable by your presence...
Pretty much, I'm not supporting anybody's or any ideas agenda, and have probably managed to piss off most everybody who wants this to be about their particular religious right or left leaning political belief...
Sorry about that.
I just want everyone to have a safe place to poop...
The solution isn't rocket science or something that needs to squash anyone's religious belief or identity...
Can we agree on that ?
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