Dear Society,
Why is this bathroom argument still going on? I understand that you have your safety concerns about these gender neutral bathrooms, however, we should have had these same concerns a long time ago. Yes, the law recently passed helps transgender people. However, this fight for bathroom safety is for more than just them. I hate to break it to you, but gender neutral bathrooms aren't defined by how you think they are. The widely thought, but horribly incorrect way, to define a gender neutral bathroom is a restroom similar to how we have it now and having men, women, trans, and kids in there at the same time. But the correct way to define it is actually plain and simple: a unisex bathroom (one that we typically see, a single "stall" bathroom.) Many want to call shared bathrooms (multi-stall) bathrooms that have both men and women (kids included) but that is actually wildly incorrect.
The same issues that we are afraid to happen are actually already happening. The same men we are afraid will touch our daughters, sisters, mothers, and aunts inappropriately are in the bathroom with our brothers, uncles, sons, and fathers touching them inappropriately. Not only do we have young boys getting beat up in and out of the bathroom, but we also have young girls getting beat up by other GIRLS in and out of the bathroom. Child predators do not have one gender or sexuality. They also don't care what sign is on the door, if they are after a specific child or gender they will do what they have to in order to get that child.
Like I said before, the fight for bathrooms is more than just for transgender people, and although I wholeheartedly support them, people are too ignorant to realize this. The same boy who got touched inappropriately is now afraid to go into a public bathroom alone and needs his mother, the only one he can trust, to take him to the bathroom. The little girl who got beat up in a bathroom may have been called a crybaby for missing her deployed or deceased mother and her father is the only one she can trust taking her to the bathroom. There is a disabled man who's caregiver is a female who needs his diaper changed just so he doesn't risk the chance of getting sick or infected. There is an elderly woman whos husband is dead and her only son is taking care of her, and she can't go to the bathroom alone because her DOCTORS don't want her falling and not having any help.
Don't try to tell me that it's for the kids. It's not. Unisex/gender neutral/family bathrooms are what we need. Not because we need longer lines for the bathroom, but because our society hasn't been raised to respect others personal space, and hasn't been taught right from wrong. If we were truly fighting "for the kids" we would make all bathrooms unisex or family restrooms, otherwise known as the original gender-neutral bathrooms.
To those reporting, sharing, and posting about how we should "Potty like its the 90's", transgender people didn't get harassed for using the restroom of their preferred gender then because people weren't "transphobic" in the 90s - mainly because people really didn't care.
Thanks,
The girl fighting for what's right
