Everywhere I look, there is a new opinion on Target’s new bathroom policy. It’s all over the news and social media with justifications about either side of the issue. In case you haven’t heard the policy, here it is in a nutshell: any team member or guest in Target is allowed to use whichever bathroom they self identify with. In other words, Target is allowing people to use the bathroom they are most comfortable with. As with all new policies, there is always backlash tied with it. With this policy in particular, the American Family Association has pioneered protests against Target, stating that this puts women and children in danger of predators who will use this policy as a way to legally get into the women’s bathroom. Although this argument has some justification to it, the backlash towards the policy should be aimed at rape culture, not the LGBTQ community.
Target’s policy is in place in order to make the transgender community feel more included in society. This section of our society is continually left out in legislation and policy making, forcing these people to conform to our cis-gender (people who identify with their genetically determined gender) only society. Target’s aim is to include those who are continually excluded from our society by allowing them to use the bathroom they identify with. The transgender community is not the ones who would attempt to assault others in the bathroom. In fact, transwomen (men who are transitioning to be women) are more likely to be physically assaulted using a men’s bathroom because the stigma associated with being transgender. In the words of Trae Crowder, also known as the liberal redneck, sexual predators would not try to attack a young child in the bathroom in broad daylight, whose parent is waiting ten feet outside the bathroom for their child. Target is trying to protect its customers from hate crime.
One of the arguments I read against Target’s policy was from a columnist from Fox News, Todd Starnes, who claimed that since Target is allowing men who identify as women to use the women’s restroom, would they allow a sixteen-year-old, who identifies as a twenty-one-year-old to buy beer? This argument has nothing to do with the actual policy. This is what is called the Slippery Slope Fallacy, which claims that two events follow each other without any rational argument to prove so. Target’s policy has absolutely nothing to do with age and everything to do with gender. These two identity claims are not even remotely the same. Identifying as a woman is not the same as identifying as a thirty-year-old. Age and gender are not the same thing and cannot be compared with each other. That's like saying because we allow a woman to marry another woman, that someone could then marry their dog. Homosexuality and bestiality are not the same thing, neither is age and gender identification.
Like I said before, I understand the concern that many people have about the predators who will try to use the policy as a way to get into the bathroom to assault someone. But, the problem with this is that if those predators were going to into the bathroom to hurt someone, they would regardless if the policy was in place. I am glad that our society is finally trying to help protect women from assault, but boycotting Target is not going to change the fact that women are still in danger of being assaulted. Society has confused gender equality with rape culture; we are scared that women will be attacked in the bathroom and instead of fighting for women’s protection, we are going to keep transgender people from using the bathroom they identify with, which won't solve either problem.
One in six women will be assaulted in her life and less than twenty percent of those assaulted will seek legal counsel and press charges against their perpetrators. Why? Well that’s because we ask them what they did to invoke the assault i.e what they wore, what they said or didn’t say, where they were at the time etc. Women and children who are abused in any fashion should be treated as victims and protected by the law. If this boycott is truly about protecting women and children from becoming victims of assault in a public restroom, then we need to start implementing laws that do just that. As in, maybe we shouldn’t question the victim as to why they made the assault happen, or possibly teach men that taking advantage of a woman is not moral. This boycott is not doing much to protect women against assault as a whole. Don’t let transphobia hide the real issue of women’s protection.
