There is no reality where bathroom policing is healthy for anyone, regardless of what gender they were assigned at birth. A Minnesota teen girl who was at Buffalo Wild Wings went to use the bathroom, but she couldn’t have expected what would happen in the next few moments. One of the restaurant’s staff chases in after her and begins pounding on her stall, saying that “the man needs to get out of here.”
When the 18-year-old high schooler came out of the stall, the aggressive server demanded that she prove she was a woman. The teen girl then unzipped her hoodie to show the worker that she had a bust, thinking that it was the only way to provide proof. Without a word, the server stormed out, leaving the girl feeling confused, hurt, and very vulnerable. “She made me feel very uncomfortable,” the teen said, according to NBC News. She continued, saying that she didn’t feel safe going into public restrooms anymore, after all, who doesn’t want to just use the toilet in peace?
Fortunately, a Minnesota gender-equality organization called Gender Justice is pursuing legal action against Buffalo Wild Wings on the girl’s behalf. This isn’t the first time something like this has happened since POTUS’s targeted attack against trans people. A cis woman in Boston was chased into a hotel bathroom by staff demanding she show ‘female ID.’ Then there was a Florida Walmart employee harassed by a man in the women’s restroom during her work shift because he thought she was trans. Mind you, these are not transgender folks being bullied; these are just some typical women.
“Bathroom policing hurts all women not just trans women,” remarks a Redditor reacting to the Minnesota teen girl’s story. “The server needs to be registered as a sex offender,” says another. “In what world can you go into a bathroom and demand to see someone’s genitals and think that any of that is normal?” adds a third. A fourth commenter lays things out very well:
“We have said from day 1 that this is what all this transvestigation crap is really about. It empowers actual predators to go into bathrooms and harass people. And if they don’t conform to traditional conservative male/female appearances, it is open season to dehumanize and threaten and harm them.”
And with people leading the country who are both openly transphobic and aggressively anti-trans, these sorts of situations will continue, if not get worse. Transphobes need to wake up and realize their behavior and discrimination hurt all women, not just trans women.
