Pants Inspector, by Martha Thomases – Brilliant Disguise | @MDWorld

April 12, 2016 Victor El-Khouri 0 Comments

In all my years of peeing, I have never — ever — seen a naked woman in a public bathroom.  I’ve seen a few pants-less babies getting their diapers changed, but never a person old enough to wear underpants.

So I don’t entirely understand what’s going on with all these new laws.  The sponsors say that refusing to allow transgender people to use the bathroom of the gender with which they identify will protect women and children in the ladies’ room from assault by men wearing women’s clothes solely for the purpose of using said ladies’ rooms.  In order to stop this, the new law requires all people to use the bathroom for whatever gender they were assigned at birth.

Maybe things are different in men’s rooms, but there is no simple way to see the genitals of any person in a women’s rest room.  We don’t have urinals, and all of our stalls have doors.  Unless I stood on the toilet seat and looked over the wall, I would have no idea who was next to me, much less what her bits looked like.  It is entirely possible I’ve been peeing next to transgender women for my entire life.

And yet, this really terrifies some people.  They think that rapists all over the world are, even as we speak, buying women’s clothes for the sole purpose of going into women’s bathrooms.  I suppose they might be, but rapists are not the same as trans women.  In fact, there has never been a case of a transgender person assaulting anyone in a bathroom.

So now they’re passing these laws that require a person to have a birth certificate before going to the bathroom.  Who is going to enforce these laws?  Will I have to pull down my pants first and get checked by the pants inspector?  Is there a reason to think that rapists might find that job even more fun than cross-dressing?

I understand that the issue of transgender people is confusing.  One of my very best and oldest friends is transgender, and she has patiently explained herself to me ever since she came out more than a decade now, even though I often ask very stupid questions.  She just spent the weekend with me, and we managed to go out to eat and use bathrooms in a variety of places without incident.  We went shopping and tried on women’s clothes in women’s dressing rooms and, to the best of my knowledge, no one paid us the slightest attention.  If the sales clerk noticed anything out of the ordinary, she very politely showed no signs of it.

The problem, I think, is one of empathy.  The anti-trans legislators cannot imagine themselves in the place of trans people.  They worry about their wives and/or children being in the same bathroom with a trans woman, but they can’t imagine how terrifying it must be for trans women who must now, by law, use the men’s room.  For that matter, they can’t imagine how their wives and/or children would react in a ladies’ room being used by a trans man.

Maybe this is why they don’t understand why those of us who aspire to empathy stand with our transgender siblings.

Rape and assault are illegal.  Anyone who goes into a rest room (or any other room) and rapes or assaults a person should be arrested, tried and, if convicted, face punishment.  To support the rights of trans people to pee where they are most comfortable in no way encourages criminal violence.

At the same time that the Religious Right worries about rapist trans people, they continue to be blind to those who really do threaten their wives and children.  Too many children continue to be abused by those who pose as priests, teachers, family friends, and other pillars of the community.  Instead of passing these ridiculous bathroom bills, let’s prosecute those who mess with kids and those who cover for them.

Martha Thomases, Media Goddess, loves Bruce Springsteen more than ever.