Stall

I love mulling over the odd subject - looking at the ins and outs, turning it this way and that. The transgender bathroom issue of course has got my attention. I know a lot of it is simply to get the simple minded worked up over a well constructed "wrong" against them that somehow threatens thier wimmen and chilldrun. Before anyone gets riled up, look at the self made videos, my favorite one where some guy corners some Target employee grilling them about the bathroom and then announces he will be stationing himself outside the bathroom to keep his daughter safe. There was a great essay written that I posted that pointed out a strange man lurking around the bathroom would probably be more distressing than anything else. Or some dowdy woman marching in with her large amount of scruffy children getting all Jesus in the clothing department - not a good advertisement for the religious right, is it?

But that is not what I wonder about - what I wonder about is how are these people going to enforce this? First of all, when we are talking about transgender, we are not talking about a hairy guy in a dress or a square woman in overalls - we are talking about a surgically altered human being, that has been living as the sex they were meant to be. So are we going to do hoo-ha checks? Will I be peered at by some low-browed born again christian? And if someone goes in a stall, what then - peeking? And if I'm peeking - how long can I peek? Will we all have to leave the door open to prove we're sitting - or standing? Will some man have to come in to the women's bathroom to enforce this - and if he does will that make HIM transgender? After all, he's a man in a woman's bathroom. What about a woman who has become a man?  What if she's wearing a tee shirt and jeans - how are you going to tell? Stall -peeking again? And this silliness about being attacked - the logistics of it are pretty mind-boggling. You would have to time it so it was just you and your victim, the bathroom would have to isolated, no one else could come in of course - this would be the reason I suppose that most attacks on women are not done in the bathroom. 

What is even more apparent, is that for years we have all be using the bathroom with transgender people. You just didn't know it, so it didn't bother you at all. No one has been attacked - and really, a public bathroom is not a great place for attacking anyone either. It is just another political tactic that will disappear as soon as the election is over - but it does give me plenty to ponder.