Gender fluidity and transgender rights have become a huge topic over the past year. Many transgender men and women have been fighting for the right to use the bathroom related to the gender they associate with at the present moment and not the one assigned to them at birth.
Yet many lawmakers and institutions have argued that allowing transgender men and women to use the bathroom they associate with unconstitutional and hazardous for the general public. These ideas are unconstitutional, hateful and wrong.
Luckily, some of the arguments made by people who want to keep transgender men and women in the bathrooms associated with the genders assigned to individuals at birth are easy to debunk.
Transgender Men Want to Infiltrate Women’s Bathrooms to Violate Children
Sadly, many people think that transgender men or women simply want to use the bathroom of the gender they associate with to violate small children. Yet this argument is both false and harmful. Men who identify as women and women who identify as men do not want to use a bathroom as a means to take advantage of another person.
They simply want to feel comfortable in their own skin. A transgender man has no desire to dress as a woman to assault women; a transgender woman has no desire to dress as a man to assault men. Most transgender men and women simply do not feel comfortable using the bathroom linked to their assigned genders at birth.
We Can Stop Transgender Men and Women from Entering Bathrooms
How many transgender men and women have you met in your life? How many times have you met a transgender person without even realizing that person’s anatomy did not match your assumption? It is extremely difficult to determine who is a man and who is a woman based on their features.
For example, a woman in a Connecticut Target was asked to leave the women’s bathroom in 2015 because another customer believed her to be a man. There is no way to determine a person’s assigned gender at birth without checking his or her birth certificate.
The Bathroom Ban Protects Transgender Men and Women
The bathroom ban makes everyone uncomfortable. Men have no reason to fear entering a women’s room if that man identifies as a woman. Just as a woman has no reason to fear entering a men’s room if that woman identifies as a man.
One of the most common misconceptions regarding bathroom legislation is that men and women should feel most comfortable using the bathroom related to the gender they were assigned at birth. A person is generally more comfortable using the bathroom that they associate with at the present moment.
Men and Women Should Accept the Sex They Were Assigned at Birth
Most arguments related to gender fluidity are backed by religion and not by science. It is scientifically possible for a man or a woman to feel more connected to the opposite sex than his or her own gender.
Many children are born with both sets of genitals; historically, the parents of these children were encouraged to choose a gender for the child. We now understand that gender is the choice of the individual and not the choice of another person.
Men and women who feel comfortable with their own masculinity and femininity are able to flourish, grow and succeed more than those who feel as though they are trapped in their own skin. Gender plays such a huge role in social identity. Shouldn’t each person have a say in that role?
The Responsibility of Determining Bathroom Laws Should Not Be Assigned to the Federal Government
Transgender issues are not religious or political issues anymore; they are civil rights issues. Every person has the right to feel safe and comfortable in his or her own skin. All people have the right to basic human rights regardless of race, sex and gender identity.
Bathroom laws that ban people from using the bathroom related to the gender they associate with at the present moment are completely unconstitutional. They deny the basic desire to a feeling of safety and well being.
Public and private institutions cannot treat others differently based on their gender associations any more than they could treat others differently based on their gender or skin color.
The Bottom Line
Men who identify as women and women who identify as men don’t want to use a bathroom associated with their birth genders to make others uncomfortable. They simply want the same human rights allowed to everyone else.
Allowing the transgender community to use the bathroom that they feel comfortable using can help curtail hate. No transgender person wants to fight for bathroom equality as a means to take advantage of small children or the opposite sex. They simply associate more with the opposite sex than the sex they were assigned to at birth.
