8 Reasons Why Anti-Trans Conservatives Should Just Shut the Hell Up

Jeff Sessions’s first act as U.S Attorney General was rolling back certain legal protections against discrimination for school-aged transgender girls and boys. Trump has now signed off on it. The public face of this public hate is refusing trans kids to use restrooms of their gender identity. And today, of course, Trump declares a prohibition on transgender soldiers, sailors, aviators, and Marines on active duty and in reserve.

“Why do liberals say I’m ‘anti-trans’ because I want to protect my wife and daughter from strange men in women’s restrooms?” conservative Christians ask. “Won’t men just say they’re transgender and lurk there? Won’t boys try for a free peep show?”

Okay. Well.

1If you’re Catholic, and you’re still trotting your sons off to be altar boys, shut up. Just shut the hell up.

There is a historical record of hundreds of thousands of cases of actual sexual abuse — worldwide, like Pitbull — over decades and decades. Maybe you read about it. Or you’ve seen a movie. Or watched TV in the last 30 years. You can shut your boys in a curtained closet with Father Botherer and Bishop Beat-the-Bishop — but you’ve got “issues” with teens using the hand dryer near your damsels. Just shut up.

2Women don’t use urinals.

Their ladyparts aren’t just hanging out all over the place like the back booth at a fern bar. Women use stalls. With locks on them. And generally they don’t treat their toilets the way men do, like a rental car with full insurance and no deductible in a 70's cop show. They don’t carve their initials in the seat or leave a scale model of the La Brea Tar Pits in the bowl. They run a classy joint.

3Okay, fine. Fine. Say you’ve read a handful of stories of dudes who posed as chicks to get access to women’s restrooms.

Breaking news: bad things happen to good people. It’s a truism even with anti-trans restroom laws. Criminals were, are, and will be deliberately deceitful. That’s what crime is. They’re everywhere and they can hurt kids out of nowhere. Anti-trans laws are not forcefields.

That handful of incidences — sudden outbursts of violence, filming women under stalls and the like — occurred in restrooms within shouting distance of other people. And they happened anyway. Because nobody shouted till it was over. But okay —

4Restrooms that are attended, regardless of anti-trans laws, are safer than those that aren’t.

Say there’s a sketchy dude checking out the aforementioned fully clothed women in the restroom. Say there are a couple of teenagers gawking at their nubile classmates. And they’re creeping your imaginary ladies out.

(Where are sex fiends set up today? Is there a qualitative difference between staring at girls from outside the restroom and staring at girls from inside the restroom? Will allowing trans kids into their preferred restrooms produce a boys-gone-wild laboratory that creates budding pervos like a stack of guinea pigs in a half-open trenchcoat?)

5For practically every public toilet I’ve ever seen, someone’s responsible for watching it.

The cashier at Denny’s. The guy behind the concession stand at the movies. That’s especially true in schools, with teachers, coaches, principals, and sometimes security guards.

If your ladies are uncomfortable with someone in the restroom — someone who isn’t deliberate deceitful, remember, just ogling the clientele — they can ask them to leave. (Much like they do now, when a woman today is acting a fool in the ladies’ room.) Or they can get someone in the establishment to ask them to leave.

6 But maybe these hypothetical Mr. Stranger Dangers assert their rights to be there. “Dudes can be in the dudettes’ restroom,” they say. “You can’t make us leave.”

If someone says that — well, they’re probably crazy. Or USDA-prime assholes. Which are just problem customers moved closer to the soap dispensers. They’re going to be trouble, anyway.

But guess what? You can still ask these merry shitheels to leave the premises. Just as you can now.

If they’re not taking a squat (again, no urinals) or washing their hands, they’re loitering. (Women in real life engage in a variety of other hygienic activities. I have no idea what they are.)

Loitering is a crime for which you can ask anyone to leave or call the police. Cops would enjoy rolling out to your restroom to handle guyslike that. They’d radio their friends and sell tickets. And that’s better than anti-trans forcefields.

7 Bottom line: anti-trans restrooms don’t resolve even the mildest of your objections.

Trans-friendly restrooms are just as safe as anti-trans restrooms. And trans-friendly restrooms are, well, friendly to trans kids. Blocking trans kids makes them feel more isolated and despised.

8 Trans kids are so vulnerable in Western society, there is a (partial, of course) list on Wikipedia of the ones who have been murdered.

See them here.

Oh — and one more thing:

9 Trump has gawked at, grabbed, fondled, or slobbered on more women than anyone cisgender or trans in any restroom anywhere.

Andrew Bryan Smith received an honorary degree in theoretical math from a fictional university. Currently he’s writing a sequel to the remake of an adaptation of a movie that was never made from a TV series that never aired. He hopes to turn the project into a trilogy, releasing the sequel first, a prequel second, and finally a spin-off of unrelated characters inspired by the original work. Andy lives in Los Angeles, or so it seems. Follow him on Twitter @doitinprivate.