The Bathroom Issue

[DapperButch]

Originally Posted by *Anya*

Woman who donated hair to cancer patients mistaken for trans woman and harassed in bathroom

Has North Carolina’s anti-transgender bathroom bill created an environment of fear and paranoia in public restrooms? One woman named Aimee Toms, who was recently harassed in a Walmart restroom after someone mistook her for a transgender woman, believes that it has.

Danbury News Times reports that Toms was accosted by another woman while she was washing her hands in a Walmart bathroom in Danbury, Connecticut. Toms was wearing a baseball hat and she had very short hair because she recently donated her hair to a charity that makes wigs for children with cancer.

She said that she was approached by a complete stranger in the bathroom and was told that “You’re disgusting!” and “You don’t belong here!” The 22-year-old Toms posted a video on Facebook talking about how the experience opened her eyes to the abuse that transgender people face every day.

“After experiencing the discrimination they face firsthand, I cannot fathom the discrimination transgender people must face in a lifetime,” she said. “Can you imagine going out every day and having people tell you you should not be who you are or that people will not accept you as who you are?”

Toms also linked her experience back to the current debate over whether transgender people should be allowed to use the public bathrooms of the gender that they identify with.



http://www.rawstory.com/2016/05/woma...d-in-restroom/

This just highlights for me again my concern that there will be an increase in harassment for gender non-conforming butches. I believe that it will level out and things will go back to "normal" (you know, the "normal" intensity/frequency of harassment butches are used to dealing with <eyeroll>), but I don't know how long that will be.

The other thing to keep in mind though, is that there really isn't any way to know if harassment in bathrooms is increasing or if it is just being publicized.

Too, I am wondering if butches who are often suspected as being male are feeling more anxious now when using bathrooms?

What is stupid about this whole thing, is that I can see the possibility of butches choosing to start using men's room just for safety. Guys don't notice.

I started using the men's room as soon as I started testosterone. It takes a while to see some changes happen. Point is, I looked the exact same. I wasn't hassled at all (unlike the women's room), and I was amazed at how much more relaxed I was. I used to have such crazy high anxiety going into the women's room. As soon as I started using the men's that all abated. I wish I had started using the men's restroom years before I decided that taking testosterone was right for me.

However, if I were a woman identified butch, I would be pissed off at the idea that using the men's room is the only way I would feel "safe". I would also feel like I was giving into the boxes of gender conformity that I had fought against my whole life.