My poor gullible Mother,
You have been fooled. Your fellow conservatives have taken advantage of your maternal instincts. They say the transgender bathroom laws are to, "protect the children from rape", but it is plain to see this is a disguise. The only reason this law has been created is to exclude the transgender community and attempt to force them to subscribe to traditional American gender roles.
I am truly ashamed of the fear based hatred I am seeing in America today, and even more ashamed that my mother is a member of that crowd. Allow me to lay down some points and scenarios for you...
1. You have been sharing a restroom with lgbtq people forever.
2. This theory of a predator claiming to be Trans to prey on children is bullshit. That has never happened. That is just how the bigots disguise their hatred for anyone different. They claim, it's for the children. The same was done by conservatives during bathroom desegregation. They claimed segregation protected the women and children from rape.
3. Also, imagine the lawsuits that will arise when a Trans man (born a woman) who has fully transitioned and fits America's cultural assumptions of what a man looks like is forced to use the women's restroom simply because he was technically born female, leading to the women sharing that restroom with him to verbally abuse or humiliate him because they assume he is a biological male and should be in the men's restroom. They may call him a predator or a pedophile, slander him, have him falsely arrested, etc.
4. Trying to enforce this law will be a complete waste of police officers time. Right now, officers are expected to respond if someone files a complaint that a person is using the wrong bathroom. That means paper work must be completed and an officer must investigate. That requires tax payers money and and officers time that could be spent on actual crime. Most of the complaints they receive will prove false or will be unable to be investigated because they can not track the accused.
5. (The following excerpt is from the Huffington post)
"The bill was passed by the state legislature in less than 10 hours and then signed by the governor that very same night with very little debate," Oakley says. "And so it's incredibly poorly drafted, leading to all kinds of consequences." The lack of enforcement guidance in the legislation also suggests "it's not motivated by solving a real problem," she says. "If it was, they would have spent more time understanding and actually addressing a problem. Instead they passed a law that is a political statement."
6. Gender really isn't black and white. When a baby is born with both genitalia the dr and parents pick the gender and get rid of the other genitals. So, what happens when they pick the wrong gender for that child? Was that child ever truly the gender that was forced upon them? So, what restroom do they use? Some hermaphrodites keep both genitalia, so do they get to use both bathrooms?
7. A predator is not going to give a fuck about what any law or sign says, if they feel they have a good opportunity to prey on someone they will and they won't need to pretend to be Trans to do it.
8. Consider the statistics surrounding boys that are molested. Most molestation of boys are perpetrated by men. That means that the bathroom laws give no additional protection to them seeing that they already share bathrooms with these potential predators.
9. This boils down to supervison. Don't let your children go to the restroom alone. That's a no brainer and good parents are already doing this because they know that a real predator doesn't care about laws, that's why their called criminals.
10. Also, America really needs to modernize our restrooms anyway. When visiting Europe I often saw that there weren't different bathrooms for different genders, and each toilet has its own room with a full door rather than a stall with minimal privacy. This is working out fine for Europe, and their "poor" children aren't at a higher risk for rape because of it.
11. What about a man who has fully transitioned into a woman, but thanks to the bathroom law she must use the men's restroom. What happens when this Trans person is then raped by a man in the bathroom because she was forced to go in there? Let's make this a bit more interesting. What about a 13 year old biological boy who is transitioning to become female? If she is a law abiding citizen she will have to use the men's restroom. So she looks like a girl and identifies as a girl, and goes into the men's restroom to do her business. Then, she is molested/raped by a cis man in that bathroom because he sees the perfect opportunity to use the bathroom law to his advantage.
In the end, laws like these are pointless, full of loopholes, and impossible to enforce. The world is a dangerous place. However, don't be tricked by laws that claim to be in place to protect children when the real motivations behind them are fear-based hate toward a group of people different from you that you don't understand.
Ps Mother: in regards to that cartoon you shared that you thought was so clever. Consider this, maybe that person entering the bathroom is transgender. Maybe that person was born a woman, but extensive genital reconstruction and hormone therapy has resulted in the "manly" appearance. So, thanks to the bathroom law you love so much that person has to use the women's restroom regardless of their outward appearance and how uncomfortable it makes the women in that bathroom feel.
Sincerely,
Your progressive daughter
