Monday, March 28, 2016

North Carolina House Bill 2: Relax! No One Wants To Look At Your Junk.


As you're probably already aware, the North Carolina General Assembly recently passed House Bill 2. This is a state law which prohibits transgendered individuals from using the correct bathroom. Instead, such persons must use rest facilities which match the specific gender identified on their birth certificate. Obviously, this creates a dilemma for the transgendered community. More importantly, House Bill 2 is state-sponsored discrimination.

My take on this whole debacle isn't from the perspective of a transgendered person. I was born a male and I identify as male. I can't fully understand what it's like to be born with one set of physical sex organs, but feel like the opposite sex (or even somewhere in between) on the inside. Yet, I can certainly relate to the struggle that comes with being discriminated against. For that reason, I wholly support the right of a person to use the proper bathroom.

What bothers me most about House Bill 2 is that it attaches a stigma of perversity to a transgendered person. This is the same myth that was attached to homosexuality for years (and in many places, still is). You know, the old notion that the gays are perverts and want to molest little children. The gender you are has nothing to do with your sexual orientation, much less your propensity for sexual assault. A rapist will rape and a molester will molest -- heterosexual, homosexual or transgendered.

The law, at its core, is a statement made in total fear. Champions of the bill, including Governor Pat McCrory whom signed it into law, supposedly want to protect the safety of "normal" people from those whom might be different.

Protect them from what, though?

Without a shadow of a doubt, I know that I have shared a bathroom with a transgendered man. I won't relate personal details of a routine bathroom trip to you out of common decency, but you can imagine what using the toilet entails. And you know what? I survived just fine. This transgendered man didn't try to touch me, proposition me or even talk to me. They did their "business" and I did mine. Why? Because we were two human beings doing what human beings do. We were taking a crap -- a gross, disgusting and ultimately unarousing act that no one likes but everyone has to do.

There is absolutely nothing sexy about this.

That's the biggest point to take away from this nonsense. No one in the bathroom, transgendered or otherwise, is trying to look at your junk. People go to the bathroom to do their natural business. We're not in there to have raucous, unorthodox sex (gay or straight). You'll never catch me putting on a dress and a wig and trying to spy on women taking a dump in the ladies' room. I would wager a large some of money that you wouldn't either. So, why would you expect a transgendered person to do it? Is it because they're somehow different than you? Is it because they don't fit into your strict cultural expectations of gender? Is it because you fear what you don't understand?

Fear, my friends, is the problem here. Fear is the great divider. Fear makes some of us do silly things. Fear makes some of us hate. Fear makes some of us pass laws like House Bill 2.

I don't care if the person next to me taking a poo has a penis or not. I'm not so egotistical to think that a transgendered person has entered the bathroom solely to become turned on by taking a peak at my genitalia. I don't live in a bubble of fear, and neither should you. Odds are, you have already used the bathroom with a transgendered person and didn't even know it. Why? Because transgendered people are just like everybody else.

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