OP-ED: "Soon I'll occupy the men's room stall next to you. Thank the Ohio Legislature. "

[Montauk6]

I’m a 26-year-old woman, former middle school teacher, current graduate student at Miami University, and soon I’ll occupy the stall next to you in the university men’s bathroom!

Thank the Ohio Legislature. In typical fashion, they added a partisan amendment to a previously bipartisan education bill they just passed. The amendment stipulates that all students in Ohio, including university students, must use the bathroom that corresponds to the sex assigned to them at birth. It’s a classic "bathroom bill" and yet another symbol of our state’s inability to focus on the actual problems that face us.

I’ve never had trouble with students or colleagues over the quirk of my birth, in part because I am a woman in the eyes of the law and the people I interact with daily. It’s been about four years since the last time I was directly "misgendered" (confused for a man). And biologically speaking, via hormone medication and surgery, I am female. So when people who have transitioned like me are forced to use the wrong bathroom, it comes at the risk of our safety.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/soon-i-ll-occupy-the-men-s-room-stall-next-to-you-thank-the-ohio-legislature-opinion/ar-AA1v3ZJS?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=09c4cc06021e4cd7b8c243ed30e350e9&ei=9

(... And none dare call it terrorism.)

[misanthrope]

1. That's when Samantha Sapp will be told

her presence in the men's room is disruptive and they would prefer she not use it. The clear implication will be that no restroom is suitable for her because ultimately, those who made the laws find her existence too problematic.

[HarryM]

2. That seems to be their plan

Wait for them to come after each and every one of us if we are not like them. This is the Nazification of the US.

[misanthrope]

14. Seems to me it is just a return to the 19th century

That has been the ultimate aim of "movement conservatism" for multiple generations now. They want to erase everything from the Progressive Era forward.

[moniss]

3. The GQP has always been about

peeking into people's underwear.

[mucholderthandirt]

8. They're so worried about what's in other people's underwear, it makes you wonder why. Why is that?

Because I personally have no interest in someone else's gender. I take them as they present. Where I used to work, there was one student that everyone said was actually a man who just dressed like a woman. I didn't care, she looked okay to me. She obviously was nervous about this, because she never spoke to anyone. I used to talk to her during the course of my duties (issuing parking permits, doing transcript requests and other things), though she never answered me back but once, when I got a quiet, almost silent, "thank you".

I interacted with all kinds of students, some gay, some in between or trying to live their best self. They liked to talk to me because I didn't judge. I accepted them as they were, or were working to be. Most of them were funny, almost hilarious with their sense of humor. There were some black students who liked to stop by my desk and talk in what used to be called "jive", I think. It was slang, which I mostly didn't understand, but we always got a good laugh out of it.

I mean, who am I to judge? I don't live their lives, I can only watch and help as I can. I can only be a human being, and treat others the way I want to be treated. Which, if I remember correctly, is the basic teachings of the man these "Christians" claim to follow. Gotta love that warrior Jesus cult!

[Montauk6]

12. The illustrative DU epithet "TSF" clearly applies to ALL them SOB's

[drmeow]

13. There is an undercurrent

of rage among all the religious nuts who have been forced to deny or feel guilty about their sexuality, gender identity, or any other so called "deviation" as defined by their patriarchal control freak religion. If others are not forced to endure the same or worse suffering than they did, they think their suffering was in vain. They want to control everyone because that is the only way they can control themselves. The freedom and acceptance of liberal ideology violates their fundamental sense of self - a sense of self that is built around "Christian" patriarchy and a strict hierarchy of dominance and control (this is true of men and women). Their sense of self is a house of cards and they despise us for what we see as just trying to live our lives but they see as a calculated attempt to knock down their house of cards self identity. They are profoundly self absorbed - it is ALL about them personally and everything we do is a personal attack on them (even when we don't give a flying f**k about them). They would be profoundly pathetic if they were not so dangerously contemptible!

[SoFlaBro]

4. MAGA's a shitty pile of sick motherfuckers. How far will they take the fucking questioning of someone trying to go piss?

[ms liberty]

5. It might be time for trans people to start wearing bodycams

Video is a powerful tool. I'm worried for all of us who are not RW and WASP. These people are in it for the cruelty and anger.

[Johnny2X2X]

6. It's absurd

They basically want to be able to check people's genitals.

And there's basically no way to police this. There are transexuals and non transexuals who look differently than one might expect in both directions.

I know some older women who became more masculine looking as they aged. Imagine the humiliation when one of them is targeted for using the women's bathroom. Imagine some poor little old lady who has a little facial hair and what looks like an Adam's Apple being targeted for using a public restroom? Because that's coming with these types of laws.

And the whole thing with puberty blockers is that it increases the chances no one will be able to tell. Many years ago I had a young man working for me for over a year before they told me they were transexual, I had no idea, he looked just like any other young adult male, not that I cared either way. And there are transexual women you may know who you have zero idea are transexuals.

Basically, Republicans have this idea in their heads of what trans people look like and they are passing laws with that idea in mind. That idea encompasses a fraction of trans people. And sex itself isn't so black and white, there are many American whose sex can't be accurately assigned at birth. People with female parts, but testicles inside them. People with both sex organs. And everything in between.

[mucholderthandirt]

9. Science has shown that gender is not binary, there's a spectrum. It isn't always simple, just to look.

[Johnny2X2X]

11. Exactly

Here's the worst part. We all know the people they are really targeting, they are targeting the people who obviously look trans. The people who are like my dear friend Erica who knew she was a women since she was a child, but spent her whole life coming to terms with it until she finally was able to live her life as herself when she was in her 50s. Erica is beautiful inside and out, but she will never pass as a woman to most of the public. Erica will never go back, she would sooner be killed than go back to living as something she isn't. And the price of that is steep, she has to constantly be vigilant as she's threatened and harassed by strangers on an almost daily basis. This is the type of person Republicans hae in mind to terrorize further. We all know there are trans people of both sexes out there who you wouldn't know in a million years were trans, those people will be able to use the bathroom of their choosing, but people like Erica will be targeted.

These people, whose lives are already frought with danger are going to face even moe danger and harassment. It's absolutely sickening to me that people want to make the lives of people, who are mostly just struggling to survive, even harder.

[Midnight Writer]

7. Can anyone find a single case of a transgender person sexually assaulting someone in a public bathroom?

I assume if there was actual evidence of this being a problem it would be all over the news, the media, the internet.

[mucholderthandirt]

10. I've never heard of such a thing, but maybe there's something out there.

I've read that in cases of child molestation, the offenders are most often straight men. But you hear all sorts of things about why gay men can't be teachers, and other such nonsense.