This whole bathroom business has long since become ridiculous, but now it’s even more so.
The debate over gender and restrooms has been in the public eye lately, with North Carolina’s “bathroom bill” receiving backlash and a number of other states wrestling with similar legislation. Conservatives want all persons to use the restroom of their gender assigned at birth, keeping all those scary transgender people from using the wrong bathroom.
But how would that actually work? Would we have bathroom monitors patrolling our public restrooms and invading everyone’s privacy to make sure they’re going through the right door?
Here’s a real world example of how that could actually happen.
Last week, Jessica Rush was at Baylor Medical Center in Texas to receive treatment for her injured arm. While there, she got up to use the restroom. As she entered the women’s bathroom, she turned around to see that a man had followed her. Rush said:
“It scared me at first. My whole… my first thought was I’m about to be attacked, um, just because I am a 5″3′ female.”
The man had actually followed Rush into the restroom because she was wearing athletic clothing, a baseball cap, and had short hair, and he thought she was male upon first glance.
So the natural response to that is to follow that person into the restroom?
Rush managed to record a short exchange with the man on her cell phone. The man was dressed in jeans and a polo shirt with no apparent indication that he was or was not an employee of the hospital.
MAN: “You didn’t look like a girl when I saw you enter, I thought it was…”
RUSH: “A boy?”
MAN: “Yeah.”
Rush called the encounter absurd and inappropriate, and she’s absolutely right. The hospital hasn’t made any comment on the exchange.
Watch the story complete with the cell phone footage below:
Feature image via video
