Last month the University of California at Santa Barbara held a speaking event. The title was “An Encroachment on Liberty: How the Left Exploits Transgender Laws.”
As is often the case when an event includes words about somebody losing their liberty, it was the majority group, the non-trans folks, who were portraying themselves as the victims.
Four college students attended the speech, and were photographed outside of the venue holding up signs. One sign read “Get your agenda out of my restroom.” The others were equally welcoming and broad minded, saying “There are only two genders,” and “Transgenderism is a mental disorder.”
UCLA Students' Anti-Transgender Bathroom Signs Cause Stir https://t.co/hjpMYTVfkZ pic.twitter.com/8v4NdqjK0z
— Los Angeles News (@LosAngeles_NC) May 11, 2016
The photo went viral, making the rounds of local news, national news, Twitter, and Facebook.
Buzzfeed reports that the reactions to the photo were mixed. One response made fun of the college students for acting as the “genital police.” Others were more supportive, saying the college should be supporting free speech and the expressive of a variety of points of view.
One of the women in the photograph, Victoria Metzel, pointed out that the signs had done nothing to stigmatize mental illness or promote oppression of any group. That point could perhaps be argued, especially considering the reference to keeping “your agenda” out of “my restroom.”
The entire episode was in reaction to recent bathroom laws passed in several conservative states. Those laws attempt to force transgender people to use the bathrooms that match the gender to which they were born.
This, of course, means that those people would need to put themselves in the bathroom of the gender with which they themselves are least comfortable. It also means that people who look like women, act like women, dress like women, and identify as women would need to walk into men’s bathrooms to take care of nature’s call. And vice versa.
There has been a lot of controversy and a lot of difficult conversation around this issue in the past few months.
One young teen, however, had the perfect response to the haters who held up those signs.
He tweeted this:
People Can’t Handle This Trans Teen’s Response To A Viral Anti-Trans Photohttps://t.co/cWbuxD1pUc pic.twitter.com/vRiVkVqVOs
— BuzzFeed LGBT (@BuzzFeedLGBT) May 19, 2016
Ian Alexander, who is transgendered himself, holds the issue very close to his heart. His response was succinct, on point, and extremely effective.
When Alexander saw the image of the four college students with those nasty signs, he took right to Twitter and…
Boom!
Yes, Ian is transgender. He is also fabulous.
So is the accepting and loving family in this video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whJzVWPuFew
Featured image by Stig Anderson via Flickr. Available through Creative Commons Generic license 2.0.
