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It seems like such a simple concept, a no-brainer really. If you are going to use a men’s bathroom, you should be prepared to prove that you are a man, and vise versa. It’s a simple way to prevent perverts and molesters from dressing up in the clothes of the opposite gender and gaining entry into their bathrooms. What could possibly be controversial about that?
A lot, as it turns out.
It turns out that there really aren’t a lot of perverts dressing up as the opposite sex and using these disguises to molest children.
It turns out that there are a lot more transgender people out there than most of us realized. People just now beginning to have the courage to come out as such. It turns out that they have been using the same bathrooms as us for some time now, without us knowing, without it being a problem. Without it ever becoming a danger to our children.
I understand it doesn’t evoke the same visceral response or allow us to flex our collective moral muscles, but if there is to be an internet uprising to make our bathrooms safer, I can think of a few other measures that could be taken.
An increase in the number of family bathrooms would be a start. Those one stall sanctuaries for us men that occasionally take our young daughters places on our own. My little girl will be five next month and I am just now comfortable sending her alone into small public bathrooms, such as at the movie theater, unattended. Larger venues, like the minor league ballpark that we frequent many nights during the summer, would be inaccessible to us without family bathrooms. I’ve lost my wife for entire quarters of football games, on multiple occasions, waiting at one entrance to a ladies room while she exits another.
Some of the country’s scariest bathrooms are the ones frequented by middle and high school females. A sixteen-year-old girl in Delaware was killed in a high school bathroom a week ago. She was punched, kicked, and her head smashed into a sink. It was a bathroom full of girls….who pulled out their phones and recorded it. They didn’t run for help. They didn’t jump to the girl’s defense. They pulled out their phones and recorded it. This is not an isolated occurrence, it happens all the time, and this absolutely fucking terrifies me.
We all want nothing more than to protect our children. Perpetual vigilance is necessary, hysteria is not. The sad truth is that our children are much more likely to be abused by someone we know, someone they trust. As they get older our daughters truly will face danger in public bathrooms, but it won’t be from men in dresses. It will be from men full of alcohol, machismo, and some sort of twisted sense of entitlement. We joke about the reasons women travel to the bathroom together, that they are fixing each other’s makeup, trading shoes, or talking about us. They go in groups to stay safe.
Last summer a long day out with my daughter ended with us stopping for ice cream at Olde Mystic Village, an eclectic collection of outdoor shops and restaurants that we walked around for a while. Everyone has their own opinion on what age it stops being appropriate for young girls to accompany their fathers into men’s rooms. I find it somewhat situationally dependent, but in this particular case, I was uncomfortable with the idea.
I was also uncomfortable with the idea of sending her into a large communal women’s bathroom alone. I was honestly more concerned with her locking herself in a stall than I was about anybody that may have been lurking in there but lacking a better option I instructed her in the importance of cleaning off the seat first, made sure there was only one exit, and sent her in.
A somewhat older woman, walking behind my daughter and obviously sensing my anxiety, gave me a quick smile and a nod, an unspoken reassurance that she would keep an eye on her for me.
They were out within a few minutes, minutes that I spent pacing. There were no issues that I was made aware of, and with a quick wave the women and her husband were off.
I wish I had taken more time to convey to her how appreciative I was. It was a simple gesture. She did nothing more than alleviate my fears about my little girl sitting in a stall crying because there was no toilet paper or helplessly calling for me because she couldn’t reach the sink and didn’t want to leave without washing her hands.
A simple gesture, but one that I was incredibly grateful for. Would I have felt differently if I had later found out that women had a penis strapped to her leg the whole time? I’d like to think that I wouldn’t.
All I know for sure is that I have a lot to be afraid of as a parent. A seemingly endless amount, a list that grows longer by the day. Some of it revolving around bathrooms.
This is not going to be one of them.
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A version of this post was previously published on Thirstydaddy.com and is republished here with permission from the author.
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