How would you feel if you watched your 8-year-old daughter walk into a locker room and that man in Seattle walked in right after her? For that matter, what would you think about your college-aged daughter having to get dressed next to Bruce Jenner, who still has his male genitalia and is attracted to women? In a society where you can’t go five minutes without hearing someone scream “rape culture” or “it’s a war on women,” how is it that a threat to the safety, comfort and privacy of women in the bathroom is being treated like it is irrelevant?
So, what about the other 20% who will feel like they have the “wrong” gender long-term? Mental illness doesn’t make you a bad or broken person any more than a broken leg does, but like a broken leg, your disorder needs to be treated. Some people get over a broken leg in a few months. Others may have to deal with the consequences of that misfortune for the rest of their lives. So it is with mental illness. If you have a mental illness, it is possible that you may have to struggle with it for your entire life. That’s a sad reality that millions of decent people have to deal with every day.
Unfortunately, when it comes to transsexuals we make two huge mistakes.
Our second mistake is that instead of having sympathy for people in that position, wishing them well and hoping for their recovery, we insist that everyone else cater to their mental disorder. There’s no law that says you have to stop cutting your hedges because your paranoid neighbor is suspicious of it. There’s no law that says you have to ask a person with multiple personality disorder whom he’s speaking to so you don’t shock him if you call him the wrong name. So, why are we willing to violate the privacy of half the population at one of their most vulnerable points during the day in order to cater to a mental disorder that afflicts a fraction of a percent of Americans?