The Real Problem with Transgender Bathrooms

The news reports on an incident in which a man was brutally arrested during a school board meeting about allowing transgender students the ability to choose their own restroom. It was widely reported, initially at least, in a way that portrayed the man as a belligerent parent, the type the government is eager to classify as a domestic terrorist.

Recent reports tell a story of political correctness gone wild, however. The man’s name was Scott Smith, and just weeks before, a boy wearing a dress entered the girls’ bathroom and sexually assaulted his 9th-grade daughter.

The Incident

Apparently, he’d gotten a call from the school saying that his daughter was involved in an altercation in the bathroom. However, when he arrived, he realized that it was far worse.

The school, Stone Bridge High School, claimed that it was handling it in-house, but that wasn’t near good enough for the distraught father. He proceeded to make a scene and the school called the police.

I should clarify, they made the call to report Smith, not to report a potential rape in the girls’ bathroom.

Smith wasn’t arrested at this time, but his outburst was instrumental in getting the alleged victim to a hospital where a rape kit could be administered. The results apparently proved useful to the prosecution’s case.

The school ultimately tried to shush it up, but a few weeks later, Scott Smith and his wife, Jess, attended a school board meeting, one of the topics covered being transgender students in opposite-sex bathrooms.

The school reported that there had never been an incident. One woman, Beth Barts, downplayed concerns with, “Our students do not need to be protected, and they are not in danger,” adding, “Do we have assaults in our bathrooms or locker rooms regularly?”

All of this right after an incident involving the alleged rape of a girl that resulted in the alleged perpetrator being charged with two counts of forcible sodomy, one count of anal sodomy, and one count of forcible fellatio.

He later returned to school, despite being under house arrest, and sexually assaulted another girl, this time in a classroom.

Smith wasn’t about to let them get away with this and started making a scene. He had a verbal confrontation with a woman there who claimed that she didn’t believe his daughter (but would have believed it if she said a martian had raped her), threatened to destroy his plumbing business on social media, and who was later ousted as being part of a Facebook group that sought to dox conservative-leaning parents.

An officer grabbed his arm and Smith yanked it away, giving the officer leeway to become violent with Smith and charge him for resisting arrest.

His wife stood crying, “My child was raped at school and this is what happens!”

Why is this a Transgender Problem?

After everyone finished denying the incident, the narrative has changed. “Sex-segregated bathrooms don’t stop boys from coming and assaulting people!” and “A few bad apples don’t spoil the bunch!”

This is an interesting argument to be coming from a group of people who tend to believe that all firearms should be banned because a minority of gun owners have committed murder, but it’s still a valid argument, right?

Well, I don’t think so in this case, but please hear me out.

It’s true that laws will only stop law-abiding people from doing wrong, thereby laying down rules of acceptable behavior that most people will try and follow. This is a classic libertarian argument and I endorse it.

Transgender students and workers also tend to make the argument that all they want to do is pee while ignoring true mixed-gender bathrooms because it isn’t validating enough.

Unfortunately, by allowing students who would normally be read as male, regardless of how they’re dressed, into female spaces and shaming the girls and women who object, it sends a message that girls and women should reject their gut instincts about a situation.

When people, regardless of sex, are in a vulnerable position, such as when undressing in a bathroom or locker room, they expect privacy and try to limit potential threats. Females are often the victims of sexual aggression, so limiting such areas only to other females who share similar anatomy is a safety instinct.

When we tell our daughters to ignore that gut instinct that says, “You shouldn’t be here,” we open them up to such assaults.

Had we not begun doing this, this boy would have been met with an indignant young woman who may have attempted to force him from the bathroom or shouted to alert someone instead of waiting to see what would happen.

This sense of “wrongness” is likely why crimes such as voyeurism are normally much rarer in single-sex (notice the term “sex”, not “gender”) bathrooms than unisex bathrooms. By giving males the opportunity to mingle with females in such spaces, and then telling females to deal with it, we are creating a problem where a simple solution exists: use the bathroom of your sex. It may not be validating, but it’s safe.