I was infuriated the other day to hear that over 50% of transgender individuals in the United States simply do not use public bathrooms because of the social stigma and the very real danger of being harassed by strangers, suffering from hate crimes, being sexually assaulted, or even being killed by a government sympathizer. Some of them even avoid eating or drinking so they do not need to use the bathroom in a public place and 8% of the trans people surveyed said they suffered from UTI or related problems from simply never using the restroom. The situation is especially egregious in schools where they may be forced to wear clothing of the opposite gender as well as only allowed to use the gender that the school assigns to them.

Despite this, sympathizers and other hate groups defend the actions of these organizations and even recruit others into their ideology to continue the legacy of oppression. The policies around bathrooms for transgender people that echo Jim Crow laws and only exist to cause suffering to the community. What is being done to Transgender people in this country is nothing short of genocide. On top of the bathrooms, the arbitrary arrests by police, or the laws put into place to stop them from getting hormones or medications. If a transgender person even tries to use the correct bathroom, the regime will make them disappear, and probably put them into forced labor with all the other political prisoners. For trans people who are also ethnic or religious minorities, the treatment is even more extreme and brutal!

In an ideal world, all of those dangerous transphobic people would be arrested and deported immediately, but unfortunately the opposite happens, with so many people giving into dangerous ideologies or using them as a paper thin disguise for the hatred of certain groups of people. They are given control of society and people feel the need to give in to complaints despite them not having

The solution is not easy, because even if restrooms were de-gendered or specific trans bathrooms that would still create opportunities for malicious individuals to harass or mistreat trans people, or in the case of trans bathrooms it would alienate and expose who is trans based on who uses that bathroom. The solution to this issue is to change societal thinking, because at the end of the day the issue of trans people using the bathroom is not an issue, even if the rightists want to believe it is. The issue is ideological fanaticism from reactionaries and overt segregation of the bathroom through unofficial ways such as humiliation and harassment from random people. People need to stop treating the bathrooms like airport security and let people pee.

I can’t believe I need to write a political theory about letting people use the bathroom. This whole situation seems so immature and childish, and if someone is so scared of being assaulted in a bathroom maybe they need to find one less seedy and dangerous. What kind of neighborhood do these people live in to be so scared of being assaulted in the bathroom or wherever else? When a person does not live in reality, they can’t be argued with. They need to take their minds out of these alt-right think tanks, and look around at the actual reality.