It was last summer when I was first confronted with the infamous controversial beast that is the unisex restroom. I was interning at an environmental research firm in the heart of Jerusalem, the holiest city on earth. The Jerusalem Municipality is the formal institution that governs the city, and, because Jerusalem houses both the people and holy sites of the three major Abrahamic religions, holy men and women serve in the local government in a variety of ways.
During our downtime we would have informal talks about a variety of topics. After hours of discussion with some of the holiest Jews, Muslims and Christians, let me say this: If you oppose unisex bathrooms because of biblical and/or religious reasons, you’re really just an asshole using God as an excuse to extend your own personal, bigoted agenda.
Not that I don’t have an agenda either: I’m a columnist in a left-leaning student newspaper. In my ideal world, public restrooms would exist in two varieties: one for Zachary Lee, and one for everybody else. I treat my body like a human vacuum-tornado, violently consuming all sorts of food and non-food items in my hangry, destructive path. The motivation for my two-bathroom distinction is not rooted in religious ideology.
Oklahoma state lawmakers not only introduced a resolution asking Oklahoma’s congressional representatives to impeach President Barack Obama, the U.S. attorney general, the U.S. secretary of education and others over a recommendation that schools allow students to use the stalls of their choosing, but also did so on the grounds that the recommendation is “biblically wrong." These lawmakers are misguided.
In the 1960s, it wasn’t uncommon for segregationists to cite the Bible to justify their racist policies. Now, we’re living in the second evolution of this oppressive ideology. With rates of religiosity decreasing in the U.S. and abroad, it’s comforting to know that this line of logic will soon no longer be relevant to our political landscape.
In my research, I have yet to find a single instance of a restroom assault by a transgender individual. However, there seems to be plenty of examples of cisgendered men and women attacking transgender individuals who try to seclude themselves in the privacy of a stall. Moreover, there are too many accounts of cisgendered men and women attacking children in their “correct” restroom placements.
Even if such an attack was propagated by a transgender individual, surely this is a sign of the propagator’s own problems. We don’t blame heterosexuality and/or the normal “gender alignment” when a cisgendered individual assaults a person — or worse, a child — in a restroom: We blame the creepy pervert. For some reason, this logic falls to the wayside when transgender individuals are involved.
Whether you’re justifying your logic in a book written thousands of years ago or justifying it in illogical arguments about the safety of children, know that this “fear” is nothing more than transphobia. These people are just trying to do what anyone else does at a public restroom: Go in, do what needs to be done and get the hell out of there as soon as possible.
Zachary Lee is a UF philosophy senior. His column appears on Tuesdays.
