It remains unclear why anybody cares about strangers’ genitalia, or whether they sit or stand when they relieve their bladders. But with the Trump Administration rolling back President Obama’s federal protections for transgender students—which had given trans students the right to use the public restroom that matched their gender identity—the political right is insistent on talking about students’ penises and vaginas.
Last night on MSNBC’s Hardball With Chris Matthews, the host invited the director of the Center For Religious Liberty at the Family Research Council to tell two trans women that they needed to pee in the men’s room. Unsurprisingly, he couldn’t do it. Also unsurprisingly, the Family Research Council is designated as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Trans activist and actor Laverne Cox took Travis Weber to task for reducing trans people to body parts, and Mara Keisling, executive director of the National Center For Transgender Equality, told Weber: “Travis knows that if Laverne and I came into the men’s room with him, he would be entirely freaked out.” Weber doesn’t buy the argument that we should treat trans people as human beings, deserving of dignity and respect, but more than that, his own fears don’t jibe with the real world.
Weber is particularly freaked out that girls might see a penis in a locker room or bathroom, but a quick poll of The A.V. Club’s female staff confirms that literally no teenager wants to be naked in a girls’ high school locker room. The poll further confirmed that nobody has ever seen anybody’s genitalia in women’s restrooms, which do not have urinals.
Also last night, comedian Rhea Butcher offered a moving rebuttal to trans bathroom laws, and Stephen Colbert took a swing at Trump’s anti-trans decision.
[via Jezebel, which, like The A.V. Club, is owned by Univision Communications]