Listen, Eddie Vedder does not speak for Samantha Bee. Neither does Tom Scholz, the last remaining original member of the band Boston. But the odd triumvirate does agree on (at least) one thing: So-called “bathroom laws” are ridiculous.
Bee covered the hypothetical threat of trans peeing on Full Frontal With Samantha Bee last night, pointing out that a trans person has never been accused of assaulting someone in a bathroom. Tennessee lawmaker Jeremy Durham, on the other hand, has been accused of inappropriately touching and otherwise sexually harassing his female employees, including texting two women late at night and asking them to send him nude pictures of themselves. Things have gotten so bad, in fact, that Durham has been exiled from the Tennessee state capitol building entirely. He’s also protected a pastor accused of statutory rape and possession of child porn.
So it’s a bit ironic that Durham supports “protecting” the girls and young women of Tennessee from the prospect of a trans person in the stall next to them, no? (Then again, Republican lawmakers have different ideas of an appropriate interaction with the stall next door than most people.) Meanwhile, a Tennessee bill requiring public school (including university) students to use the bathrooms of their birth gender was tabled for a year as of yesterday, partially due to concerns about who would pay for all these bathroom monitors.