Stay Out Of The Gutter

I'm gonna butcher the nomenclature here, but I'm trying, so give me some space. I'm old, but all this is still pretty new to me.

It's been said that I don't understand or support the trans hate movement because I'm not a woman, and if I were a woman, I'd understand how threatening all this is.

I don't know that many trans people. Something like twenty-five if I count on both my fingers and toes and borrow the dog's. More than half of them are trans men. That's where I'm gonna butcher the nomenclature. As I understand it, that means they were assigned female at birth and then went through a transition so they could become male.

Now, I don't much care where these people pee. As long as it's not in my chair, I don't give it much thought. Most public bathrooms have a little stall where they can go do their business out of the sight of everybody and everybody is out of their sight. Problem solved, as far as I'm concerned.

There have been times when my status in life was so low that I cleaned both the "men's" and "women's" bathrooms. I know what's in there. If you're terrified that a trans woman might pee in the private stall somewhere near your stall and then see you straighten your hair in the mirror and reapply your Revlon lipstick, I gotta say, that's not reason, that's not logic, that's hate.

For most of human history, whoever you were, if you had to pee, you peed in a chamber pot and dumped it in the gutter or peed directly in the gutter to save time—right there in front of everybody. That's why, even now, being associated with the gutter is considered really bad, even though we only use gutters for rainwater--not pee. It’s also where we get the phrase “keep your mind out of the gutter.” That’s where the pee is.

Coming up with a logical reason to fear trans people is super difficult. Trying to pass laws or discriminate against people because of a very small number of scattered biblical passages is extremely suspect, both for religious and legal reasons. In America, our laws sometimes agree with the bible, but they don’t come from there. That’s an extremely slippery slope.

Considering how many trans people there are in America, even trying to make the case that they represent a threat is ridiculous. What they may do, though, is make an excellent scapegoat, and a scapegoat can give somebody with no workable political message a political boost. Making people afraid of somebody they don’t know very well is easy, and most people don’t know enough trans people to judge.