Switch!

[RANT]

I moderated a panel on diversity for the Commission on Human Rights and Opportunity and one of the questions that was asked of the panel stuck with me. The question was what happens if a patient in four bed hospital ward complains about a trans patient in the room?

The lawyer answered the question with a question; what happens if another patient complains about a patient who has a different religion or a different race what do you do then?

How a 17-Year-Old’s Locker Room Freakout Became an Anti-Trans Crusade
She said seeing a trans woman scared her. Right-wing blowhards took it from there.
The Daily Beast
By Samuel Braslow
January 23, 2023


On Jan. 11, 17-year-old Rebecca Phillips approached the lectern at a sparsely attended city council meeting in Santee, a suburb of San Diego, California. No item on the agenda brought her to city hall that night. Instead, she tearfully recounted how a local YMCA had followed state law and company policy by allowing a transgender woman to use the same locker room that she did. She had no contact with the woman and claimed only to have seen her, but the experience left her “terrified,” she said.

From there, a symbiotic network of local and national right-wing media began passing the story upwards, catapulting Phillips to the airwaves of Fox News’ Tucker Carlson Tonight in just six days. But while Phillips earned the adulation of a constellation of conservative and far-right actors—including a former politician himself accused of sexual misconduct in public bathrooms—the subject of her outburst became a national target.

Okay let’s do the “switch…”

Instead substitute "Black" woman for "trans" woman; "... she tearfully recounted how a local YMCA had followed state law and company policy by allowing a Black woman to use the same locker room that she did. She had no contact with the woman and claimed only to have seen her, but the experience left her 'terrified,' she said."

Would that be okay?

Would just the fear of something different be enough to justify discrimination?

Do we ban clowns at circuses because some people are afraid of them?

Back before the seventies, segregationists used the same argument to justify segregation. That having Black men using the same bathroom a little White child was scary of what might the Black man do to the child

Where do we stop?

---

[/RANT]