Is Target Placing A Target On Our Daughters' Backs?

(Flickr: Izee. . .in&out)

Last year, Target announced it would halt categorizing toys past times intended gender—a deed that many conservatives protested, exactly that didn’t especially ruffle my feathers. My one-year-old miss currently favors “boy” toys—blocks, cars, as well as balls—and I’m fine alongside that. I’m also fine alongside her deciding she prefers princesses as well as tea parties later on on. 

But, now, Target has taken its secular pandering also far, announcing on Tuesday that transgender customers are allowed to operate whichever bath fits their “gender identity.” Interesting, considering lx per centum of Target’s customers are women, as well as 62 per centum direct maintain children. But these days, protecting the bulk isn’t the trendy affair to do—even though, regardless of their ideology, I tin guarantee 99.9 per centum of the moms at Target wouldn’t honey sending their footling miss into a bath alongside a stranger of the reverse sex. But I’m getting ahead of myself. 

As we’re all acutely aware, the bath trial extends good beyond the bullseye—we’re inwards the midst of a nationwide debate, inwards an out of the courtrooms, about, essentially, whether men belong inwards women’s bathrooms.

Of course, proponents of non-gendered bathrooms insist that unintended interlopers—men who aren’t living every bit women—wouldn’t dare accept payoff of the policy as well as meander into women’s facilities. And to some extent, I agree: Men who don’t desire to violate a adult woman also direct maintain no involvement inwards violating her privacy. 

So, yes, I recollect the bulk of men volition remain where they belong: inwards the men’s room. 

But the unfortunate flip, I believe, is also true: Men who do want to violate a adult woman do direct maintain an involvement inwards violating her privacy. And let’s expression upwards it: Men who intentionally locomote into women’s restrooms aren’t at that topographic point for the tampon dispenser or scented soap. They’re at that topographic point to commit crimes. 

In 2015, for example, a man was arrested at an Indiana mall after hiding inwards a women’s bath stall as well as thus attacking an unsuspecting woman. In a 2014 case, a man was charged alongside voyeurism after crawling into a women’s bath stall as well as grabbing a woman’s upper thigh; she ended upwards sitting on his manus on the john topographic point to protect herself.  Just a few months ago, a Utah human being was sentenced to at to the lowest degree 5 years inwards prison theatre for next a adult woman into a eating theatre bath as well as raping her. 

And every bit you lot powerfulness expect, it’s non ever adults who are the victims: In 2013, a Florida human being brutally assaulted a 9-year-old miss inwards a Best Buy bathroom. 

This terminal instance inwards detail (although all of them are horrifying) epitomizes the idiocy of allowing men to wander, unchecked, into women’s—and girls’—bathrooms. Apparently, making certain transgender adults never direct maintain to experience awkward is of greater import to our lodge than the security of our children. 

We alive inwards a twisted era where the plastic, hourglass-shaped trunk of Barbie is demonized every bit a threat to footling girls, land Target is applauded for sending grown men into the same bathrooms every bit our daughters. Let’s selection the correct battles, moms.