Of all the fabulous protest ideas floating around the country, this is probably the best. It just might be the easiest, too!
A smart, mature woman has decided that this whole stupid argument about where transgender people go to the bathroom is ridiculous.
She has decided to take action to point out the complete idiocy of getting all worked up over who is in the stall next door.
Laura Collins Lyster-Mensh is a contributing writer at the Huffington Post. She has come up with a plan in which older women like herself will just start using the men’s room when they need to go.
Ms. Lyster-Mensh is, as she put it, “still living in my original gender” and doesn’t have any children or close relatives who are faced with the choice of where to go. But she understands that in order to bring about change, people who are not afraid or threatened must take action.
She is old enough to remember when the big bathroom argument that plagued society was whether or not to integrate by race. As she says, “We got over that.”
Now she has issued a call to action on bathroom use. She’s talking to all of us ladies of a certain age when she says:
“We are going to have to step up. Well: sit down. Old ladies, are you with me?
It’s going to have to be the old broads. We’re going to have to cross the modern equivalent of the “color line” and start using “male” bathrooms. Gross. I know. But still.”
This is sheer genius! As Ms.Lyster-Mensh points out, its pretty unlikely that anyone is going to stop a gray haired lady from stepping into the men’s room. No one is going to doubt that she’s a woman and ask to see her private parts before she can walk in.
And if they do dare to challenge that old lady, they’re going to have to be made of some pretty stern stuff. We Moms and Grandmom’s can be pretty scary when we glare at you through our bifocals.
It’s one thing to challenge a nervous, androgynous teenager. It’s quite another to stand up to a sturdy grandma with a big black purse on her arm.
These old ladies will show you how tough we can be.
Featured image by Toronto History via Flickr. (CC BY 2.0)
