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Blogger Ellie DeLano just had an encounter with a transphobe in a Target bathroom that, as the title of her article on the experience put it, “got really uncomfortable really fast.”
DeLano was using the bathroom in one of the stalls when “stuff got weird.”
“The outer door opened,” DeLano writes. “And someone came in. She walked past the three open stalls and stood directly in front of my door. Then she leaned over and placed her eye firmly up against the gap between the door and the frame and stared in at me.”
DeLano was, of course, shocked by this intrusive behavior.
“I am not making this up. And let me tell you, it was awkward. Bizarre, even. This wasn’t a case of someone hoping all those occupied stalls aren’t really occupied. Mine was the only stall that was occupied. She deliberately stopped and stared in at me. My startled eyes met hers, and she moved away, into one of the larger stalls.”
DeLano writes that as she was washing her hands, the other woman called out to her from within her stall.
“‘Sorry about that,’ she said. ‘But you know, Target lets men and homosexuals use just any bathroom now. I was making sure you were a woman.’ I didn’t say a word, because I really didn’t know how to answer that.”
Target has made headlines after showing solidarity with transgender Americans, welcoming “transgender team members and guests to use the restroom or fitting room facility that corresponds with their gender identity.” This has sparked transphobes into a horrified frenzy, resulting in the harassment of several Target customers and staff.
To date, there have been zero unpleasant incidents caused by a transgender customer.
“I walked out,” DeLano writes. “Utterly gobsmacked, and it wasn’t until I caught up with my daughter and told her the whole ridiculous story that I realized the complete and utter irony of it. This woman deliberately made me feel horribly uncomfortable just because she was uncomfortable with the extremely vague possibility of someone being different than expected behind a closed and locked stall door.”
DeLano’s daughter, Anna, who “has a girlfriend,” had a different reaction. “I feel sorry for her,” Anna told her mother. “I mean, with everything going on in the world, this is what makes her afraid? She doesn’t even know how creepy she’s being.”
You can read her entire post here.
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