From http://insider.foxnews.com/2016/04/24/340000-sign-pledge-boycott-target-over-transgender-bathroom-statement:

More than 340,000 have signed a pledge to stop shopping at Target, in response to the corporation’s announcement this week that transgender employees and customers will be allowed to use the bathroom that corresponds with their gender identity.

“This means a man can simply say he ‘feels like a woman today’ and enter the women’s restroom… even if young girls or women are already in there,” stated the American Family Association, which started the petition.

I want to leave my views out of this post. But somehow this topic came up in Spanish class, perhaps because the idea of men in the women’s bathroom sparks a conflagration of emotion in thirteen-year-old girls. No small number of these girls are appalled at the idea of sharing their bathrooms. At best, they are squicked, finding the idea distasteful. At worst, they are scared.

“How can they allow that?” One student asked indignantly.

“Yeah, I don’t want a guy in the bathroom with me!” Another one said. Voices leapt in to join her protest.

“It could be dangerous. Who knows who those guys are?” Another girl brought up.

“Yeah, that’s scary.” Her classmate agreed.

I’d say they have some reason to be scared. Yes, transgender people should not be prejudged. Yes, some of the nicest people you may ever meet will identify as transgender. Yes, the civil rights of transgender people matter.

But who will control for the predators who claim they identify as female? That lie takes no effort to perpetrate, nothing more than a unisex outfit and a good story. I still remember being fondled against my will by some crazy street guy when I was a thirteen-year-old girl in the main branch of the Tacoma Public Library. That event stayed with me for decades, and no doubt skewed my view of street people forever. While the wild-eyed man blocking my exit did me no actual physical harm, he made my whole world forever a more threatening place. That assault happened long ago, back when the mentally ill were hospitalized much more often than today. Now, unless someone explicitly declares an intent to harm him or herself or others, that person pretty much remains out on the street.

Bathrooms can be isolated places, designed for privacy. They offer convenient hiding places. Some are even placed outside of the business establishments they serve, doors in walls that offer no exit other than the door you open with the key you picked up at the counter. Or did not pick up at the counter. How many of us willingly hold the bathroom door open for a stranger waiting outside as we exit?

Eduhonesty: Thirteen-year-old girls ought to have civil rights, too. A staggering number of sexual predators have been registered in this country, and those are the predators who have been caught and convicted of a crime. Just opening the doors to all America’s bathrooms to any and everyone strikes me as a bad plan.

Nearly a half-century later, I vividly remember the man who cornered me in a quiet nook in a large, public library. I never told anyone about that incident ever. Except for some scary, disgusting groping, nothing had happened and I knew my parents would be outraged, so outraged that I did not want to find out what would happen if I shared what had occurred.

I am sorry to say that I think we have to plan for the world as it is, not the world as we might like it to be, and the world as it is has become treacherous country for thirteen-year-old girls. I’d like Target to rethink this policy. I’d like transsexuals to take one for the female team, suck it up and enter that men’s room.

Do it for the girls, girls. Childhood and young adulthood are being stripped away too quickly today. Social policy should not accelerate the erosion of youth. Social policy should not increase the danger to our children.