Target Transgender Bathroom Policy Case Study

It's easy for people to hate what they don't understand. Imagine if you were learning how to play the guitar, and no matter how many times you practice and study the right chords, you just can't seem to grasp the concept, and there is nothing wrong with that. Plenty of people happen to have this mindset when it comes to transgender people. There is this constant debate concerning transgender men and women and their rights. In some cases, they are expected to abide by certain requirements in order to full change their gender and aren't granted the right to use the bathroom based on their gender identity.

Transgender rights and policies have always been an ongoing debate. In the article, “Bathroom Battlegrounds and Penis Panics,” Schilt and Westbrook (2015) argued that in order to push gender equality forward, we must consider the rights of transgender people by allowing them to have access to bathrooms that support their gender identity rather than their biological sex. In doing so, authors believed that it would make progress in alleviating discrimination against transgender people. However, in this conscious effort to fight for transgender rights and their access to sex-segregated spaces,

“Other organizations within the LGBT community don’t give a voice to the transgender community,” Jensen said, “so many decisions are made without transgender voices.”

According to the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Alliance (LGBT) since the introduction of non-discriminatory laws in 200 cities, it is transgender individuals who are on the receiving end of abuse in restrooms (Margolin, 2015). In order to protect the rights of transgender individuals in the locker rooms, Planet Fitness revoked a woman’s membership because she complained about the showering practices of a transgender female (biological male) in the women’s locker room (Shapiro,

Target is representative of gendered spaces, because Target has many regions within itself that cater to a specific sex. This makes Target a gendered space, because a gendered space is a space in which it is only appropriate for one sex to occupy. An example of a gendered space in Target would be the feminine care aisle, because all the products in that aisle are for females. This makes the feminine care aisle a gendered space, because most people find it inappropriate or weird for males to occupy the feminine care aisle. In American culture, people believe that it is only appropriate for females to occupy the feminine care aisle.

Here in Canada, this issue has been brought forward in both communities and provincial level of concerns. To take a look closer to home, the city of Toronto had witnessed the complexity of this issue in the past years. A Toronto transgender teen who identifies as a male, was banned from using his high school boys restroom, and was forced to leave school grounds and search for a public bathroom at a gas station. Concerns were mentioned for the safety of Spencer, and also how he felt uncomfortable being forced to use the women’s restroom; however, several parents and students agreed with how the school was taking action to this problem. After a petition was enacted by fellow supportive students, Spencer was allowed to freely use the restrooms at his high school.

Gender is always in the news today, widely causing different problems in different states. For example, target has jut announced that they want transgender to use whatever bathroom they identify with on their birth certificates. This means that a transgender person, who thinks of himself as female, is still able to use the women’s bathroom. Many people are upset about these types of issues, and the Target issue, in particular.

In April the company said that it will allow people to use bathroom as per their gender identity. This policy was objected by many. An online petition started by American Family Association (AFA) to boycott Target received over 1.4 million signatures.

Over one million people have signed an online petition, organized by the evangelical American Family Association, calling for a boycott of Target. The anti-LGBT quasi-hate group explains that all a man needs to do or say to gain entry into a women’s restroom is that he "feels like a woman today.”

In Kyle Reyes’s essay, “Enjoy Your Transgender Bathrooms. We Just Lost America” and Paul Roberts’ “Character in the Impulse Society,” both explains the concerns of the weakening “characters” and the rise of conflict in America. According to Reyes, Americans excessively bustling improving the world to a better place. He explains how individuals have a tendency to overreact to issues in America. According to Roberts, individuals are getting addicted to technology and themselves because they are investing most of their time on the internet.

had was that they shouldn’t have any problem using the bathroom correlating with the sex transgender people were assigned with at birth. In reality, trans people not using the bathrooms of their identity is more harmful than meets the eye. “The medical community (and increasingly, employ-ers, schools and courts) now recognize that it is essential to the health and well-being of transgender people for them to be able to live in accordance with their internal gender identity in all aspects of life—restroom usage is a necessary part of that experience. In Doe v. Regional School Unit, the Maine Supreme Court held that a transgender girl had a right to use the women’s bathroom at school because her psychological well-being and educational success depended on her transition. The school, in denying her access, had “treated [her] differently from other students solely because of her status as a transgender girl.” The court determined that this was a form of discrimination” (FAQ, Lambda Legal.) Another counter argument is a social media movement where it shows fully transitioned trans people using the restrooms of their assigned sex to show that making it illegal for trans people to access the restrooms of the gender they identify as isn’t as good of an idea as people

People tend to look passed the ones whom this debate affects. A survey was taken of over 2,000 transgender college students on the effects of the bathroom debate. This survey showed that the suicide attempt rate "increased 40% among those who said they had been denied access to a bathroom" (Scherer et al n.p.). People who are not considered normal by societal standards may have a hard time coping with the hate they receive. This hate can lead to extremes such as the attempt to commit suicide. The allowance or denial of access to a bathroom led to an increase in suicide attempt rates. Those not affected by the issue do not realize the emotional and physical hardship that transgender people go through. In Washington, D.C., a survey of 100 transgender people was taken. In this survey, "70% said they had been denied restroom access or harassed, and 58% said they has avoided going out in public because they feared being able to find a bathroom" (Scherer et al n.p.). The accommodations of both sides of the debate would allow everyone to feel safer in his or her own community. Family restrooms allow complete privacy and do not discrimination based on gender. Access to these types of facilities would never be denied. Allowing people access to the bathroom they choose opened an entire new side of the issue in

The U.S. federal government is backing the issue of gender neutral bathrooms. As Lisa Rein, publisher of an article in The Washington Post, writes, “The federal government is strongly urging employers to give transgender employees access to bathrooms that correspond to their gender identity, marking a new policy front in the fast-moving campaign for transgender equality” (Rein). Rein argues that bathrooms need to be made neutral, as it discriminates members of the LBGT community. Essentially, she argues throughout her article that emotional issues are the biggest reason to allow this. She states, “Among the many forms of discrimination advocates for transgender men and women say they face on the job,

Coming out as a transgender, identifying with a gender expression that differs from the assigned sex, has proven to be quite difficult through the ages. While the acceptance of transgender people has grown significantly higher throughout the years, people’s stance on them are still quite divided, and the uphill battle for transgender rights has proven this. Just giving transgenders the right to simply go to the bathroom they identify with has shown to be controversial according to the TIME cover Battle of the Bathroom. The TIME magazine makes sure to note the problem defiantly “far more than public facilities” (Scherer par. 9). Transgender rights are a problem that Jamison Green, president for World Professional Association for Transgender Health, thoroughly addresses in a report written by Alan Greenblatt for CQ Researcher. Jamison Green’s specific purpose in that report is to justify why transgender people deserve basic human rights like everybody else, as shown in society, through his use of facts, qualifiers, figurative language, counterarguments, and appeals to logic and values.

Despite popular belief, integrating transgender people into public environments reportedly brings about no harm to the general public - instead, transgenders are the ones at risk. The issue is getting so much attention that people are advertising about it. An advertisement featured in several popular Minnesota state newspapers received aggressive backlash from consumers due to condemning young transwomen for joining girls’ sports teams at school, claiming them to be ‘men’ who intended to harm their teammates. The