Thursday, March 31, 2016

Equipment doesn't matter?

Kristina Cook writes,
To all those defending the right of transgender folks using the wrong bathroom - one of you just told me that the equipment doesn't matter. Really?

Get your period for the first time in the middle of school wearing white jeans. Then tell me that I have to deal with that situation in the same bathroom as some confused hormone-raged male, and tell me "Equipment doesn't matter."
For the next 60+ years of your life, put your feet in stirrups and have someone put a pair of cold spoons in you and then call you back two weeks later because the giant Q-tip they stuck in there came back with something abnormal. Then tell me "Equipment doesn't matter."

Despair about the size of your breasts from the fourth grade on, and then find a lump in middle age and realize those pieces of equipment have betrayed you. Then tell me "Equipment doesn't matter."

Carry around a life for 9 months and then squeeze that life out of your womb, expanding the equipment WAY beyond normal operating tolerances. And then tell me "Equipment doesn't matter." Or worse, spend tens of thousands of dollars trying to get that equipment to work so you can do that, knowing you've been paying the price for it all these years and now it's your turn to carry that life, only to be denied that blessing. Then tell me "Equipment doesn't matter."

On the day you go off to college and move into your first dorm room, receive your first rape whistle to be used in case your equipment matters more to someone than your dignity or consent. Then tell me "Equipment doesn't matter."
I earned my right to be a woman. I have paid for it, literally, in blood, sweat and tears. Being uncomfortable with your sexuality does not give you the right to claim my gender for your own. If you want to be some other thing, be my guest. You don't have to be society's idea of a man - whatever that idea is. But you will NEVER be a woman.

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