Opinion: If Thine Eye Offend Thee…

Potty Politics

\ Apr 28, 2016

4 min read

In 1946, the one thing that was bound to destroy the moral fabric and good taste of this country was the bikini. Louis Reard, a French automotive and mechanical engineer, designed the world’s first string bikini after noticing the women on a nearby beach rolling up their bathing suits to get a better tan. The new swimwear was considered so scandalous that the only woman he could find willing to model the thing for him was a local stripper. It wasn’t bare legs or shoulders or exposed midriffs that made everyone feel so threatened—swimsuits had been showing those off for years.

Nope. It was the navel. That lint-filled flesh bowl in the middle of your tummy.

In 1957, almost a decade later, the bikini was still frowned upon in America. The magazine Modern Girl famously printed, “It is hardly necessary to waste words over the so-called bikini since it is inconceivable that any girl with tact and decency would ever wear such a thing.” Hilarious.

With time, of course, the belly button’s lusty appeal faded. See, unlike those silly pre-internet apes in the ‘40s, we know how ridiculous it is to think that someone can be scarred by seeing a navel. Thanks to modern science and good taste, we’ve managed to get over all this goofiness and nail down the really disturbing parts of the human body: nipples, buttholes, body hair and ding dongs. (Watch out, vajayjays. We’ve got our eye on you, too.)

As proof of our discerning nature, I would like to direct the reader’s attention to recent heated debates—locally and nationally—over the use of restrooms by transgender people. It’s been a tense month since North Carolina passed House Bill 2 (HB2), a law that specified the classes of people who are protected by anti-discrimination laws. Sexual orientation and gender identity were noticeably missing from the list, effectively giving businesses the okay to discriminate against the LGBTQ community.

N.C. Governor Pat McCrory claims that the bill is in no way related to “religious freedom” legislation passed in Mississippi to protect business-owners who refuse service to someone on the grounds of a “sincerely held religious belief.” Relation notwithstanding, the difference wouldn’t mean much to those in the LGBTQ community who would be powerless to defend themselves against discrimination under the terms of the law.

But opponents of HB2 won the final victory when a panel of the 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals recently overturned a Gloucester County School Board policy that barred students from entering restrooms that didn’t match the gender on their birth certificate, making HB2 invalid.

That’s right. The government has once again poked its finger into the eye of common decency, trying its damnedest to push this country toward some kind of Sodom-and-Gomorrah-type situation. All the discussion about “rights” and “discrimination” is just diversionary tactics. The real issue is the fear that people have of their children being molested by members of the trans community while trying to relax on the toilet.

Unfortunately, a cursory search reveals sexual assaults committed by transgender people are hard to find, though. In fact, according to the Office for Victims of Crime, half of all transgender people have experienced sexual assault or abuse in their lives—

Whoa. Did you see how they almost tripped us up there? Luckily, we know that facts aren’t always “truth.” Sometimes, you just have to accept well-documented, vague anecdotes of folks like Peggy Muller-Aragón, a board member of the Albuquerque School District, who shared this highly publicized story at a meeting held last month concerning the APS policy change to allow students to use whichever bathroom they choose: “I went into a restroom and there was a transgender person in there. I was in there alone, and they didn’t let me come out.” The incident was surely unnerving for all parties involved.

But there is a glaring hole in the arguments of Muller-Aragón and her ilk. The idea that a simple sign will stop someone from entering the wrong restroom and exposing themselves to children is just crazy. The only way to ensure that our children are never exposed to the naughty bits of the world is mandatory genitalia removal. Hashtags like #WeJustNeedToPee will disappear when there aren’t any more urethras. Let’s just get rid of these disgusting things once and for all. Nice and smooth. Like Barbie dolls.