America has been caught for months in a frenzy over where transgender people can pee. So on Thursday, The Daily Show’s Trevor Noah set aside eight minutes of his show for a lengthy monologue offering a point-by-point rebuttal to the anti-trans hysteria.
The Daily Show’s Trevor Noah points out the total absurdity of anti-transgender hysteria
All throughout the debates, opponents of trans rights have repeated the same talking point: If places let trans people to use the bathroom or locker room that matches their gender identity, men will take advantage of the policies and disguise themselves as women to sneak into women’s bathrooms and locker rooms and sexually assault or harass women.
Noah blew up the absurdity of this argument — that would-be sex offenders are just waiting for a legal change to carry out their acts.
“That’s what perverts have been waiting for: loopholes,” Noah said. “This argument falls flat every single time. Just think about it: We have labeled these people as perverts, as sex offenders. And you think they’re waiting for the laws to change? That’s what you’re thinking? Like guys out there going, ‘Man, I want to flash people in the bathroom so badly. When are they going to change the laws? When are they going to change the laws to accommodate me?’”
This has been the most absurd aspect of this debate from day one. Whether the laws change to be just a little more trans-friendly is irrelevant to people who are going to break the law and sexually harass or assault people in the bathroom in the first place. After all, these are sex offenders.
But if it’s not the sex offender talking point, it’s the privacy talking point — the idea that other people just don’t want to have a person with different genitalia in the same bathroom as them.
Noah, again, responded, “You know what? I understand that. Privacy. We all expect a certain level of privacy. And I’ve chatted to some of my friends who are parents of young girls and they go, ‘Hey, I don’t know if I’d be comfortable with my daughter being in the same bathroom as an exposed penis.’ And I understand that. It’s not like I don’t understand that completely, because I’m not comfortable being in the bathroom with an exposed penis, and I’m a man.”
He added, “In life, there are certain types of privacy we forgo. It’s one of the deals we make to be part of society. That’s what we do. When I go to the gym, I have to accept the fact that in the changing room, there may be a man standing there blow-drying his balls.”
As Noah is indicating, the fact is bathrooms and locker rooms are just uncomfortable places to be. Nothing is going to change that. They are, by their nature, places where some expectations of privacy go away. But if no one is getting hurt in the process — and no one is due to trans-friendly policies in the places that have them — then it’s possible to just deal with it, and let trans people use the bathroom for their gender identity without making them feel ostracized and discriminated against.
“We’re not comfortable with many things in society,” Noah said, “but we’ve learned to get over it.”
