Regardless of whether you care about Trump’s transphobic executive orders, gender policing hurts everybody, even cisgender people. A perfect yet tragic example of this would be 29-year-old Dani Davis, a Florida woman who was fired because a man followed her into the women’s restroom to harass her because he thought she was trans. Davis is cis, but the man likely thought she was transgender due to her height of 6-foot-4.
“The voice was much louder than simply someone yelling in from the door. This man was fully in the restroom, yelling” slurs and violent threats toward transwomen, Davis said. She was in the bathroom alone, so a man following her into the women’s restrooms to terrorize her was anything but terrifying. Once the creepy bigot left, she told her supervisor about what happened. Walmart terminated her position of seven years a week later.
“It was all very scary and heartbreaking and confusing,” Davis told the Washington Post. Management said the reason was that she created a “security risk.” Davis expressed, “I took it to mean that I was the ‘security risk’ because someone had mistaken me for trans.” She tried to appeal her job loss, but Walmart did nothing. It wasn’t until she took to social media to publicize the situation that the company offered to rehire her with extra pay. Needless to say, Davis declined. “I think it would just be a hostile environment to return to,” she remarked.
If people had any reason not to detest Walmart or Trump’s ridiculous new laws, this incident would be a good start. “Usual Walmart blaming the victim,” reacts a Facebook user. “Never shopping at that hell hole again,” chimes in another. Dozens more complain about how poorly Walmart mistreats its workers and that they’ll never set foot in a store again. The comment section was also filled with cis women expressing how they have also been harassed for being tall, as bigots have mistaken them for transgender people.
It’s also just as absurd how the man assumed Davis was trans and thought it okay to follow her into the ladies restroom, of all places. “So, a man decided to enter a woman’s bathroom to yell at a woman he THOUGHT was trans?” exclaimed a user. “The irony, hypocrisy and audacity of the male entering the women’s restroom to rage about men being in there ๐คฆ๐ผโโ๏ธ๐คฆ๐ผโโ๏ธ,” another commenter moaned. “Clear case of how anti-trans bigotry hurts women. Genital policing means that cis people are under scrutiny, too,” states a Redditor.
A fundraiser has been made on behalf of Dani Davis to support her endeavors after her unjust termination and bigoted harassment. Almost half of the $15K goal has already been raised.
