I wanted to briefly discuss my thoughts on the most recent events that have occurred in Loudoun County involving a student who sexually assaulted two female peers. This has been causing a lot of attraction to the trans bathroom debate once again, however this case has nothing to do with trans people or bathroom laws. It is being made into a trans issue by several right-wing political commentators such as Matt Walsh and Michael Knowles, with absolutely zero evidence to back up their claims. Let’s first discuss the facts of what happened.
A male student sexually assaulted a female classmate in a bathroom.
The male student happened to be wearing a skirt during the time of the assault.
The two met up in the girl’s bathroom for sex prior to this incident.
The victim’s parents are claiming the student is gender-fluid.
The student is then sent to attend another school where another assault happens.
This assault happens in a classroom, with no information released on what said student was wearing at the time.
Based on this information there is nothing here that leads to, trans people being allowed to use the bathroom of their gender identity, as being the issue of why these assaults happened. Let’s break it down.
A person who identifies as male who wears a skirt does not automatically make them trans. Wearing a skirt by cis men seems to be this new phenomenon that people have never heard of before. For some reason this has become an indication that someone is gender-fluid or is trans, without any sort of conversation with the person who is dressing this way. It is an assumption. Not only is it an assumption but it is also extremely ignorant to think this way, because it correlates two unrelated things to one another.
The parents of the victim from the bathroom assault are claiming that the male student is gender-fluid. In every article relating to this case, the term gender-fluid is only coming from the victim’s parents. There has been no comment from the assailant’s family or anyone else regarding how this student identifies.
The right-wing media have portrayed this event as “a transgender student wearing female clothes infiltrated a female’s bathroom to sexually assault a student.” They have made it seem as if this was an isolated incident and the first time that these students interacted with each other. When in reality, they had met several times prior. This was not a situation where someone disguised themselves to enter a woman’s space.
Allowing transgender students to use the bathroom of their gender identity was not in place at the time of the assault. This is being seen as a transgender issue due to Loudoun County implementing a policy that would allow trans students to use the bathroom of their gender identity, yet these outlets seemed to have forgotten to mention that this policy was not in place at the time of the incident. So not only was this policy not in force, but the fact that the student had previously accessed the female’s restroom for consensual sex in the past, makes this an issue unrelated to trans people.
If we take a look at the second assault, which happened at a different school and in a classroom and not in a bathroom, this only continues to prove that this had nothing to do with a transgender bathroom policy. As no bathroom was used for this sexual assault, and we also don’t have information regarding what the student was wearing at the time of this assault, not that that would matter either.
I wanted to finally talk about this because I have been absolutely outraged by the fact that people have turned this into something it wasn’t. The assault that this student endured is awful, and there is no denying that. But to then use this girl’s assault as a way to turn the narrative onto trans people is not only dishonest but it also shows exactly where these people’s minds are at. With this and with the sports bans, it isn’t about women. This is about control and that’s exactly what the right continues to attempt to do by pushing out force narratives that spark emotion. Instead of focusing on what this girl endured and how situations like this don’t happen again in Loudoun County, they have decided that transgender people need to be the scapegoats, despite trans people not being involved in this case. I don’t care for the way Loudoun County handled this at all, but that is a separate matter to discuss for a later time.
Resources:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/28/opinion/loudoun-county-trans.html