Woman mistaken for transgender, harassed in Walmart bathroom

by Sara Ritsch
Staff Writer

Aimee Toms, 22, sports a brand new pixie haircut after donating her locks to charity. But that is no reason to code her as an intruder, nor to assume a transgender person is an intruder at all.

Toms is not transgender.

While washing her hands in the women’s bathroom at a Walmart in Danbury on Friday, another woman approached her to exclaim, “You’re disgusting!” and “You don’t belong here!”

Her appearance, while nonthreatening, caused the woman to assume she was transgender.

This enthusiastic hatred for Toms’ presence was sparked by a recent LGBT law passed in North Carolina, beginning as House Bill 2, which says that transgender people must use the bathroom of the gender they were assigned at birth.

Toms is not insulted that a woman mistook her for biologically male. She is insulted for the dignity of the transgender community.

“After experiencing the discrimination they face firsthand, I cannot fathom the discrimination transgender people must face in a lifetime,” she says in the video above. “Can you imagine going out every day and having people tell you you should not be who you are or that people will not accept you as who you are?”

She says that the behavior displayed by this stranger is a direct result of House Bill 2.

“No one was telling these people to be scared of transgender people before. No one was telling them that they should be throwing people out of bathrooms,” she says. “As if it wasn’t scary enough for transgender people to use the bathroom before.”

She continues, “I’ve had people call me all sorts of names for having short hair. I’ve had people call me a boy, I’ve had people call me a dyke, I’ve had people call me gay. I’m grateful that that woman only called me disgusting and didn’t physically attack me.

“I was a victim of transphobia today as a cisgender female because my hair is short.”

Toms says this is “a cycle of disgusting bigotry” that is making a fool out of our country.

Her video has since gone viral.

The Gayly – 5/17/2016 @ 10:53 a.m. CDT