Target staffer promises to afflict women in order to comfort man

Target staffer promises to afflict women in order to comfort man

So here we go.  It’s kind of fascinating to watch Target promise to make its customer base uncomfortable while shopping, and then promise to tell the baseline customer to go stuff herself.  What retailer does that?

This one, apparently.  Anyone who’s ever been to Target knows that the store is stocked and organized to appeal to a female customer base.  When you think Target, you think clothes, accessories, beauty products, household decor.  Party supplies.  Boutique groceries and bathroom cleaners.  Yada yada; sure, there are electronics and power tools, but you don’t think “electronics and power tools” when you think of Target.  (You certainly don’t think of kicking a new set of tires or whistling softly over a new shotgun.)  The male customer’s busting-out-of-the-department-store-with-a-man-cave-full-of-video-and-audio-gadgets-all-for-an-insanely-low-price experience is more of a Wal-Mart or Best Buy kind of thing.  (And, as an aside, it would be a quintessential guy thing to actually think of Best Buy as a “department store,” just because it has more than one department.  Dudes, it’s not a department store unless there’s a changing room and a jewelry counter.)

Speaking of a changing room:  the changing room and bathroom are where Target is now determined to afflict the comfy baseline customer.  And it appears Target really is determined to do this.  A Mr. Andy Park of Tampa, Florida went to Target last week and asked to speak to someone about the new bathroom policy.  Caleb Howe, picking up on this at RedState, points out that Park was wearing male clothes and sporting two days’ stubble at the time he made his inquiry.

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Presenting himself as a man who was sometimes “uncomfortable” in the men’s restroom, Park asked if it was indeed the case that he would be allowed to use the women’s restroom.  “Gerard” in “Asset Protection” (security) was called to assist him.  Gerard assured him that, yes, he could use the women’s restroom, and if any women were concerned about that, they could come visit with the Target staff, who would presumably straighten them out.

https://www.facebook.com/andyintampa/videos/10208975135766269/?permPage=1

 

Caleb Howe makes this point:

So if the women are uncomfortable, no accommodation is made. But the reason that Park gives the manager for using the bathroom is his own discomfort. That’s what he tells him. Presumably, if the women have a problem with a man in the bathroom, they can just go somewhere else. I don’t want to belabor that. I want you to think about that.

I’m thinking the women will increasingly just go somewhere else.  I see a lot of women online bravely excoriating other women for not wanting to be in the bathroom with men, but that isn’t going to last.  The very same women who are mocking others today will be slinking quietly away from Target in the not-too-distant future, assuming Target goes ahead with this full-bore.

You see, you, personally, are not going to be in the women’s bathroom with Caitlyn Jenner.  Nor will there be a run on the women’s bathroom by a bunch of ordinary guys.  They have no interest in using the women’s bathroom.  Besides being creepy, it would mean waiting in longer lines.  There’s no upside.

No, you’re going to be in there with Joe Pervert, all 200 pounds of him, waltzing in to take pictures of you and your 8-year-old because now he can.  There will be no prior presumption against his being in there now.  It’s not ridiculous to object to this; it’s ridiculous to think it won’t cause lots of problems, and very, very quickly.  Being photographed hovering over the toilet will soon be the least of your worries, in the Target bathroom.

And here’s the thing about women being stalked and harassed in the Target restrooms: the media can’t keep that quiet.  We’re all going to know.  Even biased algorithms in social media won’t be able to suppress the information.

In almost no case will the harassment be perpetrated by trans bathroom users — that’s my guess up front — but that’s the whole frigging POINT.  Declaring open season on the women’s bathroom means there’s no keeping predators out of the women’s bathroom.  If male-to-female trans people want to shut up, be dressed as women, look feminine, and disappear into a toilet stall, most women don’t much care.  But they can already do that.  That’s not what activists are demanding.  Activists are demanding that male-bodied individuals overtly enter women’s facilities of all kinds, under no specialized pretext, and have the option whenever they want of exposing their genitals to women.

We’ll see if Target goes ahead with this.  If they do, they’re going to lose a meaningful amount of business, and they’ll have a lot more insurance vulnerabilities.  Hey, knock yourselves out, folks.  It’s not my money.

J.E. Dyer

J.E. Dyer

J.E. Dyer is a retired Naval Intelligence officer who lives in Southern California, blogging as The Optimistic Conservative for domestic tranquility and world peace. Her articles have appeared at Hot Air, Commentary’s Contentions, Patheos, The Daily Caller, The Jewish Press, and The Weekly Standard.

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