Montel Williams Thinks I Stirred Up Fear in My Letter to Megyn Kelly
As an activist who is concerned with the rights of all people, why does Mr. Williams deride, dismiss, and even deny the reality of concerns like this? Why are the very valid issues raised by these young women ignored (and even mocked) so as to show solidarity with a gender-confused teenager?
And what does Mr. Williams tell the mother who wrote to me on Facebook, stating, "This is VERY real. This new policy that was recently adopted by our local YMCA in WA allows for people to use whatever locker room they self-identify with. Just two weeks ago a boy around the age of 13 walked right into the girls side of the women's locker room. All he did was sit down and scroll through his phone. Little girls where surprised when they came in from showering with their towels wrapped around them to see him sitting there. My daughter was one of those girls. This policy opens the door to those who have malicious intent."
Along with many LGBT activists and allies, Mr. Williams effectively trashes the needs and concerns of the vast majority of the population in order to accommodate the less than 0.5 percent of the population who struggle with gender identity. (I don't for a moment demean the reality of those struggles, to be clear.)
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In my experience, most of the transgender individuals I have met are clearly transgender, but let's say that Mr. Williams is correct and many (or even most) do not appear to be transgender. Obviously, then, we would have no idea that "Sally," a biological male who had sex-change surgery at 20 and who has been on hormones for 10 years, was not a woman, and so, when Sally uses the ladies' bathroom, not a single woman would notice her. Presumably, that would be the case with the two individuals whose pictures Mr. Williams presented.
But here, again, is where he missed the point. I could just as easily show pictures of very masculine-looking transgender male-to-females, whose presence in women's locker rooms, changing rooms, and bathrooms would make the vast majority of women and girls I know terribly uncomfortable, to say the least. What about those cases?
(Surely Mr. Williams must also know that at least 20 percent of women claim to have been raped or sexually abused, yet here too, he seems unconcerned about how the transgender bathroom access laws affect them.)
Mr. Williams is correct to state that, in a certain sense, H.B.2 is unenforceable in that the government cannot (and would not) have "bathroom monitors" checking everyone's birth certificates. Once more, however, he has missed the reality on the ground.
In short:
1. North Carolina was not having any type of crisis concerning transgender bathroom access. Meaning that, if, to all outward appearances, the male-to-female individual looked female, that person used the ladies' bathroom without incident. At the same time, a clearly biological male would not be welcomed in the ladies' locker room at the YMCA.
2. The city of Charlotte passed a radical bill that would have effectively rendered all public locker rooms and bathrooms gender neutral, opening the door to all kinds of abuses, not to mention opening the door to heterosexual male predators who would pose as transgender women. (There are numerous examples of such abuses in recent years nationwide.)
3. The state of North Carolina overturned Charlotte's radical bill, introducing additional language to preserve privacy and safety.
Practically speaking, then, since no one is checking birth certificates at bathroom and locker room doors, if you look like a woman and have female plumbing, you use the appropriate facilities, and no one will bat an eyelash. If you look like a man and have male plumbing, you use the men's facilities.
Is this so objectionable to Mr. Williams? Is this really fear-mongering or moving the goal posts, or appealing to emotion or stirring up false concerns about a vast leftwing conspiracy? Isn't this simply a matter of common sense?
Mr. Williams then claims that I conveniently ignored the parts of H.B.2 that deal with larger discrimination issues. Actually, I did not ignore them at all. I was addressing specific comments made my Megyn Kelly about bathroom privacy, not the larger presentation made by Mr. Williams, which I'd be delighted to discuss in more depth on the air, as he is surely an eloquent spokesman for his cause.
Interestingly, like Mr. Williams, I am a registered independent, and these are not political issues to me but rather righteousness, safety, and common sense issues.
And so, when he argues that, "Because H.B. 2's proponents have no honest argument in favor of the measure, they've resorted to mud-slinging" and that, "Brown's rebuttal comes from a position of weakness," he is demonstrating a lack of awareness of the perceptions and concerns of a sizable majority of Americans who still believe that a teenage girl should not be forced to share a locker room and shower stall with a teenage boy, no matter how he self-identifies.
I look forward to having Mr. Williams as a guest on my show where we can discuss our perspectives in greater depth, and I do hope that he will reconsider his position.
