Transgender Bathroom Debate: Woman Who Donated Hair To Cancer Patients Harassed In Walmart Bathroom

As the debate rages on over North Carolina’s transgender bathroom bill, and people across the nation are fighting on both sides of the controversy, it seems bathroom vigilantes are creating the exact kind of hostile environment in public bathrooms that they are claiming to be afraid of. Another victim of these gender police has come forward with a video posted to her Facebook page, telling the story of how she was harassed in a Walmart bathroom for looking like a transgender woman.

Twenty-two-year-old Aimee Toms from Naugatuck, Connecticut, took to Facebook on Friday, to share with the world what transpired when she dared to be a woman with short hair, sporting a baseball cap, in a woman’s bathroom. Toms said in her video that as she was washing her hands in a Danbury, Connecticut, bathroom when a woman — believing Toms to be transgender — accosted her, screaming “you are not supposed to be here! You need to leave!” The woman then flipped Aimee off, called her “disgusting,” and stormed out of the bathroom. It took a confused Toms a few minutes to realize that the obnoxious woman had believed she was a transgender woman, using the woman’s bathroom — which, incidentally, is not illegal in Connecticut.

Aimee Toms Mistaken For #Transgender, Harassed In #Walmart #Bathroom https://t.co/NczHFE8ISv pic.twitter.com/EtzCTzC4Ja

— UJReview (@UJReview) May 17, 2016

According to New York Daily News, Toms said she fully believes that it was her short hair, and the baseball cap she wore that made her harasser mistake her for a transgender woman, but that doesn’t justify the woman’s actions.

“If it really takes me pulling up my shirt and showing someone I grew these boobs myself for them to leave me alone in a restroom, I don’t want to live on this planet anymore.”

To add insult to injury, the reason for Aimee’s pixie cut that led to her being mistaken for transgender in a Walmart bathroom is due to her unwavering kindness and charity — something her harasser lacks. This past January was the third time Aimee has cut her hair short in order to donate her locks to the Pantene Beautiful Lengths program, which fashions wigs from donated hair, and gives them, free of charge, to cancer patients, reports the Danbury News-Times.

“Now I am damn happy to rock a pixie cut, if it means that some kid gets my hair and gets to wear it. And that’s worth it to me. You know what isn’t worth it? Being discriminated against in a bathroom by some f**king a**hole who thinks they have a right to decide what gender I am, and that they have a right to judge me for it.”

Toms goes on to liken the transgender bathroom debate, and the discrimination transgender people deal with to what African-Americans faced in the 1960s over segregated bathrooms and water fountains, saying, quite succinctly, that history repeats itself.

Woman says she was verbally attacked after being mistaken for transgender inside a bathroom. https://t.co/UqC7zJyNhm pic.twitter.com/qHuuH88xAZ

— Mother Jones (@MotherJones) May 17, 2016

Aimee also makes a point to bring up the absurd notion those who are for North Carolina’s transgender bathroom bill continue to spout off about — men taking advantage of the law to dress like women and breach the woman’s bathroom to sexually harass girls.

“If a guy was going to commit a crime in a woman’s bathroom, this law isn’t going to invite them to do it, they’re going to do it anyway. See, this law was not in place a year ago, when I almost got raped in a bathroom because a man followed me into the woman’s room… There was no transgender bathroom law that was telling him to go into the woman’s room and sexually assault me.”

In short, bad guys will be bad guys, and they don’t need a law to give them permission to be creeps.

As previously reported by the Inquisitr, Aimee isn’t the first woman to be harassed in a bathroom for eschewing society’s stylistic ideals of what any particular gender should look or dress like, nor is she likely to be the last. The transgender bathroom debate doesn’t look like it will be slowing down any time soon, and in the meantime, it’s not only transgender men and women who have to fear being harassed and victimized while simply trying to use the bathroom — it’s anyone who doesn’t fit into what much of society believes to be the gender normative standard.

[Image via Aimee Toms/Facebook]