TWIBS: Transmisogyny Casts a Wide Net
Last month a cisgender woman was accosted by a stranger in a bathroom then fired over it. It isn’t the first time and it sure won’t be the last.
Humor by Alyssa Steinsiek
This Week in Barrel Scraping (TWIBS) is Assigned Media’s oldest column! Every Friday, Alyssa Steinsiek digs deep from the well of transphobia and finds the most obnoxious, goofy thing transphobes have said or obsessed over during the week and tears it to shreds.
Sound the alarm, ring the bells, call the police (JUST kidding, DON’T do that) because it’s happened again: A cisgender woman has been accosted by cisgender people for failing to conform to misogynistic patriarchal gender norms and, thus, being confused for a despicable and loathsome trans woman.
In mid-March, after working at her local Walmart for more than seven years, Dani Davis was verbally assaulted by a man in the women’s restroom who believed she was trans. While the man’s partner begged him to stop, he screamed at Davis from inside the women’s restroom about beating her up to “protect” his partner. What can I say, self-awareness and critical thought have never been the strong suits of guys like this.
Davis was likely targeted by this man because, despite being cisgender, she is 6’4” inches tall. While it is a grand and Amazonian height that many WNBA players aspire to, clearing six feet as a woman in this political climate mostly means you’re an immediately identifiable target for bigots to pick a fight with.
What happened next is truly crazy, though: Davis reported the incident to her immediate supervisor—the next step any of us would take in her shoes, most likely—and was promptly fired in less than a week for failing to report the harassment to, specifically, a salaried management employee. This, they told her, created a “security risk”... somehow.
Davis initially appealed the termination, but her appeal was denied, until her Facebook post about the whole ordeal went viral and Walmart (presumably sensing a powerful wrongful termination suit on the horizon) tried to get her to come back to work: “We want our associates to feel safe and supported in their workplace, and we won’t tolerate bullying or threats of violence against our associates or customers,” said Walmart spokesperson Joe Pennington in a media statement. “We’ve reviewed the situation and will be addressing it internally. We’ve also made multiple attempts to invite Ms. Davis to return to work, with back pay.”
She isn’t sure if she wants her job back, given how she was treated.
This isn’t the first time recently a cis woman has been mistaken for trans and been attacked by weirdos, either. Back in January, Lauren Boebert and Nancy Mace teamed up to form the most nightmarish blunt rotation of all time and flip their shit on a cisgender woman in a Capitol bathroom because they thought she might be Sarah McBride. Then, just over a month ago at a different Walmart in Tucson, Arizoña, a Black lesbian teen was harassed by police after somebody called the cops on her believing she was a trans woman. And in Scotland last October, a cis woman was briefly sent to a men’s prison for the crime of looking a bit masculine, maybe.
Hell, forget recent, Vox was reporting on the way transphobia fuels attacks against people who aren’t even trans back in freaking 2016.
While I feel for all of these women, I will say that I wish it made national news when an actual transgender woman was violently confronted for attempting to pee. It would be nice if our many allies raised a stink over our discrimination, not just the splash damage cis girls experience as a result of the targeted eradication campaign being waged against us by the religious right and federal government. That said, as ever, I’ll keep showing solidarity for other marginalized women who suffer discrimination and mistreatment.
And I’ll say this, too: If you think somebody’s using the wrong restroom, mind your own damn business. If you feel the need to call the cops over a bowel movement, consider isolating yourself from the rest of society until you get your shit together. Thanks!
Alyssa Steinsiek is a trans woman journalist who reports on news relevant to the queer community and occasionally posts on BlueSky.
