If you keep your eye on the crime reports over the next several weeks, you might see my face as the cops haul me away.
That’s because Florida State Rep. Frank Artiles (R) has filed a bill that would make it illegal for a man to enter a ladies’ restroom in Florida. As luck would have it, my wife and I will be driving the length of Florida in a few weeks. And as luck would further have it, I spend quite a bit of time in ladies’ restrooms.
Actually, I don’t spend any more time in there than the average lady does. Maybe one or two visits in a day’s time if my wife and I go to a restaurant or a show. Five or six when we’re on a long road trip.
But Florida Rep. Artiles has a problem with that, because I was born with standard-issue man-tackle, and he has filed a bill to make sure that everyone in Florida limits his or her bathroom visits to their “biological sex, male or female, at birth.” Violations may result in a thousand-dollar fine and up to a year in jail.
His target is transgender people, folks whose operating-system software doesn’t agree with their birth-issued hardware. He feels that their gender-identity is a choice, just like their desire to use an other-gendered restroom.
“People are not forced to go to the restroom,” Artiles says. “They choose to go to the restroom.”
He goes on to state that he isn’t anti-transgender, but that doesn’t apply to me anyway, because I’m not transgender. That’s not why I spend so much time in ladies’ rooms.
And I don’t do it because I’m a pervert, either.
I do it because my wife of 45 years is a stroke victim with severe disabilities that limit her ability to use public restrooms without help.
Actually, that’s putting her case lightly. Her abilities to use such facilities aren’t just “limited” to needing “help.” She is confined to a wheelchair and cannot stand or walk without aid. The right side of her body is completely paralyzed, and she cannot speak. She could never push a door open with one hand and wheel herself inside with the other or even ask for help in doing so. And once she arrived at the stall….
Well, I’m sure Rep. Artiles would understand my reluctance to give further details. After all, her privacy is uppermost in his mind, right? That’s why he introduced the bill, right?
And so, with her right to privacy and dignity in mind, let’s just say that it is impossible for her to use the ladies’ room without my help. And let’s further say that her urgent need to use it when nature calls is not a matter of her choice—any more than it was her choice to have a stroke almost five years ago—regardless of the pronouncements of some puffed-up potentate.
And so, for the past five years, I have been a frequent visitor to ladies’ rooms. Even in Florida. Call the john-darmes to come and take me away.
I dreaded those visits to the ladies’ room so much for the first several months after her stroke that I was reluctant ever to leave the house with her if I thought she might need to use the facilities. I made sure that her business was taken care of just before we left home, and we raced through whatever outside business we had to conduct in order to get back home before nature’s next call came around. An evening out at a show or a restaurant? Forget about it.
But then I realized that my wife enjoyed a night out every once in a while. She enjoyed eating in restaurants. She enjoyed a day at the mall, visiting shops and trying on new clothes. Her stroke put more limitations on her lifestyle than I could possibly explain here, so what right did I have to further limit her enjoyment, just because I felt uncomfortable pushing open that door that said “Ladies” and stepping inside with her?
And so now we go through our days as normally as we possibly can. And when she has to go, that means that I will go in with her.
Laws or no laws.
I have been amazed at how gracious and understanding other ladies are when they see me enter the restroom with her. Oh, little kids will stare, but that’s what little kids do. And some teenage girls get a bit creeped-out, because getting creeped out is what some teenage girls do best, so I try to avoid bringing my wife to the restroom when they’re in there, if she can wait just a bit longer.
But for the most part we have never met any ladies, or even teens, who are nearly as creeped-out by my ladies’ room visits as is Rep. Artiles, whose bill targets us as much as it does transgender folks.
Cain Davis, the Florida Chairman of the Citizens for Good Public Policy, is creeped-out too, it seems. He said, “We know when men go into women’s restrooms, bad things can happen.”
Well, if my wife and I ever meet him standing guard at the door of a ladies’ room and he tries to stop me from taking her inside, he’ll be able to add “a good @$$-kicking” to his list of bad things that can happen.
As I say, my wife and I will be traveling a lot in Florida in a few weeks, so watch for me on the news. I’ll be the guy whose mug shot has the unrepentant look on his face.
Or—here’s a thought—maybe I should take my wife into the men’s room instead of the ladies’ room. That way, Rep. Artiles and Chairman Davis can order the potty patrol to slap the cuffs on her and wheel her off to the clink for a year.
I’m sure they’d love to make her the poster girl for their bill.
