Spartanburg, SC based Denny's Inc. is a 1,749-restaurant chain which is one of the largest restaurant companies in the United States. Back during the 80's Denny's had a corporate 'ethnic cleansing' policy in which managers were under orders not to allow too many Blacks to congregate in their restaurants. I saw firsthand in the 80's the ridiculous extremes that Denny's peeps went to in order to keep their restaurants free of African descended people.
One night when me and my friends went to a Denny's by the Astrodome, they tried to charge us $5 cover just to get in. At another location they tried to make us prepay for food as we watched Whites get seated first without prepaying. Another time at that same Astrodome location me and two Black friends waited for our food while numerous whites who came in after us got in, ordered their food and got out before we saw a single plate hit our table.
The discriminatory culture was so ingrained that on the very day in 1993 a federal court ordered the chain to stop discriminating against Black customers, a Maryland Denny's was sued by Black Secret Service agents for glacially slow service. The class action discrimination lawsuits were eventually settled by Denny's in 1994 for $54 million, but not before a boycott of the chain by African-Americans and countless worldwide retelling of stories similar to mine. I'm taking this trip down Moni Memory Lane again because those images of past discrimination were on my mind when I heard about the Maine Human Rights Commission case involving Brianna Freeman.
The commission ruled on Monday that an Augusta, ME Denny's franchisee store was guilty of discrimination when it barred Ms. Freeman, a regular customer of the restaurant, from using the women's restroom until she had surgery.Okay, I and the rest of the transgender community are beyond sick and tired of this bull feces 'bathroom predator' meme the Forces of Intolerance and other ignorant folks who hate on transpeople are pimping these days because they have no logic based argument they can us to deny transgender people their civil rights.
The anti-civil rights peeps have dipped into their old school playbook and recycled the centuries old tactics of deception, fear and lies over the bathroom. The same arguments being used to stir up anti-transgender bathroom passions are the same ones the haters used to justify separate 'white' and 'colored' bathrooms back in the bad old Jim Crow days.Bottom line, you already share public bathrooms with transpeople and have done so without incident for decades.
I can't tell you how many times at concerts and ball games I saw ciswomen pop into the men's restroom before transition to use it because the lines in the women's restrooms were too long.
The first thing on the minds of many transpeople when we enter a public bathroom is how fast can we shimmy out of our clothes before the pee stream starts, and when we've handled our business washing hands and getting out of there. We ain't trying to start any static, but too many haters are trying to start World War III with us over peeing in a damn restroom. I transitioned 15 years ago and I'm not going to a men's room where I risk a beatdown or worse because your faith-based ignorance about transgender people makes you uncomfortable.
Deal with it.
In some cases cisgender women are getting caught in the crossfire because of your idiocy.
And let's smack down some more right wing lies while I'm at it. If a predator wants to heaven forbid, sexually assault you in the bathroom, they won't be crossdressed to do it.As far as the 'pervert' charge, you've got more to worry about from your local priest, 'christian' pastor or straight white males, who commit 98% of the molestation cases against children than you do with your friendly neighborhood transperson.
So to all the haters out there, let my people pee!
