Danielle Barron told the Jefferson City Council its policy on bathroom usage for individuals based on gender identity rather than biology is not fair. She made clear she doesn’t wish discomfort on anyone but wanted to discuss the policy from a woman’s perspective.
“I can tell you that as a woman, a petite woman, if I came out of a stall and there was a grown man built like a man in front of me, I would be shaken and rattled,” she said. “I’m a grown woman. I’m not talking about teens or children. And you sat here and you made that decision as a panel of men and you cannot know what that discomfort is like.”
Now, Barron said, that individual’s comfort has forced everyone else into discomfort.
“You made a rule ignoring the rest of us because that individual now puts that discomfort on every female, every child, everyone using that facility and that is not fair,” she said. “You’re giving them the right and taking it away from us by giving it to one. That is not fair.”
She also referenced the Sioux Center pool where the locker room is cleared for the transgender individual.
“There just has to be a way,” she said.
She suggested making another entrance or a bathroom that is a family bathroom that can be used by that individual or anyone who doesn’t want to share the bathroom with someone who is biologically the opposite sex.
“We are a small community and we love our people here, we love our families,” she said. “And we have elected you. So we’re asking you to come together at a table and find a solution for both parties. Nothing extremist, we don’t want anybody hurt, but we are saying as a woman, I have rights. Why doesn’t it matter to you that I feel comfortable when I’m in the locker room or my little girl? That is important and I think it needs to be taken into consideration. And I don’t think it was. You ignored 99.99 percent of us that are not OK with this.”
Barron said she understands the other individual who is transgender is struggling, but there’s also everyone else.
“It’s one person that you are choosing over the 99 and again, I’d just like to point out, you’re easing their discomfort by making us uncomfortable,” she said. “Do you get that you’re doing that? That’s very hypocritical, very ironic. But that’s the position you’ve put all of us women and children in and I don’t think that’s right.”
