This is Water

I'm so tired of the world. I remember last year, one of my friends commented that a professor could teach an entire American Studies class just on June 2015. (You know - Bruce/Caitlynn Jenner, Rachel Dolezal, Charleston church shooting, same-sex marriage ruling etc.)

But it seems as though the trend has continued. Either that or we just get too sensationalist-newsy come springtime.

And I'm worn out. I'm tired of all the news and "news." I'm tired of people's opinions. I'm tired of controversy. I'm tired of struggling through my days only to see the nonsense that people occupy their time with. Even if some of it is valid and worth fighting for, it gets lost in the noise.

A blogger I follow posted one of the best summaries of her feelings on the recent news stories. Check out her full post here:

https://www.facebook.com/liferearranged/posts/10157023822835319

She starts off with a similar sentiment to the ones I expressed above:

"I'M JUST TOO TIRED. I'M JUST TOO ANGRY. I'M JUST TOO FRUSTRATED that this is the world we have to live in. The world we have inherited. The world we have cultivated."

Yes, all of that and more.

For the most part, I try to take a David Foster Wallace "This is Water" approach  where I

"choose to force myself to consider the likelihood that everyone else in the supermarket's checkout line is just as bored and frustrated as I am, and that some of these people probably have harder, more tedious and painful lives than I do." 

I'm not very good at it, but I try.

Except it seems that lately, the constant barrage of outside stimuli has weakened my defenses, and I'm only able to think about how exhausted I am by it all. Not to mention that others seem to be going out of their way to make me frustrated.

Here's an example:

The stupid Target bathroom debate.

If you haven't heard (because you live under a rock), Target announced that people could use the bathroom of whatever gender they identify with - meaning that transgendered people who were born male, but identify as female, can use the women's bathrooms.

Fine. Whatever.

If you think about it, this policy is actually no different than it's always been. It's just that Target decided to announce it. There was never any procedure in place to check and make sure that people were using the bathroom that aligned with their biological gender. People mostly did whatever they wanted. I suspect that Target was trying to capitalize on some of the feel-good publicity surrounding gender issues with their announcement, but that's just my cynical perspective.

So people can use whichever bathrooms they want. Fine. Whatever.

Until an older woman, who is a staunch conservative and devout Christian, acted shocked when I mentioned I'd picked up something at Target.

She said, "You can't shop at Target anymore because they're letting the gays use whatever bathroom they want!"

Ummm......First of all, pretty sure we shouldn't be referring to people as "the gays," second of all, oh hell no!

I step foot in only about 3 stores. If I can't get it on Amazon Prime, and it isn't sold in one of those three stores, it might as well not exist. Of those three stores, Target is far and away the winner. And even if I didn't need to buy anything there, I would still go because I love my pharmacists. If you're on a first-name basis with your pharmacists, you may have a problem, but that's another story for another day.

So no one gets to tell me not to shop at Target.

But aside from that, it's insane. Later that week I was in the dressing room at Target and heard male voices. That's when I realized that there was only one dressing room at Target. The dressing rooms are co-ed, and always have been. And do you know how much it has affected my life? Zero. Zero percent.

But the issue doesn't stop there. Every day there are new, impassioned debates raging on social media about different aspects of this policy. And no one is using any critical-thinking skills.

One argument I've heard about the dressing room issue is that it is unsafe. For instance, that if we allow a transgender male to use the women's bathroom, it will be unsafe for women. A lot of people seem to think this is a valid argument.

Except I propose that the new bathroom policy makes bathrooms SAFER for women. Let's do a little thought experiment here:

If the policy requires that everyone use the bathroom of the gender they were born with, then people who were born female, but identify as male will be REQUIRED to use the female bathroom. They will be required to use this bathroom even if they are taking hormones and dress like a male. So that means that people who appear to be men will be using the women's bathroom. And if that happens often enough, it will be commonplace to see someone who looks like a man entering the women's bathroom. So what's to stop a male sexual predator from entering the women's restroom now that he knows he will be unnoticed?

Maybe my argument is flawed. Maybe I'm completely off base. But at least I'm thinking beyond the surface of whatever the media is telling me. Or what the Facebook commentators are spouting off about.

And all this before I even deal with the absurd argument that transgendered people are somehow committing more crimes in bathrooms than everyone else.

Who is spending so much time in the bathroom anyway?

So if everyone started using a little more common sense and critical-thinking skills before talking, the world would be a lot quieter and I might be less exhausted. But that's not the world I live in. So I'm going to have to find a coping mechanism.