This Woman Says She Was Called “Disgusting” After Being Mistaken for Transgender in Walmart Bathroom

“I cannot fathom the discrimination transgender people must face in a lifetime.”


A video posted by a Connecticut woman named Aimee Toms is making headlines, after she says a stranger verbally attacked her inside a Walmart bathroom on Friday after mistaking her for being transgender.

Toms, who identifies as cisgender—a term for people who identify with the sex they were assigned at birth—said she was washing her hands, when the woman called her “disgusting” and attempted to order her out of bathroom, the Connecticut Post reports.

Confused by the sudden harsh words directed at her, Toms insisted that in fact she did belong there.

“At first I was like, ‘Does she think I work in a different store and I shouldn’t be in this bathroom?'” Toms explains in the video. “So I said ‘Yes, I do.'”

Toms was wearing a baseball cap and initially gave the woman the benefit of the doubt. But she says that when she turned around and showed that she is “not a flat chested person,” the woman responded by raising her middle finger at Toms, before storming out of the bathroom. It was then Toms realized that she had likely been discriminated against because of her short haircut and had just experienced an encounter that was part of the ongoing controversy over bathroom legislation that seeks to force people to use the bathroom that aligns with their birth gender.

Toms reveals that last year, before so-called bathroom laws became prevalent, a man followed her into a women’s bathroom and sexually assaulted her. “This law was not in place a year ago, when I almost got raped in a bathroom because a man followed me into the woman’s room,” she said.

“There was no transgender bathroom law that was telling him to sexually assault me—he just did it because he was an awful person and he wanted to violate someone.”

In addition to highlighting harassment against those in the transgender community, Tom’s experience also captures some of the same anxieties felt by cisgender people whose appearance may not conform to conventional ideas of what a man or woman should look like—fears that have heightened against the backdrop of the national debate over bathroom bills.

“What these ‘bathroom bills’ are actually about is enforcing traditional gender codes and norms in an increasingly diverse and shifting America,” Sally Kohn recently wrote in an editorial for TIME. “Single-sex restrooms just like single-sex dormitories have always been rooted in compulsory heteronormativity and the sense that we have to protect women from men who can’t expect to be reigned in.”

Toms now has her own perspective on this issue: “After experiencing the discrimination they face firsthand, I cannot fathom the discrimination transgender people must face in a lifetime. Can you imagine going out every day and having people tell you you should not be who you are or that people will not accept you as who you are?”

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate