Opinion: Quote of the Week #13

WORDS BY SANDRA BUOL

“What would that allow me to do, if I declared that my gender status was…um… female? Does that allow me the freedom of movement… I mean this is a serious question… Can I go into the ladies’ loo loo then?”
 
Barry O’Sullivan, Senator for Queensland, 23/5/2018
 
 
First of all, what grown man still calls it the “loo loo”?!
 
Secondly, why do people care so much when it comes to toilets? It’s not like we still have bathrooms like the Romans where everyone was witnessing everyone’s business. There are cubicles for a reason, for fuck’s sake. And has Senator O’Sullivan never heard of unisex toilets?
 
Probably not.
 
Thirdly, it’s amazing how quickly this person – and many before him – tries to link transgender rights to perversion and predation. It’s the cheapest, most damaging sleazy rhetoric of the ignorant and lazy that LGBTIQ+ equals perversion, and belongs in the bowels of our collective “loo-loos”.