"It's now the law for me to share a restroom with your wife," Sheffield wrote on Twitter along with his selfie. He posted that message in March, only hours after North Carolina passed a law making it illegal for transgender people to use public restrooms that correspond with their true gender identities.
The U.S. Justice Department recently said the law violates the Civil Rights Act. North Carolina on Monday sued the feds in defense of the regulation.
As it's written, Sheffield would have to use the lady's room or break the law.
That's absurd, as the selfie and tweet make clear. Sheffield is a 36-year-old man who lives in Decatur, Georgia. He has a scruffy beard and a receding hairline, which he jokingly calls a "reverse fade." If he walked into a lady's restroom he'd likely be met with stares or screams or worse.
But you know what else is absurd? The idea that Sheffield -- or anyone else -- should have to choose a male or female restroom at all. And, beyond that, that any of us would feel entitled to decide someone else's gender for them -- and, consequently, where they can and can't pee.
This isn't a binary gender world. People don't fit neatly into the "M" and "F" boxes. It's time our public restrooms reflected that. The fairest way to do so is to desegregate restrooms by sex, and that means eliminating the men's and women's rooms in favor of "all gender" restrooms.
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