A restaurant from Texas has received a lot of negative feedback after a journalist tweeted a photo of their bathroom doors - which featured two photos of reality television star and transgender woman, Caitlyn Jenner.
The digital editor from The Dallas Morning News, Dom DiFurio, tweeted a photo of the doors at Cajun restaurant Dodie's Place in Allen, asking "What's going on here Dallas?'.
The restaurant had used a photo of Jenner before she came out as a trans woman to determine the men's bathroom, and another photo of the star - from Jenner's 'coming out' on the cover of Vanity Fair - to show the women's bathroom.
One of the major issues with the bathroom doors is that it perpetuates the idea of placing utmost importance on 'transitioning' as a way of legitimising transness - trans women are women, regardless of their transition. Trans identity is not skin deep, it's not about outward appearance or 'passing', and trans women don't 'become women' after transitioning.
Another major issue is framing trans people and trans identity as 'a joke'. While Jenner is a controversial personality and many LGBTQI+ people do not align with her personal and political views, she has also dealt with an overwhelming amount of jokes about her trans identity ever since she came out in 2015. This dehumanisation of trans people through transphobic jokes is undeniably common, and enormously harmful.
DiFurio told The Daily Dot that the location of the restaurant may lend some explanation to its insensitivity towards trans people - Texas being one of the places that has seen severe backlash to trans people using their chosen public bathrooms.
“Collin County, where Allen, Texas is, as a whole is considered a conservative bastion in North Texas,” DiFurio said. “I wouldn’t consider it a particularly great place to be LGBTQ.”
After DiFurio tweeted the image, many agreed that this was insensitive at best, and a harmful depiction of the trans community at worst.
Dodie's Place has not responded to the backlash at the time of writing.
