22-Year-Old Harassed in Danbury Walmart by Customer Who Thought She was Transgender: Report

DANBURY, CT — A 22-year-old Naugatuck woman was harassed in the Danbury Walmart bathroom on Friday by someone who mistakenly thought she was transgender, according to the Connecticut Post.

Aimee Toms was washing her hands in the women’s bathroom at the store when a woman who thought she was a man because of her pixie haircut began yelling at her, the report said.

Toms recently donated hair for the third time for child cancer patients, the Post reported.

In her Facebook video Toms said the woman yelled, "You are not supposed to be here, you need to leave." The woman then flipped her off and said, "You're disgusting."

Toms said at first she could see why she might have been mistaken for a man because she was wearing a baseball cap and a plain T-shirt but that when she turned around the woman should have noticed that she "has something going on up there."

Her video has had more than 16,000 views on Facebook.

"I think what a lot of people are getting all up in arms about is that they're like, 'Oh, well this gives an invitation to guys to put on a wig and go into a woman's bathroom.' If a guy was going to commit a crime in a woman's bathroom, this law isn't going to invite them to do it. They're gonna do it anyways," she said.

In her passionate rant, she said she was almost raped in a woman's bathroom a year ago. She noted that the new law that allows transgender people to use the bathroom of their choice where they feel most comfortable was not in place then.

This issue has been a heated topic, especially since the Obama administration sent a message on Friday to every school district across the country that all transgender students must be given equal rights.

"No student should ever have to go through the experience of feeling unwelcome at school or on a college campus,” U.S. Secretary of Education John B. King Jr. said in a statement.

North Carolina and the Department of Justice have filed lawsuits against each other over the state's new law that restricts bathroom and locker-room usage for transgender people.

Click here to read the full story on the Connecticut Post.

Related:

• White House Letter To Schools On Transgender Students: What To Know

Image by Mike Gifford via Flickr Creative Commons