If anyone has any suggestions of things I should do to follow up on this I would appreciate it. I don’t know if what the security guards did is legal or not.
On 4/24 I was studying at Rain Cafe when I had to use the restroom at approximately 1520. The restroom is inside Asian Family Market.
I am biologically female, assigned female at birth. I have female body parts. So I use the women’s bathroom. I have some characteristics about me that are perceived as masculine. My legal gender marker is X, which is legally recognized as nonbinary in Washington state. If there is a gender neutral/single stall restroom, I always use that, but there was no option for this at Asian Family Market.
I entered the code into the door to the women’s restroom and as I was doing so, an employee exited the bathroom and looked at me weird. I sat down in the bathroom stall to do my business and then I heard someone enter the restroom and shout “hello, is anyone in here?” I assumed it was maybe the janitor so I said yes. And then I heard a second person say “bro you can’t be in here, this is the women’s restroom.” I said I am just going to the bathroom, I am female. They said “I can hear your whole Adam’s Apple in your voice, stop lying and get out.” They started banging on the door and I said I’m scared, please stop. I was scared they were going to kick open the stall door while I was in the middle of going to the bathroom. I told them that if they kept banging on the door that I would call the police, and they started laughing. I asked them if they work here and they said they were the security guards for Asian Family Market. I said I was in the middle of using the bathroom and I would leave as soon as I’m done. They stopped banging on the door and let me finish. I told them I could show them my ID, and one of them said “I don’t care what’s on your ID, it’s not our fault you’re confused.” And they also expressed that I was scaring the female employees. I assume they were referring to the woman who was exiting the bathroom when I entered, because the only other person in the bathroom with me were the two male security guards. I was really scared. When I exited the stall they started laughing at me and one of them blocked my exit to the bathroom, confining me in the space. They were both almost a foot taller than me and I felt really cornered and afraid. They continued to laugh and mock my appearance, saying that I have a beard and I should be in the men’s bathroom. I asked the security guard who was blocking the door if he could move so I could leave. He told me not to get an attitude with him. I went back to rain cafe a few minutes later and packed up my stuff because I didn’t feel safe there anymore. I went up to the counter and asked a rain cafe employee if they knew which company the security guards work for, and as I was asking them, the security guards walked up behind me and were filming me and laughing. I just gave up and left at that point. I’ve been coming to this complex for years and I’ve never felt so unsafe, actually never had this experience anywhere in Seattle throughout my whole life and I’ve been presenting pretty nonbinary for almost 10 years. It feels horrible.
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