Commentary by Susan Brinkmann, OCDS

With more than a million people boycotting Target’s new “inclusive” dressing room policy, their stocks are beginning to slide and more details about dressing room incidents in the store are being revealed.

Breitbart is reporting on the first indications that Target is beginning to suffer from the public backlash over the retailer’s policy to allow customers to use the restroom and dressing room that conforms to their perceived gender. In addition to a boycott that is already over one million strong and counting, the company stock slid $4.50 from $84 on April 19 to $79.50 as of April 29. This five percent loss in stock value has cost shareholders roughly $2.5 billion in company value.

Target’s favorability, which is being tracked by YouGov’s BrandIndex service found that by April 27, the percentage of consumers who said they would consider buying items at Target the next time they want to go shopping at a department store dropped from 42 percent to 38 percent, which represents a 10 percent drop.

As if these were enough problems for the retailer, news has surfaced about dozens of incidents of voyeurism and sexual assaults occurring in Target stores over the last few years, raising questions about why the company would even consider such a dangerous policy.

For example, a Target shopper named Candice Spivey recorded this incident of being approached by a known pervert in a Target show in Yulee, Florida last week which resulted in her chasing him out of the store while recording his flight on her cellphone and telling startled customers to “Stop that guy!” and “Call the police!” Her video, which contains offensive language, has gone viral with more than two million views.

Earlier this year, 33 year-old Joshua Sheldon was sentenced to 90 days in jail after being caught looking under a woman’s dressing room door at a Target store in Miami earlier this year. He was fined $380 and is required to register as a sex offender in addition to attending classes and counseling for sexual offenders.

Last year saw numerous incidents of men infiltrating Target dressing rooms to videotape women in dressing rooms. Stefan Abhishek Vincent, 23, of Kingsville, Maryland was charged last August with peeping at women in the dressing of a local Target store.

In April of 2015, a woman caught a man named Douglas Collins peeping at her while she was in a Target dressing room in Owasso, Oklahoma.

This crime occurred in the same month that Matthew Foerstel was caught spying on women in the dressing room of a Brentwood, Missouri Target store.

Only weeks before, 32 year-old Miklos Jugovics of Warminster, Pennsylvania, was charged with spying on women in the dressing rooms of a nearby Target store.

Sadly, the list goes on and on.

But other department stores such as Macy’s and Marshall’s have had their fair share of voyeurism in their dressing rooms as well, which is why it is so important to keep the pressure on Target. If other retailers see a negative impact on the store, it may encourage them to think twice about embarking upon the same dangerous path of opening up women’s bathrooms and dressing rooms to men posing as women.

It’s also very important to note that not a single one of these instances involves a transgendered person. Even though the liberal media and LGBTQ activist groups continues to spin the attack on Target as an “anti-transgender” issue, most people are not nearly as concerned about transgendered people using the bathroom of their choice (as they have been doing quietly for years) as they are about criminals using these misguided policies as a way to access victims.

There simply must be protection for the general public built into these laws as well as ways to enforce policies once they are in place, such as reasonable allowances for retailers to discern whether someone is actually a transgender or just someone posing as a transgender. If that proves too difficult, then revert to single user bathrooms. The only way to be truly inclusive is to provide equal protection and privacy for everyone.

In the meantime, be careful not to let the usual ideologues frame the argument in a way that makes people who are opposed to these policies into “bigots” and “haters.” Whenever you come across an article that misrepresents the issue, leave a (courteous) comment that sets the record straight!

© All Rights Reserved, Living His Life Abundantly®/Women of Grace®  http://www.womenofgrace.com