Summary
Walmart fired Dani Davis, a 6’4" cisgender woman, after a man who mistook her for transgender verbally threatened her in a women’s restroom at a Florida store.
Davis, visibly shaken, reported the March 14 incident to her immediate supervisor but was fired for not informing salaried management, allegedly creating a “security risk.”
Davis called the firing discriminatory. After viral backlash, Walmart offered to reinstate her with back pay.
Davis, a longtime employee, is uncertain about returning, citing fears of a hostile work environment.
Transphobia rots the brain. The fact the store still fired her is insane. I hope she just takes them to court instead of taking her old job back.
Are people finally now realizing that transphobia affects cis people?? Even if you don’t declare yourself trans, but look any different than typically feminine or masculine, you’re a target for the folks who can “always tell”. It goes without saying that these people are unimaginably idiotic.
Are people finally now realizing that transphobia affects cis people??
Same for homophobia. Sadly, some folks don’t realize until it happens to themselves or to someone they care about.
Hopefully, these stories will help wake some people up to that reality before that happens.
I am a straight man. I have lived as a straight man all my life. I have only been with women.
Yet, I was somehow bullied for being gay in high school until I just dropped out. I mean, there was more to it than that, but that was the reason I vomited when I seen the school sign.
I had a similar experience as yours. . .
May the bastards that wronged us stub their toes weekly, may both sides of their pillow be warm, may their tires find every sharp object on the road.
May their socks always be damp. May their steering wheel always be vaguely sticky. May they never find parking.
Straight cis woman here and same (only I didn’t drop out)… everyone thought I was a lesbian and I got bullied for it, there is nothing wrong in being a lesbian but apparently it was supposed to be an insult to me???
Well, I’m 40. At that time we all thought there was something to be ashamed of. As much as it pains me to know I ever felt that way, I lived in constant humiliation like I wasn’t a real man or something.
My step dad (who I love and have a thousand reasons to defend when you look over the course of my life. He seems evil without context) also put me through it. “Daddy’s little girl” “little fag like his father”. Good lord, i type that out and he seems irredeemable, but he did redeem himself, honestly. Somehow he did. It turns out he went through the same thing, was the dumbest man I ever knew, and just wanted me to be as manly as I could be because that’s what it takes to keep from getting your head stomped in the world we come from. Believe it or not, it came from a place of love which somehow makes the trauma worse.
I don’t know. Life is long, and it’s tremendous. I heard that in a song years ago and it stuck out to me. I mean, we know it’s short, but some things make some times so so so long.
Is what it is. I have a drop dead gorgeous 10 out of 10 wife that any straight man would envy me for. I have kids who love me. This world is a beautiful place once you make your way, despite all of the ugly chaos.
My step dad loved me or he wouldn’t have walked to a crappy job every day just to buy my Christmas presents. He was just misguided and abused himself, and he wasn’t smart enough to see that. The way it was, that was just the way it was for him and he wasn’t smart enough to look at it any other way.
Sound like “A boy named Sue”
Kind of I guess. At first your comment made me mad, then I spent a minute thinking about it and that’s pretty much where he stood haha.
When I say he was dumb, my good lord I couldn’t come close to giving an example that would do him justice.
He was an abused kid though, and being tough meant a lot to him because that’s how he survived.
A story for fun.
My mom was very religious. Her greatest dream was to have him see the world the way that she did, and she tried, and she tried. She finally got him to go to church with her. He stopped drinking, he stopped using drugs. We were leaving church one night and going to his parents . Some of his old buddies stopped him in the road, they walked up and the one guy said, “hey Henry, what the fuck is going on, buddy?”
He said, “I’m trying to do right and raise my kids right. I would appreciate it if you didn’t cuss in front of my wife and kids.“
Dude, thought he was joking. He said, “oh bullshit, Henry going to fucking church.”
My stepdad said, “I’m going to give you one more chance before I make you regret cussing in front of my wife and kids.”
Dude said, “I don’t fucking believe this, Henry the Christian.”
My dad got out of the car and knocked every one of his front teeth out. People were fucking terrified of him. The lady across the street called the cops. The cop showed up, “Henry, we hear there’s some fighting going on down here.” My dad said, “ain’t nobody fighting here, so you can just go on up the road.”
The cop replied, “well then what happened to him?”
My dad said, “He fell.”
The dude looked at the police officer and said, “he’s right, I fell off the bridge.”
The cops pulled out and left while this dude stood here, holding his teeth and crying like a toddler.
Now in my dad’s mind, (step dad, but raised me), He was teaching us this big lesson in that moment.
Poor guy was so stupid that he didn’t realize that violence was not a lesson you teach children. I was terrified, but my brother thought he was the coolest motherfucker who ever lived in that moment. Needless to say, we took drastically different routes for a very long time in our lives.
As a father, at least half the lessons my son has learned weren’t ones i’d intended. But he’s a good kid, so something worked out.
The only people who DON’T understand that transphobia affects cis people are transphobes. And most of them would ask why this woman is so tall. If they aren’t already transvestigating her.
So, she was fired because… some dude was wrong?
Our society really likes to shit on women all the time, doesn’t it?
And low wage employees. It’s cheaper and easier to fire an employee than to confront a customer about their mistake. Remember kids, your job is only one crazy person’s ranting away from being taken away.
She was fired because a man (without affiliation with walmart) entered the women’s restroom and verbally assaulted her. He wasn’t just factually wrong assuming that a woman can’t be tall, he entered a space that he knew he wasnt supposed to enter.
Men entering women’s restrooms to use the restroom: Nightmarishly immoral
Men entering women’s restrooms to harm a woman: Laudable and in the spirit of their Dear Leader
In an exclusive interview with the Guardian, Amy Dorris alleged that Trump accosted her outside the bathroom in his VIP box at the tournament in New York on 5 September 1997.
This is also taking place in Florida. A state that began horrible and has just doubled down on it in the last 20 years.
In 1977, Anita Bryant famously led the campaign claiming to “save the children from gays” during a vote in Miami-Dade County. While the law she supported was later overturned, Florida has long had a history of anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment.
To a lot of people, trans women are just women they can still abuse.
Why was the man who was threatened by her in the women’s room?
Obviously he was just there to make sure everyone using the women’s restroom had and honest, God-given pussy.
G-gussy?
Godussy. Can’t be unclear about these things.
…so the jesussy is transparent?
I see how you could come to that conclusion, and it’s an easy mistake to make. But actually the holy-ghostussy is the transparent one.
Jesusussy does not have the same ring does it?
It’s got a ring to it, of sorts. But it sounds like the pussy owned by Jesus. Since Jesus didn’t make any pussies.
Id also recommend removing the second us, leaving us all with:
Jesussy.
G-Pussy
If he’s a man concerned about protecting murica against the scourge of the trans, and a donvict-supporting magoff, well, then, by Jehovah, it’s his right to be in that bathroom inspecting the genitalia of anyone in there.
You know, to Protect Women and Girls ™.
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a man who mistook her for transgender verbally threatened her in a women’s restroom
Self-righteousness and reasoning are often mutually exclusive
I’m assuming he threatened her as she was going into or coming out of the restroom.
These are the men threatening your daughters and wives on women’s restrooms
As people predicted, transphobia has affected cis people.
It always has. See: Olympics women’s boxing.
I hope she retires after suing Walmart for millions.
lol, she’ll get a few grand after years of effort, pain, and outright harassment.
Sorry to bust your bubble but that won’t happen. Walmart is infamous for drowning people that sue them in litigation until they are bankrupt.
She’s free to sue them for sue but that at best will get her a small payout that her legal bills will immediately consume. That’s only if Walmart offered her a payout, I’d say in this political climate and in Florida they would just grind her down.
Tort reform put a stop to all of that in the nineties
When you’re so committed to “protecting women’s spaces” that you go into a women’s restroom to harass a woman.
This story is so depressing on so many levels.
First and most obviously, we have a biological male entering a women’s bathroom to harass and threaten a biological woman because he doesn’t want biological males entering the women’s bathroom to harass and threaten biological women. Dumb redneck stared into the abyss and it stared back, as it always does. Congrats, dickhead. You are the thing you claim to hate.
But then we have this shit:
Dani Davis, who is queer, took to social media on March 24 and wrote a post about what she said happened while she was at work. The incident occurred on March 14 at the Walmart in Lake City, Florida. She noted she was a nearly seven-year employee of Walmart and holds several other part-time jobs, including the “joy and privilege" of tutoring "special-needs children as requested,” describing herself as a hard worker who has never been in trouble.
How many more reminders do we need that Capitalism hates us and our employers don’t even see us as human? A person should not have to work “several part-time jobs”, one of which is with the biggest private employer on earth, just to get by.
Does anyone else remember the ‘Hey Mon’ sketch from ‘In Living Color’ about an immigrant family that all had like 10 jobs each? It was supposed to be a joke to have to work that much to make ends meet. We weren’t supposed to make it a reality for everyone.
I hate this world.
Dani Davis, who is queer
Ohhhhh
None of this made much sense until then. This is why she was fired. Not capitalism or whatever bullshit you’re talking about.
One of the reasons bigotry like this spreads is that even supposedly well-meaning people use dogwhistles like “biological woman.”
“The voice was much louder than simply someone yelling in from the door. This man was fully IN the restroom, yelling something about” transgender women, Davis wrote.
Davis said the man yelled he was going to “beat" them and was going to “protect his wife/girlfriend from them” while his wife or girlfriend was pleading with him to stop and leave before he got into trouble.
Davis wrote she was scared and froze, not knowing if the man was going to physically attack her.
So to protect cis women, he is threatening and scaring cis women.
What a total douche. Also, how does Walmart come to the conclusion that firing this woman was for the best?
Like they tried to save face and make up for it, but it was too little too late.
Walmart has been and will always be garbage.
I find it fascinating that guys like this usually have a wife/girlfriend who somehow excuses their behavior like WTF is in their head? Are they stupid or just as shitty as the person they’re following around?
Sometimes yes, sometimes they are victims of emotional abuse and codependence. And of course plenty of physical abuse with the type of man who would follow a woman into a bathroom to threaten violence.
I think it can be a (bad) cultural thing. When I told my mom I worried my cousin’s new husband was abusive, my mom told me he was “a regular Kentucky man. They’re just like that.”
(My other cousin confirmed her sister’s new husband was an abusive dick, but sister refused to leave him. Other cousin and I both went out of state for college, which helps break indoctrination. We were back in town for a funeral.)
Gotta protect women from “men” entering the women’s washroom, by entering the women’s washroom. Love it.
It doesn’t really matter if she is trans or not IMO. nobody deserves to be treated like that.
It does demonstrate the truism that transphobia doesn’t only harm trans people.
That’s the whole point. Any woman who doesn’t conform to the traditional stereotype can be targeted. This is in no way accidental.
This is one of the reasons one of the mantras is “trans rights are women’s rights”.
I’ve always heard it as “trans rights are human rights”, is this a different form or does it have a different meaning?
I think it’s probably more focused on those impacted most and (unfortunately) where the most sympathy is.
A lot of transphobia is under the guise of women’s rights (sports, bathrooms). But also, anyone can (usually) participate it men’s sports and men are generally not threatened by someone using the men’s bathroom. That doesn’t always apply. But it’s usually women who suffer the most.
Yeah every concert/event I’ve ever been to the men willingly let women use men’s bathrooms because the women’s bathroom line is 4 times longer than the men’s.
Even traditionally feminine western women. They can just point to a minor detail like a wider mandible, a bit of hair on the upper lip or arms, a more developed Adam’s apple, etc.
Exactly. The goal is to create a definition of woman sufficiently small that nobody can feel secure she fits in it.
True, but it shows how even non-trans people are harmed by anti-trans hysteria and fear-mongering. Just like how even men are harmed by misogynistic policies and discrimination. Trans rights are human rights.
and yet again its not a trans woman invading a bathroom with ill intent.
its a right wing conservative man who invaded a bathroom with ill intent.
Every accusation is a confession.
Yep.
Makes you wonder, after pizzagate, where they’re underground child sex dungeon is… Since they were so emphatic on pointing the finger at liberals and gays and accusing them of such a thing.
It was Epstein’s island.
nah. They were too hyper focused on it being a basement under a restaurant.
They arent exactly clever when confessing their crimes by accusing the other side of doing the crime. There is absolutely a building somewhere with a basement that Republicans diddle in.
That’s because they think in terms of secret lairs and such things. It’s people saying “yes and” to serious accusations just like the satanic panic.
Step 1) Sue Walmart. Step 2) Retire in Europe.
It’s hard to sue for damages when they’re offering reinstatement with back pay.
Emotional Suffering, and IANAL but I’m sure there’s more.
Punitive damages.
That’s a hard one to prove in court.
If it were easy we wouldn’t need lawyers.
Edit: Yeah, no one would believe this caused emotional distress. /s
Around 8 p.m. on March 14, she wrote that she was alone in a stall in the women’s restroom when she heard a man yelling.
“The voice was much louder than simply someone yelling in from the door. This man was fully IN the restroom, yelling something about” transgender women, Davis wrote.
Davis said the man yelled he was going to “beat" them and was going to “protect his wife/girlfriend from them” while his wife or girlfriend was pleading with him to stop and leave before he got into trouble.
Davis wrote she was scared and froze, not knowing if the man was going to physically attack her.
“I was the only one in there so it seemed pretty clear that he saw me enter the restroom and he assumed that I am trans because of my height,” Davis recalled. “It was terrifying and I wish no one else ever had an experience like that.”
The man eventually left, and Davis was able to leave the restroom and return to her workstation.
“My immediate supervisor came by and noticed that I was visibly shaken and emotional. After taking a few moments to calm myself down, I told her what had happened. I didn’t go home since it wasn’t long until my shift was done (10 p.m.),” Davis wrote. “Less than a week later, I was fired.”
The reason given for her termination was that she did not report the incident to a salaried management employee and, therefore, created a security risk.
“I took it to mean that I was the security risk because someone had mistaken me for trans,” Davis told the Washington Post.
Davis said she was devastated. Because of the anti-LGBTQ+ climate in Florida, she had been planning on leaving the state. But now, she doesn’t know after losing the job.
She appealed the termination through Walmart’s internal review process but was denied. She filed for unemployment insurance but also took her story to Facebook, where it soon went viral.
Do step 1 before the laws change to where the guy who threatened her gets a medal of freedom instead.
He’s already started the onboarding process to be in Trump’s cabinet
Secretary of Offense
In the House of Representin’
Do… do you think…
That a person working… at Walmart…
… has the financial resources…
… to sue Walmart?
Theres a very good chance of finding a lawyer to work for compensation after settlement
Morgan and Morgan is from Florida, they might be the largest firm in the world and take cases for improper firings. Usually they take their cases on the basis of you won’t pay anything unless you win. I’m sure they’d love that case
And they’re willing to take on big corporations - iirc they were representing Austin’s mom after he was killed in the monorail accident at Magic Kingdom 17 or 18 years ago this July (damn I can’t believe it’s been that long). She ended up settling out of court, it was really an awful situation.
The firm that advertises themselves as "good Catholics, who had as many children as they could, beginning immediately after they got married”? Yeaaaah.
Oh I’m sure they aren’t great people. They make most of their money off swindling insurance companies for huge settlement offers due to work/car injuries. That said, if you’re trying to get a huge settlement from Walmart, they are probably a good bet though. Also I know they turned down a case years ago when my dad went to them about his mother. She had surgery where there was no cartilage left in her ankle. They decided to screw her ankle to her foot essentially making it unable to move but reduce the pain. When she was in recovery they kept forcing her to get up and walk on it and she kept saying it hurt to much. Weeks into the rehab they said she wasn’t trying to put in the work. Then after a lot of arguing we finally got them to do new X-rays. Of course they found hairline fractures around the screws they placed. The insurance company/Medicaid and what not all said they wouldn’t cover any rehab time after the fractures were found because that time was used up during the period they were trying to force her to walk on a botched surgery. Morgan and Morgan turned down the case, and she reverse mortgaged her house to cover the rehab time. America at its finest
Oh wow! I’m so sorry. I wish you and your family all the best, going forward.
Agreed. The misogyny is clear, even ignoring any hint of trans issues. But, I don’t know what a settlement would look like and how much effort it would be to fight WMT lawyers.
Yeah, in a strictly financial sense, they already offered to make her whole. IANAL but I doubt this would be the million-dollar suit that I wish it were.
That’s because lawyers are generally pretty smart, and they can tell when they have a sure thing.
For something like this you likely could find a lawyer to do this pro bono. Maybe even the ACLU would get involved.
Can she sure Walmart, though? It’s shocking what employers can get away with. I’ve been wronged before, and had lawyers tell me there’s little they can do.
It bares repeating, transphobia hurts cisgender people and transgender people.
Is it really worth drawing significant attention to? It may feel nice as a gotcha but I really feel the emphasis should be that trans rights are worth protecting for their own sake
I think it’s worth pointing out because so many people are selfish, bigoted assholes.
I’m Black and Queer. The fact is that the majority of ⚪ people don’t give the slightest fuck whether I live or die. (And don’t #NotAllWhites at me. I didn’t say “all”.) That’s why writers always kill the Black person first in movies. That’s why people watch so much torture porn of cops beating and killing us.
You are absolutely 100% correct. Trans people should be worth protecting for our own sake. I don’t know how to convince people that we’re humans too, but if people stopped killing us only because it hurts their wives and sisters too, I’ll take it.
Yeah it’s the same as “the patriarchy hurts men too”. It is worth pointing out in the sense that if some people aren’t free then no-one is free, but it also feels like we shouldn’t have to and we take the focus away from the ones that are most hurt.
They are. But by pointing out that it hurts cis people too we attempt to move it from “it’s a shame that they treat you like that” to an understanding that transphobic rhetoric may hurt them or other cis people in their lives. Because the fact is, most cis people who love a trans person have maybe one or two of us in their lives. Some have a lot, but we’re a small minority that’s spread out. And maybe you love your cousin you see every few years, but are you going to riot so they can take a peaceful crap in a public restroom?
I don’t mean it as a gotcha. Clearly too many people don’t care about the rights and dignity of other people unless it affects them. I wish they did, but the current political climate makes it clear that they don’t.
So I think this is worth bringing up to people about any social justice issue. Racism and nativism are used to control white workers. Patriarchy hurts men. Transphobia hurts cisgender people.
However, it is crucial to communicate to people that these ideologies are fundamentally bad and need to be abolished or else people can walk away thinking “We need to implement transphobia the ‘right’ way so it stops hurting cis people.”
Hate hurts all people.
But we are such a smart species we barely try to move past it, sometimes.
