“OK, I get it, the baseball cap, I was wearing just a plain blue T-shirt, she saw me from the back, OK. I can get why at first glance she would mistake me for somebody who’s transgender,” Toms said [about being harassed in] her video. And, Toms added, “It really got my gears turning at how amazingly ridiculous this is becoming as an issue.”

by Beth Greenfield

(Yahoo) - A woman in a baseball cap who was harassed by a fellow bathroom-goer at a Connecticut Walmart over the weekend, apparently being mistaken for a transgender man, has been getting much media play this week.

Aimee Toms, 22, said in a video she posted to Facebook — already viewed more than 57,000 times — that she was using the bathroom at a Danbury Walmart on Friday when a woman suddenly approached her from behind and yelled, “You are not supposed to be here! You need to leave!” The woman then gave Toms the finger, told her she was “disgusting,” and stormed out.

While the details of the situation are disturbing — particularly in light of various transgender “bathroom bills” being debated in North Carolina and beyond — similar episodes are neither rare nor new for women seen as being on the male end of the gender spectrum. And Toms’ experience is shining a light on how such confrontations can affect women on the receiving end — as well as how the growing national frenzy around bathroom use is emboldening citizens, more than ever, to become restroom gender vigilantes.

“OK, I get it, the baseball cap, I was wearing just a plain blue T-shirt, she saw me from the back, OK. I can get why at first glance she would mistake me for somebody who’s transgender,” Toms said in her video. (Although, if she were in fact a transgender male, then she would have been in the correct bathroom, according to transgender bathroom-bill proponents.) And, Toms added, “It really got my gears turning at how amazingly ridiculous this is becoming as an issue.”

It can also be a major source of anxiety for tomboys and butch-identified women who, just like transgender people, deal with bathroom vigilantes constantly. A recent Texas situation, in which a man followed a woman into a restroom to make sure she wasn’t a man, as well as another scene posted to Facebook (origins unknown) that shows a boyish-looking woman being chased out of a bathroom by security — are just a couple of examples of this issue. More were provided to Yahoo Beauty, in the form of personal stories, in response to an anecdote-seeking Facebook post on Tuesday.

“This whole debate is so misguided,” one woman explained in her response. “It’s all based on appearances, NOT gender identity. For most of the last decade, I have dreaded using public women’s restrooms. I’ve had women stop me and start telling me I’m in the wrong bathroom. I’ve seen women come into the restroom, see me, then go back out and re-read the sign on the door to make sure they are in in the right restroom. I am not transgender and this is my reality because I ‘look like a man’ at first glance… or second glance.”