The bigots are still, unfortunately, going to be obsessed with whatever is in the pants of those they hate in the New Year.
On January 1, a clip posted by gay TikTok creator Zach Willmore shows the harassment he faced while simply trying to use a public men’s restroom the previous evening. All dressed up and fabulous, with, as the closed-minded jerk put it in the video, “pearls on his eyes,” Willmore was simply serving a pretty look for the holiday festivities. A pretty look never hurt anybody, but that didn’t seem to stop this other young man from getting right in Willmore’s face and deriding him for styling himself in a feminine way.
@zachwillmore Happy new years, I guess I can’t win #fyp #new ♬ original sound – ★ Star Boy ★
It’s clear that, based on the demeanor shown by this small-minded bigot in the now-viral video, he thinks people who exist somewhere outside of traditional gender norms are just wrong and should just go away or otherwise not exist. “I don’t like that shit in a men’s bathroom,” the young, belligerent, drunken man slurs while pointing his finger right in Willmore’s face. Willmore alleges that the young man seen in the video harassing him, whose name is Jaxon Terill, also shook the stall Willmore was using, after asking Willmore not to use the urinal next to him because he was “uncomfortable.”
I don’t know about you, but me personally, if I’m uncomfortable around someone, especially in a public restroom, I simply vacate the area. I don’t get right in people’s faces and yell at them and hurl personal insults at them. I certainly don’t follow them around the restroom and shake the closed stall door of whomever in the bathroom is making me feel that way. That would be just plain weird. I simply mind my own business and leave whomever it is alone. But you and I both know that that’s not how the conservatives see it.
These people believe in freedom for themselves, but not for minorities. Their twisted, warped idea of “freedom” is to be allowed to punch down on those they oppress in whatever cruel fashion they see fit, without a peep of dissent from those on the receiving end of the abuse. Another TikToker, Danesh Noshirvan, got involved after Willmore’s post went viral. Noshirvan identified Terill from the video and contacted him about the unacceptable behavior he exhibited in Willmore’s clip.
Terill claims to have “sent multiple apologies to Zach,” but that doesn’t erase what he did. He went out of his way to make an innocent bystander feel uncomfortable and unsafe in a public restroom by interrogating him about his gender. Ironically, the conservatives shriek all the time about how if we let transgender people into the bathroom they prefer to use, all the cis people will be harassed or sexually assaulted in there.
Willmore isn’t even transgender, is the thing. Willmore isn’t even trying to use the “wrong” bathroom. His only crime was presenting femininely, and someone had a problem with that, just inherently. “Multiple apologies” means jack shit when your instinct is to treat those who are different from you badly just on principle. If you really want to express regret for doing that, you need to reevaluate your mindset and take accountability, not just handwave it away with the excuse of “sending multiple apologies.”
Add this incident to the ever–growing list of reasons why us as LGBTQ+ people need to look out for each other in 2026. Unfortunately, even in as advanced a society as we currently live in, certain people are still going to be acting like primitive cavemen every time they encounter a visibly queer person in the wild.
Screenshot courtesy of social media
