If you live in Washington State and you’re a woman, and a man walks into a locker room and starts undressing in front of you, it is now illegal for you to ask him what he is doing there, much less ask him to leave. If you have discomfort with the situation, you have to leave the locker room quietly. The naked guy gets to stay.

The Washington State Human Rights Commission, a regulatory agency, has been empowered by the Washington State legislature to draft legally binding rules for businesses to prevent “discrimination” on the basis of “sexual orientation and gender expression[.]” The commission has released its final rule, and boy is it a doozy.

Among other things, the rule makes it illegal to ask “unwelcome personal questions about an individual’s sexual orientation, gender expression or gender identity, or transgender status.” In other words, not only can women not prevent a person with full male equipment from entering their restroom or locker room, they can’t even ask what he is doing there.

Given that the rule applies to schools as well as businesses, your child can now run afoul of this law if they encounter one of the increasing number of prepubescent kids who are victims of the particular species of child abuse where parents tell their 8 year old kid they are transgendered.

As to what constitutes an “unwelcome” personal question about a person’s gender expression, the rule does not say; presumably, the person who is being questioned has sole discretion over whether to make someone into a lawbreaker or not.

The rule also makes it illegal for a business (including a school) to deliberately misuse the pronoun any person would prefer, thus meaning that Washington State has joined the city of New York in fining people who call human males “he” if they decide they want to be called “she.”

Again I emphasize that this rule applies to schools as well as businesses, so if a first grade teacher encounters a boy who one day suddenly declares that he is a girl, the teacher must now refer to him as “she” at the risk of being fined and/or fired.

Well, what should you do if you are a woman in, say, the locker room at the YMCA and someone equipped with full male genitalia enters the restroom and starts undressing in front of you? You can’t ask him what he is doing there (or any other “unwelcome” question), but the good news is that you can leave so that the guy can stay:

The rule states that it is illegal to ask someone who is confused about their gender to use a separate facility for the benefit of women and children who might be uncomfortable.

However, once a man begins to undress in the women’s locker room a person who “expresses concern or discomfort…should be directed to a separate or gender-neutral facility.”

So, all you women who are uncomfortable with the naked guy over there, “Please come with me and leave him alone.”

Of course, calling the person with a penis a “he” will get you fined under the rule, so this advice might not be 100% perfect, but it definitely captures the spirit of the rule.

Our society has collectively lost its damn mind. It’s difficult to imagine a society so full of rot that it would allow a rule like this to be promulgated in a major political subdivision can expect to last for very long.