It’s 2013 and we are still arguing over the right to eliminate.
Colorado has some of the best laws in the country around the protection of trans rights, and our public accommodations law covers transgender and transsexual people, but we are still doing battle over bathrooms. Most recently, a six-year-old girl has been the target of discrimination when, despite our laws of protection, her school is not allowing her to use the girls’ restroom.
And now the state of Arizona, which brought us the most discriminatory racial-profiling bill in recent history, is back at it with SB 1045, which originally mandated discrimination against trans people and would pretty much force everyone, trans or not, to haul their birth certificates around with them in order to use public facilities.
So just as Colorado proves that a public accommodations law is not going to stop discrimination against trans people, Arizona is letting us know that it really doesn’t care.
And in the trans community, we know that laws such as the one making its way through the Arizona state legislature will negatively impact trans women the most. We also know that these laws are almost always based on an underlying premise of sexual predation.
In the face of all this, I would like to reiterate some of the points I make in Five Points for Non-Trans People About Public Restroom Use and add some additional points here:
> I lived as a girl and a woman for forty-two years. In that time, I used public women’s restrooms tens of thousands of times – at school, at work, in restaurants, in bars, in the mall, at concerts, and at every other possible public venue. In all of those years, not once – not once! – did I see the genitalia of anyone else in any of those restrooms. Over a period of forty-two years, I had no idea who was in the bathroom with me or what the other bodies in there looked like – nor did I care. (And I didn’t show anyone mine, either.)
> Trans people are not sexual predators. I worked for eighteen years in child and adult protection, and I have worked with hundreds of sexual perpetrators and victims of sexual abuse and assault. I will tell you who the majority of sexual perpetrators are. They are fathers, grandfathers, uncles, brothers, husbands, dates, teachers, coaches, clergy, youth leaders, and sometimes a random stranger. In that time, I never ran into a trans person who was an assailant or a woman or girl who was sexually assaulted by a trans person.
> Laws do not thwart sexual predators. They are already breaking the law. Rape is against the law. Sexual abuse is against the law. If a sexual predator wants to enter a women’s bathroom and assault someone, he will do it (I say “he” because most sexual predators are men). No law is going to stop him, because his intention already is to break the law.
> Although most sexual predators are men, women can also be sexual predators. And what bathroom do they use?
> Trans women are in far more danger of physical and sexual assault in public restrooms than non-trans women and girls are. If you want to see assaults increase, force trans women to use men’s restrooms. Your assault units will have more than enough work to keep them busy, and the victims will be trans women. And I know that there are plenty of trans men who many women would not want in the women’s restroom, regardless of what their genitals look like or what their birth certificate says – not because they are dangerous, but because they are men.
> To those who are concerned about “sharing” a restroom with a trans person – you already are. You have been for years. You just don’t know it because we don’t strip down in public restrooms or go waving our genitals around (and for many of us, even if we did, you still wouldn’t know it). We are probably far more modest than you are, and we are probably far more concerned about taking care of business and leaving.
> The majority of sexual perpetrators in the world are non-trans men. That’s a fact, and there are statistics everywhere that will back that up. Sexual perpetrators love these so-called “bathroom bills” because they take attention and resources away from where they really should go – stopping sexual violence against women and girls, including trans women and trans girls. And passing these bills gives women and girls who believe this nonsensical rhetoric a false sense of security because some imaginary “threat” has supposedly been eliminated. By concentrating on these ludicrous bills, you are playing right into the hands of true sexual perpetrators.
There are real problems going on right now in this country, and in individual states, that require real solutions. Who is using what bathroom isn’t one of them. By concentrating on these non-issues, lawmakers are able distract the public from the real issues that need legislative attention, but that they don’t know how to solve.
Another discriminatory law is not going to help anyone. It’s just creating a problem where none exists and using it as a smokescreen to divert attention away from far more serious issues. Give it up, John Kavanagh, and get back to work.
This post originally appeared on Matt Kailey's award-winning website Tranifesto.com. Republished with permission.
