When It's More Than Just a Bathroom
This February 2017, President Donald Trump made headlines for withdrawing federal protections for transgender students which would cut funding to schools that did not allow transgender teens to use the bathroom of their choice. Set in place by the previous administration in May, these protections were based upon Obama’s interpretation of Title IX - where the federal law that banned sex discrimination could be extended to ban discrimination based on gender identity. By withdrawing these federal protections, President Trump allowed schools to force transgender individuals to use the bathroom of their assigned sex as opposed to their preferred gender without receiving repercussions.
The withdrawal of these protections came as a blow to the transgender community, but transphobic pushback in the “bathroom debate”, which has recently taken up a space in political conversation, is nothing new. “Bathroom bills” have been introduced by conservatives which mandate that transgender men and women use the bathroom matching the sex on their birth certificate. Conservative politicians who promote these bathroom bills cite the belief that sexual predators could enter a woman’s bathroom under the guise of a transgender woman. However, these fears are unsubstantiated. Progressive media watchdog Media Matters contacted the 17 largest school districts that allowed transgender people to use the bathroom of their choice and asked if there were any harassment problems, and all school districts said there were none. Others’ discomfort stems from a belief that transgender women are not really women, stating that they don’t like that “men” could be peeing in a stall next to “real” women. As one Maryland woman testified in 2014 on an LGBT anti-discrimination bill: “I don’t want men who think they are women in my bathrooms.”
In this debate, many people are discussing about whether it’s “safe” to allow transgender people to use the bathroom that aligns with their gender identity, yet there is a lack of conversation on how unsafe it is to be a transgender individual. The FBI analyzed hate crime data and concluded that LGBTQ people are more likely to be targets of hate crimes than any other minority group. In 2016, 22 transgender women were murdered, some because of transphobia; in fact, the vast majority of victims of LGBT homicides are black or Hispanic transgender women. While everybody analyzes if it’s “safe” to simply allow transgender individuals to freely use the bathroom of their choice, they are ignoring – unconsciously or not – how difficult it is to live in this world when you are transgender. In many states, transgender people do not have anti-discrimination protections, meaning that it can be legal to fire somebody because they are transgender.
By centering discussions about transgender people’s lives around their right to use a bathroom, politicians not only have the opportunity to force yet another oppression on a transgender individual, they are able to distract the world from the real transgender issues at hand. The bathroom debate is incredibly important for the transgender community to win, but one mustn’t think that their struggles stop there. Cisgender allies must continue to support, advocate, and fight for transgender people as they work to achieve tolerance and equality in today’s increasingly bigoted world.