This year, multiple Republican-controlled U.S. states have either passed or considered various bills that would prohibit transgender people from using public restrooms, changing rooms, and locker rooms that align with our gender identities. Additionally, a YouGov poll released last year indicates that U.S. adults are more likely to say that trans people should be banned from using restrooms and changing rooms that align with our gender identities than they are to say that we should be allowed to use them.
As most of my readers at this point know, I am a trans woman. The main focus of this blog is and will remain ancient history. Nonetheless, when it comes to important issues of civil rights, especially ones like this that have a direct and immediate impact on my own everyday existence, I feel it is necessary to use what platform I have to speak out and hopefully maybe change a few people’s minds. In this post, therefore, I will explain why laws banning trans people from restrooms and changing rooms serve no legitimate purpose, are generally unenforceable, and actively harm trans people.
Background about bathroom bills in the U.S.
Back in March 2016, the North Carolina state legislature controversially passed and the Republican state governor Pat McCrory signed into a law the Public Facilities Privacy & Security Act or House Bill 2, which required all schools and state and local government facilities to only allow persons to use the restroom corresponding to the sex listed on their birth certificate.
The law rightly attracted a storm of negative attention. Numerous corporations, organizations, and performers actively boycotted North Carolina over it, resulting in an estimated loss to North Carolina’s economy of between $450 million and $630 million in jobs and investments.
Governor McCrory became the first incumbent governor in the state’s history to lose his bid for reelection and his Democratic successor Roy Cooper pushed for the law’s repeal. The portion of the law pertaining to the use of public restrooms was repealed in March 2017 and a sunset provision repealed the remainder of the law in December 2020.
ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of former North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory
Sadly, despite the repeal of North Carolina’s law, similar bills continue to be proposed and passed in other states. Notably, on 14 May 2021, Bill Lee, the Republican governor of Tennessee, quietly signed House Bill 1233 into law, which requires that all public schools in the state must prohibit all transgender students and staff from accessing multi-occupancy restrooms that align with their gender identity. The law also allows that, if a person in a multi-occupancy restroom in a school happens to encounter a person whose assigned sex at birth does not match the gender for whom the restroom is designated, they are entitled to sue for civil damages.
On 17 May 2021, Governor Lee signed another, even more outrageous bathroom bill into law, House Bill 1182. This law required that any private business or organization that allows transgender people to use its restroom facilities must post a sign that is at least eight inches wide and six inches tall in a prominent location near the restrooms. The top third of the sign must have a background color of red with the word “NOTICE” written in yellow, all-capital letters. The bottom two thirds of the sign must have a background color of white and read, in black, boldface, all-capital letters:
“THIS FACILITY MAINTAINS A POLICY OF ALLOWING THE USE OF RESTROOMS BY EITHER BIOLOGICAL SEX, REGARDLESS OF THE DESIGNATION ON THE RESTROOM.”
The law mandated that any business that allows trans people to use the restroom aligning with their gender identity that failed to post this sign would face criminal prosecution.
This law was clearly designed to harass as many private businesses as possible into banning transgender people from using the restroom that aligns with their gender identity and to force businesses that support trans people to parrot a message deliberately designed to stoke transphobic outrage. Thankfully, as this article for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) describes, a federal judge struck the law down as violating the freedom of speech clause of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution on 17 May 2022.
ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons showing Governor Bill Lee (R) of Tennessee, who signed one of the most extreme and outrageous bathroom bills into law last year
As I discuss in much greater detail in this post I wrote earlier this month, in April of this year, Kay Ivey, the Republican governor of Alabama, signed a bill into law that requires all public schools in the state to require all students to use the restroom and locker room corresponding to the sex they were assigned at birth. The law also prohibits teachers from mentioning anything about the existence of gay, bisexual, or transgender people to students in kindergarten through fifth grade or having any discussion whatsoever about gender identity or sexual orientation.
Also this year, in my very own home state of Indiana, Bruce Borders, the Republican representative for District 45 in the Indiana House of Representatives, introduced House Bill 1348, which, if passed, would make it a Class B misdemeanor for a person assigned male at birth to enter a women’s restroom or a person assigned female at birth to enter a men’s restroom, with exceptions for people entering the restroom “for custodial purposes” or “to render assistance” and for children under the age of twelve who are accompanying a parent, guardian, custodian, teacher, or babysitter. Thankfully, Borders’s bill has not passed and is not likely to pass in this legislative term.
ABOVE: Photograph taken by Mickey Welsh for USA Today Network of incumbent Alabama Governor Kay Ivey (left) and official portrait of Indiana State Representative Bruce Borders (right)
The 2021 YouGov opinion poll
It is transparently obvious why Republican lawmakers are pushing anti-trans legislation right now. Quite simply, the overwhelming majority of U.S. adults now support LGB rights. Notably, a poll released by Gallup in June 2021 found that 70% of all U.S. adults now say that they support gay marriage, including 84% of all U.S. adults between the ages of eighteen and thirty-four.
A significant proportion of the Republican base, however, still strongly opposes queer rights, so Republicans are eager to push whatever anti-queer policies they think they can get away with. The general public is still making up its mind on the issue of whether transgender people should have rights. Consequently, Republican politicians are zealously trying to exploit this opening to push legislation and policies to attack trans people.
When it comes to the specific issue of whether trans people should be allowed to use public restrooms and changing rooms that align with our gender identities, Republican lawmakers do not have the majority of the population on their side, but they do appear to have a slight plurality.
A poll conducted by YouGov between 25 and 31 August 2021 found that U.S. adults are somewhat more likely to say that transgender women should be banned from using women’s restrooms than they are to say that we should be allowed to use women’s restrooms. The poll found that 45% of all U.S. adults say that trans women should be banned from using women’s restrooms, while only 38% of U.S. adults say that we should be allowed to use women’s restrooms and 17% said that they weren’t sure.
Interestingly, the poll found that men were much more likely than women to say that trans women should be banned from women’s facilities. Fully 50% of all men said that trans women should be banned, while only 42% of women said the same. In fact, women were almost split even on the issue, with 40% of women saying that trans women should be allowed to use women’s restrooms and 18% saying that they weren’t sure.
ABOVE: Chart from this article by YouGov showing that U.S. adults are somewhat more likely to say that trans women should be banned from using women’s restrooms than to say that we should be allowed
The YouGov poll found that the tendency of U.S. adults to say that trans women should be banned from using women’s facilities increased significantly when the question specified a trans woman who has not had gender-affirming genital surgery.
The poll found that fully 51% of U.S. adults—a solid majority—said that any trans woman who has not had gender-affirming genital surgery should be banned from using any women’s public restroom or changing room. Only 31% of U.S. adults said that a trans woman who has not had gender-affirming genital surgery should be allowed to use women’s changing rooms and only 32% said that she should be allowed to use women’s public restrooms.
In the same survey, YouGov also found that U.S. adults were slightly more likely to say that allowing trans women to access women’s facilities “presents a genuine risk of harm” than they were to say that it does not. The survey found that 40% of all U.S. adults said that allowing trans women to use women’s facilities presents a genuine danger to cisgender women and girls, while only 36% said that it does not.
Once again, men were significantly more likely than women to say that allowing trans women to use women’s facilities poses a genuine danger. Forty-six percent of men said that they believe that allowing trans women to use women’s facilities poses a “genuine risk of harm.” Women, by contrast, were actually slightly more likely to say that allowing trans women does not pose a “genuine risk of harm,” with 39% of women saying that it does not pose a genuine risk and only 35% saying that it does.
ABOVE: Chart from this article by YouGov showing that U.S. adults are more likely to say that allowing trans women to use women’s public restrooms poses a genuine danger to cisgender women and girls than they are to say that it doesn’t
Curiously, the poll found that U.S. adults were much more closely divided on whether trans men should be allowed to use men’s restrooms and changing rooms. Nonetheless, a razor-thin plurality still came down in favor of banning trans men from using men’s public restrooms, with 42% of U.S. adults saying that trans men should be banned, 40% saying that they should be allowed, and 18% saying that they weren’t sure.
ABOVE: Chart from this article by YouGov showing that U.S. adults are somewhat more likely to say that trans men should be banned from using men’s restrooms and changing rooms than to say that they should be allowed
Why trans people should not be banned from normal use of public restrooms
Given the fact that Republicans are pushing laws to ban trans people from public restrooms and the fact that U.S. adults are apparently more likely to support these laws than not, I feel it is important to address this issue.
To start off, there is absolutely no legitimate reason why any trans person should be barred from normal use of the public restroom of their gender identity, other than simply because transphobes want to hurt trans people. All that a person normally does in a public restroom is use the toilet and wash their hands. No one needs to see anyone’s genitals. Public toilets have stalls around them for a good reason.
The only place where anyone is even likely to see someone else’s genitals in a public restroom is at the urinal in the men’s room, but a trans man is very unlikely to be using the urinal unless he has a penis, in which case it will be no different from a cisgender man using the urinal.
Why laws banning trans people from public restrooms are unenforceable
This brings me to my next point, which is that laws that attempt to ban trans people from using the public restroom of their gender identity are by their very nature impossible to enforce consistently, because public restrooms are unguarded and there are many trans people who pass so completely as our gender identity that generally no one can tell we are trans by looking at us. If you use public restrooms, you have almost certainly shared a restroom with a trans person at some point and not even known it because they looked cisgender to you.
I’m willing to use myself as an example here. I began socially transitioning in summer 2021 and I have been on feminizing HRT since 3 October 2021, but, at this point in my life, I have not had any gender-affirming surgeries of any kind and I have not made up my mind yet whether I will ever have any. This presumably means that only 32% of U.S. adults think that I should be allowed to use the women’s restroom.
Despite this, I have been exclusively using the women’s restroom for over the past year now. I have used the women’s restroom at many different locations, including my university, restaurants, stores, theaters, parks, and even at least one Evangelical church. Never once has anyone in the women’s restroom ever told me to get out because I don’t belong, given me a strange look, or given any other indication of thinking that I am trans.
In general, I pass extremely well as a woman. It helps that I’m abnormally tiny for a person assigned male at birth who went through male puberty; I’m just slightly over 5’2″ (157.5 centimeters) tall and very slight of build. Over the past year and a half, I’ve even gotten my voice, which was always very high-pitched for a male voice, to sound completely passable as a woman’s voice.
Since I started openly presenting as a woman about a year ago, never once has a stranger in public ever openly clocked or misgendered me based on my appearance alone. Since I’ve transitioned, the only time I can remember when a stranger who did not know me before I transitioned has ever misgendered me was in the fall 2021 semester when I wanted to put a book on reserve at the Herman B. Wells Library on the IU Bloomington campus. To do this, I showed my university ID, which had an old photo of me from before I transitioned on it, to an older man at the front desk. After seeing my ID, the man referred to me as “he.”
I’ve reached a point where, whenever I introduce myself to a new person, the person invariably has no idea that I am anything other than a cisgender woman until I tell them that I am trans and, when I do tell them, they are invariably surprised. There was actually a funny incident a couple of weeks ago when I happened to meet a trans boy and neither of us had any idea that the other was trans until, after at least fifteen minutes of conversation, he happened to mention that he was trans and I told him that I was trans too.
ABOVE: Really bad photo I took of myself in the mirror in an otherwise empty women’s restroom on 8 July 2022
ABOVE: Another really bad photo I took of myself in the mirror in the same otherwise empty women’s restroom on 8 July 2022
Ironically, the only time in my life when anyone has ever confronted me for supposedly being in the “wrong” restroom was in the men’s restroom. It happened three years ago in summer 2019. This was long before I started transitioning, but, at the time, I was clean-shaven with relatively long curly blond hair. Even before I transitioned, people told me that my face looks rather feminine and strangers frequently “mistook” me for a woman.
At the time, I was volunteering at the local public library in the very small, very conservative town in Indiana where I grew up. I was in the men’s restroom at the library washing my hands at the sink when a tall, older man came in. When he saw me, he looked surprised and asked me something like: “What are you doing in here?”
The man clearly perceived me as a woman and was startled to find me in the men’s restroom. I didn’t say anything. I just quickly finished washing my hands and got out of the restroom as quickly as I could. Afterward, though, I felt a sense of gender euphoria.
ABOVE: Really bad attempt at a selfie that I took of myself in front of one of my bookshelves in my bedroom on 14 August 2019, showing what I looked like in summer 2019 at the time when an older man demanded to know what I was doing in the men’s restroom at the local public library
The only way laws banning trans people from public restrooms could be enforced
The only way that someone could actually enforce a law prohibiting trans people from using the public restroom of their gender identity would be to post a guard who stands outside each restroom at all times when the restroom is open and make it a requirement that every person must show the guard an official, government-issued ID card that lists their assigned sex at birth before the guard will let them go in.
This would obviously be extremely impractical and would be an immense nuisance not only for trans people, but also for the vast majority of cisgender people. If there is no guard posted, though, or at least an ID scanner that every person needs to scan in order to gain access to the restroom, then anyone can just walk into any public restroom at any time based on self-ID and, if they look like they belong, no one will question their presence.
Regarding department-store-style changing rooms
Much of what I have said here about bathrooms equally applies to changing rooms with stalls of the kind that they typically have in department stores. No one in a department-store-style changing room ever sees anyone else’s naked body or genitals. A person simply goes into a stall, closes and locks the door, tries on clothes, and then comes out. Men and women’s department-store-style changing rooms aren’t even built differently; they are usually exactly identical, only with different signs.
Similarly, just like restrooms, there are always trans people who pass so well as our gender identities that we can use the changing rooms of our gender identity without anyone at all even suspecting that we are trans. In around December of last year, my Mom took my sister and I clothes shopping at a department store. At one point, I went to the dressing rooms to try on clothes. The store actually had a woman standing guard outside the changing rooms. Her primary responsibility was to make sure nobody tried to put on clothes from the store in the changing room and sneak out of the store wearing them.
When I showed up, she noted the clothes items I was taking back. Then she automatically directed me to the women’s changing room and gave me the number of a stall to change in without even batting an eye at me. I didn’t even have to tell her that I was a woman; she just automatically assumed it from my appearance. I think she even called me “ma’am” or something like that.
I went to the stall she assigned to me, closed the door and locked it, and tried on clothes inside. Then, when I was done, I left the stall, and the woman at the entrance checked to make sure that I still had all the clothes I had taken back and that I wasn’t wearing any of them to try to sneak them out of the store. Once again, she gave absolutely no indication of thinking that I was trans or that I didn’t belong.
ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons showing a row of changing room stalls in a department store in Denmark
Regarding athletic-style locker rooms
When it comes to athletic-style locker rooms, I will acknowledge that matters are a bit different, since it is fairly common for people to have their genitals exposed in such locker rooms. Nonetheless, I still don’t think that trans people should be banned from using locker rooms of their gender identity, for several reasons.
First, one thing that most transphobes don’t realize about trans people who still have our original genitals is that the vast majority of us are not at all interested in flaunting those genitals around. In fact, many of us (if not the vast majority of us) are deeply self-conscious and even embarrassed about our genitalia and would much rather that no one at all or at least no stranger sees them. Some trans people (in extreme cases) are actually so intensely dysphoric about their own genitalia that they can’t even bear to look at them, let alone allow other people to see them.
I have never personally had any problem with seeing my own genitalia, but I have definitely long been strongly averse to the prospect of strangers seeing them. The last time I ever personally used a urinal was when I was in first grade. Since then, I have never used one—never even once. This is partly because, even from a very young age, using a urinal just felt wrong, but also partly because I was extremely self-conscious about my body and my genitals and I didn’t want anyone to see them.
Even before I came out as a trans woman, any time I used a public restroom, I always insisted on going in the stall. Even if I only had to urinate and all the stalls were taken, I would still always insist on waiting until someone got out, rather than use the urinal.
In middle school and high school, I was always required to change in the boys’ locker room for P.E. class, but I never wanted any of the other boys to see me change. The boys’ locker room only had one stall, but I insisted on always changing my clothes in there in private, rather than out in the open like all the other boys did. On the few rare occasions when someone else was already in the stall when I arrived, I always waited until they got out before I got changed.
Naturally, in middle school, the other boys frequently bullied and made fun of me in the locker room (both for always changing in the stall and for whatever other reasons they could come up with), the room always stank of Axe body spray (which the boys were in the habit of spraying profusely everywhere), and I always dreaded having to go in there.
When we did our swimming units in gym class in middle school and high school, we had to change in a different set of locker rooms that were specially designated for swimming. The boys’ swim locker room did not have a stall for me to change in, but I still didn’t want to change in front of the other boys, so the swimming instructor let me change in private in the faculty locker room.
When I went to Boy Scout summer camp as a teenager, we were all required to change in the locker room next to the pool for the swim test on the first day. I absolutely hated swimming and never wanted to swim, but I was still required to take the swim test.
The pool locker room did not have any stalls for me to change in, so I always went over to a corner where there were fewer boys, wrapped my whole body in a towel to hide myself from the others, and changed inside the towel. I also always wore a swim shirt because I didn’t want to have my chest exposed (even though, with my scrawny, skin-and-bones physique, I was probably the most flat-chested person in my entire troop).
As expected, most of the other boys relentlessly made fun of me for this and accused me of being an overly diffident sissy. Some of them even accused me of being secretly a woman, insinuating that that was the real reason I didn’t want anyone seeing my genitals. (It turns out those boys were right in a sense—but not at all in the sense they meant it!) On one occasion, one boy even made a show of waving his penis around in front of everyone to show, in contrast to me, just how little he cared about other people seeing his naked body. (I looked away and closed my eyes.)
I have never used a women’s locker room as an adult and I currently have no plans to. I’m fully committed to avoiding all locker rooms as much as I possibly can. Nonetheless, if, for some reason, circumstances forced me to use one, I would definitely change in a stall if there is one and, if there isn’t one, I would change inside a towel like I did back when I was in Boy Scouts. I would not change out in the open where anyone could see my genitals. I suspect that many, if not most, other trans people would probably prefer to do the same.
Additionally, laws and policies that ban trans people from using the locker room of their gender identity generally apply even to trans people who have had gender-affirming genital surgery (or surgeries) and who look indistinguishable or almost indistinguishable from a cisgender person of their gender, even when naked.
This means that, taken literally, these laws would require that hairy, muscular trans men who have had phalloplasty or metoidioplasty and have penises would be required to use women’s restrooms, changing rooms, and locker rooms. Thus, ironically, laws that are ostensibly meant to keep cisgender women from seeing men with penises in women’s changing rooms and locker rooms could actually require men with penises to change in those very rooms.
I think that the best solution to this issue is to simply let people choose which restroom, changing room, or locker room to use for themselves and require changing rooms and locker rooms to have stalls for people who don’t want to change out in the open.
I’m willing to consider that it may be a reasonable policy to prohibit trans people who have genitals that are not what is considered typical for a person of their gender identity from exposing those genitals in public locker rooms—but banning trans people from using the locker room of their gender identity altogether certainly is not.
ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons showing an athletic locker room in Hong Kong
The canard about trans women supposedly assaulting cisgender women and girls in women’s facilities
Because there is no legitimate reason why trans people should be banned from using public restrooms, changing rooms, and locker rooms according to our gender identities and anti-trans bans accomplish absolutely nothing other than marginalizing and harming trans people, transphobes have invented all kinds of bizarre and ridiculous scenarios and arguments so that they can pretend like banning us serves some legitimate purpose.
The most common objection that I have heard people make to allowing trans people to use public restrooms according to our gender identity is that this will supposedly lead to trans women sexually assaulting cisgender women and girls in women’s bathrooms. This objection is so outlandishly ridiculous that it boggles the mind to fathom how anyone could possibly believe it.
The argument only even begins to make sense if someone starts out with the demonstrably false and transmisogynistic assumption that all trans women are innately dangerous sexual predators. Alas, transphobes routinely promote this very canard, usually by citing anecdotal instances in which people who they claim were trans women supposedly committed horrific and depraved atrocities.
To rebut this argument (if we can even call it such a thing), I feel I should start by pointing out that trans people make up a fairly substantial population in the United States. According to this report by Pew Research Center published on 7 June 2022, approximately 1.6% of all U.S. adults identify as some variety of transgender or nonbinary, amounting to approximately 5.318 million adults nationwide. Pew additionally found that roughly 5.1% of all U.S. adults under the age of thirty identify as some variety of transgender or nonbinary.
A different report released in June 2022 by the Williams Institute, a public policy research institute based at the UCLA School of Law, which uses a different methodology and did not include an option for respondents to identify as nonbinary, estimates that approximately 515,200 adults nationwide identify specifically as transgender women. For comparison, the current population of the entire state of Wyoming is 581,348 people, which means that there are nearly as many trans women in the U.S. as there are people total in Wyoming.
In addition to being a fairly large population, trans women are also a very diverse population—one that encompasses many different kinds of people with different backgrounds, different experiences, and different personalities.
Given these facts, it should not be a surprise to anyone that some trans women have committed acts of physical and sexual assault. This fact, however, does not in any way even remotely imply that all or most trans women are dangerous sexual predators or that trans women are any more likely to commit acts of physical and sexual assault than people of any other demographic.
ABOVE: Chart from this report released in June 2022 by the Williams Institute showing that trans women make up an estimated 38.5% of those the Williams Institute surveyed who self-identified as “transgender,” or about 525,200 adults nationwide
In fact, despite the relatively large number of trans women in the U.S., at least as far as I have been able to find, there has never been a single reliably reported case of a definite trans woman ever assaulting any person inside any women’s public restroom or changing room anywhere in the U.S.
There was one high-profile incident in November 2017, which is described in this article published by The Washington Post, in which a kindergarten-aged cisgender girl claimed that a teenager who was assigned male at birth and who the girl claimed was “genderfluid” sexually assaulted her in a women’s restroom at a public school in Georgia. A social service agency investigation into the incident, however, concluded that the girl’s allegations were “unfounded” and officials for the school district have countered that the student the girl identified as having allegedly assaulted her is not, in fact, genderfluid at all.
In a different, less-publicized incident, reported in this article by the local news agency KXII in February 2019, a thirty-one-year-old transgender woman allegedly sexually assaulted a sixteen-year-old in a public restroom at a Walmart—but the teenager she allegedly assaulted was a boy and she allegedly assaulted him in the men’s restroom, which is the very restroom that transphobes want to force all trans women to use. The report says that the woman denied the charges against her. I have not been able to find confirmation of whether or not she was convicted of anything.
I have only been able to find one case of a probable transfeminine person in the U.S. sexually assaulting someone in a women’s public restroom, but the gender identity of the assaulter in the case is not totally clear and, for reasons I’ll discuss, it is unlikely that banning all people assigned male at birth from the women’s restroom would have prevented the assault.
According to this article published in The Washington Post in October 2021, a juvenile court found “sufficient evidence to sustain charges” (i.e., the juvenile court equivalent of a conviction) that a fifteen-year-old student who was assigned male at birth sexually assaulted a fifteen-year-old cisgender girl classmate on 28 May 2021 in the girls’ restroom at Stone Bridge High School in Ashburn, Loudoun County, Virginia.
The girl victim testified in court that she and the student who was convicted had engaged in consensual sexual activity together in the women’s restroom on two previous occasions and that they had arranged to meet there again on the day of the assault at around 12:25 p.m. She testified that they chose to meet in the girls’ restroom because that was where they had always met.
She waited for the other student to arrive in the handicapped stall with the door unlocked. When the other student arrived, they went into the stall, locked the door behind them, and began groping the girl sexually. She told them that she wasn’t in the mood for sex. Ignoring this, the student pinned her to the ground and sexually assaulted her twice.
The girl’s parents claimed that the student who assaulted their daughter was genderfluid. According to the Post, the defendant’s gender identity was never addressed during their trial, but the defendant themself apparently mentioned to detectives that they were wearing a knee-length skirt during the incident.
Regardless of the assaulter’s gender identity, because the assaulter and the assault victim in this instance specifically arranged to meet in the women’s restroom in advance, it is unlikely that somehow preventing anyone assigned male at birth from entering the women’s restroom would have done much to prevent the assault, since, if the assaulter and assault victim had known that the assaulter could not enter the women’s restroom, they probably would have simply arranged to meet someplace else instead.
ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons showing the exterior of Stone Bridge High School in Ashburn, Loudoun County, Virginia, where an allegedly genderfluid student sexually assaulted a cisgender girl classmate in a women’s restroom
Cisgender women assaulting other cisgender women in women’s restrooms
In any case, even if there were a reliably reported case of a definite trans woman assaulting someone in a women’s restroom, that still would not be an adequate justification for banning all trans women from using women’s public facilities, since it would be unfair to ban trans women who have not assaulted anyone from using the restroom just because some other trans woman at some point assaulted someone in one.
It is worth noting here that there have been many recorded cases of cisgender women sexually assaulting other cisgender women in women’s public restrooms and changing rooms. To give just one notorious example of this, as I discuss in much greater detail in this post I wrote in November 2021, on 26 October 2021, the BBC published a wildly transphobic article by the reporter Caroline Lowbridge that was clearly intended to promote the canard that trans women as a collective group are dangerous sexual predators who rape cisgender women.
One of the main sources for the article was a cisgender lesbian pornographic actress named Lily Cade, who talked in the article about how she supposedly faced stigma from fellow cisgender porn actors for her ardent refusal to shoot porn scenes with trans women because she only shoots scenes with women and she does not consider trans women to be real women.
The article very spuriously tried to portray this as evidence that trans women are coercing cisgender lesbians into sex, even though no trans woman ever actually tried to coerce Cade into doing anything and all she ever faced was at most indirect pressure from fellow cisgender performers and producers.
Many people, however, quickly pointed out that, in 2017, after multiple women accused Cade of having sexually assaulted them, Cade herself publicly admitted that the allegations were true and that she has indeed sexually assaulted multiple cisgender women, including in women’s restrooms on multiple different occasions.
To make matters even worse, after the BBC published the article, Cade published a series of absolutely deranged, serial-killer-manifesto-type posts on her personal blog in which she, among other things, declared that she wishes she could “execute” every last trans woman on the face of the earth “personally,” expressly urged her readers to “lynch” specific, named trans women, and expressly called for men to brutally gang-rape and murder the mother of the trans girl Jazz Jennings for accepting her daughter as trans.
In the wake of the public outcry that ensued after Cade published these posts on her blog, the BBC eventually amended their article to remove the section featuring Cade, but still refused to apologize for platforming her and refused take the article itself down.
No one is arguing that, because one cisgender lesbian woman (i.e., Lily Cade) has assaulted some women in women’s public restrooms, all cisgender lesbian women should be permanently banned from using those restrooms. If someone did argue this, then it would be a ridiculous and prejudicial argument in the extreme.
Even if a trans woman did assault a cisgender woman in a women’s restroom, I don’t even think that that would be adequate justification for banning the specific trans woman who committed the assault from using women’s restrooms, since being allowed to use a public restroom is not a privilege that is generally contingent on a person having never assaulted anyone in one.
Notably, despite the fact that Lily Cade has publicly admitted to assaulting multiple women in women’s public restrooms on multiple occasions, she has still never been banned from using women’s public restrooms and she is presumably still freely using those restrooms today. Even if, hypothetically speaking, Cade were to go to prison for assault, she would still be allowed to use public restrooms after she got out.
My view is that, if society does not ban cis women who assault other cis women in public restrooms from using those restrooms, then we shouldn’t ban hypothetical trans women who might assault cis women in public restrooms from using them either. People who commit assault should definitely face consequences for their actions, but being permanently banned from using public restrooms shouldn’t be one of those consequences.
ABOVE: Photograph from this article published in Newsweek showing the lesbian pornographic actress Lily Cade on 23 January 2016 at the Adult Video News Awards in Las Vegas, Nevada
But what about letting trans people use the restroom supposedly making it easier for cisgender male predators?
At this point, some people may try to object that allowing trans people to use the restroom of their gender identity will somehow make it easier than it would be otherwise for a cisgender man to go into a women’s restroom by pretending that he is a trans woman so that he can assault women. This notion is widely held, but it is mind-bogglingly silly.
As I have already pointed out, it is already perfectly easy for a man to go into a women’s restroom, since there are no guards posted. If a man wants to assault women, he clearly does not care about the law or common courtesy, so what makes anyone think that a mere sign that says “women” is going to stop him? He does not need a legal pretext for being in a women’s restroom, since his intentions are already illegal.
Also, if everyone is required to use the restroom of the gender they were assigned it birth, this means that trans men, who, in many cases, look completely indistinguishable from cisgender men, will be required to use the women’s restroom. If you’re worried about predatory cisgender men going into women’s restrooms to assault people, it would be much easier for a predatory cisgender man to go into the women’s restroom by pretending to be a trans man than by pretending to be a trans woman.
ABOVE: Screenshot of a selfie shared by the trans man Michael C. Hughes on 11 March 2015 to protest “bathroom bills” that were being considered at the time, showing him in a women’s restroom
Cisgender people assaulting trans people for using the public restroom
While we are talking about people assaulting other people in public restrooms, it’s worth noting that trans people are actually at much higher risk of being physically or sexually assaulted by cis people in public restrooms than cis people are of being assaulted by trans people.
A study conducted in 2015 by the National Center for Transgender Equality (NCTE) surveyed 27,715 U.S. transgender respondents. The study found that 12% of trans people in the U.S. at the time had experienced some form of severe verbal harassment, physical assault, or sexual assault while attempting to use a public restroom. The study also found that 24% of trans people in the U.S. at the time had had someone question or confront them over their presence in a public restroom on at least one occasion and 9% had been denied access to a public restroom on at least one occasion.
Confrontation, harassment, and physical or sexual assault of trans people in public restrooms are all so common and pervasive that trans people—especially those who have just started transitioning and/or don’t pass as their gender identity—are frequently afraid to use public restrooms. The 2015 NCTE report found that no less than 59% of all trans people in the U.S. at the time had deliberately avoided using public restrooms out of fear of being confronted, harassed, and/or physically assaulted.
The vast majority of incidents of cis people harassing and/or assaulting trans people for using the public restroom go completely unreported because the vast majority of trans people do not feel safe reporting incidents to the police or news outlets.
Police officers have a long history of abusing and mistreating trans people, generally with impunity, as well as a general reputation for being viciously transphobic. (For a taste of just how hostile they can be, see this example of racist, transmisogynistic hate mail that a person claiming to be a police officer recently sent to a trans woman who is a clinical instructor at Harvard Law School.)
Even though some individual officers may not hate and abuse trans people and might be willing to help, law enforcement discrimination against and abuse of trans people and trans women in particular is pervasive and well known enough in the community to make the majority of trans people, especially trans women, afraid to talk to the police.
Meanwhile, news outlets are notorious for promoting anti-trans hysteria and moral panics. Even news outlets that are generally liberal or centrist like the BBC, The Guardian, and The New York Times have run articles and op-eds that portray the existence of trans people as a dangerous menace. Additionally, whenever a trans person receives basically any kind of public attention whatsoever, it inevitably leads to them facing online harassment and abuse. As a result, many trans people, especially trans women, are afraid to talk to news outlets because they don’t want public attention.
Despite all of this, some incidents of violence against trans people over public restroom use have occasionally attracted law enforcement attention and been reported in news outlets. For instance, according to this article published in January 2019 by NPR, in December 2018, two cisgender women allegedly sexually assaulted an anonymous trans woman in the women’s restroom of Milk Bar in downtown Raleigh, North Carolina.
According to the trans woman, she went into the bathroom to check her hair and makeup. The two cisgender women were already in the restroom. They seemed to be intoxicated and began making harassing comments about the trans woman’s genitals. One of the cis women exposed her breasts and they allegedly began grabbing the trans woman’s body without her consent.
The trans woman tried to escape and she repeatedly told the cis women to stop and let go of her, but the cis women refused to stop or let go. After the three women moved out of the restroom and into the main venue of bar, the bar’s owners intervened on the trans woman’s behalf and forced the two cis women to stop assaulting her. The two cisgender women, Amber Harrell and Jessica Fowler, were charged with sexual battery and second-degree kidnapping.
ABOVE: Mugshots showing the two cisgender women, Amber Harrell (left) and Jessica Fowler (right), who allegedly sexually assaulted an anonymous trans woman in the women’s restroom of a bar in downtown Raleigh
This news report published by The Oregonian/Oregon Live on 5 September 2019 describes how, on 24 August of that year, a trans woman named Lauren Jackson used a women’s public restroom at Agate Beach State Recreation Site near the town of Newport, Oregon. At the time, Jackson was still very early in her transition, she was non-passing, and she still had facial hair.
According to the report, nearly an hour after Jackson used the women’s restroom, a man from Idaho named Fred Costanza walked over one hundred yards across the park toward her and began screaming and shouting at her, repeatedly asking her: “Oh, you think you’re some kind of lady?”
Then, in full view of multiple witnesses, Costanza grabbed her by the hair and brutally punched her in the face “more than ten times,” shattering her jawbone in multiple locations and fracturing her skull. Witnesses report that the assault left a massive amount of Jackson’s blood all over the ground.
Costanza left the park with his wife while Jackson was rushed to the hospital for urgent treatment. He returned to the park, however, later that day and police arrested him. According to this follow-up article in The Oregonian/Oregon Live in February 2020, the jury for the Lincoln County Circuit Court found Costanza guilty of a first-degree hate crime under Oregon’s new hate crime legislation, which includes protections for transgender people, as well as second-degree assault and harassment. As punishment, the jury sentenced him to nearly six years in prison.
Meanwhile, Jackson, who thankfully survived the assault and recovered from her injuries, says she is doing the best she’s ever been and says she is overwhelmed by the support and kindness others have given her.
ABOVE: Photograph from this article in CNN showing Lauren Jackson as she looked at the time Costanza assaulted her in August 2019 (left) and photograph from this article in The Oregonian/Oregon Live showing what she looked like by February 2020 (right)
To give a more recent example, this report for the local news channel Fox 19 describes how, on 3 July 2022, a twenty-year-old transgender man named Noah Ruiz, who has been on testosterone, looks like a man, and has a deep voice and facial hair, was camping at Cross’s Campground near the town of Camden in Preble County, Ohio.
Rick Cross, the owner of the campground, specifically told Ruiz to use the women’s restroom on the campground because he was assigned female at birth. Ruiz clarifies in a tweet that Cross is a family friend and that he told him to use the women’s restroom because he believed it would be best for Ruiz’s own safety and the safety of others. I don’t know what on earth gave Cross this impression, but he was clearly wrong.
At around 9:40 p.m., Ruiz was using the women’s restroom with his cisgender girlfriend when a cisgender woman came in and started shouting. Ruiz describes what happened as follows in his interview with Fox 19:
“I was using the bathroom, and she just started shouting. She was like, ‘Who the [expletive] is in here?’ And I replied, ‘I am.’ My girlfriend replied, ‘I am as well.’ She was like, ‘No man should be in this bathroom. Like, if you’re a man you need to use a man’s bathroom.’ And I was like, ‘I’m transgender. Like, I have woman body parts, and I was told to use this bathroom.’”
As Ruiz was trying to explain himself, three fully grown, muscular cisgender men burst in and violently assaulted him because they believed that he was a trans woman. Ruiz describes the assault as follows:
“They, like, grabbed me up off the ground. They choked me out. They said, ‘I’ll kill you, you [expletive] doing all this.’ And I said, ‘Dude, I’m not, I’m using the right bathroom. Rick Cross, the owner of this establishment, told me to use the bathroom. I’m following the rules.’”
Ruiz notes in a tweet that everyone involved in the incident was intoxicated, including himself. He says that he tried to defend himself against the men and the scene attracted a large crowd.
Soon, deputies of the Preble County sheriff showed up and arrested Ruiz for “disorderly conduct” and “obstructing official business.” Ruiz explains in a TikTok video that the police tased him, forced him into tight handcuffs that cut deeply into his wrists, and strapped him tightly into a chair, causing significant further injuries. (His TikTok video contains photos of his various injuries.) Ruiz spent the night in prison while the men who allegedly assaulted him got off totally scot-free.
Ruiz appeared in court on 18 July. He is currently trying to get the charges against him dropped and the men who assaulted him charged. According to this tweet, he has already gotten one man who he says punched him in the back of the head charged.
If you want to help and you possess the financial means, Ruiz has a GoFundMe page where you can donate money to help him pay for lawyers and court costs. As of the time I am writing this, he has already raised more than twice his $5,000 goal, but I’m sure any additional donations people might want to make would not hurt.
ABOVE: Screenshot of Noah Ruiz (left) describing how he was assaulted after being told to use the women’s restroom, accompanied by his mother (right)
I also feel it important to emphasize that, in all of these incidents I have just described, transmisogyny and transmasculine invisibility are the overriding factors that led to violence. In all of these incidents, a person who apparently looked outwardly physically masculine used the women’s restroom and cisgender people who perceived the person as a trans woman assaulted them.
I also feel that it is important to emphasize that transphobic violence in general overwhelmingly disproportionately impacts lower- and working-class trans women of color. The Human Rights Campaign (HRC) keeps a list every year of all the trans people who are reported as murdered in the United States. Every single year, the overwhelming majority of the people on the list are invariably trans women of color.
Here is a link to the HRC’s list for 2022. As you can see, of the twenty trans people the HRC has record of who have been murdered so far in the U.S. this year alone, eighteen of them are trans women and seventeen of them are trans women of color. Of the twenty who have been murdered, only three in total are white and only two are trans men.
Unfortunately, those who are most likely to face transphobic violence are also the ones who are least likely to report their experiences to law enforcement or the media and the ones who are least likely for law enforcement and/or local news media to take seriously, which means that their experiences are rarely publicly documented.
What these laws and policies actually do
As I have established, laws and policies banning trans people from using the correct restroom cannot realistically be enforced. Trans people like me who can consistently pass as our gender identity will always be able to use public restrooms without anyone even noticing. This does not, however, mean that these laws have no effect.
Because many of these laws and policies specifically target schools, where teachers and school administrators generally know which students are trans and have the power to punish trans students for using the “wrong” restroom, they inevitably disproportionately hurt transgender youth, who are, unfortunately, already a highly vulnerable population.
As I discuss in much greater detail in this post I wrote in December 2021, according to the Trevor Project’s National Survey on LGBTQ Youth Mental Health for 2021, 52% of transgender and nonbinary youth have seriously thought about killing themselves within the past year and 20% have actually attempted to do it within the past year.
Statistically sound scientific studies and surveys with large sample sizes have consistently and repeatedly found that trans youth who have unsupportive or actively hostile family environments, who lack support networks, and/or who have experienced higher levels of discrimination and harassment have much higher rates of suicidal contemplation and attempted suicide than trans youth who have supportive families, other support networks, and/or less exposure to discrimination and harassment.
Although correlation does not necessarily indicate causation, in this particular case, I think it is a reasonable hypothesis that having an unsupportive or hostile family, lacking support networks, and/or experiencing harassment and discrimination are factors that can contribute to an increased likelihood of a trans person considering or attempting to kill themself. Banning trans students from using the restroom and locker rooms of their gender identity could contribute to those students feeling like the world is against them and potentially taking their own lives.
ABOVE: Chart from the Trevor Project’s National Survey on LGBTQ Youth Mental Health for 2021 showing the percentages of trans and nonbinary youth who have considered or attempted suicide within the past year
Anti-trans bathroom bans also enforce passing standards for adult trans people by effectively banning those who cannot consistently pass as cisgender from using the public restroom of their gender identity, which may be the only restroom they feel comfortable or safe using.
Because lower-income trans people are less likely to have access to the resources and healthcare that make passing easier, these laws and policies inevitably disproportionately harm lower- and working-class trans people and young trans people who do not have supportive parents.
These laws and policies also disproportionately harm trans people of color, both because, due to systemic racism, trans people of color are statistically more likely to lack access to the resources and healthcare that make passing easier and also because, as I noted earlier, transphobic hate intersects heavily with racist hate and trans people of color are more likely to be targets of violence.
Finally, these laws and policies also directly embolden violently transphobic people like the men who assaulted Jackson and Ruiz by sending them the message that the law is on their side and that they are doing the right thing by assaulting anyone they see using a public restroom who they believe might be trans. If you don’t like people getting assaulted for using public restrooms, you should oppose anti-transgender laws and policies.
Public facilities for nonbinary people
Finally, one additional matter that is often left out of this conversation is that many nonbinary people are not comfortable using either the men’s or the women’s facilities.
Opposing bathroom bans is an immediate priority for the moment, but, in the long run, we should try to move toward having more single-occupancy gender-neutral public facilities that can accommodate nonbinary people who don’t feel comfortable using the restroom of either binary gender. In general, I think that all single-occupancy restrooms should be gender-neutral.
Having more gender-neutral restrooms will not just help accommodate nonbinary people; it will also increase efficiency and restroom availability for everyone else. Many public buildings currently have two single-occupancy restrooms: one designated for women and one designated for men.
Often, a person may find that the restroom corresponding their gender is occupied, while the other restroom is empty. This forces a person to wait for another person to finish up and get out of the restroom, even though there is a restroom right next door that is unoccupied and available.
In buildings where this situation exists, it would be extremely easy to make both single-occupancy restrooms gender-neutral, which would eliminate this problem and allow a person to simply use whichever restroom happens to be open. This would help eliminate the long lines that sometimes accrue outside such restrooms and would be a great convenience to everyone. Frankly, it’s kind of silly that more places haven’t already made their single-occupancy restrooms epicene.
ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons showing a sign for an “All Gender Restroom” in Saint Paul, Minnesota
Spencer, I didn’t know you were trans. I’m in shock wow.
I know it’s not my business but you could have had a child that could have been a as talented person as you are. This feels like so much potential wasted.
Since you believe you are a woman now, are you going to change your name as well?
Wow. Gross and misinformed.
*Many trans people retain the ability to procreate.
*Nobody owes you procreation, though.
*The name “Spencer” has been used by men and women before.
*If she decides to change her name, I’m sure she’ll let us know (assuming she doesn’t block you first).
*If someone “believes” they are a woman, then they are a woman. We have a wealth of science and social wellness evidence proving as much.
*There are so many opportunities to educate yourself in this post and THIS is how you decided to respond? That’s the real “potential wasted”.
Thank you so much for sticking up for me; I really appreciate it! At the same time, though, I generally try to be understanding of people if I think they are responding in good faith. In this case, I think that cem’s comment was most likely intended in good faith, which is the reason why I haven’t deleted it and why I have taken the time to respond to it.
I write about many diverse topics on this blog and, as a result, it attracts all different kinds of people. I recognize that many of the people who read my blog don’t know any trans people and aren’t really well informed about trans issues. I try to balance, on the one hand, fostering a community of readers that is open and accepting and, on the other hand, trying to reach out to and persuade those who maybe aren’t as well informed.
I did write in good faith.
I appreciate you and your articles.
You should delete my first comment and block me if my first comment and this one are offensive to you.
I admit, I’m old headed about trans people and their cause. My only concern is for children.
To think of a future where they are exposed to these ideas openly on TV/media is terrifying to me.
You would do both us and yourself a favour if you were to re-evaluate your existing biases and arrive at the realisation that your “concern” is based on nothing but the prejudices that your society (assuming you live in Turkey) has taught you throughout your life. There is absolutely nothing wrong with being transgender. There is, however, something wrong with believing that being trans is bad or undesirable, as the belief inevitably leads to conflict or rejection.
I come from Croatia, a country where being transgender is not accepted. That is one of the main reasons why I am sick and tired of trans people being seen as not normal. There is absolutely nothing wrong with me. I am a human being with thoughts and feelings just like anyone else. My life would be so much easier if people like you did not make a big deal out of my being transgender. But no, I had to fear for half of my life that my parents would disown me, and they might even have done that had we not moved to Germany, which resulted in them becoming more understanding of the topic.
If you find this “shocking,” you’ve clearly missed the fact that at least every seventh post I’ve written on average for the past two years has been about something trans- or queer-related, the fact that my profile photos over the past two years have grown increasingly feminine, and the fact that I’ve explicitly called myself a trans woman in two previous posts, including in this post I made earlier this month in the second sentence of the first paragraph.
Regarding me having a child, first of all, you shouldn’t automatically assume that, because I am trans, I will never have a child. Trans women do, in fact, have the option to have our sperm frozen before we go on HRT and, if a trans woman chooses to have her sperm frozen, she ends up with a partner who is reproductively compatible with her, and she and her partner want to have children, she can have the sperm sample that she had frozen before going on HRT unfrozen and her partner can become pregnant through the process of in vitro fertilization (IVF). It is therefore possible for some trans women to produce biological offspring after medically transitioning.
Leaving that aside, whether or not I produce biological offspring is my decision, not yours. I’ve known for many years now that I probably would not want to have child and, if I did end up having a child, I absolutely would not under any circumstances want to have more than one. Before I went on HRT, I had to make a very difficult decision whether or not to freeze my sperm. I spent over a month contemplating it. Ultimately, I decided not to freeze my sperm because I was pretty sure that I wasn’t going to want to have children anyway and I decided that it wasn’t worth having to pay the monthly cost to keep my sperm frozen on the off chance that I ended up changing my mind. I still stand by my decision.
Finally, to answer your question, I am going to keep the same name, since I’m personally very attached to my name and, according to data from the U.S. Social Security Administrator, in 2021, fully 18.7% of all infants given the name “Spencer” in the United States were assigned female at birth. I figure that, if nearly one fifth of all infants being named “Spencer” nowadays are assigned female at birth, then it must be acceptable as a woman’s name.
So many people are cruel bullies, seems to be the root problem (well, one of them). If a way to get at someone is offered, they’ll take it. We should not be encouraging that. You’ve already found out what it’s like, even before your coming out, as have many others. I believe, or at least hope, that this will change though.
I really hope that things can change for the better also.
I was bullied extensively throughout most of elementary school on a daily or almost daily basis. I also faced bullying in middle school, but most of it I didn’t really think of at the time as bullying because most of it came from people whom I considered my friends. I didn’t really face much bullying at all in high school, since, from freshman year onward, I pretty much isolated myself and cut myself off from the people I had been friends with throughout elementary and middle school, most of my classmates in general had grown to respect me or at least ignore me by then, and, by then, I was one of the older ones in my scout troop.
I’m so sorry for that. My own school years had bullying, and for much of it I had no friends, though it sounds as if your experience was worse. In any case in case I’m glad to hear things are going better for you.
Thank you so much for this article! I have had some similar experiences myself, when I was younger people often assumed I was a girl due to my long hair and light voice. Alas, those days have mostly passed now. I think it is very brave of you to speak openly of this, especially your personal experiences in school etc. On a more pedantic note I believe your height in cm should be 157.5 (or 1.57/1.58 in meters)
Thank you so much for this comment! I hesitated for a long time debating whether I should say anything about my personal experiences, but I ultimately decided that those experiences were important to share in this context, especially as a counter to the narrative a lot of transphobes have embraced that tries to portray trans women as perverted, exhibitionistic fetishists eagerly foisting penises upon cisgender women in women’s locker rooms. Who knows, there might be some people out there who are really like that, but it is definitely very far removed from my own experience.
Thank you for pointing out the error about my height! Somehow I must have accidentally left off the one in the first digit column. I have now corrected the mistake.
Why the fuss over single-sex toilets?
A few years ago, I attended a national contract bridge tournament at a large hotel. The lines to enter “Ladies Rooms” ran out into the hallways while stalls lay empty in adjacent “Mens Rooms,” a not uncommon occurrence in America public places. I was at a urinal when a woman entered the Mens Room. I mentioned to her casually that she was in the wrong restroom.
“No I’m not,” she said. I’m a European, and we all use the same restrooms there. Never any problems.”
So, whenever a woman is waiting outside a pair of public restrooms, I ask, “Do you know what the prefix ‘wo’ means in Martian?” She never does, so I tell her. “It means HONORARY. So walk right in.”
As always, a post that proves that passion need not be exclusive with sharp reasoning and exacting eloquence.
It is absolutely appalling that this is in any way an issue. Assuming that humanity has a future, I think that things like the bathroom bills will be no more understandable that the Inquisition is to a modern mind. Our descendants will have to make themselves believe that we acted like this. Yet equally I am convinced that any future WILL indeed be gained by getting past this kind of cruel, indecent, insane bigotry.
I would like to live in a world where there is all the time in the world to discuss the ongoing project of re-constructing an understanding of the Ancient World because it was no longer necessary to fight things like transphobia. Yet here we are for now.
As to these weirdoes who gain political office by obsessing in what perfect strangers are doing in the bathroom, I can only say: so much for smaller government.
This is very well said! Thank you so much for the complements!
Articles that deal heavily with present-day bigotry are often difficult and unpleasant for me to write and I generally feel much happier when I’m writing about old history, but, as I mention in my intro to this piece, I feel that it is important to use my platform to try to combat bigotry and debunk misconceptions and canards that actively hurt people living in the present day.
For what it’s worth, I’m planning for my next few articles to be more history-related. The next article will most likely be one about etymology.
I think there are lot of similarity between these “bathroom bills” to old “racial segregation” in South. There are desire to protect white woman “purity”. Notice how transman bathroom is almost never talked about.
You are absolutely right that both the conservative rhetoric around racial segregation in the South during the Jim Crow Era and the present-day conservative rhetoric around anti-trans bathroom bills focus heavily on the supposed need to protect cisgender white women from the imagined threat that members of a marginalized community supposedly pose simply by existing in proximity. You’ll also notice that, in both cases, it’s not really about protecting cis white women, but rather about protecting the white supremacist cisheteropatriarchial social order.
Thank you for this article, for your bravery, and your willingness to share. My daughter-in-law is trans and is very familiar with the stresses of using bathrooms, body dysphoria etc. Your words remind me of the things she has to endure that she rarely mentions. I am full of respect for both of you.
Congratulations on your transition! You are “tranifesting” a better, freer culture for all of us.
Thank you so much! Unfortunately, I have very little power or influence, but I still try to do what I can to hopefully make the world a better and more tolerant place.
Trans rights appear to have to catch up with gay and the rights of other minorities who themselves still suffer some degree of discrimination and prejudice.
Indeed. In some ways, it seems like the trans rights movement is at a similar place to where the gay rights movement was at in the late 1970s, when there was massive anti-gay backlash through things like Anita Bryant’s “Save Our Children” campaign.
There are some major differences, though, between the gay rights situation in the late ’70s and the trans rights situation today. On the one hand, U.S. culture today in general tends to be more accepting than it was back in the late ’70s, so trans people today tend to have more allies than gay people in the late ’70s did.
On the other hand, though, trans people are also in some ways more vulnerable to conservative attack than gay people were back then, partly because it is generally much harder for a person to hide the fact that they are trans than it is for someone to hide the fact that they are gay or bi and also partly because most trans people are reliant on access to gender-affirming healthcare through institutions, so it is easier for right-wingers to hurt trans people by taking away that access.
True. Sexual orientation is way more possible to hide than gender (unless of course someone has transitioned to the point that they can easily pass off as the gender they identified to others in public) and definitely race.
By the way you look great in those photos, seems like your hormone treatment is paying off.
Thank you! That’s very affirming to hear!
Excellent post, Spencer. Wishing you all the best on your journey.
Happiness should be a human right.
Thank you so much! I really appreciate your support and encouragement!
So women are almost evenly split on whether trans women should use female restrooms. I’m not sure what this is supposed to prove. Suppose that 42% of women felt unsafe when walking the streets. Would that figure be too low to suggest that there was a problem? Hardly. The fact that even more men than women are opposed to the use of female restrooms by trans women is irrelevant. The feelings of 42% of women should not be discounted. And, no, these women do not need to be “educated” on this issue. It would be a huge insult to say that these women need to overcome their “transphobia”.
It is abundantly obvious that you haven’t bothered to read my whole article and that you simply stopped reading on the section about the poll results before you even got to my actual argument. The fact that women are almost split even on whether trans women should be allowed to use women’s public restrooms is just one piece of background information that I happen to mention in the second section when talking about polling results on this issue. It has no relevance to my actual argument.
Your argument here seems to be that trans women should be banned from using women’s public restrooms simply because 42% of women say that trans women should be banned, which is the plurality of women by two percentage points. This is transparently a fallacious argument, because it simply assumes that those 42% of women must be justified in their sentiments and dismisses even the possibility that those sentiments could possibly be rooted in baseless prejudice.
If 42% of white women were to say that allowing Black women to use women’s public restrooms poses a serious menace to the safety of white women and that all Black women should therefore be banned from using those restrooms, then, clearly, your reasoning implies that all Black women should be banned from using women’s public restrooms, simply because “the feelings of 42%” of white women “should not be discounted.”
Your argument also completely fails to address any of the points I have actually made in my post above.
I believe that this poll finds that 42% of Cisgender women had that feeling. This begs the question. What is under debate in the first place is whether the definition of “women” has been sufficiently inclusive. Your failure to acknowledge that this is, at best, a notable bias, and arguably a methodological flaw, demonstrates the depth of the bias you bring to reading the study. You are a prime example of why education is needed.
The YouGov poll just says “women,” so it is not clear whether any trans women were included in the polling sample. In any case, I don’t think the survey results should have any bearing on whether trans people are allowed to use public restrooms that align with our gender identities. If a law or policy is unjust and prejudicial, then it does not matter whether the policy is popular; we should oppose all unjust and prejudicial laws and policies, regardless of how popular or unpopular they may be.
This poll should have no impact at all. Had it been about separate facilities for different races in the Jim Crow era and if taken across the immediately affected region then the outcome would have been as foreseeable as it was wrong. I do feel that this unexamined ambiguity in the survey serves to demonstrate the level of instructional bias from which it proceeds and which it ends up supporting. It is not only methodologically questionable, it is in bad faith.
Your analogy doesn’t work. In order to make it work you would have to suppose that white women had a right to their own restrooms but that they should be willing to share the facilities with black women who had undergone skin bleaching procedures.
This raises the following question. Should there be separate facilities for men and women? Some people don’t think there should be. However, if it is granted that women feel uncomfortable about sharing their facilities with men and have the right not be subjected to this then what follows? Who decides when women do or do not have the right to feel uncomfortable? It can only be women themselves. Furthermore, I see no reason why 42% is not high enough to warrant a ban on the use of female restrooms by those who are not women.
Your objection to my analogy does not work because it is founded in circular reasoning; the objection itself is simply the exact conclusion that you have so far failed to prove, which is that cisgender women supposedly have a right to use restrooms in which no trans women are allowed. If you want to claim that cisgender women have this right, then you need to demonstrate that there is a compelling reason why trans women being allowed to access women’s restrooms hurts cisgender women and that this harm to cisgender women sufficiently outweighs the harm that banning trans women from using women’s restrooms causes to trans women to justify implementing such a ban.
Your initial argument was that the 2021 YouGov poll found that 42% of women think that trans women should be banned from using women’s public restrooms and that this somehow proves that allowing trans women to use women’s restrooms poses a threat to cisgender women. My objection to this argument was that just because a certain percentage of people believe something doesn’t necessarily mean that they have any good reason for believing such a thing. The purpose of my analogy was to illustrate the specific point that people are capable of believing that certain other people should not be allowed to use the same public restrooms as themselves based on mere prejudice and that the mere prevalence of such beliefs does not in any way prove that they are justified.
I have spent my entire article here arguing that there is no evidence that allowing trans people to use public restrooms according to our gender identities causes any harm to cisgender people, that there is compelling evidence that banning trans people from using the restrooms of our gender identities causes immense harm to trans people, and that laws prohibiting trans people from public facilities are impossible to consistently enforce anyway due to the existence of cis-passing trans people.
Since you have clearly have not read my post completely, you have totally ignored all of my arguments in the post, you have not provided any valid evidence whatsoever to support your claims, and I am tired of arguing with you, I will not approve any further comments from you on this article.
Anti-transgenderism is often based on religious beliefs. Based on what verses in the Torah/Pentateuch, Bible or Qur’an?
There aren’t actually any verses in either the Hebrew Bible or the New Testament that directly address transgender people. That being said, the verses that Christian religious transphobes most commonly try to cite as anti-trans clobber passages are Genesis 1:27, Deuteronomy 22:5, Deuteronomy 23:1, and 1 Corinthians 6:9–10. I address all of these verses in detail in this post I wrote in March 2021. (The post is a lengthy general defense of trans people’s existence against both pseudoscientific and religious objections; if you want to skip straight to the part where I respond to religious objections, you’ll have to scroll down past the earlier sections, which address pseudoscientific objections.)
To give you the short version here, the anti-trans interpretation of Genesis 1:27 is demonstrably wrong and requires reading ideas into the text that are simply not there; the actual verse says absolutely nothing about whether a person’s gender is determined by their sex assigned at birth and, although it does describe God as creating human beings “male and female,” it does not say anything about these being the only possible genders.
Deuteronomy 22:5 forbids cross-dressing, but this only even arguably applies to trans people if someone starts out with the presumption that trans people are really the genders we were assigned at birth, rather than our gender identities. The verse’s significance for the present-day is also debatable at best, given that it occurs in a list of rules that were originally meant to govern extreme minutiae of daily life in the seventh-century BCE Kingdom of Judah, the vast majority of which most Christians and probably most Jews today completely ignore.
Deuteronomy 23:1 bars men who have been castrated or emasculated from entering the assembly of Yahweh, which could only even arguably pertain to trans women who have undergone gender-affirming genital surgery (and, even then, only if someone starts out with the incorrect presumption that trans women are really men). The verse is also clearly about ensuring the masculine integrity of the assembly, not about morality, and there are numerous pro-eunuch passages elsewhere in both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, such as Isaiah 56:3–5 (which promises that Yahweh will reward eunuchs who follow his commands), Matthew 19:11–12 (in which Jesus seems to imply that it would actually be commendable or even necessary for some men to castrate themselves for the sake of the Kingdom of Heaven), and Acts 8:26–40 (in which the apostle Philip baptizes an Aithiopian eunuch as a Christian).
Finally, 1 Corinthians 6:9–10, if translated correctly, only condemns men who participate in the specific sexual act of same-gender male penetrative intercourse and has no relevance to transgender identity per se.
I don’t know which verses in the Quran Muslims may try to cite against trans people because, as of the time I am writing this, I haven’t really studied the Quran or looked into what it says that present-day Muslims may interpret as pertaining to trans people.
When OI read what you have written here, I see for the first time with fullest clarity that modern fundamentalists are simply looking in the wrong place for what they want, and they are blinded to it by their prior determination that the will find it there.
Where, in all of the Tanakh, does it say anything about concepts of identity and pro-active self-affirmation on any subject at all? We barely look into anyone’s mind or heart at all in that text, aside from asides about sorrow, anger, greed, defiance, fear, joy and so on. It is not a story about self-reflection, let alone about the ongoing and difficult project of identity.
Leviticus is about behaviors.
The New Testament and the Koran add scarcely anything more in terms of the depth of what people think, let alone reflect upon, doubt, and refine.
It really isn’t there.
The topic of persons who find that they must understand themselves outside of the immediately available cultural and collective habits of self-identification and self-understanding is simply beyond the scope of these texts–not to say that people have not always done those things, but we have built our codes over those needs and activities, and in alter centuries that has become more and more explicit.
It might be argued that more than anything technological, that what really makes the modern era something separate is the existence of not only language but the shift of a focus upon what people do to what people are like on the inside–the concept has always been there but the collective emphasis has not, in terms of discourse at least.
What can these texts offer the modern world to the extent that modernity must be defined in terms of practical projects of refined self-understanding?
Worse: we must suspect that the very appeal that these texts have is that they allow retrogression to a less internally-aware, more action and conformity focused world, for those who are not equal to the modern project of collectively supported individual self-creation.