Ever since Caitlin Jenner's iconic "Vanity Fair" cover and people like Laverne Cox spoke out, the nation has been forced to deal with the fact that transgender people do exist. For those who don't know, a transgender person is someone who's gender identity doesn't match up with their biological sex.
Here is the NC Bathroom Law explained:
On Feb. 22, Charlotte, North Carolina passed an ordinance that expanded antidiscrimination laws to grant LGBT people protection in places of "public accommodation". This would, among other things, allow transgender people to use the bathroom that corresponds with their gender identity. This was a great expansion of civil rights for LGBT people and would go in effect on April 1.
On March 23, House Bill 2 (HB2) was proposed and passed. Gov. Pat McCrory signed it into law that night. This law served to essentially retract the ordinance and limit any power individual districts might have had to extend civil rights to LGBT people.
Here is why the law is fundamentally deceptive:
The logic behind HB2 is warped to meet an unjust end. The most common argument is that the law is keeping people from abusing a system where "a man in a dress" can go into the women's restroom and terrorize your wives and daughters. This fear is completely unfounded and illogical. If a man wanted to go into a women's restroom and assault women, then I don't think a bathroom law is what's going to stop him. If we're worried about rape, then let's focus on rape and not where people go to the bathroom.
The supporters of this law have used that image of a man smearing on lipstick to enter a changing room full of teenage girls to scare people. They continue to use fear tactics of displaying these plagued helpless women to continue to deny LGBT people their civil rights. Not once has anyone mentioned the opposite scenario: a woman dressing up as a man and sneaking into the men's locker room. Again and again, fear is the common denominator in taking away people's fundamental rights.
This all is a ludicrous concept, considering that transgender people are the ones being assaulted. According to the National Transgender Discrimination Survey, 61 percent of those surveyed were the victim of a physical assault and 64 percent were the victim of a sexual assault.
This law was made to "keep men out of the women's restrooms", but it is putting those trans-men back into the women's room because it says female on their birth certificate.
I think that North Carolina legislators need to take a second to put themselves in trans-people's shoes. How would it feel to be living in the wrong body for your whole life, and then being able to make the change to make your outsides represent how you feel on the inside. When your whole being is screaming that you are one thing and the rest of the world can demand to see your genitals and declare you the exact opposite because of their perceptions of gender. Now, as a transgender person, they are being forced into going into a restroom they don't belong in. The men pictured above are now, by law, required to use the women's restroom.
HB2 is abhorrent and is forcing everyone into an uncomfortable situation that is a possible hotbed for discrimination and assault. Most people have probably shared a bathroom with a trans-person and never known the difference. Trans-people have enough to worry about, and now they can't even go to the bathroom in peace.
