A few days ago, North Carolina’s governor signed a controversial bill that will block cities from allowing transgender individuals to use public bathrooms for the sex they identify as—as well as restricting cities from passing nondiscrimination laws more broadly. In other words, transgender people will now be required, under penalty of law, to use bathrooms which correspond to their sex at birth, instead of the gender that they identify as. The law also prevents any local governments from passing their own non-discrimination ordinances and mandates that students in the state’s schools use bathrooms corresponding to the gender on their birth certificate.
North Carolina’s most recent bill pushing against LGBTQ rights is just the tip of the gigantic iceberg of discrimination against transgender people, who are already ostracized and marginalized in today’s society. States such as Arizona, Florida, Texas and Kentucky have already passed similar bills imposing regulations on the bodies of transgender folks. Proponents of the new bill claim that allowing transgender people to enter the bathroom of the gender that they identify as creates opportunities for sexual assault and rape; in other words, they cast transgender people as “predators” lurking in the bathroom, using their gender identity as an excuse to assault (mainly) ciswomen.
Which might make some sense, if there were actually any reported incidents featuring a “bathroom predator”—that’s right; so far, there has been zero reported cases of trans people sexually assaulting others in public bathrooms.
In a 2015 interview, Spokespeople from the Transgender Law Center, the Human Rights Campaign and the American Civil Liberties Union said that no statistical evidence of violence exists to warrant legislation dictating the bathrooms trans people should enter. Vincent Villano, the director of communications for the National Center for Transgender Equality, also affirmed that there was no firm data to corroborate the “transgender bathroom predator” myth, and that NCTE has "not heard of a single instance of a transgender person harassing a non-transgender person in a public restroom. Those who claim otherwise have no evidence that this is true and use this notion to prey on the public's stereotypes and fears about transgender people." Likewise, shortly before Houston’s referendum on whether to retain its non-discrimination ordinance of public bathroom usage, government employees and police officers from three other cities in Texas reaffirmed that not a single case of the “transgender predator” had ever been reported.
Furthermore, police departments in states and cities that exercise nondiscriminatory ordinance and support transgender rights have ubiquitously clarified that these policies have not resulted in an increase of reported cases of sexual assault in their jurisdictions. In other words, the idea that a transgender person could sneak into your bathroom and prey on you is nothing but pure fiction.
Perhaps a more pressing consequence of the bathroom bill is the perpetuation of bigotry, violence and hatred against trans and genderqueer folks. According to the most recent National Transgender Discrimination Survey report, 63 percent of respondents "had experienced a serious act of discrimination" in their lifetime—that’s three out of five people. Furthermore, according to a 2013 Williams Institute report, 70 percent of trans people have reported “being denied entrance, assaulted or harassed while trying to use a bathroom.” The consequences of such violence can be life-threatening. A trans-masculine student in Michigan held it for so long that he was hospitalized with a life threatening kidney infection, after he was banned from using the boy’s restroom, and bullied constantly for using the girl's or staff facility; the vast majority of transgender youths like him all over the country face bullying and harassment, and over a third report being physically assaulted at some point. In 2011, Missy Polis was savagely beaten as she was seen leaving a women’s bathroom in McDonald's, sparking a national debate about trans rights. Imagine fearing for your life every time you use the bathroom—that is, lamentably, the reality for the majority of transgender folks in this country.
The myth of all transgender people as sex-hungry “men” preying on women is also hurtful because it leaves individuals out of the conversation—namely, transgender men and genderqueer people, transgender women taking transitional medication, and cisgender people who don’t conform to societal gender norms. A ciswoman was humiliated and harassed outside a women’s bathroom in an establishment in Detroit because her gender expression was seen as an anomaly; the reinforcement of toxic gender stereotypes clearly hurt more than just queer people. A bill forcing transgender people to enter bathrooms corresponding to their birth sex can also result in embarrassing and uncomfortable situations where muscly and bearded men—yes, men—occupy the same spaces as ciswomen, which could be awkward for everyone. On the other hand, the supposed constituents of the so-called “predators”—transgender women—are actually the least likely to commit sex crimes and the most likely to be victimized, as their testosterone levels are reduced to almost zero by medication aiding their transition.
As we’ve seen, the “transgender predator” stereotype recycled countless times by transphobic legislators is nothing more than a myth—and horrifyingly, a myth that not only creates more obstacles in the already difficult lives of trans people, but also threatens the lives of members of society from all walks of life. Instead of stripping transgender people of their basic rights, perhaps the governor of North Carolina—as well as numerous other states—should devote their efforts to supporting victims of sexual assault, which include, disproportionately, trans people.
