Since the gay rights movement began in 1969, opposition and hatred have been directed toward those in the community. Last year, when the Supreme court ruled that gay marriage was legal, there was finally some progress in the fight for equality. However, people tried to contest the ruling by denying to service gay weddings, claiming "religious freedom" but really this was just self driven hate. Now the most recent debate that has affected the LGBTQ+ community is which facilities and locker rooms people who are transgender are allowed to use.
South Carolina was the first state to make a "bathroom bill" forcing transgender people to use the bathroom or locker room that matches their biological sex. Currently nine states currently have similar bills: Illinois, Kansas, Missouri, Mississippi, Oklahoma, and Tennessee. Many business closed, performers cancelled, and protesters protested in response to this law. Also in response, Target announced that employees and customers were free to use the bathroom or changing room that they identified as. This also has received some mixed responses-- from cheers to the American Family Association petition boycotting Target. The issue is bigger though than choice of bathroom or changing room, this issue ultimately boils down to an issue of human rights and of the government trying to deny those human rights.
One of the main arguments against someone who is a transgender male using a male bathroom or a transgender female using a female bathroom is that we are protecting people from potentially being assaulted and uncomfortable. People believe that a man might try to pose as transgender to purposely assault a woman.
This is a completely ridiculous justification because if a man is planning to assault a woman in a bathroom he will do it regardless. All this bill is doing is putting transgender people in harms way because if they are forced to use the bathroom that correlates with their sex, then they are bound to be subjected to violence and bullying. 64 percent of transgender people experience sexual assault within their lifetime. It is completely bogus to justify denying the right to use the gender bathroom you identify with just because of the potential "harm" that can come without any sort of proof.
The hate that is being directed at the transgender community needs to stop but this is nothing new in our history. We can look back 66 years ago to segregation when they believed that white and black people had to be separated. It was the same then as it is now with the transgender bathroom debate.
These bathroom bills allow the government to discriminate against someone based on their gender expression but this can be taken even further. a woman who dresses more masculine-like could be mistaken to be a transgender male and be forced to use a male bathroom when they are a woman. This is a clear violation of a person's rights and should not be tolerated in any form. The real issue is societies obsession with labels and separation of people from each other. When people try to break or change these labels, they must be stopped, but at what cost?
