Is It the Government's Business What Bathroom Transgender People Use?

As far as politician's promises go, Texas state Rep. Debbie Riddle didn't kick off her term with vows to help struggling Americans deal with bread-and-butter issues like fair wages, unemployment, or the housing economy. 

Instead the Republican lawmaker took to her Facebook page to declare that the top of her political agenda is technically nearer to her constituents' bottoms: bathroom rules. She wrote:

This is the 1st day of our Legislative Session here in Texas. I am rolling up the sleeves of my new red dress & getting to work. I have several bills I think you may like. One will protect women & children from going into a ladies restroom & finding a man who feels like he is a woman that day.

To that, transgender people might say that gender orientation is deeply felt, real, and shouldn't be treated like a mood or passing fancy, noting that trans people have too frequently been the targets of abuse and violence in public bathrooms. Yet, just last week, Riddle delivered on the declaration by proposing a bill that would make it illegal for transgender individuals to use a public restroom of the gender with which they identify if they haven't had their documentation altered from birth. Another bill extends the rule to public locker rooms and showers, and imposes a felony penalty for property owners or managers who don't police the bathroom to stop allow anyone over the age of seven years old into a “locker room, shower facility, or toilet facility” that does not match his or her “gender established at the individual’s birth” or “the gender established by the individual’s chromosomes.”

Burdensome state and federal requirements mean transgender people often deal with a bunch of conflicting personal records when it comes to the "M" or "F" identifiers on documentation. Only about 21 percent of transgender people have been able to update all of their IDs and records to reflect their new gender, according to a 2011 survey from The National Center for Transgender Equality, an advocacy group.

Enforcing such rules would require business owners to monitor customers’ bathroom use and ask to see documentations, such as a birth certificate, before they enter a restroom, said Leslie Cooper, a senior staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union. The proposed legislation would add the rules to a section of the penal code that covers public nuisance bans on using profanity, mooning people, or peeping into dressing rooms. 

“It certainly can’t be good for business, for business owners to have to manage customers’ bathroom use and ask intrusive and humiliating questions of them,” she said.

Transgender individuals may be the targets of this scrutiny, but the opportunity for humiliation could affect many, said Cooper. A busy mom who run errands in sweats and a baseball cap, for example. 

“Anyone who’s not perceived to be significantly masculine or significantly feminine in they eyes of the beholder may face such an experience,” said Cooper.

Texas is the latest state to move toward criminalizing bathroom use as politicians ramp up “fear-mongering” about transgender people, Cooper said. In Kentucky, the Senate Education Committee approved a resurrected bill on Monday that would require transgender students to use the bathroom that matches their biological sex, and allows other students to sue the school for up to $2,500 if they catch someone using the “wrong” restroom. Although this bill initially failed, it has been resurrected and expected to go before the state’s Republican-controlled Senate for a vote.

Earlier this month in Florida, Rep. Frank Artiles introduced H.B. 583, a bill similar to Texas’ that mandates people use the public restroom  that matches the “biological sex” they were born with, per their birth certificate.  Breaking this proposed law would be a misdemeanor, and business owners could be subject to lawsuits by customers who happened to be using the restroom at the time of the violation.

According to the bill, it is intended to ensure the public’s privacy and protect them from offenses like rape, molestation and exhibitionism, but shortly after the legislation was introduced, it faced an outpouring of opposition and criticism for targeting the trans community.

On February 12, Artiles’ office wrote a blog post calling the bill a “work in progress” and announcing an amendment that “uses more inclusive language” and “includes a reduction of penalties.” Most notably, the amendment expands the definition of “female” and “male” to include people who have a driver’s license or passport that lists them as such.

Artiles said the goal of the bill “is not to discriminate against any group or individual,” but rather protect the people of Florida.

“My intention is to prevent criminals, sexual predators, and sex offenders from being able to hide behind the law due to the overbroad, vague, and subjective language passed by some counties across the State,” he said in a statement. Attempts to reach Artiles and Riddle for further comment were unsuccessful.

Some of these transgender restroom laws are part of a backlash to LGBT anti-discrimination laws passed at the state or local level, said Cooper, but they are aimed at “protecting” the wrong demographic.

In reality, it is transgender individuals who are at risk when using public restrooms, as 70 percent of trans people reported having been assaulted, harassed, or denied entry to bathrooms, according to a 2013 survey conducted in Washington D.C. by UCLA’s Williams Institute.

“If that rate were to hold true for trans people everywhere, that’s a vey pervasive problem for the trans community,” said Jody Herman, study author and a scholar at the University of California, Los Angeles' Williams Institute, a think tank that studies LGBT issues.

Although there’s not enough research to say whether this data holds true on a national level, multiple studies have shown that restroom access for trans people is a problem that has long-term effects, she said. Fifty-four percent of survey respondents said they had developed physical problems, including urinary tract infections and dehydration, because they chose to “hold it” to avoid a public restroom, the study states. Fifty-eight percent of the 93 respondents said they avoided going out in public altogether because of a lack of safe restrooms.

Some cities and states have been making an effort to make bathroom access easier for transgender individuals through the use of gender-neutral restrooms. Washington D.C. passed a regulation banning gender-specific, single occupancy restrooms in an effort to accommodate the trans community. The University of California school system announced last year that all single-stall restrooms on their campuses would also be changed to gender neutral.

“Restrooms are kind of a necessary fixture for folks engaging in public life,” said Herman. “Even going out to dinner, going to a park, enjoying the public realm.”

Original article from TakePart