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Gender-Segregated Public Bathrooms Have A Long, Ugly History

Many attribute the dozens of anti-trans bills that have been introduced since late 2015, and the few that have since passed — including North Carolina’s, one in Mississippi, and the newly recalled ordinance in Oxford, Alabama — to staunch anti-LGBT backlash in the wake of marriage equality. But more broadly, this brand of anti-trans panic is bound up in the natural evolution of American public restrooms, which have perpetuated gross inequities since their inception, with racial segregation being the most obvious, and by far the most egregious, example. Whatever civil rights battle is being waged at any given time in history, you can almost guarantee that bathroom will be a primary battleground: the place where the bogeyman lives. Trans people are only the latest marginalized group to be actively denied equal access to safe, clean, and secure public restrooms — and, by extension, to equal participation in public life.

H/T: BuzzFeed

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U.S. Directs Public Schools to Allow Transgender Access to Restrooms

The guidance issued by the U.S. Department of Education and U.S. Department of Justice regarding accommodating transgender and gender nonconforming students under Title IX is a crucial component of ensuring that the rights of all students are protected! Read GLSEN’s statement on it here.

“No student should ever have to go through the experience of feeling unwelcome at school or on a college campus,” John B. King Jr., the secretary of the Department of Education, said in a statement. “We must ensure that our young people know that whoever they are or wherever they come from, they have the opportunity to get a great education in an environment free from discrimination, harassment and violence.”

H/T: New York Times

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I’m Proof Bathroom Bills Are Not Just a Transgender Issue

Whatever you might have heard to the contrary, the “bathroom bills” that have passed in North Carolina and Mississippi and are now pending in other states have nothing to do with public safety. The simple fact is that under existing laws, it is already a crime to dress up as a man or woman in order to falsely gain entry to any public restroom to harass or harm anyone. That is a crime in states with transgender legal protections and a crime in states without such laws. Fox News anchor Chris Wallace noted that such crimes have not taken place in communities that have transgender rights laws.

What these “bathroom bills” are actually about is enforcing traditional gender codes and norms in an increasingly diverse and shifting America. Single-sex restrooms just like single-sex dormitories have always been rooted in compulsory heteronormativity and the sense that we have to protect women from men who can’t expect to be reigned in.

H/T: Time

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Why do Tennessee lawmakers want to monitor my bathroom use?

HB 2414 and SB 2387 are discriminatory and threaten the well-being of students, schools, and communities. Tell lawmakers in Tennessee to focus on improving schools, not legislating student bathrooms! http://glsen.us/1NmIw7y

I simply can’t understand legislation that adds another barrier to the success and safety of students by legislating which restroom I use. It’s time that we call on our elected officials to focus on things that actually matter, like supporting our educators, decreasing bullying and raising graduation rates. I shouldn’t have to think about the bathroom at school and neither should our elected officials.

H/T: The Tennessean

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Not in the Name of My “Protection”

The North Carolina Republican Senatorial Committee launched a new fundraiser late last week. The fundraising site features an image of a man entering a woman’s bathroom and encourages donations to “thank NC Governor Pat McCrory and Legislative Leaders for fighting to keep our children safe and passing a common-sense law to stop grown men from sharing locker rooms and bathrooms with young girls.”

I’ll pass, thanks. Painting pure bigotry as an attempt to “protect” women from the dangers of bathrooms is an old American story, and one we have a duty to reject.

H/T: HuffPo

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Bathroom Bills Aren’t About Religious Freedom

In order to believe transgender identities are somehow sinful, you would have toinvent scripture that just isn’t there. This would also require one to conflate gender and sex either lacking the knowledge that they are not one in the same or just refusing to believe the medical community. You would also have to believe that sex is binary, while ignoring the biological reality of intersex individuals. You would need to also forget Jesus’ words of praise to the gender minorities in biblical times. Of course, this doesn’t even begin to cover how bathroom usage is somehow part of North Carolinians religious practices.

H/T: HuffPo