“Bathroom bills” (such as this new one in Texas) try to make people use the bathroom of whatever sex is listed on their birth certificate). Some people think that a transgender person can easily be caught using the “wrong” bathroom. They assume a Male-to-Female (MTF) transexual, for example, will look like a man dressed up as a woman. Actually, when male-bodied individuals take estrogen, they grow breasts and could actually look as female as any cisgender woman. Conversely, a FTM person on testosterone could grow a beard and totally pass for a man. Sure not all do, but that’s usually the goal: to “pass” as the gender they are in their heart/mind, which is not necessarily the one on their birth certificate.
If you support these bills, ask yourself: do you want people who look like men to use women’s bathrooms, and people who look like women to use men’s bathrooms?
How about this guy, Buck Angel, who was born female. Would you want him waltzing into your bathroom, ladies?
If that’s a problem for you, then why support these bills, which would require him to use the women’s restroom?
These bathroom bills do not help anyone, and fall into the category of mean-spirited harassment of a category of people you probably haven’t taken the time to truly know and understand.
Can you tell who is male and who is female in this screenshot?
Hint: It’s the opposite of what our culture’s gender stereotypes suggest. Here’s the video the shot is taken from.
Under all this is a certain underlying assumption, the one that says, “people with penises sneak into women’s restrooms to sexually molest women.” It assumes that people with penises have no control over themselves. If I had a penis, I think I’d be incensed at that.
This article goes a little more deeply into these issues, if you are interested. And if you live in Washington state, you should know that there’s an initiative, I-1552, that is aiming to try to force transgender folks into using the bathroom of their birth gender.
Coiled to Spring 