Transgender bias unwarranted

Olivia Decker, Editor-in-Chief

Olivia Decker

Editor-in-Chief

Transgender people use public restrooms just like everybody else, but they have a radically different experience than everybody else.

The trans community deserves the right to use the restroom that they feel comfortable with, and to force them to use a different restroom puts them in danger and violates their basic human rights.

Representatives in various states have recently proposed anti-transgender bills that restrict the right of trans people to use whichever public restroom they feel the most comfortable in. In the past, residents in these states, including Kentucky and North Carolina, were some of the most visible defenders of segregation and injustice, so it’s really no surprise that these same states are heading the fight for discrimination once again.

An obvious solution to this problem is to encourage the normalization of gender-neutral restrooms in public places that all people are free to use alongside restrooms for men and women, but the issue with this is what to do in places that only have gender-specific restrooms. Many people believe that installing a completely separate transgender restroom is a good idea, but in the Brown vs Board of Education Supreme Court case in 1954 the Supreme Court established that “separate but equal facilities are inherently unequal.” Separating the trans community from the rest of society would do nothing but breed intolerance as it has in the past.

After the Target corporation announced that both employees and customers have the right to use whichever restroom they feel comfortable in, the notoriously bigoted American Family Association wasted no time in using “family values” as a front for discrimination. The AFA has been known for speaking out against LGBT rights, and it has organized many different protests targeted toward the LGBT community. According to USA Today, the AFA released a petition to boycott Target, stating that “a man can simply say he feels like a woman today and enter the women’s restroom even if young girls or women are already in there.” Laws protecting the rights of trans people in no way defend predatory men in the women’s restroom, and if a man were to commit assault in the restroom it would be wrong to place the blame on the transgender community because there have been zero instances of transgender women committing assault in a public restroom.In fact, according to a UCLA study, 70 percent of trans people have experienced verbal harassment in public restrooms, and 10 percent have reported physical assault because of their gender identity. Safety is the main issue of the debate, but transgender people aren’t a threat.

Some of the most militant supporters of anti-trans legislation have gone so far as to demand that they have the right to bring guns into public restrooms for self defense, proving that they are as self-centered as they are intolerant. With regard to the bathroom debate, the transgender community wants nothing more than to use the restroom without fear of assault. How are they supposed to do that when there are people who actively go out of their way to bring guns into restrooms to harm them? Trans people deserve the same amount of respect as everybody else, and to say differently encourages the people out there who discriminate against them.

Our society has so much potential, but discriminatory legislation such as this proves that it is not as advanced as some like to think. History classes teach about times of injustice such as racial segregation and the Holocaust in order to avoid the mistakes that previous generations have made, but studying history is pointless if society refuses to learn from those mistakes. The past has proved time and time again that discrimination and bigotry do nothing but fuel hatred and create a model for the future on what not to do, so why ignore the warning signs that have been provided? Our society has a choice to make: do we want to be remembered as the generation that condoned hatred, or be remembered as the generation that stood up to injustice?