Trans people and bathrooms
This debate is stupid.
One talking point that will still pop up every now and then is the idea that allowing trans people to use bathrooms and locker rooms that match their preferred gender will lead to creeps putting on dresses and entering women’s spaces to leer at or even assault them. As Mark Normand eloquently put it, this is a silly idea - why would anyone want to look at some random woman taking a dump?
Jokes aside, the evidence on sexual assaults shows that this complaint has no merit. School officials, experts on sexual assault prevention and police departments all agree that protecting trans people poses no threat to cis women and girls.
A review by the National Policing Institute investigated sexual assault cases that occurred in places of public accommodation in four counties that increased protections and accommodations for LGBTQ people. They found no instances of a “man dressing up as a woman” to assault women in the bathroom, concluding that “There was no evidence of sexual assaults taking place resulting from legislative efforts to increase protections for individuals of the LGBT community in public accommodations.”
A 2018 study analyzed police reports of sexual assaults in public accommodations of several Massachusetts counties, finding no evidence that nondiscrimination laws led to an increase in this type of crime happening, with the counties that had these laws actually reporting slightly fewer crimes than other matched counties.
And in 2017 CNN reached out to 20 law enforcement agencies in states with anti-discrimination policies to ask about this issue. None who answered reported any bathroom assaults after the policies took effect. They only found one instance from Seattle in which a cis man entered the women’s locker room - once around 5:30 p.m., then later again when young girls were changing for swim practice - seemingly to “protest” a recent nondiscrimination law that had been passed. i.e. this wasn’t a trans woman, but a conservative man harassing women and girls (which is nothing new, really).
Even the Family Research Council, a religious right-wing think-tank, was only able to find 23 cases of “bathroom incidents” in the U.S. over the span of 18 years - most of which involved cis men, not trans women or even crossdressers, and two cases of discrimination against trans women who were just using the bathroom. Meanwhile thousands of kids are systemically abused in the Catholic church, with many in the leadership also helping to cover up the abuse - yet the FRC only has some lukewarm criticism to give to the church, with more paragraphs being dedicated to rant about porn and adultery.
Even TERFs struggle to find actual examples of trans women being creeps in bathrooms because that’s just not how most sexual assault works. As the aforementioned review by the NPI puts it:
Our overall findings are consistent with the research literature on sexual assault, which indicates that victims of sexual assault are primarily female (over 90 percent) and that, in 8 of 10 cases, the assault is not perpetrated by a stranger but rather by a person known to the victim, such as an acquaintance or intimate partner.
And in 2016 the WCNC interviewed Andrew Oliver, the director of Pat's Place child advocacy center, who stated that:
The center's stats show that last year, Pat's Place interviewed 536 victims; of them only 2%-- or just 11 cases-- involved strangers. Over the last two years at least 850 children were interviewed, and the number of transgender bathroom assaults was zero. Oliver says there are bathroom sexual assaults, but almost all of them occur between children who are about the same age and who know each other.
Indeed, the hysteria about trans women in bathrooms has no basis whatsoever in reality. However this hasn’t stopped conservatives from discriminating against trans people who just want to take a piss. Eleven U.S. states limit trans people’s ability to use bathrooms and other facilities that match their gender identity. Among the more than 27,000 trans and GNC people who participated in the 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey a large chunk reported experiencing harassment, humiliation or even violence when using a public restroom, along with other problems due to fear of harassment (p. 224-230).
Nearly one-quarter (24%) of respondents said that someone had questioned or challenged their presence in a restroom in the past year.
Nearly one in ten (9%) respondents reported that someone denied them access to a restroom in the past year.
One in eight (12%) respondents were verbally harassed, physically attacked, or sexually assaulted when accessing or using a restroom in the past year.
More than half (59%) avoided using a public restroom in the past year because they were afraid of having problems.
Nearly one-third (32%) limited the amount they ate or drank to avoid using the restroom in the past year.
Eight percent (8%) reported having a urinary tract infection, kidney infection, or another kidney-related problem in the past year as a result of avoiding restrooms.
This is a lose-lose situation for trans people because even when using the bathroom that matches their sex they are are at risk of being attacked. Noah Ruiz, a trans man, was asked to use the women’s restroom by the establishment owner. As he left the bathroom he was attacked by three men as they shouted slurs and threatened to kill him. Noah was then arrested while his assailants walked free.
The bathroom hysteria doesn’t negatively affect only trans people, however. While in Las Vegas, a cis woman, Jay, was harassed by another woman in the bathroom who thought she was a trans kid. There have also been two recent cases of mothers and their autistic sons being kicked out of an establishment after they went together to the women’s bathroom; one in New Jersey and another in Kansas.
Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. And also damned if someone mistakes you for a trans person. This isn’t about protecting women, it’s about instilling fear - Kellie-Jay Keen, one of the U.K.’s most prominet transphobes, has actually admitted so herself, saying that she’s fine with putting women’s reproductive rights aside and that armed men should enter women’s spaces and harass them to “make a point”. (See 23:54 and 41:01. Or just watch the whole video ‘cause it’s good.)
The party of “protecting children” is also adamant about attacking trans youth with these bans, as they focus primarily on restrooms and other facilities in K-12 schools despite this offering no protection to cis kids.
Besides the aforementioned studies showing that trans-inclusive legislation on this issue doesn’t lead to an increase in assaults, a 2022 study found that trans teens were no more likely than cis teens to commit sexual violence. They had slightly lower rates of perpetration - though not to a statistically significant degree - and were actually more likely to be victims of sexual violence.
This is consistent with a study from 2019 which found that trans youth who had restricted access to restroom/locker rooms were at higher risk of sexual assault. While the authors couldn’t assert if this relationship was causal, they cite a previous qualitative study in which some trans teens mention being harassed when using the bathroom that matched their sex because other students thought they were in the wrong restroom (p. 10).
Finally, it’s worth pointing out that data from the CDC’s High School Youth Risk Behavior Survey shows that, in states that ban trans students from using facilities according to their preferred gender, students report nearly the exact same rate of sexual violence victimization as those in states with no such bans.
All of this echoes a long history of discrimination in the U.S. The racial segregation of restrooms and other public spaces was justified by invoking unfounded fears about sexual contact and exploitation, much like we see today with trans people. Discrimination back then didn’t protect anyone, and today it is also protecting no one, and only serves to further harm a community which is already under attack.