In recent weeks, Baltimore and Maryland have been hotspots of LGBT political activity, and to nobody’s surprise, it’s not going very well.
Marriage equality, considered a foregone conclusion, failed to pass in both segments of the statehouse. HB 235, which would have provided job protections and other anti-discrimination language regarding gender identity and expression, also failed.
Generally, most of the trans folk I know in and around Maryland cared only moderately about marriage equality (it’s so often bought by trading away trans rights that our interest continues to plummet), but cared quite a lot about HB 235. Also speaking generally, many trans people *REALLY* objected to HB 235 because it did not include language for public accommodations. While there are many very well-educated, smart, thoughtful people (both trans and cisgender) who feel that a not-good bill is better than no bill at all, I still think the bill should have had public accommodations addressed explicitly. First of all, it’s the right thing to do – other groups don’t have to wait in increments like that, and we should not have to either. Second, if equality orgs had some clue the bill was going to fail anyway, shouldn’t they have gone for the moral victory of at least failing with the strongest bill?
During the course of HB 235′s path around Annapolis, it became exceptionally clear that Equality Maryland – which I had once considered the best of the equality orgs – was willing to bargain trans rights more than I would have expected. Trans leaders across the country, and especially in Baltimore and Maryland, broke with Equality Maryland and started speaking out about HB 235. The LGBT caucus in the Maryland statehouse (there are seven out LGB delegates, which seems awfully high for a state this small), which formed specifically to address the marriage bill, settled back to whispering where trans rights were concerned.
Then the bill failed, and we all thought, Okay, time to set up a better fight for next time.
Yesterday, we were reminded why exactly public accommodations language is so vital. The main argument people use against it is that trans women will use women’s restrooms, thus endangering the minds/hearts/souls/bodies/etc of cisgender women in the same restrooms or locker rooms. The argument always gets reduced to an offensive and grotesque myth, that of the predatory Man in a Dress. Please note that a) this is unadulterated nonsense and b) there are no reported incidents ever of a trans woman doing anything predatory in a ladies’ restroom or locker room.
In reality, we are the ones who are in danger every time we enter a public restroom.
Earlier this week, a young trans woman in Baltimore County was confronted and violently attacked because she went to use the ladies’ room at a local McDonald’s. Two teenage girls dragged her to the floor, kicked and beat her, pulled her across the floor by her hair, and slapped an older woman who tried to interfere (everyone else in the McDonald’s was watching and filming). The employees at the restaurant called the police, and then settled in to film the incident on their cell phones; video hit the internet; yesterday the news story finally broke. I am not linking to the video because there are thousands of other places you can watch it on the internet, if you are so inclined.
Public accommodations language would not have protected this woman from her attackers, that’s true. But when this goes to court – and the girls have been arrested and charged, so it presumably WILL go to court – some lawyer will argue that she should not have been in the ladies’ room, that the girls were afraid, that they were trying to protect some abstract notion. The employee who posted the video online stated that she was “a man, not a woman,” and a “cross-dresser,” and as far as he’s concerned, that justifies the whole incident. A lack of public accommodations protections makes that rhetoric viable, but also much more alarming. She can’t hire a lawyer to say, Ms. X has an absolute right to use that bathroom. She can’t say, The law protects me while I am doing one of the scariest things a trans person (especially a trans woman) can do, which is use a public restroom.
Stop telling us we have to wait. Make it harder for people to get away with attacking us. Please.
April 23rd, 2011 at 9:23 pm
Creeper men who want to bother women in women’s restrooms do not need to cross-dress. A female friend of mine was assaulted in a restroom by a man (I *think* it was a gendered “ladies’ room”, but I don’t remember for sure). He walked in, locked the door behind him, and prevented her from leaving. He was not cross-dressed, and I don’t see how doing so would have helped him commit his crime. So to me it seemed like a strange assumption for the women in the video to make. I wonder if they were just being cruel to her.
I’m curious what your solution to the bathroom problem would be. Is it just that people should definitively know that they do not have the right to enforce gender of other people in the bathroom, or should we do away with gendered bathrooms altogether? I liked the non-gendered bathrooms and barracks portrayed in Battlestar Galactica, but I haven’t thought through what all the implications of that might be.
April 24th, 2011 at 8:31 am
Chris, I wish we could just have ungendered bathrooms (I heart BSG) in more places, if not altogether, but that seems unlikely. As it stands, almost every time a state or federal bill comes up to protect trans people from job and housing discrimination, the bill’s not-quite-supporters insist on language allowing discrimination in public accommodations – gym locker rooms, retail changing rooms, and restrooms. But nobody considers where trans people “should’ use the bathroom. Should this woman have used the men’s room, where she would also be a target for mockery and violence? Should I use the ladies’ room, despite my beard? Laws need to happen to let us use the bathroom that is correct for our gender, so at least we have that on our side. People will still be jackasses – and creepers will still creep (and I’m sorry about your friend, also). But legal protection would at least send a statement.