Some Realities About Public Restrooms

April 1, 2013 by Matt Kailey

http://tranifesto.com/2013/04/01/some-realities-about-public-restrooms/

It's 2013 and we are still arguing over the right to eliminate.

Colorado has some of the best laws in the country around the protection of trans rights, and our public accommodations law covers transgender and transsexual people, but we are still doing battle over bathrooms. Most recently, a six-year-old girl has been the target of discrimination when, despite our laws of protection, her school is not allowing her to use the girls' restroom.

And now the state of Arizona, which brought us the most discriminatory racial-profiling bill in recent history, is back at it with SB 1045, which originally mandated discrimination against trans people and would pretty much force everyone, trans or not, to haul their birth certificates around with them in order to use public facilities.

Rep. John Kavanagh, a sponsor of the bill in the state legislature, has now "softened" it to allow, but not force, businesses and organizations to discriminate. He claims he did this in the face of public outcry. (Did he think there wouldn't be any? He doesn't know our Arizona trans community very well.)

His best point here is that the ridiculous waste of time and public resource takes time away from dealing with the real issues of who and how REAL criminal assaults are caused by, and their prevention. 

One night two years ago while I was still pre-op I was using a women's rest room in a restaurant and thwarted the entry of a male into the rest room under the guise of "helping" a little girl who was unrelated to him!!  The girl told me without hesitation she did not know the man. The underlying issue was the fact that the 6 year old girl's parents were seated on the far side of a restaurant watching a sports game on TV along with some friends. 

My state has adequate laws regarding child endangerment, but for some reason, sending your young male or female CBG child to a public restroom un accompanied does not click in the minds of parents who are drinking alcohol and are preoccupied with more "important things". 

One of my highest compliments actually was a young mother who was changing a baby asking me if I could turn on the water in a rest room sink so her 5 year old could wash her hands after going to the toilet. It was a push on faucet, and I stood there keeping on for the little girl.  In neither case was it fed back to me they may have thought I was trans.