North Carolina is now a gender police state.
Last week, its Republican governor, Pat McCrory, signed a bill to legislate policing of transgender and gender nonconforming people under the guise of religious freedom. HB 2 nullified Charlotte’s ordinance, protecting LGBT people from discrimination in public accomodations and city contracts, according to The Charlotte Observer.
But the law doesn’t just void discrimination protections for LGBT people — it encourages discrimination. HB 2 only allows for a person to use the bathroom of their biological sex, which is defined as the sex on your birth certificate.
How is the government supposed to figure out your biological sex when you enter a restroom? Will there be new bouncers posted outside each public restroom in North Carolina where you have to show your birth certificate to pee?
Transgender people don’t come with identification. It is impossible to prove someone is trans just from looking at them before they enter a bathroom.
One frustrating thing about the need for bathroom privacy to appease religious conservatives is that it’s based on a complete lie about transgender people. The myth is men will pretend to be transgender women to assault others in a women’s restroom.
I’m calling it a myth because this hasn’t happened. This myth has been debunked by law enforcement experts, government officials and women’s safety advocates in cities and states across the country, according to Media Matters.
More Republican lawmakers have been caught in bathrooms for sexual misconduct than transgender people. Yet religious conservatives cite this widely debunked fallacy again and again.
While advocates of HB 2 argue this issue is about privacy, they will violate more people’s privacy by inquiring about an individual’s biological sex before they enter a restroom.
NYU Law professor Scott Skinner-Thompson, who writes at Slate, states this violates a person’s right to privacy. When an individual is asked about their biological sex upon trying to enter a restroom, “they will be forced to disclose sensitive information about their sex and medical history.”
This bill is an invasion of privacy that will affect far more than just the trans people it targets. According to Media Matters, a Louisiana woman who underwent chemotherapy and a bi-lateral mastectomy after a stage two cancer diagnosis was accused of being a man while standing in line for a Walmart restroom.
These bills are popping up all across the country — both the South Dakota legislature and the Georgia General Assembly passed gender policing bills, but they were vetoed by Republican governors. Another gender policing bill is awaiting a hearing in the Louisiana Legislature.
These bills capitalize on the fears of a relatively unknown population. Transgender people haven’t received much media attention until recently. Caitlyn Jenner is the first transgender person many of my friends, and probably most Americans, have ever heard of.
Transgender people need protection, not religious conservatives. According to a report from The National LGBTQ Task Force and the National Center for Transgender Equality, 78 percent of transgender students in grades K-12 reported harassment and 35 percent of these students reported experiencing physical assault.
In addition, 58 percent of transgender people reported harassment in places of public accommodation, such as hotels, restaurants, buses, airports or government agencies. Public accomodations are the types of protection trans people need and the types of protection HB 2 repealed.
We should pass laws to deal with the daily injustices that come with being transgender, not legislate discrimination against transgender people. Being trans in a world that doesn’t understand you is a daily risk.
We should dedicate more resources to help transgender people survive. Bullying transgender people to quell the fears of religious conservatives won’t make us any better, either. It will only hurt an already misunderstood population and be a stain on our history.
Michael Beyer is a 22-year-old political science senior from New Orleans, Louisiana.