In order to prevent racial bathroom harassment in North Carolina, legislators passed North Carolina’s IH8 law. The new law states, “Everyone must use the bathroom matching their race.”

Sounds crazy, right? Its 2016! Who would pass a law like that?

The “IH8” law may be fictional, but North Carolina’s HB2 law isn’t.  The HB2 law states in summary that all people must use the bathroom matching to the sex given to them at birth, regardless of their gender identity or if they are in transition from male to female or vice versa.  This law is just as discriminatory as dictating rights based on race, sexual orientation, or religion.

The main reasoning behind this law is sexual harassment in bathrooms, even though there are zero documented cases of transgender* people sexualy harrassing cisgender** people in public restrooms. All that these laws do is exacerbate a nonexistent problem. These laws make non-cisgender people look like the problem, when in reality, all they want is to be treated equally.

Another driving point behind the HB2 bill is that without it, anyone could go into any bathroom. While this is technically true, it’s irrelevant. At this time, with or without the HB2 bill, anyone can go into any bathroom and sexually assault someone of their same or opposite sex, which is against the law. Taking away a person’s basic bathroom rights will not stop the local pedophile from entering the opposite sex’s bathroom. Someone whose goal is to harass someone, either physically or sexually, would have no regard for the HB2 law even if it is in place.

This law, more importantly, puts transgender people in danger. Which bathroom should a trans-woman (a woman who was assigned male at birth, but identifies a woman) use? Should she use the men’s room, where she might be harassed by men because she is a woman. Or should she go into the female bathroom, where she is then breaking the law?

One of the most sickening arguments for passing the HB2 law is the idea that without it, men would “choose” to be a girl in order to gain access to the women’s bathroom. Along these lines, former governor of Arkansas Mike Huckabee said, “I wish someone had told me in high school I could have felt like a woman when it came time to take showers in PE. I’m pretty sure I would have found my feminine side and said, ‘Coach, I think I’d rather shower with the girls today.’”

Huckabee’s expressed desire to act as a sexual predator aside, this is a completely invalid argument to the life of a transgender person. National transgender advocate and Montgomery Village resident Allyson Dylan Robinson said, “Every civil rights movement has its ‘bathroom issue.’ Black people were forced out of ‘whites only’ bathrooms in the 1960s. It wasn’t about protecting anyone then and it isn’t now. It’s just another attempt to rationalize prejudice.”

Furthermore, the HB2 law requires students to use school restrooms and locker rooms based on the gender on their birth certificates, so transgender students who have not taken steps to change the gender noted on their birth certificates have no legal right under state law to use school restrooms of the gender with which they identify.  With the concerns that exist about high school bullying for straight, cisgender students, the problems that this law poses are unconscionable.  

Transgender and non-cisgender kids go through discrimination and harassment every day of their lives. Of the total transgender-identified survivors of sexual harassment who reported to NCAVP (National Coalition Of Anti-Violence Programs),80.9 percent of transgender survivors identified as transgender women. This data also shows that transgender women were three times as likely to experience discrimination than non-transgender women. So who should we be taking moves to protect here?  

American politics today are talking less about the fear of terrorism, global warming, or the lack of jobs than whether transgender people should have the right to go to the restroom that matches their gender identity or their sex. The youth is America’s future, and if we are still stuck on who people are physically, how will we ever stand by Thomas Jefferson’s words that “All men are created equal”?

We, as the youth, can rise above the stereotypes of the past, to create a more comfortable future where everyone can be safe being who they are.  

America, try looking at one’s heart and character, not their chromosomes.

key terms:

*Transgender- Someone whose gender is the opposite of the sex given to them at birth IE: Born male identifying as a female or vice versa.

**Cisgender- Someone whose gender identity matches the sex given to them at birth IE: Born a male and identifying as a male.

Sex- Genetically male or female IE: Having XY or XX chromosomes.

Gender- What a person identifes as IE: Man, Woman, Non-Binary, etc. (typically used with reference to social and cultural differences rather than biological ones).