Texas' "bathroom bill", or SB 6, recently passed the Texas Senate and is headed to the House. The bill, which intends to prohibit transgender people from using the restroom that matches their identity in public schools, universities, and government buildings, as well as doing away with local requirements to provide trans-friendly bathrooms, is very similar to the infamous North Carolina bathroom bill. North Carolina's bill, passed last year and repealed (with stipulations) just yesterday, had many impacts on business and jobs as businesses pulled out of the state and events were held elsewhere. Other states have rejected similar proposals because of the consequences it had in North Carolina. So why is such a pro-business state as Texas seriously considering such a useless and harmful bill?
It's incredibly difficult to understand what the bill's supporters, most notably Lt. Governor Dan Patrick, think that they're accomplishing by pushing this agenda. Their worry is supposedly that sexual predators will take advantage of trans-friendly restrooms by claiming they're transgender if caught committing a crime in a restroom. This doesn't really make any sense, considering the people who want to partake in such acts will do so with or without such laws. No known case exists involving a transgender person creeping on women in bathrooms.
It is already illegal to assault people. It is already illegal to be a "peeping Tom". These things already happen to women constantly by cis-men, in many environments. Trying to force transgender people into bathrooms that don't match their identity does nothing to protect women. I think of my trans-woman friends being forced to use a men's restroom, and how awkward it would be for everyone involved. I worry about them getting harassed by the same intolerant men who wanted this law in the first place. I think of the shock on the face of the woman who authored this bill as she enters the restroom to find a bearded man washing his hands because the "F" box is marked on his birth certificate, and she realizes, not having understood who transgender people actually are, that she herself is now to blame for men in women's restrooms. I also wonder how on Earth this could ever be enforced, short of paying for birth certificate checking bathroom guards in every public building.
Luckily House Speaker Joe Strauss, apparently the only Republican at the Capitol still on his meds, has acknowledged that the bill is "a contrived answer to a manufactured problem" and is completely against it. This bill is an absurd waste of time, proven bad for business, and totally discriminatory. If legislators actually care about the safety of women and children, it would actually make more sense to try to keep football players away from them than transgender people trying to use the restroom without anxiety.
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