Wisconsin Republicans have proposed a dangerous bill that would remove gender neutral bathrooms and changing rooms from K-12 schools around Wisconsin. This is a gross attempt to legitimize transphobic ideologies and invalidate transgender students’ identities.
Bill would tighten restrictions on gender-specific bathrooms, locker rooms in schools
If passed, the bill would prohibit allowing transgender males or females from using the bathrooms they identify with.
The bill also permits local school boards to “provide reasonable accommodations to a pupil to use a single-occupancy changing room” when a transgender student or the student’s parents requests that they receive this accommodation. How truly sweet of the lawmakers.
While the lawmakers who proposed this bill require the school to designate a temporary changing area for so-called “special events,” the underlying foundation of the bill is transphobic.
First of all, referring to any transgender individual as a “special event” speaks for itself.
Secondly, the lawmakers who fast tracked this bill clearly do not understand the difference between sex and gender — so I will break it down for them. Sex refers to the innate, biological characteristics of a human being, like chromosomes and hormones. Gender is a psychologically and culturally constructed term that varies from culture to culture. It is learned.
The key difference between sex and gender is the fact that gender is socially constructed by what our culture deems appropriate, while sex is not. If a person’s identity is not in harmony with their assigned sex, they are transgender.
The reasoning for transphobic bills like this is the argument that such laws are necessary to protect people’s privacy and public safety.
But there is no evidence that these fears are warranted or justified. Actually, there is more evidence against these discriminatory bathroom bills than for them. Media Matters, a liberal news outlet, studied 17 of the largest school districts with nondiscrimination policies in place. They found that none of these schools have experienced any problems with their students and bathrooms.
The bill, and arguments supporting it, are simply baseless fear-mongering mixed with a phobia of transgender individuals.
Not only is the bill transphobic, but the bill sounds eerily similar to the Jim Crow era “white only” bathrooms laws. It seems that our lawmakers have now graduated to replacing “white” with “cisgender” instead. It is an odd parallel in our modern times, because today we consider ourselves more accepting than in the era of segregation. Apparently these lawmakers are not.
Perhaps the most frustrating aspect of this bill is the fact that transgender men and women have to fight for society to view them as mentally stable individuals with civil rights.
This bill suggests what transgender people feel isn’t valid. This is the crux of the whole argument. When a school system does not feel the need to respect a transgender student’s identity, other students will not feel the need to either.
This factor can easily prompt more bullying for transgender students, who are already targets for harrassment. The National Center for Transgender Equality published a study in 2011 that found those who expressed a transgender identity or gender non-conformity while in K-12 school reported alarming rates of harassment, assault and sexual violence. In some cases, the bullying was so severe that it led 15 percent of victims to leave school.
Think about that. A staggering 78 percent of transgender students reported harassment and one-sixth of the students left school because of the severity of the bullying. No person should be bullied for any reason and certainly not for expressing who they are. If this bill were passed, these official rules can legitimize prejudice against many transgender people.
No group of people should have to fight for civil rights. They should readily be given to everyone. Any type of discrimination is problematic, whether it be racist or transphobic, and we should all attempt to combat this atrocious bill from passing the Wisconsin State Legislature.
Shelby Petta ([email protected]) is a sophomore majoring in communication arts.
