The centerpiece of renewed arguments to restrict the bathroom use of transgender people is that strict rules are needed to stop sexual assaults against women. Such arguments fail, however, upon examination of the facts about sexual assault.
North Carolina officials, led by Gov. Pat McCrory, used the safety argument earlier this year to pass a law that stifles local ordinances that protect the civil rights of transgender people and ensure they can use the bathroom of the gender with which they identify. The federal government has filed suit to block the new North Carolina law and on Friday, the Department of Justice released additional guidance for schools reaffirming that transgender students must be allowed to use the restroom that corresponds with their gender identity.
McCrory argues that men who were born male but identify as female must use the men’s bathroom. Otherwise, his thinking goes, women and children will be at great risk from men who pretend to be women to gain access to women’s restrooms and commit rape.
Such claims may sound chivalrous, but they are based on false assumptions. They also demean transgender people by equating them with pedophiles and rapists and suggesting that transgender women — those who were born biologically male but identify as female — are simply pretending to be women and are doing so for some nefarious motive.
Eighty percent of sexual abuse is committed by someone the victim knows. For adult women, an intimate partner is the most likely perpetrator. One-third of perpetrators of sexual assaults against children are family members. Restricting transgender bathroom use will do nothing to change these troubling statistics.
Of the remaining 20 percent of attacks, it is unlikely that a large number occur in public restrooms or involve men dressing as women.
Last month, the fact-checking website Politifact conducted an extensive review of these claims.
“After spending hours combing through conservative blogs and family values websites dedicated to news about transgender bathroom ordinances, we were able to confirm three cases in the United States in the last 17 years in which a biological male was convicted of a crime that involved him in a women’s bathroom or locker room and dressed as a woman,” Politifact reported. It is unknown if any of the men were transgender women or claimed to be. None of the three incidents involved sexual assault.
It also cited the work Media Matters, which last year spoke with public school officials in 17 districts with a total of 600,000 students that allow transgender students to use the bathroom of the gender they identify as. The officials, including Lewiston Superintendent Bill Webster, hadn’t reported a single incident of “harassment or inappropriate behavior” related to transgender students and bathrooms, Media Matters reported.
In fact, transgender people, especially teenagers, are the ones more likely to need protection.
The suicide risk for transgender people is nearly 10 times that of the general population. More than 40 percent of transgender individuals have attempted suicide, according to the National Transgender Discrimination Survey. Nearly three-quarters of LGBT youth report being verbally harassed, and one-third report having been physically harassed because of their sexual orientation or gender identity, according to a 2013 survey by the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network. More than a third of these students avoid gender-segregated spaces in schools, such as bathrooms and locker rooms.
These are real problems that demand real solutions.
