Here in Massachusetts, back in 2016, a final comprehensive bill was passed by a supermajority of the legislature that gave transgender people equality of access to all public venues. These didn’t just include the often derisive bathrooms and locker rooms but such places as restaurants, public transit, shopping centers, in other words any place a normal person would consider reasonable to visit without obtaining special permission.
The bathroom nonsense is just that, nonsense. There is no there there, no reported incidents of men pretending to be trans to gain access to women only protected spaces, No statistics have changed in any meaningful way in the eighteen states that have public access bills for trans people in force.
Further, no such bill is ever going to legalize the behaviors that the decriers are angry about. Harassment, sexual assault, voyeurism, etc. remain criminal offences whether they are done by cisgender or transgender men or women.
Here in Massachusetts the powers of evil, a.k.a. the Family Research Council is funding the effort to get the law repealed through a ballot initiative. At this point it’s looking good that the referendum will fail.
But don’t relax just yet, the Trump Administration has leaked a proposal to only accept as valid the genitalia of a person at birth to define a person’s sex. Never mind that pesky 1-2 percent of people born intersex for whom that isn’t clear at birth. The net effect of the proposal, if put in place, would be to strip what’s left of the federal protections from trans people.
Write your senators, write your congress people. Let them know how you feel about having an ignoramus for a president who wants to afford less protection for trans people than Iran and Pakistan. There is, to my knowledge, no western democracy where such an overt push exists to trod on trans people’s legal rights. We deal with plenty below the surface and will continue to do so, we don’t need it from the federal government.
My Gifted Life 