Tennessee anti-trans “Bathroom Bill” HB1182 has been signed into law — What does this mean for trans people and trans allies in the state?
Does that sign make you feel a little bit uncomfortable? Or, are you scratching your head wondering what the heck it even means? Well, if you’re in Tennessee, sometime after July 1st this year, you might see that in front of a bathroom near you.
Spoiler alert: it is meant to make you feel uncomfortable.
Disclaimer:
I am not a lawyer and I am not providing any kind of legal advice. This is my interpretation of things as a trans woman and nothing more.
Casting trans women as men… men who are invading women’s bathrooms and spaces is nothing new. Bigots and transphobes have been pulling that garbage nearly since the public first became aware that trans people existed
Back in my previous article, “The elephant in the room… again”, I called out the republican party and some of their latest anti-trans bills that were up for debate/vote in state legislature throughout the United States.
So here we are, just a few weeks later, and the state of Tennessee has actually managed to pass and sign into law HB1182 an anti-trans bathroom bill.
NOTICE:
THIS FACILITY MAINTAINS THE POLICY OF ALLOWING USE OF RESTROOMS BY EITHER BIOLOGICAL SEX, REGARDLESS OF THE DESIGNATION OF THE RESTROOM
Ironically, this humiliating sign is going to be posted outside of bathrooms in businesses that are actually trans supportive.
So what’s going on?
First: what this law isn’t…
What this law doesn’t do is outright ban trans women from using the women’s room or trans men from using the men’s room. Lawmakers likely know that any such direct attack would be very quickly shot down by the courts. Instead, they attempted to put trans allies in a difficult position.
The new law designates a very specific wording for the sign, which re-frames trans-inclusive bathroom policy as “scare words”. This has two basic effects.
SO lets break it down:
The law specifies in section 1 b that the signage must meet the following requirements:
(1) Be at least eight inches (8'’) wide and six inches (6'’) tall;
They clearly want the sign to be large
(2) The top one-third (1/3) of the sign must have a background color of red and state “NOTICE” in yellow text, centered in that portion of the sign;
Top third of the sign must be red with a large yellow “NOTICE”
This signals danger — this type of sign is warning you about something possibly dire
(3) The bottom two-thirds (2/3) of the sign must contain in boldface, block letters the following statement centered on that portion of the sign:
THIS FACILITY MAINTAINS A POLICY OF ALLOWING THE USE OF RESTROOMS BY EITHER BIOLOGICAL SEX, REGARDLESS OF THE DESIGNATION ON THE RESTROOM
So, they’re warning you (scare words) and implying that anyone can and will use any restroom
This is how anti trans people perceive trans people using the restroom that we are just arbitrary invading the space of a given gender.
The issues here are twofold:
One: for any trans person seeing this sign, they will feel very unwelcome and uncomfortable as that language is incredibly offensive.
Two: it signals to people who are anti-trans that this business has a trans positive bathroom policy, but does so in a way that very clearly is calling out as something negative and to be warned about. It implies that a trans positive policy is a “free for all” for bathrooms.
Businesses and entities that are trying to be trans positive, are often very considerate / careful in using language saying they are are trans inclusive or other phrasings that do not stigmatize trans people or portray trans people in a negative light.
By forcing this offensive and humiliating language to be posted in a very large and prominent sign at the entrance of the bathrooms (note originally it was to be posted outside the business, but was amended to just require the signage outside the bathrooms), trans people are disenfranchised while anti-trans people are riled up.
When you look at the language of a genuinely trans inclusive bathroom policy, it usually just says something to the effect that people are free to use the bathroom that reflects their gender identity. And, this is the thing…
Words matter.
Phrasing matters.
If you ask many Americans, “Should people be able to use the bathroom that corresponds to their gender identity?”, many would likely not find anything terribly wrong or scary about that. If instead, you ask, “Should men be allowed to use the women’s room?” they will likely be aghast at the very question. That is incredibly loaded language. That’s why this bill is a problem, because it is effectively forcing businesses who wish to have a trans-inclusive bathroom policy (these signs are NOT required of businesses who do not have such policies) to use very loaded language, very scary language on a big sign out in front of the bathroom. A big scary NOTICE designed to provoke controversy and alarm; wording and typography designed to raise concern. This may well cause some companies to alter their trans positive policies or end them altogether to avoid having to put such an alarming sign up.
This is the clear intent. If they can’t directly attack the trans people they will make life difficult for allies — in the hopes that allies will decide it’s not worth the hassle. Thus, trans people are made a bit more isolated; Made to feel just a bit less equal; a bit less human.
Tennessee lawmakers will be very quick to say, “Oh, we’re not saying that trans people can’t use the bathroom. We just want to warn people.”
However, the way in which these signs twist a trans inclusive bathroom policy to a “restroom free-for-all” could have much more dire consequences.
What I’m talking about here is that it seems like it is only a matter of time before some cisgender male edgelord deliberately walks into a women’s bathroom and causes a scene specifically claiming,
“…well, the sign said, I can do this, the policy says men are allowed in the women's rooms. Maybe if they didn’t have a policy like that then this wouldn’t be an issue.”
The signage is meant to be provocative, and may well encourage actions like this. The idea being that such incidents would give anti-trans folks a rallying point to say,
“you see?! This is what happens when you let men into women’s bathrooms!”
The whole thing reeks of a solution in search of a problem, and worse: a setup for trolls/edge lords.
Trans people have existed for a very long time, and to my knowledge, there are no recorded incidents of trans women assaulting women in bathrooms, or trans men assaulting men in bathrooms. However, there have been many incidents of trans women being assaulted in women’s rooms or being assaulted by men on their way out of women’s rooms. There are many stories of trans men being assaulted in men’s rooms. The fact of the matter is trans people take a risk of being assaulted or harassed every single time they go into a public bathroom. Sometimes the only thing that protects us from assault or harassment is if our presentation in our gender is good enough that people don’t recognize us as being trans.
That concept is known as “passing” and will be the subject of a deeper dive in a future article.
However, the point for right now is that not all trans people have that luxury.
Trans people, especially those who are early on in their transition, often go through an awkward phase where they neither really “pass” for the gender that they identify as nor do they “pass” very well for the gender they were technically assigned at birth. They’re often somewhere in between, and don’t really fit in in either restroom. Nonbinary, agender, and genderqueer individuals may never chose / desire to “pass for” either male or female, and some may deliberately want to never be put in a specific box.
Here’s the most important and overlooked part though:
It is absolutely inhuman to expect that a person is going to use neither the men’s room nor the women’s room and basically not pee. While I may sound crude here, this is a basic, necessary biological function that every single one of us has to do several times a day.
Everyone needs to pee
I do not know anyone, cisgender or transgender, who particularly enjoys or looks forward to using public restrooms. They’re often smelly, crowded, and just downright unpleasant, and pretty much every single person just wants to get in, do their business and get out on molested by anyone.
The big lie here is that somehow trans people are different. That we’re predators that we want to go into women’s spaces and bother/attack/molest people.
No! we’re there for the same reason everyone else is to pee and for trans women and others who wear makeup, maybe fix our makeup before we head back out again.
Negative effects of this law may very well include businesses rethinking trans-positive bathroom policies. Again, this is is not an “unintended side effect”, that is basically the intent of this law. The intent is clearly to scare off businesses from having trans positive bathroom policies while simultaneously punishing those companies that do. Additionally, it is making openings for trolls / edgelords to cause the very kinds of problems that the law is claiming to try to protect people from.
Furthermore, if this law is not challenged in courts and found unconstitutional, you can guarantee that it will spread to other states like a contagion.
The most important thing you could take away from this article is that you have probably shared a public restroom with many, many trans people over your lifetime without ever noticing. We’re just fellow human beings who need to use the bathroom, wash our hands, maybe fix our makeup and get on with our daily lives.
This article was adapted from the transcript of my podcast, Transgressive, Season 1, Episode 6
