Preliminary data has been released from the 2015 US Transgender Survey, which was conducted last summer and had 28,000 adult respondents. Full data will be released later this year.

The data released concern bathrooms...which is not what our lives are about, but which dominate all perception of us.

Survey says:

59% of trans people have avoided bathrooms at work, at school, or in public places in the past year because they feared confrontation.

12% reported that they had been attacked, harassed, or sexually assaulted in a bathroom in the pst year.

31% reported having avoided eating or drinking during the previous year so that they would not need to use a restroom.

24% reported that in the previous year someone had told them they were in the wrong restroom or questioned their presence in a restroom.

9% reported being denied access to a restroom appropriate to their gender identity at some point during the previous year.

8% reported having developed a kidney or urinary tract infection during the previous year caused by avoiding restrooms.

When trans people are scared to use the bathroom, they do things that can literally hurt their health.

Note that all the the responses were made before NC2 was passed.

Since that law drew huge national attention, there’s a good chance that trans people’s fears of bathrooms were increased as a result of the law and the nationwide controversy it sparked.

The statistics show how transgender people are affected by discrimination and violence, and how trans people try to work around the harassment and discrimination we fear every time we use public bathrooms.

--Mara Keisling, NCTE

The point, of course, of the bathroom controversy is to separate transgender people from public life.