Since the repeal of Human Rights Commission rules covering transgender people's use of sex-segregated facilities failed by a 24-25 vole in Washington's Republican-controlled Senate earlier this month a man named Joseph Backholm has launched a group called Just Want Privacy with the purpose of filing an initiative to force transgender people out of public facilities.

The takeaway line on its webpage is

Backholm is director of the Family Policy institute of Washington.

It’s a matter of safety for us. It’s a matter of comfort for people who are not transgender.

--Gunner Scott, Pride Foundation

The fact that it is exploitable by people with bad intentions is undeniable.

--Backholm

Usually at this point it is pointed out that such has never happened in places where transgender people have protections to use sex-segregated facilities.

Just Want Privacy is taking steps to void that argument.

Last week, a man entered the women’s locker room at Evans Pool in Green Lake and started undressing. He did not verbally identify as female. But when parks staff asked him to leave, he said “the law has changed and I have a right to be here.” Staff said they did not feel the need to call police, because the man eventually left on his own.

We can’t give someone a legal right to be someplace where they don’t belong just by saying I am a woman.

--Backholm

Notice that the man in question never identified as either transgender or a woman.

One might ask how this could have happened.

On the Facebook Page of Keep Locker Rooms Safe one finds a January 6 "call to action":

A commenter at the Family Policy Institute page suggested

Maybe they could go do that in the restroom of the human rights building.

Other commenters called for attacking transgender women...and called us "the freak fringe."

Curious that the very people who claim to want to protect cisgender women from creepy, straight cis men might be encouraging creepy dudes to go into those bathrooms in the first place.

--Sidney Brownstone, SLOG

While these acts are meant to illustrate the danger of “men in women’s restrooms”, they prove the exact opposite: it’s the will of the privileged and the powerful that remains a grave threat to trans Americans. Many cisgender people are so uncomfortable with the idea of trans bodies that they would rather spread widely debunked myths about pernicious “bathroom predators” than accept the basic human rights of transgender people. The problem isn’t trans folks; it’s everyone else.

--Nico Lang, The Guardian

It’s the safety of trans students, as well as transgender people everywhere, that we should be gravely concerned about, not the reverse. Last year, a record number of trans Americans were murdered. That reality will not change as long as we continue to believe that the unfounded feelings and fears of cisgender people are more important than everyone’s humanity.

--Lang