The Chicago City Council's Committee on Human Relations advanced an ordinance to the City Council Floor which will close a loophole in the city's human rights code which could make it difficult for transgender people to access public washrooms.

Under examination was the requirement that people be able to show a government-issued identification card that indicates that their gender matches that indicated for the washroom.

After emotional testimony from ostracized transgender Chicagoans, aldermen moved Wednesday to close a legal loophole that, Mayor Rahm Emanuel has warned, could “inadvertently” allow restaurants, hotels and other “public accommodations” to discriminate against transgender people.

Alderman Nick Sposato (38th) voiced concerns about what he called the "knucklehead effect" (a man might claim to be transgender just to gain access to women's washrooms).

Some ladies are saying some guy is coming in the bathroom. I’m not saying he’s doing anything. He’s just in there. They’re just uncomfortable that guys are coming in the bathroom. You send a squad there. What’s the deal? If they identify as a woman, you guys turn around and tell the lady there’s nothing we can do? What’s the CPD policy?

--Sposato

Captain Sean Joyce of the Chicago Police Department’s Office of Legal Affairs said that kind of complaint would trigger a police response and an investigation.

But there wouldn’t be an automatic violation of law just because a male stepped into a female washroom or vice-versa, unless a crime had been committed.

--Captain Joyce

When Ald. Patrick Daley Thompson (11th) asked “what protections do we have” to prevent someone from falsely claiming they are transgender to gain access to public facilities, Human Relations Commissioner Mona Noriega did not pull any punches.

You’re already showering next to people who are transgender and you don’t know it.

--Noriega

I do get questioned a lot when I go to the bathroom.. I've been asked to step out of the women's locker room even after I show them my breasts and my genitalia, without saying the other words that might be offensive to you guys.

I just want to go pee, that's all I want to do. I want to go pee. I want to go in without being harassed, without being followed, without being questioned.

--Aurora Pineda, a gender non-conforming woman

Among those who testified was Lilly Wachowski.

She’s a 6-foot, 4-inch, 214.5-pound woman with a deep voice that makes her, as she put it, “unmistakably transgender.”

Wachowski told the harrowing story of what happened in the dressing room of a Chicago store recently when she was exchanging a sweater her boyfriend had given her for Christmas.

Another patron, upon hearing my voice, asked sternly to see a manager regarding the store’s policy of allowing men in the women’s changing room. My internal alarm began to ring. Run, it said. I quickly finished my business and went to pay the balance of my exchange. At the checkout, the woman had emerged from the dressing room and was lecturing the manager. I fought my flight instinct and decided to engage her to tell her that I was sorry if I made her uncomfortable. It’s just that there isn’t a place for people like me.

She cut me off to tell me she wasn’t going to talk to me. Though I was right in front of her.

She would not recognize me. In her man-or-woman, binary world view, I simply did not and could not exist. This kind of thinking is rampant. It is institutionalized — be it in the form of TSA security scan, gender bathroom, locker room or changing room. But, we are here. We exist. And I implore you at this moment to please recognize us.

--Wachowski

The amendment would change the ordinance to read:

For purposes of this subsection, ‘sex’ includes both biological category and gender identity. Each person determines his or her own gender identity. No proof shall be required except his or her expression of his or her gender.

If we don’t change this, we’ll have more men in the women’s bathrooms and more women in the men’s bathrooms. We are doing the exact thing we don’t want.

--Deb Mell (33rd)

My ID does not reflect who I am. … The gender marker betrays my presentation. Even at bars in Boystown, I often experience a great deal of very intense anxiety at the prospect of handing over my ID to whoever is working the door.

While I understand the necessity of proving my age in settings like this, obedience of the law does little to quell the internal turmoil I experience every time someone looks at my ID and at my face and sees the difference between the two. Giving people proof that I am trans often feels like handing them a loaded gun given the state of discrimination against my community.

Already, I’m very cautious about what public facilities I use. Often I have to go out of my way in order to find a bathroom where I feel safe enough to answer the call of nature. It is a pattern I repeat out of fear.

--written testimony of Lucy D