The Texas they desire
I wrote about the US Transgender Survey conducted by the National Center for Transgender Equality in early December.
Turns out there were enough respondents from Texas (nearly 1500) to glean some Texas-specific data.
One-third of transgender Texans avoid eating or drinking so they don't have to use a public restroom, and a majority have forgone using the bathroom at all while they're out to avoid confrontation or violence, according to a new survey.
Trans men and women in Texas, where there's no state law protecting LGBT people from employment discrimination, are more likely to live in poverty (34 percent) or be unemployed (17 percent) than the survey's national averages.
Of the Texas respondents, 73 percent of transgender schoolchildren said they'd experienced mistreatment because of their gender identity, with nearly half saying they'd been physically attacked and 14 percent leaving a school because of how they were treated.
Another 14 percent of those surveyed said a professional — like a psychologist or religious adviser — had tried to stop them from being transgender, and 41 percent said they experienced "serious psychological distress" sometime in the month before they took the survey.
Sen. Lois Kolkhorst has introduced Senate Bill 6 to protect Normal Texans from transfolk.
With this bill we are codifying the common decency the general public has always expected. The right of every Texan will be protected when they find themselves in the most intimate public settings.
Except transgender Texans, of course.
This whole idea that we are discriminating against anyone is nonsense. We say it’s based on your birth certificate, so if you were to have some type of surgery or hormonal therapy, and a judge agrees that you can change your birth certificate, it’s based on your birth certificate. It’s a clean-cut bill and it’s a sensible bill.
Statistics obtained by the Observer from the Department of State Health Services (DSHS) suggest that fewer than 1 percent of transgender Texans have updated their birth certificates, meaning the overwhelming majority could be forced to use restrooms that don’t match their gender identity under Senate Bill 6.
Texas has no standardized procedure for transgender people to update their birth certificates or driver’s licenses, and judges in only three of the state’s 254 counties — Bexar, Dallas and Travis — routinely issue court orders granting gender-marker changes, according to LGBT advocates. Last year, a Texas appeals court in Harris County rejected a trans man’s petition for a gender-marker change on his driver’s license.
The author of the so-called bathroom bill said she is working on potential changes after listening to people "from all walks of life," emphasizing that her measure is aimed not at the transgender people it would affect but at men who might assert a right to go into women's restrooms for perhaps nefarious purposes.
It's really not about the transgender. It's about other people that will abuse that. And that side of it's not been told very well.
The true transgender, this is not what that bill is about. It’s a slow erosion to straight men being able to say, ‘I have the right to go into that restroom.’
--Kolkhorst
There is no evidence of a transgender person assaulting anyone in a restroom in Texas, and transgender advocates see the measure as indisputably targeting them.
The under-reported scenario Kolkhorst appears to be referring to is one in which a creep-ass man enters a women's bathroom or locker room under false pretenses in order to creep on women or even assault them — then justifies his actions by lying about his gender identity, saying he identifies as a woman.
Is it technically possible? Sure. Then again, does it matter what any creep-ass man's justification is for entering a women's restroom under false pretenses? As we and countless outlets have reported before, this man will get arrested anyway should harassing or creeping on women be his intent — even if he falsely claims to be a woman.
Yet Kolkhorst for some reason appears to believes that her largely unenforceable bill is what will deter such predators — never mind that most twisted minds likely already understand that there are laws against such crude behavior. Meanwhile, thousands of "true transgender" Texans across the state, as Kolkhorst describes them, will be forced into uncomfortable situations under a trivial law that infringes on an otherwise basic, private human function: using the toilet.
--Meagan Flynn, Houston Press
Among other provisions, the bill also would prohibit any local government from adopting an ordinance preventing businesses from making their own restroom policies. It also would enhance criminal penalties for certain offenses if they are committed in a public restroom.
I think it's probably certainly indicative that she is getting a lot of feedback/pushback related to it. I'm happy that she's recognizing that there are concerns with the legislation, and I'd welcome the opportunity to share our concerns with her as well.
--Chuck Smith, Equality Texas
The Texas Association of Business released a study in December saying that initiatives targeting gay and transgender Texans could cost the economy $8.5 billion a year and endanger 185,000 jobs.
