Transgender People Should Use the Bathroom of Their Choice | Elijah Nealy / Big Think

Transgender People Should Use the Bathroom of Their Choice | Elijah Nealy

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Your gender is your sense of self — it is located very much above the waist. Legislation that compels transgender people to use bathrooms that align with their biological sex, rather than their gender identity, are not really championing public safety. In fact, there is a hidden hypocrisy in those laws that makes the most vulnerable among us markedly less safe. According to Dr. Elijah Nealy, there is a dangerous myth that perpetuates the trans bathroom debate: that trans women are sexual predators (the data does not support this claim, and we heard the same story 25 years ago about gay men). This myth implies that transgender women have ulterior motives when using the restroom, when in reality, like every other human being, they go there to relieve a simple biological need. Insisting that bathroom laws are anchored to biological sex places trans men and women in difficult positions. States with these laws in place would have Dr. Nealy, an openly trans man, use the women's room. It also puts trans women in a very dangerous spotlight by forcing them to enter and use the men's room. Perpetuating false myths and supporting discriminatory laws only serves to invalidate the existence of an already marginalized community who are—whether others like it or not—very real. Elijah Nealy is the author of Transgender Children and Youth: Cultivating Pride and Joy with Families in Transition.

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ELIJAH NEALY :

Elijah Nealy, Ph.Ds, M.Div., LCSW, is Assistant Professor in the Department of SociaI Work and Latino Community Practice at University of Saint Joseph in West Hartford, CT. As an out transgender man, he has spent the past 25 years working extensively within the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer communities.

For 12 years, he worked at the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) Community Center in New York City. Initially serving as the program director for alcohol and drug counseling, then the overall director of mental health services for adolescents and adults, and finally as the Deputy Executive Director of the Center.

His book, Transgender Children and Youth: Cultivating Pride and Joy with Families in Transition, is one of the first comprehensive guides to the medical, emotional, and social issues of trans kids. To learn more about Dr. Nealy, visit elijahnea

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TRANSCRIPT:

Elijah Nealy: Yes, I think the bathroom debate is largely a distraction, and based on erroneous assumptions: One of which is the assumption that all trans women are predators, and that’s not any more true than the myth that existed 25 years ago that all gay men are predators. The reality is most sexual predators are cisgender straight men. Most women and boys that experience sexual assault growing up experienced that at the hands of a cisgender straight male perpetrator.

The second erroneous assumption is that transgender women are using the women’s restroom for any reason other than what any other women would use the restroom. They’re simply using the restroom to take care of bodily functions that we all have, and that myth or negative myth or stereotype as trans women as predators is not valid. There’s virtually no data that documents trans women attacking other women in public restrooms. It’s simply not true. But it is used and being used to police trans people and to attempt to legislate transgender people out of existence in many ways and to invalidate their existence—their right to exist in the world alongside, the same as, anyone else’s right to exist.

It’s also not very workable, right, because as a transgender man in some states I would be expected to use the bathroom that matches my biological sex. But the reality is I don’t think many women would feel comfortable in the women’s room with me there. And there are trans men all over the country, and in all the states that are looking at these laws are enacting them who move through the world being seen only as men who would be very out of place in the women’s room. And there are many, many trans women who move through the world being seen as women and would be very out of place and at very high risk if they were to be forced to use the men’s room.

So the reality is while there’s this guise of protecting women, it’s both not effective in that it means men like me would be using the women’s room, and if it were really about protecting women we’d see a whole...

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