[UncleMeat]

There are bathroom bills in 13 US states. Trans people (especially those who pass well) need to make a rather difficult choice when out in public for more than a few hours. Do they use the bathroom that matches their gender identity and run risk of criminal punishment? Do they use the bathroom that matches their birth sex but the look completely out of place and make it likely that they will be harassed or have the cops called on them? Neither option is good. If you can't use public bathrooms safely then "being out of your home for more than a short period of time" is a denied right.

We've seen bills introduced to consider trans people "misrepresenting" their gender as different from their birth sex as criminal fraud. This isn't too far from the current administration's executive order banning trans people from the military for being "liars", according to the bigots in the administration.

There are also bills trying to make the public visibility of trans people something that is threatening to children based on the bigoted perception of trans people as child rapists. So you'll get things like "public performance" classified as sexualized drag performance so that trans people experience the same limitations on being in or around places with children as sex offenders.

Then, of course, there is all the basic healthcare stuff. The white house put out an executive order (currently delayed by courts) withholding federal funding for hospitals that provide gender affirming care for people age 18 and 19. These are legal adults. If this stands, we'll almost surely start seeing legislation banning gender affirming care for adults in various red states. Criminalizing hormone treatment is forced detransition.

[conartist6]

> Do they use the bathroom that matches their gender identity and run risk of criminal punishment? Do they use the bathroom that matches their birth sex but the look completely out of place and make it likely that they will be harassed or have the cops called on them?

Thanks for writing up this answer. I suspect the commenter you are replying to has never even stopped to consider the experience of a real person and what it would be like.

[UncleMeat]

The entire situation is just so asinine. In addition to the clear pain and suffering this causes trans people, it also hurts cis people and doesn't even achieve the stated goal of making cis women feel safe in the bathroom (not that it would justify the bigoted policies, even if it did).

There are plenty of butch cis women who now get harassed in the bathroom for "looking like a man" because these policies have opened up the floodgates for bigots to transvestigate everybody they come across. And if everybody follows the law as written then there will be people using the women's restroom who are indistinguishable from cis men unless you inspect documentation (which nobody is obliged to carry in public) or inspect genitals.

The true outcome (and I believe the true goal, though not typically stated out loud) is that trans people (and people who don't fit rigid and traditional gender presentations) are simply not able to be in public safely.

The regression we've seen in legal rights has been so swift. In 2016 North Carolina tried to pass one of these bills and major organizations like the NCAA and Paypal took serious economic action in order to get it reversed. It felt like a society-wide rejection where it wasn't just left leaning activists pushing back but major organizations without a typical political agenda too.

In the past four years we've seen 13 states pass bathroom bills and more than half the states pass gender affirming care bans for minors largely without a peep from corporations.