Transgender Texans, activists and even a constable made similar arguments over and over again on Friday: The state’s latest bathroom bill makes no one safer.
Dozens of people testified against the bill in the House State Affairs Committee before around 50 local activists staged a sit-in at a Capitol bathroom in opposition to the bill that would block trans people from using the bathroom that aligns with their gender at schools or government buildings.
They weren’t without their detractors: One man suggested that trans people are operating under a similar delusion to those who think they are Jedis, the fictional characters from “Star Wars.”
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“A frog doesn’t become a cat, a cat doesn’t become a dog,” the man reasoned. “A man doesn’t become a woman. That’s not hate. It’s reality.”
One woman pointed out the ways that men and women were fundamentally different, not biologically, but sanitarily.
“[Women] don’t come in contact with their body when they use the restroom, and men do,” she said. “I don’t want to touch the same things. It’s germs that are packed away into clothes. I just don’t want to do that. I’m a real female, and I want privacy in locker rooms.”
Though some in the state have argued that the bill is needed to keep cisgender women safe, others have questioned what threats the bill even addresses.
Travis County Constable Stacy Suits testified against the bill Friday, noting that in nine years stationed outside a court bathroom, he had never encountered an issue.
“We don’t want to be the potty police,” he told the committee, adding that he wasn’t sure how he was supposed to spot who was trans and who wasn’t anyway.
Senate Bill 8 is among more than 16 anti-trans bathroom proposals filed in the Texas legislature in the past decade. Though those have never been signed into law, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has put a bathroom bill on two special session agendas after it failed to pass the regular session. SB 8 has already passed the Senate. Its House counterpart, House Bill 52, which was under discussion Friday, is expected to pass.
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Sixty-eight percent of transgender people report having been harassed in public bathrooms, according to Advocates for Trans Equality, the nation’s largest transgender rights group.
“For nearly a decade, bills like this one have painted trans people as threats, but the truth is, we are the ones consistently under attack and disproportionately impacted by violence and shelters and prisons and beyond. This bathroom bigotry does not protect women and girls,” said Raquel Willis, founder of the advocacy organization Gender Liberation Movement and a national voice on transgender rights, at the hearing.
Willis added that SB 8 echoed the segregationist policies her Black ancestors faced.
“I think of my mother’s story of not being served in a restaurant because of her blackness,” she said. “I imagine the White woman who denied her service would have blocked her from the restroom at that time, too.”
SB 8 would also prevent Texas prisons from housing transgender detainees in accordance with their gender, a rule that likely violates the federal Prison Rape Elimination Act, which requires prisons and jails to place trans people on a case-by-case basis.
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The bill institutes a $5,000 fine for a first offense and a $25,000 fine for a second.
“I know that I’m about to get so many calls in the next two weeks, and people are going to say, ‘Why do you still live there?’” said Andrea Segovia, senior field and policy adviser for the Transgender Education Network of Texas, an advocacy organization. Segovia’s husband and child are both transgender.
“There’s a deep pride of being a Texan, no matter that your state government is trying to erase you or degrade you or cause harm to people that you love,” she added. “Trans Texans are still really proud to be Texans.”
Two hours after the hearing adjourned, 50 Texans took the Capitol bathroom to show their disdain for the bill. Approximately nine of them staged a sit-in inside the bathrooms while the rest protested outside the bathrooms.
The action was led by Gender Liberation Movement, which held a similar protest in Washington, D.C., last December, where 15 people were arrested. Friday’s protest wrapped up without arrests, even as protesters occupied the bathroom for more than an hour, according to Eliel Cruz, an organizer of the protest.
