The anti-trans bathroom and locker room initiative being headed up by a campaign called Just Want Privacy is offically beginning the long slog of collecting signatures to qualify for the ballot.
Because that’s what this initiative would do—it would override the existing protections for trans folks under the state’s nondiscrimination language by requiring that they use not the restroom which best fits their identity, but rather, which fits their sex at birth.
This, of course, represents a basic misunderstanding/ignorance about trans individuals—not to mention in direct contradiction with, you know, medical science—but that’s sure not stopping these alleged humans from creating marketing materials like this:
LOLLLLLL I CAN’T EVEN TELL YOU ALL THE WAYS THIS IS AWFUL.
Anyway, despite only having about two months and change to gather close to 300k signatures (GOOD LUCK), a feat which will likely take literal millions of dollars (which they are not exactly raking in, even with the help of all these bigots!) and may still not end with a spot on the November ballot.
As we have warned about before, this is 100% not actually about the safety of women and children (it, for example, would not have done anything to thwart this recent incident of bathroom grossness at SeaTac airport!). It will protect no women. What it will do is make trans and non binary folks in our community less safe, and will essentially legalize transphobia by business owners, patrons, and schools.
It’s a bad initiative. Don’t sign it. To help, we’ve updated out What to Sign guide:
Do you live in Washington? Are you going to any festivals or street fairs this summer? Print out this handy guide so you know which signature gatherers are worth you time and which you can ignore!
The American Family Association, an anti-queer hate group, on the “bathroom panic” they’ve been helping raise against letting transgendered people use washrooms appropriate to their gender identity: “we’ve already had people testing this, going into Targets, and men going into bathrooms, there is absolutely no barrier”
Once again: every part of this is an active construction by the fundamentalist right. Every single part of it. And one of the goals is to intimidate women and police femininity – as well as boost fundamentalist voter turnout in November, of course.
There are still zero documented cases of transgendered people misbehaving in washrooms; there have still been more cases of Republican Senators doing so, and far more cases of Republican officeholders in a general sense; there is now an absolute wave of intentional, political intimidation of women in washrooms, by the fundamentalist movement, to create panic towards and violence against transgendered people.
