By Laura Townsend
For many Americans, transgender law is associated with public restrooms and not much else. While the debate over which restroom a transgender individual has the right to use is important, it alters the perception that non-transgender individuals might have of those who identify as transgender. The debate centers national conversation of a vulnerable minority on their bathroom habits.Further, when the nation’s main concern is centered on which restroom a transgender individual may use, it distracts from the other forms of discrimination that transgender individuals can face every day.
Transgender-rights activist Evelyn Shuker framed the concern perfectly on social media last week. “It’s telling that the site of debate over the existence of trans people focuses on us at our most abject,” Shuker said. Shuker, who identifies as transgender female, believes that centering the debate on restroom laws leads Americans away from concern over other discrimination that transgender individuals face. I could not agree more.
I will iterate that the restroom debate is essential to transgender rights, but it seems to me that the conversation should not be so focused on such a specific issue when there are a myriad of other difficulties transgender individuals might struggle with in a society in which they are often marginalized, bullied, or denied basic human rights simply because of their identity.
If the nation focused on anti-discrimination laws that encompass equal treatment at work, school, and other aspects of daily life —rather than just on restroom laws — non-transgender Americans might be more likely to open their minds and regard the transgender community as individuals being denied human rights.
When the conversation focuses solely on the restroom debate, it belittles all that transgender Americans and their allies are fighting for. This is a fight for equal rights in all areas of life, a fight for acceptance, for tolerance, for unity. Those rights will be more difficult to gain if the conversation is not expanded to all areas of life.
Shuker said the “point is to reframe the debate.” The point is to push the conversation past the restroom laws. Otherwise, the debate itself can be dangerous. “That’s transphobia at work … dehumanizing us by framing our existence in terms of our body functions instead of social positions, so that even when we defend ourselves, we are doing it from a position of abjection.”
Let’s expand our conversation to include all transgender rights.