TWIBS: Major Leaks in Bathroom Bills

May 3

Fear, hurt, confusion are the feelings of the month at Utah public schools where trans students are now forced to use the wrong bathrooms or run afoul of the law.

Humor, by Alyssa Steinsiek

Passed in January, Utah’s poorly thought out House Bill 257 is now subject to be enforced by state auditors, to the confusion and frustration of most normal human beings who were born with the light of stars in their eyes and are capable of experiencing joy and empathy for those unlike them.

House Bill 257 was crafted with as much hatred and disgust as the shriveled and blackened hearts of right-wing Utahn legislators could muster. Into this bill, they poured their cruelty, their malice, and their will to dominate all transgender people. Oh, and they probably got some help from a few particularly evil friends, but who doesn’t cheat on their test every now and then? Just don’t go looking into any of the other copy/pasted bathroom ban bills, or you might embarrass them…

In brief, HB 257 demands that any state-owned building force people to use bathrooms that align with their “sex assigned at birth.” Transgender people using the bathroom that feels right for them can’t be punished, but just entering the “wrong” changing room as a trans person is now considered criminal behavior. Expect to see this “criminality” leveraged against primarily nonwhite transgender people, considering how minor laws like this are typically enforced.

So, if you need to take a leak catching a connecting flight through Salt Lake, fret not. You, my affluent friend, are unlikely to be apprehended by the gender police.

Predictable of any legislative effort passed by the “who will think of the children” crowd, they who possess all the acumen of a dull brass doorknob floating in a landfill, HB 257—disingenuously labeled the “Sex-Based Designations for Privacy, Anti-Bullying, and Women’s Opportunities” bill—is sure to harm and endanger innocent trans children the most.

Speaking to the Associated Press, 11-year-old Utahn student Graham Beeton, who uses he/they pronouns, said that they “feels loved by his classmates and does not understand why the government cares which bathroom he uses.”

“It hurts me,” he said. “I might be uncomfortable going into that restroom, so I want to go into a different one, but the law doesn’t say that I can.”

Bree Taylor-Lof, a transgender teacher forced to explain the law to their students—who gave them hugs and hand-written cards—told the AP, “Our youth today have a keen sense for justice and inclusion and looking out for each other. That was clear in the concern that they expressed about their fellow peers, and for me.”

Whether school administrators want to support their LGBTQ+ students or not, they may be forced to comply with these draconian laws. Suspected violations of HB 257 can be submitted to the Utah State Auditor, who will then determine whether or not the reported facility is in compliance with the law, without “[making] any determination on the actions of private individuals” or “[investigating or determining] an individual’s sex or gender,” they say. If the auditor believes the facility is violating the law, they can refer the case to the State Attorney General’s office, and the facility may be fined up to $10,000 per day per infraction until they take steps to comply.

Under threat of financial penalties they can’t afford, it’s possible that this law will create an environment of suspicion and tattle-telling. The privacy of families may be invaded, communities may be torn apart, and young trans children’s lives may be ruined as they’re callously used for political points in a cultural war that helps nobody, that harms everybody.

Of course, Utah lawmakers think they’re being incredibly evenhanded. There’s a perfectly reasonable carve-out in the law for transgender Utahns who have had their birth certificate* changed and “undergone a primary sex characteristic surgical procedure.” Children can do neither of those things, of course, so they’re shit out of luck. The bill’s sponsor, Kera Birkeland, wants you to believe that she’s not targeting trans people, but instead people who might pretend to be trans to enter into “women’s spaces” for malicious purposes, a thing that has never happened. When asked for literally any evidence of this being a real problem, Birkeland admitted, of course, that she has none.

Fuck Kera Birkeland and everybody like her. I don’t know how to fix Utah’s problems right now, but I do have some idea of how we might make progress moving forward, and I’ll explain by sharing some awesome news out of California:

That’s right, Berkeley High got themselves a fancy all-gender bathroom! And while nine months of demands and pressure from Berkeley High LGBTQ+ students, in particular the Alliance for Gender Expansive Students club, to get a sign changed on a bathroom door might feel sort of underwhelming, I truly believe this is the only way we can move forward on this issue.

Exclusion is, obviously, not the answer. Even if Utahn lawmakers pigheadedly think so. Trans Berkeley High students used to hold it all day long, or even leave campus to use the gender neutral bathrooms at the local library. Now, thanks to tireless student activism, everybody’s got a place to piss.

That’s my stance. That’s what I want to see, moving forward. People working together to get what we want and what we need from a society whose fringes are desperately trying to squash us.

UPDATE: An earlier version of this sentence referred to “transgender Utahns who have had their ID changed” as being capable of accessing gender-appropriate bathrooms. We have clarified the sentence to make it clear that changes have to be made to a birth certificate, specifically.

Alyssa Steinsiek is a professional writer and video games nerd who cohosts a podcast about trans news!