Women don’t actually support laws to ban trans people from women’s bathrooms
Women do not support attempts to ban transgender women from the female toilets, polling has found.
Across the US, states have seen a wave of Republican-backed ‘bathroom bills’ aimed at rolling back LGBT rights protections – which are marketed as a measure to secure “safety” for women by banning transgender people from public toilets.
There’s just one slight hitch in those spurious “women’s safety” arguments – it turns out that they don’t actually work on women.
Polling this week from Pew Research Center shows that a majority of women support trans people being able to use the restroom of their chosen gender, with 55% in favour and 40% against.
On the flipside, men are apparently more concerned about “women’s safety” than actual women, supporting discrimination against trans people by a margin of 52% to 40%.
It’s almost as if women can see when they’re being exploited as a political bargaining chip to attack a minority group.
Young people – who separate polling shows are far more likely to actually know a transgender person – are also more likely to see through the ‘bathroom debate’, with 67% supporting trans bathroom rights.
Despite the media focus on the bathroom issue, many of the GOP bills in state legislatures simply use it as a thin coating to disguise more broad anti-LGBT legislation.
Many of the proposed laws advertised as ‘bathroom bills’ also pare back anti-discrimination protections based on sexual orientation and gender identity, with some including opaque ‘freedom to discriminate’ clauses snuck through under the bathroom bigot banner.
A recent investigation found the fingerprints of the Liberty Counsel – the hardline evangelical law firm that represents anti-gay clerk Kim Davis – on many of the bills.
The group admitted helping Republican lawmakers draft ‘bathroom’ legislation in a number of states.
