Transphobia in Texas

[Content Note: Transphobia.]

Last month, I wrote about a transphobic bill introduced in the Florida state legislature that seeks to prohibit trans* people from using public bathrooms corresponding to their gender. Similar legislation has passed in the Kentucky state senate.

And now the Texas state legislature is following suit and doubling quadrupling down, with four pieces of transphobic legislation introduced in the past few weeks.

HB 1747 "amends the definition of 'disorderly conduct' to make it a crime for transgender Texans who have not been fortunate enough to correct their official gender markers to use public gender-segregated space appropriate to their gender identity or expression."

HB 1748 "creates two new offenses: making it a state jail felony for most business owners if they repeatedly allow a person who has at least one 'Y' chromosome to enter a space designated for women, or a person with no 'Y' chromosome to enter a space designated for men; and making it a Class 'A' misdemeanor for a person with at least one 'Y' chromosome to enter a space designated for women or a person without a 'Y' chromosome to enter a space designated for men."

HB 2802 is an update of HB 1748, which expands this chromosome requirement to educational spaces.

And HB 2801 "declares that schools must 'adopt a policy providing that only persons of the same biological sex may be present at the same time in any bathroom, locker room, or shower facility.'"

Introduced yesterday by Republican Texas Rep. Gilbert Peña, HB 2801 "does not define how a student's 'biological sex' would be determined or verified." But it does nonetheless encourage other students to hunt and report on their fellow students they believe or know to be transgender:

The bill does, however, make the school liable to any cisgender (nontrans) student who "encounters a person not of the student's biological sex" in a bathroom, locker room, or shower. Every student who successfully proves the school violated this would-be law "shall be awarded … exemplary damages in the amount of $2,000." That sum does not include the "actual damages," which the bill notes includes "damages for mental anguish even if an injury other than mental anguish is not shown."

In other words, the bill sets up a standard where cisgender students can not only complain about sharing facilities with a student they believe to be transgender, but if they can prove that student was in the "wrong" restroom, will also be awarded $2,000, in addition to whatever amount a judge deems is sufficient compensation for the "mental anguish" presumably caused by sharing space with a trans person.

Emphasis mine.

As I have pointed out before, and will keep pointing out until these bigoted fuckos stop targeting trans* people and endorsing state-sactioned terrorism against them, this is projection. It is not cisgender people who need to be kept safe from transgender people; it is transgender people who need to be kept safe from cisgender people.

Case in point: This fucking legislation.

All of these hateful stains purport to be concerned about preventing violence, with zero regard for the fact that trans* people are at much greater risk for violence because they are trans*. It's a damnable, indefensible lie that this sort of legislation will protect anyone; it only makes trans* people less safe.

[H/T to Eastsidekate and Marti Abernathy.]