Let me know what you think
Presumed Problem
Transgender people will use public restrooms inconsistent with their biological sex, making others uncomfortable or fearful. Specifically, biologically-male trans women may molest little girls.
Solution
Laws, such as North Carolina’s HB2, requiring people to use public restrooms consistent with the sex originally recorded on their birth certificates.
Narrative
While this issue is in flux, anything I write now may be out of date by the time you read it. However, this is such a perfect example of a soluprob that I can’t let it go by unheralded.
I’ll admit it: things were simpler when I was growing up. Every school I attended had a “Boys Room” and a “Girls Room,” and nobody had any confusion over which to use, even though boys, girls, men, and women all used the same bathroom at home. Similarly, boys liked girls, and girls liked boys, except when the girls had cooties or the boys were doodoo heads. In recent decades, many of these old certainties have dissolved. It’s not so much that people have changed, but that we’ve begun acknowledging and even accepting variations that were there all along.
Other posts on this website deal with homosexuality and same-sex marriage, but the issue of transgender individuals is different. When I
was young, some girls were labeled “tomboys,” meaning they engaged in the rough and tumble behavior more associated with boys. While parents might sometimes be concerned, it was generally felt that such girls would eventually “grown out of it,” that they were just “going through a phase.” That was often true.
Today we realize matters are more complex than earlier assumed. Some
boys feel in their bones that they should have been girls. They share the 
interests and desires more associated with girls, even though they are likely to suffer ridicule or worse if they play with dolls and wear dresses and make-up. And there are individuals born biologically female, who are certain they were meant to be male. And they are clear it is not a phase they are going through. It lasts well into adulthood.
In 2015, this issue was brought front and center when former athlete Bruce Jenner announced to the world that he/she was now Caitlyn. She was not gay, saying she still was sexually attracted to women rather than men, but she just felt more natural dressing and acting like a woman. Some transgender individuals carry their gender modification to the extent of surgery that converts them from one biological sex to another. These are transsexuals, but not all transgender individuals go that far.
As American society has grown generally more tolerant of human diversity in recent decades, the possibility of living a transgendered life without fuss has increased. It has become more feasible to operate in society with no one being the wiser. There is probably an analogy to be drawn to light-skinned African-Americans “passing” as white earlier in our history.
None of this means that everyone is comfortable with people choosing to change genders. The existing discomfort has focussed primarily on the use of gym facilities and public restrooms. We’ll examine the latter in this post. I think it’s fair to say that the issue is specifically one of concern over trans women using Women’s Rooms. Some women say the thought makes them uncomfortable or even fearful, and some men express concern that their daughters may be molested.
As I am writing this, the most notorious representation of this “problem”
and its “solution” is North Carolina’s HB2 (Session Law 2016-3):
AN ACT TO PROVIDE FOR SINGLE-SEX MULTIPLE OCCUPANCY BATHROOM AND CHANGING FACILITIES IN SCHOOLS AND PUBLIC AGENCIES AND TO CREATE STATEWIDE CONSISTENCY IN REGULATION OF EMPLOYMENT AND PUBLIC ACCOMMODATIONS.
The meat of the law specifies:
Public Agencies shall require every multiple occupancy bathroom or changing facility to be designated for and only used by persons based on their biological sex.
The law also specifies that no one may bring suit against the law on the basis of discrimination, nor are municipalities permitted to institute non-discriminatory laws permitting transgender use of public toilets. At the same time the law reminds us that the State of North Carolina is wholly opposed to discrimination on the basis of biological sex.
The law was subsequently declared in violation of federal civil rights legislation, but the drama is not over. Before leaving the Republican presidential primary, Senator Ted Cruz expressed his whole-hearted opposition to transgender bathroom privileges, while Donald Trump initially seemed sympathetic to transgenders’ full bladders, but he quickly changed positions when attacked from the Right.
As I write these words, North Carolina and the Federal government are suing and counter-suing each other, respectively, and students are being advised to take pepper spray, looking for a problem to solve. It’s clear that this post will be revised more than once in the future, just as it’s clear that HB2 was a soluprob: A “Solution” without a “Problem.”
Was the Problem Real?
Specification of the presumed problem has pretty much lingered as a matter of “you know.” In comments online, some women have said they would feel uncomfortable if a “man” came into a Women’s Room while they were using it, but it’s difficult to pin the discomfort down further than that.
I am told that all public restrooms for women consist of enclosed stalls. Thus it seems unlikely that a trans woman using a 
Women’s Room would result in the display or viewing of opposite-sex genitalia. Apparently there’s something about just knowing that a biological man just entered the facility, but it seems unlikely that you would know. No woman is likely to call the police if her public facility is visited by the person to the right of this paragraph.
On the other hand, I could understand that reaction if this guy came breezing in. As you undoubtedly figured out, the person above is a trans woman, while the one to the left is a trans man. More to the point, I imagine that those women who say they would feel uncomfortable if a trans woman entered their Women’s Restroom, have already had that happen, more than once, but they didn’t know it. Hence, they weren’t uncomfortable after all.
Going a step beyond mere discomfort, as I’ve mentioned, there are some women, who are genuinely fearful. There’s no denying the very real problem of men abusing women, sexually and otherwise. However, I can find no record of a trans woman molesting women or girls in a public restroom.
A recent web poster points out that more Republican ministers have been arrested for sexual offenses in public restrooms. Without denying that the fears some women have are real for them, those fears are apparently groundless, like the fear of zombies or vampires. This is clearly a “solution” without a “problem.” In fact, it could be argued that transgender use of public restrooms was not even seen as a problem until laws like HB2 drew attention to the matter and made it a political issue.
Negative Consequences
While a law discriminating against any particular group of people has negative consequences for members of that group, substantial public damage has been done to the Great State of North Carolina and its economy. Seeing the law as blatantly anti-LGBT, numerous individuals and organizations have retaliated against the state.
Bruce Springsteen, Mumford & Sons, Ringo Starr, and other performers cancelled concerts scheduled in North Carolina. Others, like Jimmy Buffett and Greg Allman said they would keep scheduled concert dates, but they were very vocal in condemning the law. Cyndi Lauper said she would perform as scheduled but would donate all profits to efforts to repeal the law.
Prior to the law’s passage PayPal was planning to build a $3.6 million dollar operations center in Charlotte. Those planned were cancelled in protest of the law. Deutsche Bank had planned an expansion that would have provide 250 new jobs to the state. Plan cancelled.
The Center for Social Responsibility reported that nearly 1,700 companies were withdrawing from North Carolina in protest to the law.
On May 4, 2016, the U. S. Justice Department ruled HB2 in violation of the U. S. Civil Rights Act and Title IX. That circumstance would result in North Carolina losing all federal grants, totaling billions of dollars. As noted above, this issue is still in flux.
The issue may ultimately be resolved as suggested by comedian and social critic, Bill Maher: “If you look like a woman, use the women’s room, if you look like a man, use the men’s room. If you’re a bearded dude in a dress, just hold it until you get home.” When you think about it, Maher’s prescription is simply for a continuation of past practices.
© Earl Babbie 2016, all rights reserved Terms of Service/Privacy
Sources
http://www.ncleg.net/Sessions/2015E2/Bills/House/PDF/H2v4.pdf
http://fortune.com/2016/04/14/north-carolina-hb2-law-stars/
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/04/north-carolina-hb2-businesses/478179/
Hector Cruz, “Bill Maher slams self-loathing white liberals on Real Time” – http://lastnighton.com/2016/04/23/bill-maher-slams-self-loathing-white-liberals-on-real-time/
The simple fact is that anyone of any sex, intentionally or accidentally, can walk into any restroom anywhere. No law will prevent malicious deviants of any sort from entering a restroom. This has been the case for as long as there have been restrooms. The fact has had zero impact in violent and non-violent sex-offence statistics. Whether there is a law or not, if any man or women or transgendered individual walks into any men’s or women’s restroom and starts molesting people, scream, run out of the restroom, and call the police. That has worked for as long as there have been restrooms, and isn’t discriminatory to anyone. Fortunately, the need to do even that is exceedingly rare. Statistically, horrifically, children are far more likely to be molested in their own homes, or by Priests at their churches.
The only impact of the law in question is the intentional discrimination and criminalization of people that some other people don’t like. One intent of good law is that it rises above our petty intolerances to ensure that some people are not in a position to use the law against other people they don’t like.
It is ironic that Conservative lawmakers whose sworn duty is to enact laws that provide equal protections against individual discrimination have taken it upon themselves to target a specific group of people, using the full power of the State to oppress them simply because some Conservatives don’t like them. These lawmakers employ an unholy ruse to camouflage their intolerance in a hypocritical violation of their oaths of office. They fail to uphold both their Christian principles and Libertarian perspectives, illustrating hypocrisy that must make the God they say they serve weep that He brought them into existence.
It is hard to understand how such people live with themselves, what misguided, tortured people they must be to go out of their way to marshal the apparatus of the State to harm other people in such an openly nasty, belligerent way. The response of individuals and businesses to boycott States, like North Carolina where such barbarism is being inflicted, comes with a heavy cost to all the people who live there. Hopefully, the good people of those States will find the means to turn these peculiar lawmakers out of office, and hopefully elect a more principled body who fulfill their obligations to enact laws that support the rights of all rather than some.
In this case, no new law was necessary. It is clearly a solution without a problem. A group of Conservative lawmakers went out of their way to intentionally harm a particular group of people they don’t like. Ideally, it is an injustice for which they will be held to account, both criminally, and at the polls.
One might argue that there was a problem that North Carolina’s HB 2 was supposed to solve, and did so in splendid fashion; however, it wasn’t the stated problem. That is, legislators knew there was no actual problem with transgendered people using public restrooms, but faced a problem of keeping voters engaged in an election year which threatened to overwhelm their attention to down-ballot races. By trumping up a non-issue into something that would draw outrage from voters, lawmakers could show their concern for constituents and their ability to act while their opponents tried to defend not acting on the issue.
I’ll admit having no evidence to support such speculation. But there is a long history of people in public office using non-issues to distract attention from legitimate problems they don’t want voters to notice. It costs taxpayers money, detracts from good governance, and destroys government’s credibility. Such quick fixes for non-existent problems unfortunately succeed in misdirecting voters all too often.
As I have worked on this project, I have often been confronted with the possibility of a different problem being addressed by the “solution.” More than once, politicians have bragged that Voter ID laws would prevent their opponents from being able to vote. Similarly, politicians have bragged that TRAP laws (officially aimed at protecting women) would help deny abortions altogether. You describe your comments as speculation, and that’s inevitable in addressing the “real” purposes of such “solutions.” As a result, I’ve tended to tread lightly on that aspect.