Recently an unrelated comment on one of my TikTok’s made me reflect once more on the conservative fable that discrimination against trans woman is motivated by a desire to protect women. It stems from an extremely prejudiced depiction of trans woman like other minority groups throughout history as sexual predators. It is rhetoric that labels us as liars, pedophiles, and rapists in an equivalent way to the nazis propaganda machine of the 1930s and 40s. This message continually positions us as a group that should be feared and excluded from areas like change rooms and working with children. It is an age-old strategy to transfer fear, hatred and anger towards a group like sexual predators onto minorities which continually proves to be successful due to humanities’ innate desire to distrust the ‘other’. However, not only does it victimise the trans community and inspire greater levels of hate crime it serves a greater purpose. That is to reinforce patriarchal beliefs of male supremacy and continue to protect perpetrators of gender-based violence.
The call to ‘protect women’s spaces’ is a deliberate misrepresentation of sexual violence.
The entire premise of this conservative lie is that the inclusion of trans woman in public facilities creates a threat towards cis women and girls. Now some conservatives will refrain from attacking the trans community directly and suggest that the threat isn’t us but that male predators may disguise themselves as trans to access potential victims. Regardless it is a claim that lacks any real basis in statistical fact.
In the US there is no evidence to support bathroom bans. During the period of 1999 to 2017, only a total of 21 cases of men posing as transwomen have utilised bath polices to attack women. In this same period, there have been a total of 5 490 150 cases of sexual assault, an average of 322 950 a year. That means that during this period bathroom attacks involving men posing as transwomen account for just 0.00038% of sexual assault. Statistically it is safe to say there are a lot more places where women are in danger, and it is therefore hardy compelling evidence to denying rights to a whole group of people. Instead, one would think there were more immediate areas of concern with these numbers.
Even the concept of gender-neutral bathrooms comes under attack as a haven for sexual predators. Once again though the data doesn’t really carry much weight for this version of the argument either as in the UK between 2017 and 2018 there were 120 assaults in gender neutral bathroom (not involving trans people I might add) however once again in that same period 73 000 assaults occurred in the UK. This time it means these bathroom attacks equate to 0.0018%. In this case the reported numbers are attributed to cis presenting males and yet the potential ‘threat’ is being used to justify the removal of gender-neutral spaces which often serve as a safe middle ground for the trans community. I feel like there are some clear messages we could be taking from this data but let’s continue to dig a little deeper.
Further to this simple breakdown of statistics that highlight the fact that sexual assaults in restrooms are exceedingly rare, one of the only studies conducted thus far shows no link to non-discrimination laws. Published in 2018 a study conducted by the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law concluded that concludes “that fears of increased safety and privacy violations as a result of nondiscrimination laws are not empirically grounded.” Thats a fancy way of saying it’s based on nonsense rather than evidence. Another paper published in Frontiers in Sociology on the legal discourse also highlights that the idea for “individuals to use bathrooms according to the gender assigned to them at birth to ensure safety in these spaces is inconsistent and disproportionate” considering small number of bathroom attacks. In fact, the paper finds it “unreasonable” to create laws to curb crime that is already illegal. The authors feel that the solution to addressing sexual harassment would seem to be enforcing these laws and punishing perpetrators. This might be a novel idea.
So not only does a quick dive into the statistics show that bathroom attacks are exceedingly rare and therefore not present a significant risk but experts in law and sociology can’t find any justification for the bans proposed. Mmmm, looks like they aren’t really ‘protecting’ anything just targeting a minority group.
They couldn’t just be making it up… could they.
As per usual the conservative anti trans brigade needs to find something however slim to make their claims relevant, so they rely on several main pieces of evidence that seem to get reused at every possible convenience.
The first is ‘The Swedish paper’ (2011) which many use to assert that Transwomen have a similar pattern of criminal behaviour to Cis Men. Even without underlying problems with these broad conclusions the paper in no way touches on the prevalence of bathroom sexual assaults so is a limited form of supporting evidence in the first place. However, there are serious issues in terms of interpretation of the findings that undermine this broad oversimplification. It is this approach that contributed to the lead Author of the paper issuing a clear clarification of the paper’s findings: ‘What we were saying was that for the 1973 to 1988 cohort group and the cisgender male group, both experienced similar rates of convictions. As I said, this pattern is not observed in the 1989 to 2003 cohort group’. Of course, since this clarification conservatives have sort to discredit the authors interpretation of their own research. Something I find entertaining is that by attacking their credibility you are technically undermining the validity of the study in the first place. Hell, anything to make sure the desired interpretation keeps getting pushed.
Finally, the last ‘great’ piece of evidence those promoting bathroom bans often rely on is individual cases that they pounce on, like the fact that a person can commit a specific crime is once again representative of the entire population. Hell in 2016 everyone’s favorite ‘non biased’ conservative news feed The Daily Wire published an account of 5 instances. I guess they could have been part of the 21 I mentioned earlier. What is most entertaining in this ‘report’ is that most of the five examples involve cis men. Even if they were members of the trans community the actions of 5 people do not represent the majority and these rare cases do not represent a statistically significant threat that justifies any sort of ban. If we played the same game, here is a list of 90 state lawmakers that were accused of sexual miscondut in just a two-year period or there is the fact that a current presidential candidate is a sex offender, which demonstrates an alarming perspective which encourages sexual assault. I guess we shouldn’t allow politicians in public places. The idea is absurd these cases represent the individuals involved, their criminal behaviour and the importance of punishing perpetrators.
So what is the truth about the trans population and sexual violence.
It’s clear that most sexual violence is not taking place in bathrooms so where are the real dangers that these ‘feminists’ and passionate advocates for women’s rights be focusing their efforts. In Australia data consistently shows that since 1993 sexual assault has been steadily increasing and that in 2021 67% of incidents occurred in residential locations, alarmingly 61% of victims were under the age of 18. Additional data from 2024 shows that largest source of sexual violence, contributing 1 in 9, comes from intermit partners while other acquaintances, housemates and family members also show significant cause from concern. Strangers are obviously a major threat to women however considering all the other categories represent people known to victims the largest portion of assault and sexual violence is perpetrated by perpetrators know to the victim. In the USA the trends are more significant with data from 2010 showing that 51% of victims reported being raped by an intermit partner and a further 40% by an acquaintance. This is a snapshot of the data available, and it all paints a remarkably similar picture about sexual violence and the main threats to women. The clear messages from all of this is that if people wanted to ‘protect women’ there are for more critical areas that need to be addressed.
So, what about the situation regarding the transgender community, considering the media’s desire to paint us as sexual predators it might surprise most people to know that the rate of victimisation is much higher for both transwomen and men. Once again research conducted by the Williams insitute demonstrate that trans people are four times more likely to be victims of violent crime including sexual assault. The fact that 1 in 4 trans women that were victims of violent crime also felt that it was a hate crime also demonstrates the potential impact of negative representations and hateful rhetoric in society. These trends are once again similar in Australia with more then half of the Transgender and gender diverse populations experiencing sexual violence. The survey of more than 1500 participants demonstrated that those assigned female at birth had the largest level of victimisation while transwomen were the least likely to report acts of sexual violence. The truth being buried by this paranoid fear mongering is that the trans community are increasingly targets of sexual violence.
In both instances it is clear by focusing on this nonsense and imagined threat society is failing to address the real problem. This distraction of ‘protecting women’s spaces’ covers the inability of governments to implement polices to decrease sexual violence. Worse, the deliberate misdirection of this campaign takes the focus away from the real threat of intermittent partner violence and allows these perpetrators to continue to operate in the darkness. This only means that they are less likely to be brought to justice, there will be less education and there will be an ongoing increase in sexual violence. Anyone complicit in this campaign are unwittingly contributing to this and should feel ashamed.
Impact of toilet bans on the community
Considering the lack of evidence to support toilet bans, the other aspect worth considering is the potential impact of such policies. As a transwoman in very progressive and supportive environment in Melbourne, Australia this paranoid discourse of ‘protecting women’s spaces’ has had a minor but clear impact on day-to-day life. It means that anytime I am in public I am self-conscious about my need to use the bathroom, there is a hesitation to use public toilets. It means that often try to avoid it as much as possible for concern of being clocked and potential threatened by some transphobic nutter. The possibility meant that I have also put myself potentially in dangerous positions using the men’s despite presenting feminine. It is only recently with the increasing changes of HRT the safest option are women’s spaces and I accept the potential risks of TERFs. It means that this simple act of going to the toilet in a public place is filled with heightened anxiety and in an odd situation a real sense of fear that something might happen. This is without the reality of a ban or the widespread campaign of hate in other parts of the world. I couldn’t imagine how much worse this is in the States or UK.
Yet again research has been done to highlight the negative impacts of these toilet bans especially on trans youth. Research published in the Pediatrics in 2019 concluded that “Youth whose restroom/locker room use was restricted were more likely to experience sexual assault”. Unsurprisingly transgender girls are especially at a much greater threat of sexual violence in these situations where they are forced to use the boys’ facilities. The data suggests that in situations where bathroom bans are put in place trans girls are 2.5 times more likely to be assaulted at a rate of 37.9% meanwhile non-binary youth assigned female at birth have the highest risk at 42% overall. Considering this it is not surprising that such toilet bans have a detrimental impact on mental health with another study showing that 85% of TGNB youth in these situations experience depressive mood. Alarmingly 60% seriously consider suicide with 1 in 3 TGNB youth in these situations attempting suicide in the previous year. The bottom line is these bans cause harm. The evidence leads no room for doubt. Anyone supporting these bans, especially in schools, are harming young people at an alarming rate and needs to seriously evaluate their membership to humanity.
As horrifying as this data is the impact is not only felt by the trans community as cis women have quickly become targets of these bathroom vigilantes. There have been regular reports of cis women being accused of being trans and at times assaulted just for attempting to use the bathroom. This mistaken attack is connected to perception of masculine traits whether this is height, musculature, facial features or even potentially presentation. In an example of a sad irony the recent story of two cis women attacking each other in a bathroom highlights this impact this hostile anti – trans discourse. This new thought serves to reinforce gender stereotypes as Cis women attempt to avoid the ugly and dangerous confrontations. Such a result would continue the alarming trend of rolling back progress on women’s liberation. A document plan from conservatives and builds on the assault of reproductive rights. The fact that they have been successful in courting a range of ‘feminist’ groups to support these bans and prompt their propaganda must make them laugh. It is a sorry situation.
Let’s cut the crap and stop falling for this dangerous lie
The truth is out. The campaign to “protect women’s spaces’ is nothing more than a paranoid exercise in fear mongering. It lacks any basis in fact. It distracts us from the real problems in society. It causes serious harm. All reasons why it needs to stop. Time to stop falling for a lie.
Read more about transgender participation in sport, the importance of supporting trans kids and the dangers faced by the trans community
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