Enter the wrong bathroom; you’re going to prison

Bobby Jo Bracy | Contributing Writer

opinion@fiusm.com

Representative Frank Artiles doesn’t spend much time thinking about stuff. What Artiles thinks about plenty, though, is what you’re doing in the bathroom.

Last week, ignorance collided when the unstoppable Rep. Artiles introduced the immovable HB-538, a bill that would effectively give police the authority to arrest anyone they suspect is not using the bathroom Artiles wants them to use. It’s impossible to imagine what legal standard police would use to detain or arrest people using public bathrooms, because it’s not clear what Artiles thinks about gender—or if he thinks about it all. When asked by a reporter from BuzzFeed LGBT about his thoughts on transgender women, Artiles said “I have not spent much time thinking about that.”

The proposed law makes it a misdemeanor crime, punishable by up to one year in prison or $1,000 in fines, to use a single-sex public accommodation that Artiles doesn’t want you to use—the gender of the facility you enter must match the gender on your birth certificate. Simple, right?

Not so fast—while the bill does not explicitly target transgender people, the reliance on birth certificates to “prove” one’s gender strips us of our individual freedom, only to surrender it to the person that did your paperwork for you when you were born.

Furthermore, each state has a different policy for amending birth certificates. Dean Spade, associate professor at Seattle University School of Law, notes that “the type of medical intervention [required for birth certificate amendments]…differs significantly from policy to policy.” Some states, like Tennessee, do not allow birth certificates to be amended at all. At any rate, it’s difficult to believe that the doctor who delivered you knows you better than you know yourself. Now Rep. Artiles wants his gender police to keep things orderly.

But the harm of HB-538 is not just limited to transgender people or gender-nonconforming people—it goes much further than that. Do you have a younger sister who is screaming for help in the bathroom? You’re a criminal if you try to intervene for her. Are you a mother who wants to accompany her son to the men’s bathroom? Get a lawyer. Are you a woman who feels safer going to the bathroom with your male friends rather than going alone? Tough.

Rep. Artiles argues that his main concern is public safety and privacy, yet I question how much a person actually thinks about women’s safety or privacy when they uncritically take such a narrow and discriminatory approach to violence prevention. Violence, like gender, is fluid and dynamic. Women assault women. Men rape men. This bill does not consider these possibilities—Frank Artiles doesn’t seem to think about them. What Frank thinks about plenty, however, is your “plumbing”—and not the plumbing that would help us flush his bill down the drain where it belongs.

Safety is hardly the concern behind this bill. According to the National Center for Women and Policing, “two studies have found that at least 40 percent of police officer families experience domestic violence in contrast to 10 percent of families in the general population.” Violent people are attracted to positions where they can assert authority over others, so it should be no surprise that there is a higher concentration of abusive people in law enforcement than in the general population. Are these the people we are entrusting to protect women?

To be fair, Artiles is likely not consciously trying to subject women to more violence—he is legally married and has two beautiful daughters. But being conscious about gender violence requires you to think about women—all women.

Rather, Artiles is most likely motivated by greed. Extreme right-wing religious groups were unable to prevent anti-discrimination ordinances from being passed locally, so these same groups have shifted their attention–and money–to Tallahassee. HB-538 would preempt all local ordinances that provide legal protections for gender-nonconforming people. The proposed law would also leave FIU vulnerable to private lawsuits—and attorney’s fees—because our university has a significantly different approach to making our bathrooms safer and more accessible.

In order to keep our public accommodations safe and accessible for everyone, we must oppose Rep. Frank Artiles’ bill. Maintaining public safety and individual privacy requires us to resist the formation of “gender police” invading our bathroom stalls.

Not in my stall.

Bobby Jo Bracy is a student of the College of Law and a FIUSM Alumni.