“If the law says that any man, if he chooses, can enter a women’s restroom…and stay there, and he cannot be removed because he simply says at that moment he feels like a woman, you’re opening the door for predators.”
This argument, offered by United States Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX), claims that women’s safety would be at risk if policies that permitted transgender women to use public women’s restrooms were implemented. (For clarity’s sake, such policies will be referred to as “transgender-inclusive restroom policies” throughout the rest of the article). This line of reasoning is widespread. Former North Carolina Governor Patrick McCrory has stated that such a policy could create “major public safety issues by putting citizens in possible danger from deviant actions by individuals taking improper advantage of a bad policy.” Similarly, former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee once said that he wishes he had known in high school “that [he] could have felt like a woman when it came time to take showers in [physical education],” illustrating his belief that men could claim to be transgender to gain access into women’s restrooms. Conservative activists lauded President Donald Trump for reversing a federal guidance that allowed transgender students to use restrooms befitting their gender identity in February 2017, as they claimed that the guidance “violates [female students’] right to privacy and harms their dignity.” Countless others have expressed concern that transgender-inclusive restroom policies would allow individuals assigned male at birth to invade, disrobe, and initiate unwanted advances in women’s restrooms.
These claims, though widespread and common, are extremely misguided. Their pitfalls are twofold. First, they are blatantly false, as transgender-inclusive restroom policies do not threaten women’s safety. Second, they are hypocritical, as many of those who oppose these policies in the name of “women’s safety” do not support other efforts to increase women’s safety, demonstrating that they only claim to care about “women’s safety” when it enables them to restrict transgender rights.
Contrary to the pervasive fears, studies have consistently shown that transgender-inclusive restroom policies do not increase the incidence of violence against women. After certain localities in Massachusetts issued ordinances allowing transgender individuals to use the restroom of their choice, a group of researchers examined whether criminal incident reports related to assault, sex crimes, and voyeurism in women’s private spaces were filed more or less frequently in the localities that had passed these measures. Additionally, the study investigated whether there was any fluctuation in the frequency of these incident reports in the two years before and after transgender-inclusive restroom policies were passed in certain localities. Ultimately, the study found that the passage of transgender-inclusive restroom policies “is not related to the number or frequency of criminal incidents” in women’s spaces and that “fears of increased safety and privacy violations as a result of [transgender-inclusive restroom policies] are not empirically grounded.”
Another study prompted by North Carolina’s law preventing transgender individuals from using the restroom of their choice explored how frequently sexual predators who committed crimes in restrooms claimed to be transgender to gain access to the restroom. The study found that such instances were “extremely rare occurrences” and that there is “no current evidence that granting transgender individuals access to gender-corresponding restrooms results in an increase in sexual offenses.”
Clearly, the empirical evidence does not give credence to the concern.
The other issue is the hypocrisy of those who argue that transgender-inclusive restroom policies lead to violence against women. Many who embrace this argument do not act to protect women’s safety in other situations, thus proving their hypocrisy and showing that their true intention is to restrict transgender individuals.
To illustrate this, let’s consider several (out of the many) significant threats to women’s safety. Roughly one in every three women has faced physical violence, including sexual assault, at least once in their life. In addition, women face a gender wage gap that sees them earn roughly 85 cents for every dollar that men earn. Lower wages increase women’s likelihood of experiencing risk factors such as economic and housing insecurity, which can force women to be financially dependent, remain in abusive relationships, and face violence.
When the Speak Out Act of 2022—a piece of legislation that would prohibit employers from using non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) to silence employees who experienced sexual assault or harassment—was first introduced in the House of Representatives, 109 members voted against the measure. Among them was Representative Virginia Foxx (R-NC), who has falsely claimed that transgender-inclusive restroom policies increase the risk of sexual assault, and Representative Andrew Clyde (R-GA), who implied in a 2023 Congressional hearing that it would be unsafe to allow biological males to enter women’s private spaces. Representative Lauren Boebert (R-CO), who once attempted to remove a person who she believed was a transgender woman from the Capitol’s women’s bathroom (she was mistaken), also voted nay.
In fact, at least 64 of the 109 Representatives who voted against the Speak Out Act have publicly advocated against transgender-inclusive restroom policies on the basis of women’s safety.
These Congresspeople’s arguments for restricting transgender women from entering women’s restrooms would suggest that they would vote in favor of prohibiting NDAs from being used to quiet victims of workplace assault, especially given that women face workplace violence at over twice the rate of men. Yet, their votes of opposition make their hypocrisy crystal clear: Women’s safety is only of importance when it is combined with a restriction on transgender rights.
This pattern of hypocrisy extends to other attempts to decrease violence against women. Twenty-two Senators voted against the Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act (VAWA) of 2013, which expanded protections for victims of gendered violence by providing increased funding for victim services and implementing measures to keep the identities of victims confidential. The “nay” votes included five future Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, who later brought in American author Abigail Shrier to testify in a 2021 hearing on the Equality Act, which would have allowed individuals to use public restrooms that corresponded to their gender identity. At the hearing, Shrier portrayed transgender females as a threat to women’s safety by suggesting that male teachers could gain intimate access to female students or that men could gain access to females in shelters by claiming to be transgender. Again, these politicians seem to only selectively care about women’s safety; they care when it enables them to restrict transgender rights but not when it comes to genuine issues of women’s safety.
Finally, this hypocritical approach extends to efforts that could shrink the gender wage gap. In 2021, 50 Senators voted against the Paycheck Fairness Act, which would have established a federal task force to address the enforcement of equal pay laws and reward employers who made significant attempts to decrease the gender wage gap. This group of 50 includes Ted Cruz (whose opposition to transgender-inclusive restroom policies was noted previously) and 13 signees of a 2022 letter stating that transgender-inclusive restroom policies in primary, secondary, and post-secondary institutions would “harm women and girls” by allowing predators to “use these policies to gain access to private spaces such as bathrooms or locker rooms.” These senators claim to support women’s safety when it comes to banning transgender women from women’s bathrooms, yet they do not support an effort that would decrease the gender wage gap, which would address a fundamental aspect of women’s safety.
There is no doubt that efforts must be made to end gendered violence; the list of ways to prevent violence against women goes on and on. Further, despite transgender-inclusive restroom policies having no empirical relationship with decreased women’s safety, the idea of using a restroom alongside a transgender individual can be uncomfortable and unfamiliar to many. Conversations should certainly be had regarding how to maximize comfort while allowing transgender individuals the dignity of choosing the restroom they use. Such dialogue must acknowledge some individuals’ discomfort, even as empirical evidence refutes fears of increased risk. Ultimately, embracing empathy and understanding will affirm everyone’s right to safety and dignity, and it will pave the way for a future in which everyone’s comfort and inherent worth is respected.
Effective discourse, however, cannot be held when those who oppose transgender-inclusive restroom policies pose hypocritical arguments that weaponize women’s safety to shoot down transgender rights. Transgender women must not be victimized in what is ultimately a futile and discriminatory attempt at protecting women, and we must reject the flagrantly hypocritical arguments that restrict their freedom to choose. Until those who seek to restrict transgender rights under the guise of women’s safety take real action to protect women, we must understand their argument for what it is—a direct attack aimed at transgender individuals—instead of the women’s safety issue that it is disguised as.