Oh hey everybody. This week on Ask Cristen it’s time to take some facts and use them
like toilet paper to wipe up some gender discrimination in the bathroom and flush it all down the
toilet. That is a disgustingly vivid analogy. [Toilet flushing].
This week’s Ask Cristen question/request is coming from Mandy who says, ‘I am getting
so tired of this nonsense about children being more likely to be molested in bathrooms where
transgender people have access. Children are molested by the same gender anyway, and it
seems to me that this argument is only perpetuated by the belief that transgender people are
sexually deviant so KEEP THEM AWAY FROM MY UNATTENDED CHILDREN. We need a video, Cristen!’
Well Mandy. [Magic bells chime]. Before I get into statistics about gender neutral bathrooms
and safety I first want to emphasize how historically public restrooms have been ground zero for
discrimination. Not all that long ago, African Americans were segregated to their own bathrooms
due to racist fears about how it might be unsanitary and even immoral for them to sit
on the same toilet as a white person. Not to mention disability activists have also
had to fight for access to essentially pee in public. And here we are again with our
21st century round of unfounded fears of what might happen in the bathroom, specifically
that if we outlaw gender identity based bathroom discrimination that somehow women’s restrooms
in particular will suddenly become hotbeds of sexual assault, child molestation, indecent
exposure and kidnapping. But in reality our private probably not gender neutral bathrooms
at home are more ‘dangerous’ for children and women than public restrooms are, unless
of course you count stalls without any toilet paper as a danger. A lot of these transgender
bathroom fears revolve around stranger danger myths, completely forgetting the facts that
a majority of child molestations and sexual assaults are perpetrated by people that the
victim’s know, whether that’s family, friends, acquaintances, spouses or significant
others. Not a fun fact. And speaking of child molestation, 23% of perpetrators are under
18. And if we’re worried about say, abduction, only 0.1% of those cases involve stereotypical
kidnappings of a stranger walking into a space like say a public restroom, snatching up a
kid and running. Most missing children have not been abducted, they’re running away
from situations at home. Moreover there is zero, let me repeat, zero, third time’s
the charm, zero, statistical evidence that outlawing gender identity based bathroom discrimination
in any way increases the risk of sexual assault in those spaces. And we know that based on
the dozen or so states that have already passed laws prohibiting that kind of gender discrimination.
For instance, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico and Vermont are among the states that already
have those laws on the books and in 2014 Media Matters polled police departments in those
states asking whether there’s been an uptick in violence in public restrooms since those
laws were passed and here’s what they had to say. Minneapolis’ police spokesperson
said there had been quote, ‘not even remotely a problem’. Las Vegas’ police department
also said they’ve had no reported incidents or transgender suspects since passing the
law. The Albuquerque police department reported quote, ‘We are unaware of any cases of assault
in our city as a result of transgender accommodations.’ Heading over to beautiful Portland, Oregon,
their police chief said quote, ‘I’ve never heard of any issues like this in Portland.’
And then he got on his custom made fixed-gear bicycle and rode off into the wind. If we
hightail it over to Bernie Sanders country in Montpelier, Vermont, the police chief said
quote, ‘We don’t have any complaints related to this issue.’ But there is one group of
people that does face a lot of harassment, discrimination and even violence in public
restrooms and those are transgender people. Data from UCLA’s Williams Institute found
that 62% of the transgender people it surveyed experienced at least one incident of harassment,
denial of access, or outright assault in a public restroom. A lot of trans might simply
hold in having to go to the bathroom to the point it causes kidney and bladder health
problems. So to answer Mandy’s question about whether there are any statistics to
debunk all of this gender neutral potty panic the answer is obviously yeah. If we really
look at the nature of these crimes and the nature of these perpetrators and spaces where
these perpetrators are likely to be, it’s not transgender people that we should be worried
about or scared of. And that friends, is a fact.