A proposed bill in Florida would make it illegal for a person to enter a public facility designated as single-sex if the person was not born a biological member of that sex. The measure would apply to bathrooms, dressing rooms, fitting rooms, locker rooms, showers or wherever there is a “reasonable expectation of privacy.”
If a person born male enters a women’s bathroom, for example, that person could be charged with a misdemeanor and fined up to $1,000 or sentenced to one year in prison.
Professor of humanities in the Farquhar College of Arts and Sciences Kathleen Waites, whose academic focus is gender studies, said this bill, if passed, would violate individuals’ privacy in the worst and most intimate way, and it’s discriminatory.
“The passage of such a bill would simply provide further evidence of the regressive nature of the Republican-controlled Florida legislature and make us a laughingstock; it’s just absurd,” she said.
The Single-Sex Public Facilities Act, filed by Florida House of Representatives member Frank Artiles of Miami, would target Florida’s transgender community, which won legal protection from discrimination from a Miami-Dade Human Rights Ordinance that passed last December
Artiles told the Miami Herald his number one concern is the public’s safety because the ordinance creates a loophole for criminals, sexual deviants and sexual predators to walk into a shower, a woman’s locker room under the cover of law.
“A man such as myself can walk into the bathroom at LA Fitness while women are taking showers, changing and simply walk in there. Someone can say, ‘What are you doing there?’ Under the ordinance, I don’t have to respond. It’s subjective. If I feel like a woman that day, I can be allowed to be in that locker room. I don’t know about you, but I find that disturbing,” said Artiles.
Waites said the bill sets a dangerous precedent by marking people as different and then penalizes them for it and is just another way to disallow people rights.
“Shouldn’t the legislature be working on real problems rather than manufactured ones? Going to the bathroom should not be a crime, whether or not your gender coheres with your biological sex. Moreover, who is going to make that determination? The bathroom police? It’s just silly,” she said.
Allison Brimmer, assistant professor of humanities in the Farquhar College, whose academic focus is cultural studies said, “The fact that this type of legislation is even being considered is truly outrageous.”
“This movement to criminalize the transgender community is fear based. This issue doesn’t even exist, except for those who fear change,” Brimmer said. “When people aren’t familiar with something, they often move to a place of rejection, rather than acceptance; I think this is the case with those supporting this legislation.”
Brimmer said, “A law like this can only take away rights and damage everyday activities and interactions between people.”
President of NSU’s Social Awareness Student-Action (SASA) Julia Yacoub, freshman biology major, said gender should not be the quality that defines a person’s worth or capabilities; this is one of SASA’s core values.
“Just the idea of bathrooms being so closely monitored for who may walk in and out of a restroom is ridiculous. Are they going to start making similar laws in which a person is discriminated against for entering a public facility?” she said.
Yacoub said this bill will harm human rights and that individuals shouldn’t be discriminated against.
“Laws should be put in to place to protect all citizens and not to be used to carry out discrimination against an individual that just so happens to identity differently than what society may be used to,” she said.
Yacoub said, during a class she took at NSU, they studied gender by viewing it on a spectrum, and she learned that using the terms “gender” and “sex” interchangeably is incorrect.
“We are born and assigned a sex and then sent out into the world. Therefore, biological sex and gender are different; gender is not inherently nor solely connected to one’s physical anatomy,” Yacoub said. “A person’s gender identity and expression is a person’s private understanding or sense of their own gender. Who are we to tell them any differently?”
A second Florida house committee voted in favor of the bill on March 17, which would result in arrests for transgender people who use the “wrong” bathroom. Now that the bill has passed through the government operations subcommittee, it is to be voted on by the house judiciary committee later this year.
“I advise transgender students who are upset about this issue, as with any issue in the transgender and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community, to make their voice heard by those that government,” Waites said.
