The Department of Education has announced that it no longer intends to pursue civil rights complaints filed by transgender students who are denied access to appropriate restrooms.
The agency, headed by Trump appointee Betsy DeVos, argues that gender identity is not covered by Title IX, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in education facilities that receive public funding. But this interpretation runs contrary to the beliefs of many trans people, as well as legal scholars and several courts.
And this isn’t the first time that the Department of Education has denied trans people of all ages their full civil rights, and compromise their ability to participate freely in society. Such efforts are particularly worrisome to a generation of trans kids who grew up during the Obama administration, when progress on their rights was moving forward.
The fixation on trans people and bathrooms is, quite frankly, puzzling to most of us — really, all we want to do is pee. But since the issue keeps coming up in the form of bathroom bills and cases like this one, it’s worth taking a closer look.
When trans men and women transition, they usually want to use the accommodations that align with their gender — whether those be specifically gendered restrooms or all-gender facilities — for a variety of reasons, ranging from personal safety to inclusion.
Some people seem convinced that allowing trans people to use the bathroom is “dangerous,” and they use harmful rhetoric to suggest that women’s bathrooms are particularly vulnerable to “men in dresses” who lurk within and prey on cis women and children. This couldn’t be further from the truth: Trans women are women, not men in dresses, and rapists and child molesters aren’t stopped by a sign that says “cis women only.”
But we do know that trans people are at very high risk of being harassed — and sometimes assaulted — in bathrooms. Nine percent of respondents to a Williams Institute survey in 2013 said they had…