Tomorrow Will Be Different: Love, Loss, and the Fight for Trans Equality

by Sarah McBride

In other battles for trans rights, anti-equality activists and politicians had stoked unfounded fears that protecting transgender people from discrimination throughout daily life, including in restrooms, would allow sexual predators to dress up as women to harm or assault women and, particularly, young girls. The argument was completely disingenuous. A person intent on committing a crime in a restroom is offered no cover from laws that merely protect transgender people from discrimination or harassment. More than a dozen states and more than a hundred cities had passed similar bills without any problems of that kind. These arguments were just recycled talking points from previous gay-rights fights. “Protect our children,” read the antigay signs in the 1970s and ’80s. “Preserve parents’ rights to protect their children from teachers who are immoral and who promote a perverted lifestyle.” Just as these arguments preyed on people’s stereotypes and ignorance about gay identities, so too do these new antitrans arguments. They feed on the lack of understanding of trans identities. They were wrong and false then and they are wrong and false now, but they were politically potent.