How the Bathroom Verification Cards Would Work

I think they want magnetic locks on public bathrooms

Card by evondue, hands by by Hiep Pham, both from Pixabay

Today, I saw an online troll making transphobic statements about trans people in bathrooms. One troll may not matter, but this evil nonsense spurred some thought, like about magnetic locks on public bathrooms.

Definitely a Troll

He was definitely a troll. He was just expressing concerns about the bathroom predator myth. He was just expressing skepticism about trans people. That, of course, is what trolls do.

As if his firstname-bunchofnumbers handle wasn’t enough of a clue, other behavior revealed him as a troll. I didn’t interact. I just observed.

He presented an anecdote that someone had once been assaulted in a bathroom (he wasn’t even alleging a trans person had been involved), and when presented with a competing anecdote that a trans person was once framed for a crime they didn’t commit, he backtracked and said anecdotes are an invalid basis for discussion.

Then he demanded statistics. While continuing to make blanket statements that “many people” are assaulted in bathrooms, he admitted he couldn’t find any relevant statistics from a quick search in his preferred search engine, then placed the burden of proof on trans-inclusive people to deliver these statistics to support our position. He asked for someone (not him) to please educate cis people like himself who are merely concerned about the existence of trans people, and to prove to him, please, that trans people present no problem. Otherwise, he would continue to assert that trans people might be a problem and that our existence should therefore be restricted. Without statistics, he assured us, transphobes like himself will continue to be transphobic. To make it a bit more challenging, he demanded that trans-inclusive people produce these statistics at the local level. Just because trans people don’t commit crimes in Idaho, I think he was saying, doesn’t mean they don’t commit crimes in Guam, so I need statistics from everywhere.

What He Wanted

He said there should be a “verification process” for changing one’s legal gender marker. He didn’t say what facts needed to be verified, but from context he…