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The Anti-Trans Bathroom Nightmare Has Its Roots in Racial Segregation
An ad that aired frequently in Houston this past month depicted a man accosting a young girl in a bathroom stall. Its purpose was to convince voters about the dangers of the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance, known as HERO, which protected 15 classes of people from discrimination, including LGBT people. Opponents of HERO vilified transgender people as sexual predators and portrayed an ordinance protecting them as a “bathroom bill.” In so doing, they reframed a referendum question on civil rights as a question of whether to permit male sexual predators to molest children in women’s bathrooms. This strategy was dreadfully effective. On Nov. 3, Houston voters rejected the city’s anti-discrimination law by a 61-39 percent margin.
The conservative idea that civil rights protections sexually endanger women and children in public bathrooms is not new. In fact, conservative sexual thought has been in the toilet since the 1940s. During the World War II era, conservatives began employing the idea that social equality for African-Americans would lead to sexual danger for white women in bathrooms. In the decades since, conservatives used this trope to negate the civil rights claims of women and sexual minorities. Placing Houston’s rejection of HERO within the history of discrimination against racial minorities, sexual minorities, and women reveals a broader pattern: When previously marginalized groups demanded access to public accommodations, conservatives responded with toilet talk to stall these groups’ aspirations for social equality.
Since World War II, public bathrooms have figured centrally in African-American civil rights struggles for racial integration in the workplace and in schools. Integrating these spaces in the Southern United States meant doing away with Jim Crow laws that mandated, among other things, separate public bathrooms for blacks and whites. Whites defended these segregated spaces with violence. And, with varying degrees of cynicism, segregationists often interpreted demands for racial equality as black male demands for interracial sexual contact with white women. In 1941, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 8802, which prohibited “discrimination in the employment of workers in defense industries or government,” the government established the Fair Employment Practices Committee to enforce this order. Historian Eileen Boris has shown how Southern Democrats fought the FEPC, viewing it as an attempt to “saddle social equality upon Dixie,” and lead to, in the words of one senator from Georgia, “social equality and intermingling and amalgamation of the races.”
The conservative idea that civil rights protections sexually endanger women and children in public bathrooms is not new. In fact, conservative sexual thought has been in the toilet since the 1940s. During the World War II era, conservatives began employing the idea that social equality for African-Americans would lead to sexual danger for white women in bathrooms. In the decades since, conservatives used this trope to negate the civil rights claims of women and sexual minorities. Placing Houston’s rejection of HERO within the history of discrimination against racial minorities, sexual minorities, and women reveals a broader pattern: When previously marginalized groups demanded access to public accommodations, conservatives responded with toilet talk to stall these groups’ aspirations for social equality.
Since World War II, public bathrooms have figured centrally in African-American civil rights struggles for racial integration in the workplace and in schools. Integrating these spaces in the Southern United States meant doing away with Jim Crow laws that mandated, among other things, separate public bathrooms for blacks and whites. Whites defended these segregated spaces with violence. And, with varying degrees of cynicism, segregationists often interpreted demands for racial equality as black male demands for interracial sexual contact with white women. In 1941, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 8802, which prohibited “discrimination in the employment of workers in defense industries or government,” the government established the Fair Employment Practices Committee to enforce this order. Historian Eileen Boris has shown how Southern Democrats fought the FEPC, viewing it as an attempt to “saddle social equality upon Dixie,” and lead to, in the words of one senator from Georgia, “social equality and intermingling and amalgamation of the races.”
http://www.slate.com/blogs/outward/2015/11/10/anti_trans_bathroom_propaganda_has_roots_in_racial_segregation.html?wpsrc=sh_all_mob_tw_bot&utm_content=buffer0a24d&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer
