{"id":1865,"date":"2015-03-12T02:54:06","date_gmt":"2015-03-12T02:54:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/live-journal-of-law-and-public-policy.pantheonsite.io\/?p=1865"},"modified":"2015-03-12T02:54:06","modified_gmt":"2015-03-12T02:54:06","slug":"isolation-is-not-the-answer-public-locker-room-access-for-transgender-individuals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/jlpp\/2015\/03\/12\/isolation-is-not-the-answer-public-locker-room-access-for-transgender-individuals\/","title":{"rendered":"Isolation is Not the Answer: Public Locker Room Access for Transgender Individuals"},"content":{"rendered":" \n\nMost individuals have felt lonely at some point in their lives\u2014some more than others. Many would go as far to say that they feel like they don\u2019t belong, or they feel surrounded by a community that is significantly different from them. But instead of merely feeling like an outsider, what if society refused to acknowledge the validity of your identity? Or worse\u2014 what if you were forced to \u201cprove\u201d your identity wherever you went?\n\nImagine being harassed by law enforcement every time you present identification because they believe you don\u2019t \u201clook\u201d your gender. Imagine the DMV refusing to take your photograph for your driver\u2019s license when you turn sixteen and pass your driving test until you \u201clook more like a boy.\u201d Imagine being kicked out of the locker room of a community pool<\/a> and being told that the locker room is for men when you, in fact, are a man and identify as a man. Imagine being turned away by your insurance company for medically necessary healthcare because of a specific exclusion based solely<\/a> on discrimination against your identity<\/a>. Finally, imagine that every time you needed to use a restroom in school, you would have to use a gender neutral bathroom \u201cassigned\u201d to you out of fear of being beaten up or arrested for using<\/a> the restroom designated for your gender<\/a>.\n\nThis is the sad reality for members of the transgender community, who live in a gender-bifurcated society with strict definitions of \u201cmale\u201d and \u201cfemale\u201d that these individuals often do not or cannot conform to. These individual\u2019s choice or inability to conform to stereotypical gender roles and appearances is met with widespread prejudice, discrimination, and heightened risk for violence.<\/a> Transgender individuals, particularly those who are not accepted by their families or communities, have even turned to suicide<\/a> due to feelings of isolation and societal rejection. While a recent study<\/a> indicates that approximately 75% of Americans polled had a solid understanding of what the term \u201ctransgender\u201d means and about 11% of those polled reported that they had a close friend or family member who identifies as transgender, education about remains absent from high school health education across the nation.\n\nThe issue of transgender-individuals\u2019 access to public locker rooms has recently resurfaced in an incident at a Planet Fitness<\/a> in Midland, Michigan where Yvette Cormier lost her membership after she complained to the gym of a \u201cman\u201d changing in the women\u2019s locker room. In response to her complaint, an employee of the gym<\/a> told her that Planet Fitness\u2019s policy is \u201cwhatever gender you feel you are, that\u2019s the locker room you\u2019re allowed to go in.\u201d The gym employee further explained that \u201cif [Cormier was] uncomfortable with [the policy] [she could] wait until [the transgender individual] [was] done [changing in the locker room.]\u201d Cormier responded saying that \u201cHow about he waits until I\u2019m done in the women\u2019s locker room. Or get a unisex bathroom.\u201d Cormier phoned Planet Fitness corporate to complain, but received the same response she had heard from the gym employee. Cormier claimed that she \u201cwouldn\u2019t have signed up for [the] gym if [she]knew [of the policy] ahead of time,\u201d adding that the gym is \u201cfailing to protect [her] if anything happens in those locker rooms with a man.\u201d After returning to the gym and complaining to several other gym members, Planet Fitness corporate called and revoked her membership immediately.\n\nWhile Planet Fitness should be praised for its no-tolerance for harassment policy, the company\u2019s decision to terminate Cormier\u2019s membership as a result of her complaint will likely drive individuals in the transgender and cisgender\u2014individuals whose gender identity match their sex assigned at birth\u2014community further apart.\n\nTerminating the membership of an individual who either does not understand or does not accept transgender individuals is effectively the same as neglecting to educate individuals about gender dysphoria. Moreover, the membership termination sends the same message to cisgender individuals that cisgender people have historically used to target and ostracize transgender people\u2014\u201cif you don\u2019t conform to our views, we will oust you from our community.\u201d\n\nThe more effective alternative is for public facilities to have clear policies alerting individuals who use their facilities that transgender people will not be discriminated against on the basis of their gender identity. While this will obviously not solve the problem of bigotry, these facilities are not responsible for changing the way Americans perceive members of any minority. Public facilities can only send a message that discrimination is wrong and further promote acceptance of individuals whose gender identity does not match their sex assigned at birth, but not through punitive means for those who do not agree with the facility\u2019s stance. This will allow the public discussion of transgender rights to become less combative and more socially acceptable, much like the recent developments for members of the LGBT community in the plight for marriage equality.\n\nFurthermore, the cisgender\/transgender binary is worsened by absence of well-settled case law explaining the rights of transgender individuals. Currently, the success of most civil rights actions brought by transgender individuals hinge upon a state\u2019s human rights laws<\/a> and the federal statute 42 U.S.C. \u00a7 1983<\/a> for cases involving state actors. Some discrimination cases brought by transgender students, such as Doe v. Bell<\/em><\/a>, have also been successfully litigated on grounds of discrimination on the basis of a disability under the Americans with Disabilities Act<\/a>. But these cases have failed to really hone in on transgender individuals as a historically discriminated minority, which fails to give the transgender movement the same strength as the gay, lesbian, and bisexual movement for equality.\n\nThe oft-cited counterargument for prohibiting transgender individuals whose sex-assigned at birth from using opposite-sex restrooms and locker rooms is that doing so would be a threat to public safety. For example, allowing \u201cmen\u201d (transgender women) to use women\u2019s restrooms would open the door to possible instances of sexual assault or exposing children to the genitalia of the opposite sex. However, the success of these arguments hinges on the fact that transgender people wish to enter these locker rooms and restrooms on the basis of ill-will. When an individual enters the bank, there is always an opportunity to attempt to rob the bank. Do most people act on that opportunity? Clearly not.\n\nMoreover, this argument fails to take note of one of the fundamental principles of gender dysphoria: transgender men are<\/em>men and transgender women are<\/em> women, even if the sex they were assigned at birth does not match this reality. Therefore, there is no difference between a transgender woman and a cisgender woman making use of a woman\u2019s locker room\u2014both individuals are women making use of the facility that is designated for their gender identity.\n\nOver the past sixty years, the Supreme Court of the United States has made great strides toward striking down discriminatory laws targeting members of historically oppressed racial communities, and the United States legislature has developed and implemented various laws facilitating inclusion and diversification in education and the workforce. Most recently, same-sex couples have in the plight for marriage equality, and this year, the Supreme Court on a case that will decide whether state prohibitions on same-sex marriage are unconstitutional. Equal rights for transgender individuals is certainly on the horizon, but the movement cannot gain momentum without the necessary public education about gender dysphoria and the elimination of isolation techniques to address discord between transgender and cisgender people in the public sphere.\n\n ","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Imagine being harassed by law enforcement everytime you present identification because they believe you don\u2019t \u201clook\u201d your gender. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1866,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1865","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archives","category-news-stories-2014-2015"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1865","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1865"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1865\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1866"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1865"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1865"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1865"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}