Today in Ohio, SB 104, the bathroom bill has gone in to effect.
This law mandates that school bathrooms and facilities be restricted by assigned sex at birth, putting transgender youth at risk of harm, harassment, and isolation.
This morning protestors occupied buildings at the University of Cincinnati who removed gender neutral restrooms, put up bathroom signs reading “biological male” and “biological female” and required the reporting of students violating the law.
Despite the rhetoric that espouses the natural separation of sexes, it has only been in the last hundred years that states passed laws segregating bathrooms.
While the justification of these laws has been spoken as “protection of women,” the real motivation was keeping women in their place.
In Jim Crow, restrooms were racially segregated, sometimes justified by needing to protect white women from Black people.
Today, bathroom bills like SB 104 are rooted in this same fear—protecting cis women from sexual assault by trans women, which is often spoken but never backed up with facts.
These laws are about erasing people like me and denying our rights and making us more vulnerable.
Don’t let them divide us, let us unite in this oppression and create safe spaces for everyone.
