I've been watching the controversy regarding North Carolina's "bathroom laws" with great interest, because they affect several people close to me. The jist of the law is that people have to use the bathroom corresponding with the gender assigned at birth, and that cities cannot create their own laws protecting LGBTQIA people, nor can public buildings provide gender neutral bathrooms. Supporters of the law claim it is to protect women from predators dressing in drag to access women's restrooms. This urban legend not only has no basis in reality, but sexual predation is still illegal in localities where trans rights are protected.
Ted Cruz supports the law, saying that "trans" is what happens if Donald Trump dresses as Hillary Clinton. But this shows a massive amount of ignorance about the people who this law affects and even puts at risk.
Transvestites are indeed people who dress in the clothing of the opposite sex, but they rarely go out in public dressed as such, except to places accepting of this behavior. There is a lot of stigma associated with the practice, and most transvestites are not out of the closet.
Transgendered people actively take hormones or otherwise alter their bodies to become more like the opposite sex. The younger they start the hormore therapy and the longer they use it, the more they resemble the opposite sex. These are the people who are most damagingly affected by the bathroom law. You may not realize that an individual is transgendered until they are forced to choose: break the law and us the bathroom that feels right, or reveal their private medical history and risk getting beat up by bigots (which happens all too frequently). These individuals are already in a dangerous position, just because many people consider being trans perverse or immoral. I remember what happened to Matthew Shepherd; crimes against LGBTQIA people happen all too often.
Intersex ndividuals are born with gender ambiguity. I was a child when I first heard about such a thing, on some talk show where a boy about my age and his mother were discussing the choices the doctors had made at his birth. He had been born with a tiny penis and yo-yo testicles, and the doctors thought he was a deformed girl and performed surgery to make his genitals look female. He always identified as male, though, and when puberty began, it was clear he was genetically male. Today, doctors don't make those decisions at birth, and allow the child to make the choice themselves at puberty, or even postpone puberty until the child makes a firm decision. As these persons were not assigned a gender at birth, do they have the right to use a bathroom at all in North Carolina?
The governor has decried protests of the law as "political theater," and completely ignores the plight of those it affects. It causes undue hardship on this specific group of people and refuses them protection. It perpetuates prejudice by lumping trans people in the same category as sexual predators. The law needs to be repealed immediately, as legislation has already been put forth, or declared unconstitutional. May it be so.
