Soon I'll occupy the men's room stall next to you. Thank the Ohio Legislature. | Opinion
The existence of trans people makes some uncomfortable, including our elected representatives, so they want to wield the power of big government to marginalize us from public life.
I’m a 26-year-old woman, former middle school teacher, current graduate student at Miami University, and soon I’ll occupy the stall next to you in the university men’s bathroom!
Thank the Ohio Legislature. In typical fashion, they added a partisan amendment to a previously bipartisan education bill they just passed. The amendment stipulates that all students in Ohio, including university students, must use the bathroom that corresponds to the sex assigned to them at birth. It’s a classic "bathroom bill" and yet another symbol of our state’s inability to focus on the actual problems that face us.
I’ve never had trouble with students or colleagues over the quirk of my birth, in part because I am a woman in the eyes of the law and the people I interact with daily. It’s been about four years since the last time I was directly "misgendered" (confused for a man). And biologically speaking, via hormone medication and surgery, I am female. So when people who have transitioned like me are forced to use the wrong bathroom, it comes at the risk of our safety.
Trans bathroom bills put people like me in danger. That's the point.
Back when I taught seventh grade in Preble County, on my commute I’d pass the campground where a trans man, Noah Ruiz, was assaulted while using the women’s bathroom at the request of the owner. This is the central irony of the bill − proponents argue that it is about protecting people, but it is directly putting people like me in danger.
What happens when I’m using the (men’s) bathroom late at night in the library, and a drunk man demands to know what I’m doing there − and what happens when I tell him I’m transgender, a demographic that some sitting members of Congress decry as evil and deserving of violence?
More realistically, I teach undergraduate classes as a graduate student, so what happens when I run into my male students at the sink and have to explain why I’m there? It’s absurd.
In my opinion, the real purpose of the bill is to punish trans people for existing.
Our existence makes some people uncomfortable, including our elected representatives, so they want to wield the power of big government to marginalize us from public life. But what they don’t understand is that trans people can’t just stop being trans, and bills like this force us to live our lives even louder.
Trans people are your neighbors. We are not a problem to solve.
We are not a problem for the state to solve. We are your neighbors, and some of us, like me, are school teachers and Christians. And, like everyone else, we can see the real problems affecting Ohio.
When I was teaching, I saw firsthand how much the opioid epidemic was tearing our communities and families apart. Some of my students lost their parents to addiction.
I saw the toll, too, that poverty and an unconstitutional school funding formula took on them.
But our elected representatives don’t have meaningful solutions for the real problems facing us, so they distract us with this − a bill that puts our most vulnerable students in the wrong bathroom where they will be targets of bullying. And also me, a 26-year-old graduate student.
So what can you do?
Please be a public and vocal ally for us. Sow seeds of love and acceptance in your community.
Gov. Mike DeWine should have vetoed the bill, but he signed it anyway. The political machine of the state will grind on, and some of us will get crushed beneath it − just hope it isn’t you or your child next.
And please, if you’re on a college campus, don’t freak out when you see a woman in the men’s room or a man in the women’s room, because it’s the law that has put us there. We would rather use the bathroom in peace, too.
Samantha Sapp is a former middle school teacher and a graduate student at Miami University. This column originally appeared in the Cincinnati Enquirer.