Florida lives down to its image
It was a tad disorienting the first time I entered a public men’s room in Europe and there was a woman attendant standing inside keeping the place clean and neat. But what the hell. When in Rome, right? (Was it Rome?) So it’s hard to understand the parochial freakout on the American right over trans people using bathrooms. Well, not that hard. They react to anyone outside their black-and-white categories as they might at encountering a snake or a spider the size of a Buick. With a visceral shudder.
Count on Florida to model how to overreact for the rest of MAGAstan (Washington Post):
Florida’s legislature Wednesday passed a bill that bans transgender people from using many bathrooms and changing areas that match their gender identity, on penalty of criminal trespass charges, in the latest spate of anti-LGBTQ legislation that has been taken up by state lawmakers.
A small number of Republicans joined their Democratic colleagues in opposing House Bill 1521, which applies to schools, government buildings, prisons and detention centers. It now heads to the desk of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), who is expected to sign it into law. DeSantis — who has privately indicated that he intends to seek the 2024 GOP presidential nomination — has tacked to the hard right on social issues such as abortion, as he courts primary voters by showing off his conservative vision for the state and pitches Florida as a “blueprint” for the rest of the country.
DeSantis means to prove to the rest of the country that he is what his state looks like on a map.
The legislation is “part of a pernicious, degrading, and systematic attempt to dehumanize one of our most marginalized communities,” said Human Rights Watch.
Under HB 1521, “specified persons who enter certain restrooms or changing facilities and refuse to depart when asked to do so commit the criminal offense of trespass.” Unisex restrooms and changing facilities are exempt. But those attendants in Europe would find no work in Florida.
And enforcement?
The nine GOP legislators who wrote the initial draft of the bill did not respond to requests for comment overnight Wednesday. In the draft legislation, they write that they aim to “maintain public safety, decency, decorum, and privacy.” Researchers have noted that trans women are much more likely than their cisgender counterparts to be victims of violence.
It is not clear how such a law — which defines sex using characteristics such as “chromosomes, naturally occurring sex hormones, and internal and external genitalia present at birth” — would be enforced. Kaleb Hobson-Garcia, a transgender man, said at a hearing that despite his beard and deep voice, the bill would require him to use the women’s restroom, potentially alarming those around him and putting him in danger.
Kansas, Arkansas, Iowa, and more states are on the stomp-a-trans bandwagon, the Post reports. North Carolina’s infamous 2016 “bathroom bill” cost the state about $3.7 billion in bocotts, etc. before its more-or-less repeal.
Upholding HB 1521 will be a challenge in courts where equal protection still means anything.
And good luck enforcing this:
Twitter user Erin Reed tweets, “This is one of the most terrifying bills in America. It will cause violent confrontations. Its enforcement mechanism is essentially, ‘cis people can demand trans people subjugate themselves to their request to leave a bathroom.’ ”
Reed adds, “Connecting flight in Florida? Convention? On Vacation? Visiting family?”
Jeff Sharlet (The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War) reacts, “Read the bill. It’s even worse than Erin says. Read this and @ me — please — with your ‘explanation’ of why this isn’t ‘fascism.’ Tell me which side you’re on.” He adds, “Yes. Folks saying ‘courts will overturn’ might as well say ‘the center will hold.’ It won’t, because it hasn’t. We’re past that now.”
“First they came for the socialists,” etc.
The internet has freed many of our most marginalized groups to emerge from the shadows where our most reactionary neighbors wish they would remain. Myself, I get L, G, and B. I have friends. I still have trouble wrapping my brain around T. But that’s because I’ve met few of the people Florida and other red-state legislatures are rushing to criminalize. But I don’t have to to believe it’s none of my business in the United States of America to legally stomp them like spiders.
But then, some of us think it’s OK to choke the life out of someone in mental distress, too.