This story is part of Queer Kentucky’s digital issue surrounding the trans youth experience in the Bluegrass state, featuring personal essays to educational information. Read the full issue here.

Trans people need to pee. Pretty much all research suggests allowing them to use the bathroom that aligns with their gender identity is the safest option for everyone, but the right to choose which bathroom to use has been under attack in the last five years. 

Many states have passed laws of varying intensity and scope for the express purpose of “keeping men out of women’s restrooms,” predominantly affecting K-12 schools and colleges. These laws are subject to a lot of moral and legal questioning. Can the government dictate policy for private universities like this? What does enforcement actually look like? And most importantly, why does the government care which bathroom people use?

Most of these laws are directed towards government-funded institutions and public buildings. Very few regulate private  K-12 schools and colleges, but some do. They are often less severe on private campuses, though.

 In public schools, the government can directly dictate policy, state exactly how laws like SB-150, which regulates (among many other things) bathroom use in Kentucky public schools, are meant to be interpreted and enforced. They can also more accurately verify whether these laws are being followed. 

Private schools, however, are small businesses. Private institutions like Sayre and Lexington Christian Academy in Lexington, Kentucky Country Day and Trinity High School in Louisville can pass regulations, but they don’t have nearly as much influence on their interpretation as public institutions.

The language and definition vary, but the end goal is to force people to use the bathroom by their  assigned gender at birth. There is little evidence to suggest this is any safer than the previous system. Social convention is the most significant driver for halting people from entering “opposite” bathrooms. 

The chance of a transgender person being noticed when using the bathroom goes up when they use the bathroom assigned by their birth gender, more often than not. Especially in adults who are late in transition and “pass” well. Given the higher rates of violence faced by trans people and how they often stick out among their cisgender counterparts, forcing them into restrooms full of men is a recipe for disaster. According to the UCLA School of Law, transgender people are four times as likely to experience violence as cisgender people. It puts them at an extreme risk of violence. 

To pretend these laws are about anything other than targeting transgender people is a misapprehension. Laws like SB-150 in combination with proposed laws like HB-163  in Kentucky make it illegal to enter bathrooms of the opposite sex, even when no one is inside them, making the physical act of entering them a violation of the law. At that point, it’s not about safety, propriety, or privacy. Even if that were the true goal of these laws, they would still be ineffective.

The major problem with these laws lies in enforcement. Most don’t directly outline how the institutions monitor and prevent “violations.” The only way to monitor who enters a given restroom is by checking IDs at the door, which would require paid personnel not budgeted for in any of these laws. 

Even then, they can’t rely on identification cards , as in most states, gender markers can be changed. So, in practice, most rely on citizens’ reporting, which is based on extremely unreliable assumptions. None of the actions a citizen would have to take are reliable, as there is no reason or incentive for anyone to care or notice which bathroom people use. Considering how long it takes for legislation to be passed and how much scrutiny it goes under, there is no way these governments have not considered these problems.

So why focus on banning bathroom access for the most vulnerable populations? 

Transgender people make up around 1% of the global population, governing their behavior in this way is almost unnecessary.  The fact is, there’s a lot more to a person’s gender than what the government can define and police, putting people in boxes and situations the government has no business forcing them into. Simply put, this is just one of the many fronts of the current culture war. These laws receive headlines and invoke moral outrage on all sides. With the division of our world through the attention-driven media and political landscapes, that engagement is invaluable. Passing and supporting these laws only helps candidates cement their position as “anti-woke,”\ further securing the broad voter base that wants these policies. These laws are appealing enough on paper to gain support, but are ineffectual enough that they don’t require any effort or genuine thought on the part of the lawmakers. These laws have become dog whistles to signal a given candidate’s position on trans people and “gender ideology” as a whole without actually implementing positive change through policy.

When politicians focus on cultural issues, they can gain support and make it to office without having their important positions on things like the cost of living crisis, the war in Gaza, and all the other things affecting the state of the world scrutinized. 

When politicians use buzzwords instead of policy to guarantee their support, they do so without taking important stances on things affecting their constituency, things like economic uncertainty, the healthcare crisis and the thousands of other problems affecting them. The longer we spend talking about these culture war issues, the less time we spend on the important things. 

It’s important to make your voice heard about issues like this. Call congresspeople, send letters, attend town halls, and let elected officials and lawmakers know how you feel about these issues. Ask them their positions, make them explain themselves, and ask them why they feel the need to police the bathroom use of roughly 1% of the global population. Interacting with the legislature is one of the most important ways to effect change.