Using the wrong bathroom makes us unsafe and more at risk of assault and harassment in public spaces (Picture: Ugla Stefanía Kristjönudóttir Jónsdóttir)
A homophobic slur. Physical assault. Shattered tooth. Trauma.
This is what happened to 17-year-old Cobalt Sovereign at the end of last month when she says a male student called her a ‘f****t’, then punched her in the face. She described how one of her ‘teeth exploded’ and she had to get three titanium plates fitted in her jaw after it broke in two places.
All because she’s a trans girl and dared to use the men’s bathroom at her high school in Minnesota.
This brutal and reportedly unprovoked attack perfectly illustrates that if trans people were to follow what anti-trans policymakers and transphobic voices demand, we’re placed at increased risk of harm.
Sadly, I am not surprised this has happened. It is precisely what trans people and our allies have been saying would happen for a long time.
Using the wrong bathroom makes us unsafe and more at risk of assault and harassment in public spaces. It makes a mundane activity like using a public loo a risk for us.
Cobalt is a trans girl who dared to use the men’s bathroom at her high school in Minnesota (Picture: Kare11)
Cobalt described how one of her ‘teeth exploded’ and she had to get three titanium plates fitted in her jaw (Picture: Kare11)
I have been using women’s spaces since I was a teenager when I came out as transgender. While I’ve not had any altercations like this personally, it was definitely a huge fear when I first came out.
As an adult, I am seen and perceived as a woman in society by everyone I meet. By going into the men’s bathroom, I would not only cause confusion and uncomfortability for everyone, but I would out myself as trans to people that otherwise wouldn’t know.
Even if such a policy were to be put into place in the UK, I refuse to be forced to conform to patriarchal and harmful standards about gender and sex that ultimately serve no one. I know who I am, and I deserve dignity and respect for it.
No one would be able to actually enforce it anyway.
This recent moral panic about bathroom and single-sex spaces completely ignores the lived experiences of trans people (Picture: Ugla Stefania Kristjonudottir Jonsdottir)
Cobalt said that she had never been afraid to use the men’s restroom before, but that it admittedly made her ‘incredibly uncomfortable’ whenever she sometimes did.
‘I would rather be uncomfortable than make other people uncomfortable by using the women’s bathroom,’ she bravely said.
But after the assault, she has had nightmares and will require months of further treatment and surgeries.
How can anyone advocate for a reality that opens trans people up to this sort of trauma?
The answer is that our detractors don’t care about us because it’s never been about safety or protecting young people. It seems to be about exclusion, no matter how much harm it causes.
They simply want to push us out of public life. Otherwise they wouldn’t be trying to dictate what toilets trans people should be using in the first place.
This recent moral panic about bathroom and single-sex spaces completely ignores the lived experiences of trans people, some of whom have been using spaces in line with their gender identity for decades without trouble.
Still, anti-trans voices cite ‘concerns’ that trans inclusion means that cisgender men could ‘pretend to be women’ by ‘putting on a dress’.
But there’s a fatal flaw in this logic. If trans people were forced to use bathrooms based on what gender and sex they were assigned at birth, it would mean that trans men and trans masculine people would have to use the women’s.
Trans people like Cobalt deserve to feel safe at all times (Picture: Go Fund Me)
Women’s bathrooms would therefore suddenly have a bunch of trans men who are indistinguishable from cisgender men – many who sport a beard, hairy bodies and deeper voices.
By that system, it would be a thousand times easier for a cisgender man to simply pretend to be a transgender man to enter women’s bathrooms in order to abuse them. So just how would this make women safer?
The answer is that it wouldn’t, because this isn’t actually about protecting women and girls, and never has been. They conveniently ignore aspects of it that make no sense, and continue pushing a false narrative.
In fact, a 2018 UCLA study found that there’s no link between trans-inclusive policies and bathroom safety risks. On top of that, the Office of National Statistics found in 2020 that trans people in England and Wales are twice as likely to be victims of crime as cisgender people.
So to me, these hypothetical scare scenarios aren’t based on reality. Trans people simply existing in a space with you isn’t infringing your rights – we deserve to use those spaces just as much as anyone else.
This obsession about trans people isn’t normal or logical (Picture: Ugla Stefania Kristjonudottir Jonsdottir)
Thinking otherwise is plain and simple transphobia, wrapped up in disingenuous and unsubstantiated ‘concern’ for women and girls — and I’m begging people to stop falling for it.
This obsession about trans people isn’t normal or logical, and it desperately needs to end.
Because trans people aren’t going anywhere at the end of the day. We’ve always been here, and we always will. And no amount of intimidation, exclusion and violence is going to change that.
People can debate our lives, throw slurs at us, attack us and scream about us until they are red in the face — and we’ll still continue being ourselves.
We will persist, and I hope one day enjoy the same liberties and dignity as other people. Hatred and division never wins in the end.
Trans people like Cobalt deserve to feel safe at all times – and that means in the loo too.
Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing Ross.Mccafferty@metro.co.uk.
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