by Rekha Basu
Five years ago, my late friend Casey Gradischnig approached me with an unlikely invitation: To join him in the public areas of women’s bathrooms around Des Moines, Iowa, to see how the other patrons reacted to the presence of a 6-foot, 218-pound bearded dude with a deep voice.
This wasn’t some creepy joke or attempt to scare unsuspecting bathroom-goers, though we feared that might happen. Our goal was to test out how North Carolina’s then-new bathroom law, the one requiring everyone to use the bathroom matching their sex at birth, might look in practice in Iowa.
The answer? Not very good. It rattled everyone: Visitors startled by the unexpected presence of someone who, as far as they could tell, was a large man; Casey himself, who was born female but identified as male and looked that way; restaurant and hotel managers, security guards and police who were called in by concerned or furious patrons. We were thrown out, spat at and threatened with arrest.
That mayhem and distress is what Iowa senators are now fixing to unleash, along with possible business boycotts, if they pass Senate File 224. Backed by Sens. Jim Carlin, R-Sioux City, and Jeff Taylor, R-Sioux Center, it would apply to bathroom use in K-12 public and private schools. If passed and signed into law, schoolchildren would be compelled to use the bathroom corresponding to their “biological sex.”
Try to imagine the impact that could have on young people dealing with gender dysphoria as their bodies grow more unwelcome male or female characteristics while they identify another way.
I think of three teenagers I interviewed in 2015 from West Des Moines Valley and Des Moines East and Roosevelt high schools who were born female but identified as male. They talked about the challenges of high school in their 15- and 16-year-old bodies. Bathrooms were a big source of stress whether or not they had taken hormones or bound their breasts; they could be harassed or chided in male and female school bathrooms, so two of them wouldn’t use them, other than at the nurse’s office.
One had known since elementary school that he didn’t identify as a girl. He said he’d tried unsuccessfully to broach the subject with his parents at 8 and again at 12. His mother told me she may have been dismissive because the issue wasn’t even on her radar then.
I reached out to Carlin and Taylor by email to ask if they were responding to requests for such a law from schools in their districts. I’ll update this if and when I hear back from them. But their bill comes across as a larger attempt at behavior modification — as if forcing transgender youth to comply with required gender rules and roles will compel them to shake off their true identities. These teens had already tried that when they were younger — taking up Barbie dolls, dressing feminine and wearing makeup. It didn’t work.
And, anyway, it’s not a school’s place to do that under orders from the state, subjecting young people to ridicule and scorn, shame and possible self-loathing. A Register story quoted the mother of a 5-year-old transgender girl who said it would be “heartbreaking” for her daughter to have to use the boys’ bathroom.
Carlin, the bill’s sponsor, told a Register reporter his concern was for the safety of women and girls because sexual predators — I assume he means biological males — could “pose as transgender” to gain access to women and girls. Remember, we’re talking about schoolchildren here. Does he think boys will dress up as girls to gain access to their bathrooms and then assault them? Keenan Crow, with the LGBTQ advocacy group, One Iowa, wasn’t aware of a single case like that since the Iowa Civil Rights Act of 2007, which allows people to use the bathroom corresponding with their gender identity.
But on the other side, a 39-year-old transgender man who volunteers at his 10-year-old daughter’s elementary school in Dallas County named Kristian Maul said the proposed law would force him to use the girls’ bathroom. Which brings us back to Casey, whose first-hand lesson appeared in the Des Moines Register.
Before Casey and I did our experiment, he, then 54, had been using men’s rooms without a problem for almost 20 years.
By the way, that North Carolina law that may have inspired Iowa’s generated such backlash from boycotting businesses and sports governing bodies that it was partially repealed a year later. There are already threats to that effect if Iowa takes this route.
Iowa lawmakers should think long and hard about what they’re fixing to do with this and recognize that this shortsighted measure, along with lots of others this session, puts them squarely on the wrong side of history.
Rekha Basu is a columnist for the Des Moines Register. Readers may send her email at rbasu@dmreg.com.
