Isolation is Not the Answer: Public Locker Room Access for Transgender Individuals

Most individuals have felt lonely at some point in their lives—some more than others. Many would go as far to say that they feel like they don’t belong, or they feel surrounded by a community that is significantly different from them. But instead of merely feeling like an outsider, what if society refused to acknowledge the validity of your identity? Or worse— what if you were forced to “prove” your identity wherever you went?

Imagine being harassed by law enforcement every time you present identification because they believe you don’t “look” your gender. Imagine the DMV refusing to take your photograph for your driver’s license when you turn sixteen and pass your driving test until you “look more like a boy.” Imagine being kicked out of the locker room of a community pool and being told that the locker room is for men when you, in fact, are a man and identify as a man. Imagine being turned away by your insurance company for medically necessary healthcare because of a specific exclusion based solely on discrimination against your identity. Finally, imagine that every time you needed to use a restroom in school, you would have to use a gender neutral bathroom “assigned” to you out of fear of being beaten up or arrested for using the restroom designated for your gender.

This is the sad reality for members of the transgender community, who live in a gender-bifurcated society with strict definitions of “male” and “female” that these individuals often do not or cannot conform to. These individual’s choice or inability to conform to stereotypical gender roles and appearances is met with widespread prejudice, discrimination, and heightened risk for violence. Transgender individuals, particularly those who are not accepted by their families or communities, have even turned to suicide due to feelings of isolation and societal rejection. While a recent study indicates that approximately 75% of Americans polled had a solid understanding of what the term “transgender” means and about 11% of those polled reported that they had a close friend or family member who identifies as transgender, education about remains absent from high school health education across the nation.

The issue of transgender-individuals’ access to public locker rooms has recently resurfaced in an incident at a Planet Fitness in Midland, Michigan where Yvette Cormier lost her membership after she complained to the gym of a “man” changing in the women’s locker room. In response to her complaint, an employee of the gym told her that Planet Fitness’s policy is “whatever gender you feel you are, that’s the locker room you’re allowed to go in.” The gym employee further explained that “if [Cormier was] uncomfortable with [the policy] [she could] wait until [the transgender individual] [was] done [changing in the locker room.]” Cormier responded saying that “How about he waits until I’m done in the women’s locker room. Or get a unisex bathroom.” Cormier phoned Planet Fitness corporate to complain, but received the same response she had heard from the gym employee. Cormier claimed that she “wouldn’t have signed up for [the] gym if [she]knew [of the policy] ahead of time,” adding that the gym is “failing to protect [her] if anything happens in those locker rooms with a man.” After returning to the gym and complaining to several other gym members, Planet Fitness corporate called and revoked her membership immediately.

While Planet Fitness should be praised for its no-tolerance for harassment policy, the company’s decision to terminate Cormier’s membership as a result of her complaint will likely drive individuals in the transgender and cisgender—individuals whose gender identity match their sex assigned at birth—community further apart.

Terminating the membership of an individual who either does not understand or does not accept transgender individuals is effectively the same as neglecting to educate individuals about gender dysphoria. Moreover, the membership termination sends the same message to cisgender individuals that cisgender people have historically used to target and ostracize transgender people—“if you don’t conform to our views, we will oust you from our community.”

The more effective alternative is for public facilities to have clear policies alerting individuals who use their facilities that transgender people will not be discriminated against on the basis of their gender identity. While this will obviously not solve the problem of bigotry, these facilities are not responsible for changing the way Americans perceive members of any minority. Public facilities can only send a message that discrimination is wrong and further promote acceptance of individuals whose gender identity does not match their sex assigned at birth, but not through punitive means for those who do not agree with the facility’s stance. This will allow the public discussion of transgender rights to become less combative and more socially acceptable, much like the recent developments for members of the LGBT community in the plight for marriage equality.

Furthermore, the cisgender/transgender binary is worsened by absence of well-settled case law explaining the rights of transgender individuals. Currently, the success of most civil rights actions brought by transgender individuals hinge upon a state’s human rights laws and the federal statute 42 U.S.C. § 1983 for cases involving state actors. Some discrimination cases brought by transgender students, such as Doe v. Bell, have also been successfully litigated on grounds of discrimination on the basis of a disability under the Americans with Disabilities Act. But these cases have failed to really hone in on transgender individuals as a historically discriminated minority, which fails to give the transgender movement the same strength as the gay, lesbian, and bisexual movement for equality.

The oft-cited counterargument for prohibiting transgender individuals whose sex-assigned at birth from using opposite-sex restrooms and locker rooms is that doing so would be a threat to public safety. For example, allowing “men” (transgender women) to use women’s restrooms would open the door to possible instances of sexual assault or exposing children to the genitalia of the opposite sex. However, the success of these arguments hinges on the fact that transgender people wish to enter these locker rooms and restrooms on the basis of ill-will. When an individual enters the bank, there is always an opportunity to attempt to rob the bank. Do most people act on that opportunity? Clearly not.

Moreover, this argument fails to take note of one of the fundamental principles of gender dysphoria: transgender men aremen and transgender women are women, even if the sex they were assigned at birth does not match this reality. Therefore, there is no difference between a transgender woman and a cisgender woman making use of a woman’s locker room—both individuals are women making use of the facility that is designated for their gender identity.

Over the past sixty years, the Supreme Court of the United States has made great strides toward striking down discriminatory laws targeting members of historically oppressed racial communities, and the United States legislature has developed and implemented various laws facilitating inclusion and diversification in education and the workforce. Most recently, same-sex couples have in the plight for marriage equality, and this year, the Supreme Court on a case that will decide whether state prohibitions on same-sex marriage are unconstitutional. Equal rights for transgender individuals is certainly on the horizon, but the movement cannot gain momentum without the necessary public education about gender dysphoria and the elimination of isolation techniques to address discord between transgender and cisgender people in the public sphere.