West Virginia Gov. Patrick’s Morrisey’s bill to ban transgender women from single space places can’t be enforced if the Legislature passes it because of Fourth Circuit Court ruling. (Vladimir Vladimirov | Getty Images)
Gov. Patrick Morrisey’s “gender definition” bill is wasting everyone’s time.
House Bill 2006 states it will “reaffirm the longstanding meaning of sex, male and female in state law,” and “preserve women’s restrooms, multiple occupancy restrooms or changing rooms, and sleeping quarters for women in facilities where women have been traditionally afforded privacy and safety from acts of abuse, harassment, sexual assault, and violence committed by men.”
There are no criminal penalties under this bill because doing so would be in violation of the ruling in Grimm v. Gloucester School Board, where the Fourth Circuit ruled that under Title IX protections, a student must be able to use the bathroom that matches their gender identity. This bill only comes into play if that ruling is overturned.
This is similar to the inaccurately named “Women’s Bill of Rights” that former Gov. Jim Justice pushed last year, but failed to go up for a vote on the final night of the regular session. The only difference is that Morrisey has added domestic violence shelters to the list of spaces.
The West Virginia Coalition of Domestic Violence opposes this bill.
“Most of the women seeking shelter have been abused by their intimate partners, not men dressing up as women to gain access to vulnerable survivors,” the coalition said in a press release. “Protection for women and girls is best provided by recognizing that most forms of violence are perpetrated against them within their homes.”
This is the myth that Republicans try to sell — straight men will dress up as women to enter these spaces and abuse women. In states with an LGBTQ non-discrimination law, there’s no record of behavior like that increasing.
The problem here is cisgender men, not transgender women. This bill targets the wrong people.
Let’s look at some of the wording in this bill: “…in facilities where women have been traditionally afforded privacy and safety from acts of abuse, harassment, sexual assault, and violence committed by men.” Why aren’t women afforded safety from men in all facilities?
Women — cisgender and transgender — all deserve to feel safe.
However, that’s not how the world works. Domestic violence shelters are necessary. And transgender people may be more likely to experience intimate partner violence than cisgender people.
Banning domestic violence shelters from serving transgender women would be “a death sentence,” said Julie Britton, executive director of the YWCA Resolve Family Abuse Program in Charleston.
“There are no alternative facilities, and if we are not available, the only other option would be a homeless shelter or the streets,” she told lawmakers. “I don’t know if we’re worried about women’s safety putting trans women out on the street.”
It’s clear that these shelters want to continue to help transgender women — so why would the state prevent them from doing so? It’s unnecessary government overreach.
If Republicans really cared about keeping women safe from harassment and violence, there wouldn’t have been bills in both the Senate (which was withdrawn) and House trying to remove rape and incest exemptions from the state’s near-total abortion ban.
How is it protecting a woman to make her give birth after a man forced himself on her and impregnated her? In West Virginia, a rapist’s parental rights can only be limited or terminated if there’s a conviction. Nationally, only about 31% of sexual assaults are reported, and of those only about 2.5% of sexual abusers will go to prison or jail. Only about 12% of child sexual abuse is reported to the police.
In about 8 out of 10 incidents, the woman knew her rapist, according to the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN — only about 19.5% of rapes are committed by a stranger, making it more difficult on the victim to report the incident for fear of more retaliation. Those incidents aren’t happening in women’s locker rooms or women’s bathrooms.
Another bill that will put women in danger is Senate Bill 299, which aims to ban hormone treatment for children diagnosed with gender dysphoria.
Children with gender dysphoria suffer from psychological distress because their gender identity doesn’t match the gender they were assigned at birth. So much so, that they can sometimes feel suicidal. When doctors can prescribe hormone treatment, like puberty blockers, it relieves some of that distress. The medications temporarily pause puberty and are totally reversible.
When the Senate discussed SB 299, they had virtual testimonies from people who tried to sell the story that minors receiving gender-affirming care are having major surgeries. They are not. A study by researchers at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health network found little to no gender-affirming surgeries on transgender minors in the U.S. In fact, cisgender minors and adults had substantially more gender-affirming surgeries, such as breast reductions surgeries for males.
Gender-affirming care is most often used by cisgender people. If you aren’t going to ban hair transplants and breast augmentation surgeries for cisgender people you’re not serious about gender-affirming care. You’re only serious about hurting transgender people.
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