As the consensus on same-sex marriage solidifies, the attention of advocates and opponents alike has gradually been turning to transgender rights. Although the discourse has not been as fraught as in other places, opposing voices are growing louder in a pattern reminiscent of the push against marriage equality in 2018.
Some of those voices held a news conference earlier this month to condemn gender-neutral bathroom policies. In the name of women’s rights, the Taiwan Women’s Association and Taiwan Solidarity Union decried the use of women’s bathrooms by “men who gender self-identify as women,” saying that gender-friendly policies have “gone too far.” Their demand was to only allow trans people who have undergone a medical procedure or hormone replacement therapy into their desired restrooms. Their argument was that women feel threatened by people “who still possess male genitalia” entering female-only public spaces — although they failed to cite any data to back up the assertion.
While the demand seems reasonable at first, it fails to consider a number of factors. First, to get an accurate picture of the extent of the controversy, it is important to look at the data.
An Executive Yuan survey from 2021 found that 65.1 percent of people had no problem using a bathroom at the same time as a transgender person. That was already a 3.1 percentage point increase from the year before, showing that the trend is moving quickly toward acceptance. Younger people were also overwhelmingly in favor, with 82.7 percent of those in their 20s saying they had no issue with sharing a restroom. In addition, gender-neutral bathrooms have been around on campuses and public spaces for years, and there have not been any reports of the kind of violence feared by opponents.
On the other hand, a majority of trans people do fear violence. A 2020 survey by the Taiwan Alliance to Promote Civil Partnership Rights found that 55.41 percent of trans people had been afraid to use a restroom, while 18.53 percent had been harassed or attacked in public. Rhetoric stoking public fear of trans people only serves to exacerbate antagonism, making something as simple as using the toilet even more frightening.
The groups at the news conference were quick to point out that they do not oppose the use of female toilets by trans women, as long as they have received some kind of treatment. Yet again, this fails to consider some basic realities of being transgender.
Putting aside that not all trans people want medical intervention, even for those who do it is not a simple matter. Gender-affirming surgery is not covered by the National Health Insurance, and therefore costs well into the hundreds of thousands of New Taiwan dollars. Many people save up for years to get it, or travel abroad to places such as Thailand where it is more accessible. Only in September did the Supreme Administrative Court rule that requiring sterilization surgery to change one’s legal gender violated multiple human rights, although the Constitutional Court declined to try the case. Hormone replacement therapy is more accessible, but it is not covered by insurance and requires consultations with a psychiatrist, which might or might not be covered. Even if the person ticks all of the boxes requested by opponents, how would a bathroom rule be enforced? Imagine having to bring medical records to use a bathroom, or the humiliation felt by a cisgender woman who is deemed too masculine by an enforcer.
This is not to say that women never face harassment in restrooms. There have been many cases of men placing secret cameras in bathrooms, for one. Yet using transgender people as shorthand for violence against women only serves to harm the rights of both groups, as it distracts from formulating policies that could benefit all genders and replaces it only with antagonism.
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