Like, let’s be clear about this, re: anti-trans bathroom laws.
There’s the part of the law where using the bathroom becomes something you can be arrested for if you don’t pass perfectly, regardless of which one you’re in. This by itself makes being in public difficult and fear of arrest an everyday fact.
Then there’s the part of the law where once you get arrested and convicted and become a sex offender, you’re subject to all of the other laws affecting registered sex offenders in your local jurisdiction, such as: inability to live or work within or outside of certain zones (sometimes this amounts to every part of a city), the requirement to notify a registry of your address, inability to be around underage people, inability to use the internet, etc.
And then there’s the part of the law where once you’re a registered sex offender, your photo, name, address, car license plate, whatever information was collected is available publicly on the internet for any random neonazi to search and access.
This is about turning the trans community into targets of violence and arrests and making life so difficult that it becomes impossible. This is about making sure that the government has an updated list of trans people and where to find them whenever they get a way to do worse.
It’s also about making sure all of their violent supporters have access to that information immediately and winkwink-nudgenudge support for using it.
This is the first time I’ve heard of the bathroom laws resulting in sex offender status. That’s several new levels of fucked up. Do you know which specific bathroom laws include this and why it hasn’t been more of a focal point im the campaign against the bathroom laws?
The whole “registered sex offender” thing needs a complete fucking overhaul, anyway. Too many people’s rights are being stomped on in the name of what ultimately amounts to a boogeyman. I’m not saying sexual assault doesn’t happen, I’m saying the system is making a lot of shit up and making people panic for the wrong reasons. The people you expect to be sex offenders are the ones you actually have to worry about the least. The ones to really worry about are the ones who have the money, power, and social capital to get away with it.
True, like, the US and many other countries sex offenders registration is soooo fucked up. It doesn’t make people safer. It sweeps up non-violent ‘crimes’ like sex in a park with things like rape. It completely stops people from building a new life in which they can heal. It’s ten thousand kinds of horrible. It already effects a lot of trans people who do sex work or simply exist publically as sexual beings and it would be extra extra extra horrible if it started exposing a lot more trans people to all this shit.
QueerAnarchism 