Last summer a transgender woman told police that a 45-year-old man attacked her after she went into the women’s room at a midtown Omaha bar. She said he pounded on the restroom door, and after his girlfriend opened it, he punched the transgender woman and called her slurs.

The man pleaded no contest and was sentenced to 18 months of probation.

Other local transgender people say public restrooms can be a source of fear.

“I’m the mouse that you don’t notice in the restroom because I don’t want to be noticed, because of this paranoid fear about meeting that person” who could be violent, said Eris Koleszar, a 30-year-old transgender woman. “You only need to meet one of them.”

After North Carolina passed its law, Koleszar embarked on a campaign to take selfies in Omaha public restrooms with women who are cisgender, meaning that, unlike transgender people, their gender identity matches the sex they were assigned at birth.

She said 70 or more fellow women have taken their picture with her and posted it on social media with the phrase “she just wants to pee.”

Kate Parrish, a 63-year-old transgender woman, said she doesn’t want to use the men’s room for the same reasons that any other woman wouldn’t want to go in there.