Mel Gonzales is an 18-year-old high school senior from Sugar Land, Texas. His smiling face might have flashed across your TV or computer screen back in the fall, when he was crowned homecoming king, the first transgender student at his high school to win that title. Some will say it’s a pity win, but he laughs it off and shrugs. His win is a sign of progress. That’s what really matters, he says.

Yet even as his local community is making strides in accepting trans people, Texas state is attempting to prohibit them from one of the more basic rights: access to bathrooms. If couple of Texas lawmakers have their way, it might soon be illegal for Gonzales to use the men’s room, because he wasn’t assigned male at birth.

Such bills – referred to as “papers-to-pee” bills by their opponents – have sprouted up in Texas, Kentucky and Florida in response to local ordinances that extend protections to transgender people by allowing them to use the gendered bathroom to which they identify. Politicians behind these proposed legislations insist that this is a matter of public safety – to prevent men from entering women’s bathrooms. LGBT activists say these bills are a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist and are anti-transgender.

“It’s unfortunate because transgender people already face very high rates of discrimination and harassment in public accommodations, including restrooms. This could encourage that kind of harassment and it’s dangerous,” says Sasha Buchert, staff attorney at the Transgender Law Center.

If passed, these laws would have a devastating impact on transgender people in all aspects of our lives – including our workplace, going to a restaurant. Everyone needs to use a public facility or a public amenity in our daily lives and most of us take it for granted, but for transgender people it can be very challenging.

Gonzales, who knows what’s it like not be able to use the bathroom of his gender, says using a bathroom is a basic function of all humans and should not be denied to anyone.

Mercedes Mackay and Mel Gonzales after being crowned homecoming queen and king. The photo was taken by Fernando Gonzales, Mel’s father. Photograph: Courtesy of Mel Conzales

‘I would get weird looks that I had walked into the wrong restroom’

For Gonzales, freshman year was tough. It was the first time that he came to terms with his identity as a transgender male.

“I was born biologically female, but I now identify as a male. Freshman year, I hadn’t transitioned socially at all,” he says. In middle school, Gonzales identified as “a girl who was attracted to other girls”. “The whole idea of switching gender identities was foreign to the majority of the people at that school,” he said. Including himself.

Prior to his own transition, Gonzales didn’t know anyone who was transgender or who had transitioned. Most of his knowledge on the subject came from the internet. Since he now identified as male, Gonzales began to use the men’s room in and out of school.

“I looked very male. There were classmates who recognized me as ‘Oh, that lesbian’,” he says. No one ever directly told him that he didn’t belong in there, but they didn’t make him feel welcome either. “I would get weird looks, like I had walked into the wrong restroom. My whole idea was just to get in there and go.”

After someone reported him for using the wrong restroom, Gonzales met with a counselor. Despite the fact that Gonzales identified as a male, he was told to use the women’s bathroom. Afraid of being harassed, being yelled at and kicked out of yet another bathroom, Gonzales decided not to use the school’s bathrooms at all. After some time, he began using the nurse’s bathroom, a gender-neutral single-stall restroom.

When he transitioned medically in his sophomore year and his gender marker on his ID changed to male, Gonzales was given permission to use the men’s room at school. Now, in his senior year, Gonzales uses the men’s room.

However, not every transgender student might have that option.

Transgender students in Texas and Kentucky might have it even tougher if the bills proposed by their state politicians pass into laws. The HB 2801 bill proposed by state Republican representative Gilbert Peña in Texas includes $2,000 in damages for “mental anguish” experienced by anyone who finds a member of the opposite sex using the wrong bathroom, shower or locker room.

In Kentucky, under the first version of the bill, the school where such an incident takes place would have to pay out $2,500 plus attorney fees. The Kentucky bill was introduced by senator C B Embry in response to Louisville high school allowing transgender students to use the facilities of their gender identity, according to US News.

These so-called damages are a “bounty” for reporting transgender students who violate these strict bathroom policies, say LGBT activists.

The Kentucky bill has since been changed and no longer includes a section explaining the punishment, according to Mother Jones. The bills don’t stop with schools, however.

Florida: ‘If you don’t want men in the [women’s] restroom, this is not the law to enact’

In Florida, state representative Frank Artiles has introduced a bill that would prevent transgender people from using bathrooms meant for the sex other than what they were assigned at birth. The bill, which has already passed through two subcommittees, is to be heard by the house judiciary committee later this week. The bill has been amended to make exceptions for parents or guardians accompanying a child that is not of the same gender or those carrying out a job – say a janitor or a sports reporter in a locker room.

For Florida’s LGBT activists, no amendments will be enough.

“There is nothing that we can see that can make this bill palatable or acceptable to the transgender community. It’s too discriminatory. It’s too marginalizing of the community,” Gina Duncan, transgender inclusion director at Equality Florida, told the Guardian.

The bill is intended to keep men out of women’s bathrooms and help prevent assaults, rapes, molestations and voyeurism. Yet it would effectively force transgender men to use the women’s bathroom, as that is the sex they were assigned at birth.

“My gender marker on my license and everything is female. If this law goes into effect, I am required by law to go into the female restroom,” Will Ryan, a doctoral student in biology at Florida State University, told the lawmakers of the government operations subcommittee. “If you don’t want men in the [women’s] restroom, this is not the law to enact. Because I will be in the restroom with your wives, with your daughters, by law, so that I don’t get arrested.”

“[The bill] is actually creating the very dilemma that [Artiles] is trying to alleviate,” says Duncan.

In Texas, state representative Debbie Riddle introduced two similar bills during this year’s session. Her HB 1747 makes entering a public restroom of the opposite sex a disorderly conduct offense. Under this bill, sex is determined by a person’s driver’s license. Her second bill, HB 1748, is less flexible in that it applies to any individual over 13 years old and makes entering shower, locker room or bathroom of an opposite sex a Class A misdemeanor. In this case, sex is “established by the individual’s chromosomes”.

Gonzales, whose driver’s license identifies him as male, would be able to use male bathroom under HB 1747. Under HB 1748, by entering a male bathroom, he would be committing a Class A misdemeanor and could face one year in jail and be fined up to $4,000.

Is the era of strictly male and female bathrooms over?

The costs of being a trans person

The transgender community is hard to measure, but by one recent statisticonly about one in five transgender people have gone through the process of changing their gender marker on their licenses, says Duncan.

Part of that is due to cost. Not everyone can afford to transition medically and undergo the invasive surgery. Duncan transitioned in 2008 while serving as a regional manager with Wells Fargo. At the time, she wasn’t able to get her gender marker changed until she had her reassignment surgery. Today, Florida allows its residents to change their gender marker if they can present a gender dysphoria letter from a mental health professional and pay $400 to legally change their name.

The new process is an improvement, but is still prohibitive, says Duncan. Many members of the community “can’t afford a mental health therapist or can’t afford the $400 for legal name change”.

States that only allow a change in gender marker post surgery are even more prohibitive, as gender reassignment surgery is often not covered by insurance and has to be paid for out of pocket, Buchert points out.

“They shouldn’t have to undergo an invasive surgery just to be able to amend their identity document,” she says. She says transgender people face epidemic levels of employment discrimination and often struggle financially as a result. “When you are not able to find a new [job], it might be challenging to put together resources to undergo the surgery if you do want it.”

‘What are they going to do at the door of every bathroom?’

What really worries activists is the enforcement of these “papers-to-pee” bills.

Riddle’s HB 1748 bill places the burden of enforcement on small businesses and other facilities operating a public bathroom. Business owners who allow those of opposite sex to enter a “wrong” bathroom could face a minimum of 180 days in prison or maximum two years, in addition to being fined up to $10,000.

“What are they going to do at the door of every bathroom – ask the person to verify chromosomes or show their papers?” asks Buchert, adding that that could result in a landslide of litigation challenging the law from both transgender people, as well as people who are incorrectly perceived as transgender.

“What if you get challenged by someone? ‘I think you are a man dressed up like a woman, and you are in the women’s room and you are marking me uncomfortable. Show me your ID,’” says Duncan, acting out a scenario.

“The bill assumes that that interaction is going to go amicably and the transgender person is going to go: ‘No worries, here is my driver’s license. Please note that it says female on my driver’s license.’ ‘Oh. OK. I feel better. Let’s be friends.’ Or what do they do? ‘Well, your driver’s license says male so you are in violation of the law, and I know about this law so stay right here until I get the management or the police and we get you arrested.’”

It’s scary to think of such bills passing, says Gonzales. In his opinion, the lawmakers pushing them and people that support them don’t understand what transgender people have to face every day.

“Using the facilities is our right,” says Gonzales. “You shouldn’t deny it to anybody.”