A transgender American can be a sibling, parent, child, friend, co-worker and even part of the Kardashian clan.

That is how far we've come in 2015: The stigma that once surrounded gender identity is giving way to compassionate conversations about a journey that can be so challenging, many people wait years or decades to embark on it publicly.

See also: The faces of transgender teen America

Yet even as we inch closer to greater acceptance, a single but very emotional issue threatens to stall that progress: how and when transgender people use a public bathroom.

Transgender people want the right to use the restroom that corresponds to their gender identity. Opponents, many of whom refuse to see a person's transition as genuine and legitimate, argue that it makes easy prey of women and girls who could be assaulted by men "disguised" as women. There's no evidence that this happens, but the fear of it is shaping local and national debates over public policy.

​While privacy advocates have been outraged by the question of bathroom access, that stance seems hollow. They have not made the same fervent case about protecting women from rapists at work or at school, nor do they acknowledge that many transgender people actually fear using bathrooms of either gender because they frequently encounter harassment and violence when they do.

The bathroom panic also casts transgender people as capable of great harm by their very nature, when in fact, evidence shows the opposite. They regularly face discrimination and harassment and do not always enjoy the same rights as their fellow Americans, including equal access to employment, housing, education and health care.

A 2011 survey of 6,450 transgender and gender non-conforming people found that 63% of respondents experienced "serious acts" of discrimination and 23% reported a "catastrophic" discrimination.

These inequities can and do have devastating consequences like job loss, homelessness and denial of health care. When not protected by the law, transgender people live in constant fear. Their means of survival can be torn away without explanation or consequence.

In some cases, the imagined fear about bathroom access has trumped the real terror that transgender people live with everyday, including the threat of deadly violence.

That's what happened when Houston voters considered an equal rights ordinance designed to protect LGBT residents, in particular, from discrimination. On Tuesday, 61% of voters repealed the law, passed in May 2014 by the city council, after its opponents characterized it as a "bathroom ordinance."

The Houston Equal Rights Ordinance made it illegal to discriminate based on a number of grounds, including pregnancy and military status, but perhaps most important among those was sexual orientation and gender identity. There is no federal or state law that fully prohibits employment discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity, and major Texas cities had passed similar ordinances to protect LGBT people from bias.

The bill was a big victory for LGBT advocates, but once put to a public vote, became a referendum on bathroom "privacy" and "safety" as opponents argued it would essentially give men the right to stalk and assault girls and women in a public bathroom.

Those opposed are bigoted misogynists because they don't want men in bathrooms with women and little girls? Interesting. #HERO #Houston — Adam (@KeepItRealist) November 4, 2015

Surveys have shown that the majority of Americans say they don't know someone who is transgender — or is at least openly transgender — so it's unsurprising that misconceptions would prevail.

At 700,000, the estimated number of transgender Americans is much smaller than the 8 million people who identify as gay, lesbian and bisexual.

This means comparatively fewer opportunities to disprove stereotypes, including that sharing a bathroom, or any other public accommodation, with a transgender person will somehow be dangerous. The emotional appeals from the opposition on this issue only make it harder for the public to see and value their shared humanity with transgender people.

In Houston, supporters of the ordinance argued that it is already illegal to enter a restroom to harass or attack someone, and that the bill wouldn't protect or promote that kind of behavior, but that mattered little.

“Houstonians refused to be bullied by the agents of political correctness who wanted to force them to allow men to use women’s public accommodations," Dr. Steven Hotze, president of the Campaign for Houston, said following the vote. "This sends a message to the rest of the country that Houston is a family oriented city with a moral backbone.”

Michael Silverman, executive director of the Transgender Legal Defense & Education Fund, a New York-based advocacy organization, believes the opposition sent a different message with its "fear-mongering tactics." Those included a television ad, paid for by the Campaign for Houston, that featured a man stalking a girl in the restroom and ominously following her into a stall.

"I think the vote in Houston was a wakeup call to much of America about the deep-rooted bias and animosity that still exists toward transgender people," says Silverman.

Privacy advocates can respectfully raise their concerns, but should prepare themselves for the possibility that their anxieties are unfounded. For years, lesbians and gays fought vicious stereotypes portraying them as deviants or pedophiles, but the mainstream has fundamentally rejected that belief, and the discrimination it perpetuated.

The same is possible for the public's relationship with the transgender community, and the first step could well be acknowledging that trans people don't want access to the correct bathroom to exploit other people's vulnerability, but simply to live every moment of their lives authentically and free from violence.

Silverman believes the bathroom battle will persist until more Americans personally know a transgender person. Meanwhile, this issue will continue to play out in legislatures and in the courts, but legal relief may arrive sooner than expected.

Today, everyone in Houston is more vulnerable to job discrimination, HERO lost because of lies about LGBT people. #HERO — Rev Dr Nancy Wilson (@RevNancyWilson) November 4, 2015

The Obama administration filed a brief this week in support of a transgender student's lawsuit regarding a ban on bathroom use. On Monday, the Department of Education ruled that a Chicago school district violated a transgender student's rights by prohibiting her from using the girl's locker room.

These victories and others like them may help prove to Americans that transgender people use the bathroom for the same reason as anyone else — and deserve this basic, dignifying right. Once the appeal to fear loses its power, there will be no option but to confront the entrenched discrimination that transgender people regularly endure.

"Those of us who work in the community know that the struggle is real, that people are suffering every day and that the road ahead of us is a long and difficult one," says Silverman, "but we’re going to stay on that road because there is no alternative to freedom."