Laws like North Carolina’s HB2 force me to get a Texas court order to change my Ohio birth certificate in order to pee in a North Carolina women’s restroom. This is obviously ridiculous, but HB2 isn’t about bathrooms — it’s about who gets to decide which identities are allowed in America.

Taken verbatim from the Constitution

While trans people have rarely received positive TV coverage in the past, our increased visibility can’t be ignored. So rather than attack trans people directly, many HB2 supporters argue it’s a safety issue (when it isn’t). Conservative Charles Krauthammer called HB2 a ‘solution in search of a problem’ and Fox News’s Megyn Kelly questioned McCrory’s defense of HB2.

If conservatives are starting to accept transgender people’s existence, that seems like a win, only until we’re told laws giving us equal rights create exploitable loopholes and need to be overturned. When Ted Cruz says he “isn’t concerned about the Caitlyn Jenners of the world” — he makes it seem like trans issues are something he’s open to discussing, we just have to be more specific (let’s ignore that even Republicans consider Cruz dishonest).

So what makes a legal sex, gender, or gender identity? In this case, the North Carolina General Assembly decided a birth certificate is more important than a drivers license or passport, even though both are more recent and relevant in your daily life (this ignores how trans people have difficulty getting correct identification). Many trans advocates rightly argue ID laws aren’t enough, because regardless of what an ID says, if someone’s gender expression doesn’t match societal norms, they’re more likely subject to harassment, discrimination, and other negative outcomes everywhere.

Women were being kicked out of bathrooms before HB2 was a thing, and transgender and cisgender women experience so much gender policing that it appears linked to increased suicide attempts. So people like Trae Crowder call it like it is: people don’t like ideas that make them uncomfortable.

When Black Lives Matters highlights racial issues, they make white people uncomfortable. When a gay couple exists in public, they make heterosexual people uncomfortable. When Jennicet Gutierrez interrupted Obama during a Pride celebration, she made white trans women uncomfortable, because “that kind of action in that context isn’t how we best win our rights” (I disagree).

So when Donald Trump says trans people aren’t a problem in the bathroom, it isn’t because he doesn’t realize that makes his base uncomfortable. He just knows other identities, like Muslim and immigrant, make even more people even more uncomfortable, which helps his polling numbers with xenophobes.

This is no more about bathrooms than voter ID laws are about “common sense” measures to protect against electoral fraud. This is just another way for conservatives to control whose voice, vote, and identity counts in their America — an America that increasingly looks a lot less like them.