Conservative Trolls Have Been Suggesting Men Go into Women's Restrooms to Help Legislators Discriminate Against Trans People

Anti-trans bathroom bill supporters rallied in Olympia on Monday. Alex Garland

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It's one thing for conservative legislators to throw out specious arguments about the possibility of men abusing an anti-discrimination rule that protects transgender people in bathrooms.

It's another thing to try and goad male conservatives into using women's restrooms in order to prove a point. Over the last two months, Facebook users who support the anti-trans discrimination bills in the state legislature have been suggesting that men invade those spaces in order to drum up support for the legislation.

On the Facebook page for "Keep Locker Rooms Safe," a group supporting the anti-trans bills, one commenter responded to a January 6 "call to action" like this:

Keep Locker Rooms Safe/Facebook

On another page encouraging supporters to turn out for a hearing in Olympia on SB 6443, a Facebook user named Ryan Hart said that he thought, "A group of men should go 'occupy' all the women's restrooms in the building to prove the point that men should not be welcome there."

Pack the House I Senate Bill Hearing 6443/Facebook

Yesterday, a commenter on the Family Policy Institute of Washington's Facebook page suggested that men ought to undress in the women's restroom in the state's Human Rights Commission building. Commenters on news stories have proposed similar stunts.

This week, KING 5 posted a story about pool employees reporting a man in board shorts using the women's locker room and claiming he was protected by the state's anti-discrimination laws. (He was asked to leave and did.) The incident itself occurred two days before an important vote on the issue in the state legislature.

We still don't know all the details about the Evans Pool incident, but it's worth pointing out that anti-trans groups across the country have repeatedly seeded the news with meritless stories about men in women's restrooms. Curious that the very people who claim to want to protect cisgender women from creepy, straight cis men might be encouraging creepy dudes to go into those bathrooms in the first place.