A right-wing activist in the United States has said that he would pretend to be a transgender woman in order to be allowed to share bathrooms and changing rooms in attacking a California anti-discrimination initiative.

Dan Joseph of the right-wing Media Research Center posted a video to YouTube entitled, ‘The Transgender Bathroom-Locker Room Question,’ in which he filmed himself talking to students at a Virginia university campus and asked them question about whether they would be prepared to share bathrooms and change rooms with transgender people, trying to solicit negative responses.

One of the students told Joseph, ‘High school kids get away with a lot of bad stuff – a lot of kid nowadays would probably take advantage of this,’ to which Joseph says, ‘You mean like a guy who just wants to see some naked chicks going “oh, I’m transgendered and I need to go to the girls locker room?"’

The student replies, ‘exactly,’ to which Joseph then says, ‘I mean, that’s what I would do.’

The video then shows hidden camera footage in which Joseph, dressed like a male college student and talking in a stereotypical camp gay voice stops a female student who is about to enter a changing room and tells her he’s transgender and asks if she would be ok with him changing in there with her.

‘I’m a transgender,’ Joseph tells the student.

‘So that means I have the man parts but inside I feel more like a woman. I was just wondering, is it okay if I go in there with you in there and change and shower and stuff? Just because I don’t really feel, like, comfortable in the men’s area. It’s just weird. Is that okay with you?’

The California law allows transgender students from kindergarten to grade 12 to access bathrooms and changing rooms of their preferred gender and also play on the sports teams of their preferred gender.

Joseph is not alone in saying he would lie to get into girls changing rooms – Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly said on 13 August, ‘If I get reincarnated, when I’m a teenager – bam!’ indicating he would pretend to be transgender and go straight into girls changing rooms.

Fox News’s Greg Gutfeld had voiced the same-sentiments only a few days earlier filling in for O’Reilly.

‘As a devious teen growing up, I would tell girls that I’m a girl trapped in a boy’s body, just so I could sneak into the girls’ bathroom,’ Gutfeld said 9 August.