Protesters head into the Legislative building for a sit-in against House Bill 2 in Raleigh, N.C., on Monday. While demonstrations circled North Carolina’s statehouse for and against a Republican-backed law curtailing protections for LGBT people and limiting public bathroom access for transgender people, House Democrats filed a repeal bill that stands little chance of passing. Credit: Associated Press

It's apparently not enough that transgender people already are disproportionately the targets of violence and discrimination in this country. Conservative lawmakers looking to score political points have decided that their very right to use public restrooms — to pee in peace — also should come under attack.

Wisconsin's own Rep. Jesse Kremer took time out of his busy schedule to add misdirection and ridicule to the fire when he issued a release decrying Target for its corporate policy of inclusion, and talking up his own (so far failed) efforts to introduce legislation that would codify transphobia into state law.

Perhaps Kremer is trying to ride the dirty coattails of Ted Cruz, a struggling Republican candidate for president. Cruz, in response to Donald Trump's own flip-flopping on the topic, has made several statements in favor of North Carolina's recently passed "bathroom bill" that forces people to use bathrooms based on their sex assigned at birth.

There are at least 29 anti-transgender bathroom bills under consideration across the country. It's a backlash against recent strides made for LGBTQ rights that is as horrifying as it is sadly predictable.

With the focus having been so heavily on marriage equality, many of us either lost sight of or never saw to begin with the struggles of the most vulnerable members of our community. Extremists looking to claw out space for their backward and dangerous views, however, saw the opportunity clearly. We're now paying a price for that failure to plan and fully support the trans and gender nonconforming members of the community.

Trans LifeLine, a suicide prevention hotline for transgender people, has seen its call volume nearly double since North Carolina's HB2 was enacted. Greta Gustava Martela, co-founder of the hotline, points to recent waves of legislative attacks on the trans community, adding that people might be feeling discouraged about future prospects: "If I had to guess what's being impacted I think (it's) probably people's hope for the future."

Barring people from using the public restroom that aligns with their sense of self is not merely an inconvenience. It's a dehumanizing tactic similar to the Jim Crow era laws that forced African-Americans to use segregated drinking fountains, bathrooms, entrances. Now as then, the motivation behind the rules had nothing to do with safety. These are tactics of intimidation and fear, meant to establish a bigoted hierarchy of who's considered worthy of rights and respect.

Kremer takes the same, ignorant tack as Cruz and others who champion discrimination: He claims that it's all about "protecting women and girls" from predators, taking a sudden interest in the emotional and physical well-being of women that is otherwise absent from his political record. Putting aside the deeply patriarchal implications that women need protection both by and from men, of course, this isn't really about safety. Transgender women are not "men pretending to be women." They are women. Trans men are men. Biology is not destiny.

Even if you can't understand the whys and hows of transgender identity, there's no reason to use that as an excuse to actively target and discriminate against transgender people.

Furthermore, how are such laws to be enforced? Who gets to stand guard at the doors checking people's birth certificates or under their clothes? How is that not the far greater invasion of privacy and safety? How do you, just by looking, determine who should be stopped and who can go in?

I'll use myself as an example: I'm female assigned at birth, and identify as female (a.k.a. "cisgender," not trans) but I've received plenty of comments from readers of this column alone who seem genuinely agitated that pictures of me don't look like how they think a woman should look. I've been physically and verbally harassed for using the women's restroom since I was a child, by people who thought I was a man in the "wrong" room. I'm not about to drop my pants or carry around a copy of my birth certificate in order to prove anything to these people.

That is not the country I want to live in, nor should it be one you want to live in. Transgender people face too much danger simply for living honest, open lives. There's no risk in the rest of us choosing to be decent humans.

Emily Mills is a freelance writer who lives in Madison. Twitter: @millbot; Email: emily.mills@outlook.com