Trans-inclusive bathroom policy let a predator into a girls' school
Robby Starbuck said:
“This has happened in American schools where girls were raped by a guy with a penis who went in there and said they were trans. In Virginia schools, this happened multiple times when they allowed a boy to go in there, and he raped these girls by saying that he was trans, and that's how he was allowed in that space.”
A specific location (Virginia schools) and a specific mechanism (claiming trans identity to gain access) makes this sound like documented fact rather than speculation, and the harm described is serious and real.
The Loudoun County case was real, and the assault was real, and the harm to the young people involved was real. What is not real is the part of this story that gets repeated: the student was not transgender, did not identify as transgender, and gained no access through a trans-inclusive policy. Court records and subsequent reporting confirmed this. The version being described here, a predator claiming trans identity to enter a space and commit assault, did not happen in that case, and researchers looking across the many US states and countries that have had trans-inclusive bathroom policies for years have found no documented pattern of it happening at all. What does happen, consistently and in the data, is that trans women face far greater risk of harassment and violence in public spaces than they pose to anyone else. Casting trans girls and women as a predatory threat, on the basis of a case that does not support it, is not protecting anyone: it is the thing that puts them in danger.
What I said at the time:
“That's horrific. Do you say to your daughters, Be careful if you are in a space with a male on their own, because that male might rape you.”
Trans girls and women, who are cast as a predatory threat in shared spaces, fuelling policy that excludes them from facilities they need and exposing them to greater risk of harassment and violence.