From the Archives: What These Sexual Abuse Survivors Think of ‘Transgender’ Restrooms

Originally published in May 2016.

After the U.S. Department of Justice threatened to cut off North Carolina’s federal funding because lawmakers don’t believe men pretending to be women should have access to women’s restrooms and changing rooms, lawmakers called the move overreach and said they won’t back down.

Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), a Christian legal firm that represents Americans fighting to protect their religious freedom, filed a lawsuit on behalf of students and parents against the U.S. Departments of Justice and Education. From the ADF:

The DOJ disregarded student privacy and safety when it issued letters threatening the suspension of federal funding for North Carolina’s schools and university system, as well as federal financial aid for North Carolina’s university students, unless the state government repudiated the law known as House Bill 2. That law ensures that government facilities and public schools protect personal privacy by maintaining sex-specific restrooms, locker rooms, and showers. The DOJ then filed suit against the state on Monday, the same day that the governor and the General Assembly each sued the agency over its illegitimate demands.
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The lawsuit, North Carolinians for Privacy v. United States Department of Justice, asks the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina, Western Division, to declare that the DOJ and DOE exceeded their authority by redefining “sex” in Title IX, and that federal law does not forbid sex-specific restrooms and locker rooms. Liberty, Life, and Law Foundation attorney Deborah Dewart, one of more than 3,000 private attorneys allied with ADF, is serving as local counsel in the case.

ADF posted a video about sexually abused women, the kind liberals apparently don’t think about when calling for grown men to walk into rooms where women expect privacy.

Gretchen Flores said she was molested at the age of 10 by her swimming coach in the locker room. Imagine how she’d feel today if a man walked into a private place where she was changing her clothes.

Kaeley Triller said she’d been sexually exploited during her childhood. She was so traumatized, she used to shower in her underwear. She was a YMCA communications director when her boss asked her to draft talking points about men using the same restrooms as women and girls. Triller didn’t want to do it.

It’s irrelevant whether the man is pretending to be a woman or has no intent to exploit, she said. To turn around and see a man in the bathroom with you is “an instant trigger.”

Watch the brief clip to find out what happened with Triller’s job and to hear other women’s stories.