Media Asking Wrong Questions on North Carolina’s ‘Bathroom Law’
By Janine Jackson
April 14, 2016
In the wake of North Carolina’s new law banning transgender people from using restrooms that correspond with their gender identity in publicly run facilities and schools, you will have heard media asking what things like the cancellation of a Bruce Springsteen concert might mean for the state’s economy.
You will have heard how Gov. Pat McCrory, who signed the law, now finds himself in the “Crossfire of GOP Civil War,” as a Washington Post headline (4/13/16) sympathetically put it.
You will have heard the question posed as a battle between freedoms: The Today show April 10 spoke of backlash against “various religious freedom laws,” and explained, “At issue: the rights of the LGBT community pitted against those of people with religious objections.”
What you have heard little or none of is what Media Matters research fellow Carlos Maza (3/24/16) called “The Question Every Reporter Should Be Asking About Transgender Bathroom Bans,” namely: “How Is the Government Supposed to Figure Out a Person’s Biological Sex?”
Maza noted that media are amplifying right-wing myths about privacy and women’s safety, even though
the idea that men will pretend to be transgender to sneak into women’s restrooms has been debunked by law enforcement experts, government officials and women’s safety advocates in cities and states across the country.
But while media are busy working through anti-LGBT talking points, they aren’t asking Republican politicians to explain how they’ll enforce laws that would require people to prove their “biological sex” at the bathroom door. The law says people must use facilities that corresponding to the sex “stated on a person’s birth certificate.” So people should carry their birth certificates with them at all times?
You can’t prove someone is transgender just by looking at them. But business owners and, hey, other bathroom-goers should make snap judgments about who does and doesn’t belong?
Scarier still, Maza notes that some states are looking at bills that would award damages to anyone who shared a bathroom with a transgender person. So if media are indeed concerned with encouraging violations of privacy and safety, there are plenty of questions to ask. They just need to be sure they’re asking the right people.
Janine Jackson is program director of FAIR and the producer and host of CounterSpin.
http://fair.org/home/media-asking-wrong-questions-on-north-carolinas-bathroom-law/
= new reply since forum marked as read
...maybe we could have transgender folks wear some kind of armband or maybe a symbol sewn on their clothing so we'll all know who we need to fear in the bathroom. That's the ticket, sew some kind of recognizable symbol onto their coats. Make it bright yellow and big so you can see if from the stall all the way at the end. That's a new idea.
Yeah, that'll make America great again.
Sunday discussing this.
There are protests in NC over this. His poll ratings are down. He is up for re-election. He can be charming. He was seen as a future Presidential Contender when he was elected Governor.
Even with the protests and pressure about NC losing business and gaining a bad reputation, he's not really backing down. Says he's doing the best he can, and will call a "Special Session" of the Legislature to "reconsider" the vote.
Many can't wait for him to be sent out of office dragging some "tar and feathers." He had much promise when he was elected as a Moderate Repub from Charlotte...but, he was "Captured" and has turned the state way back in time....an ugly time.
But, then, so many states are suffering through this stuff. Much "clean up" needs to be done. Lot's of work ahead. 