In mid-to-late October, I read an opinion piece in the Iowa State Daily that included a specific line referring to the Civil Rights Act being used to “push men into women’s bathrooms.”
In isolation, it sounds silly, and maybe you see no reason to look deeper. The author certainly didn’t, since he chose not to elaborate.
But I think it’s a sign of something more, a dog whistle designed to keep the reader at a surface level to mask a deeper meaning.
Dog whistles, in a political context, are a form of coded language used to signal certain values to those in the know without alienating those who aren’t. They often involve an agreeable, surface-level statement and are a favorite tactic of anyone who wants to present their views as simple and universal.
But there is no such thing as simple politics.
A common dog whistle related to that earlier bathroom line refers to “biological males” and “biological females” when discussing human sexual variance. Most Americans probably see nothing wrong with those terms and therefore do not question further.
But putting aside the sheer amount of human biology that the two sexes do not cover (I’d recommend Anne Fausto-Sterling’s “The Five Sexes, Revisited” as a starting point), referring to sex via a “biological” binary is most commonly a targeted act against intersex and transgender people.
For example, this kind of language was amended into the Iowa Civil Rights Act, making it so that employment and housing policies are legally allowed to discriminate based on gender identity. If an employer or realtor doesn’t like how an applicant presents or identifies, they’re allowed to deny them for that reason.
It was also used in a U.S. executive order in January, one currently blocked by the District Court of Massachusetts, requiring that passports only refer to assigned sex at birth, which can endanger intersex and transgender people by outing them to bigots or other violent actors, as described by plaintiffs in the ongoing Orr v. Trump case.
Now, I’d like to bring us back to the column line that worries me: “[pushing] men into women’s bathrooms.”
This, too, is a dog whistle, most often used in the refusal of trans women’s identities, labeling them as men and banning them from a particular space. The same can be said of attempts to “ban men from women’s sports,” which also work to create a space in which trans women cannot exist.
The bathroom bans are often framed in the name of safety, though they guarantee none for the cisgender women they claim to protect. If someone wants to commit violence, is a bathroom sign going to stop them?
The sports bans are framed in the name of fairness, separating on physical ability, as many sports do. But a difference of ability between the sexes cannot be fully proven, as no man and woman have ever been raised in the same context with the same emphasis on physical development.
Both arguments, both dog whistles, break under slight pressure, and so must push the reader to a surface understanding. That’s why that column quote feels no need to justify itself. If it can keep the audience on a surface level, it simply won’t be challenged.
But it needs to be challenged, because if they aren’t what they say on the surface, then what are these bioessentialist arguments meant for? The answer is obvious: They serve to create spaces where transgender people are not allowed to exist.
By changing the framing of the argument around “common sense” and inviting a surface-level understanding, a lot of transphobic politics justifies the continued exclusion of trans people from public spaces until trans people cannot exist in public at all.
If these statements go unchallenged, trans people like myself will be forced out of the public eye, and if you don’t pay attention, then people you know, friends, coworkers and family will live in a world that assumes they don’t exist.
To make matters worse, those anti-trans measures cannot be enforced without harming non-trans people as well.
Enforcement of bathroom or sports bans would require mandatory genital inspections to be accurate, and anyone whose body varies from the assumed binary outline would suffer. Everyone would face consequences, and all to avoid accepting people with different relationships to gender.
Don’t let people get away with dog whistles. Don’t let them rope you into a surface-level understanding. Ask for elaboration. Ask yourself where a certain way of thinking leads.
You may not be able to end a dangerous line of thought, but stopping to question it could shield you and your loved ones from harm.
Self-written bio: Erin O’Brien is a senior Technical Communications major at Iowa State and an avid writer. She’s also published in the latest issue of Sketch, if you like short fiction.
