Over the last few years, transgender and gender nonconforming people have started to come out of the darkness of isolation. For many people, our lives are new and confusing. Some of this confusion is based on misinformation and hateful propaganda directed against the transgender community. As a transgender woman, I wish to address the bathroom controversy. Since the advent of public restrooms, transgender men and women have been using public restrooms along with cis men and women without any controversy or concern. However, last year, a very private manner that everyone does multiple times a day became politicized. Unfounded paranoia about “men in dresses” sexually assaulting cis women in the ladies room has led to draconian laws that threaten women like myself with jail time for using the restroom that corresponds to our gender. Whether its the Religious Right or “Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists”, TERFS, many people are using the serious and painful experience of sexual assault to promote transphobia. As a sexual assault survivor myself, it is extremely painful to hear accusations that I am a “sexual predator” because I just need to pee! As a Christian, I am appalled at so called ministries blatantly spreading lies and misinformation. During the summer of 2016, religious conservatives created a false panic in Fairfield by telling a group of parents and high school cis girls that by letting trans girls use the same bathroom, cis girls would be forced to shower and change with men. Nothing could have been further from the truth. Innocently, these girls were frightened and worried enough to not want to even come to school. People are not born bigoted, it is taught. It is time that truth reigns in this debate rather than fear, paranoia, misinformation and outright lies. Transgender women are just as vulnerable and at risk of violence, including sexual violence. By forcing trans women to use the men’s room and trans men to use the women’s restroom due to genitalia, our community is at risk of more violence and harassment. At Iowa State, we have sporadic gender neutral restrooms. However, not every building on campus has a gender neutral option. In the College of Business for instance, there are restrooms on every floor. However, the restrooms are either men’s or women’s. It is not equal treatment for trans students who attend class in Gerdin or in other buildings without gender neutral restooms to walk across campus just to find a place to relieve themselves before their next class while cis men and women can easily just find the restroom that corresponds to their gender. This is separate and unequal and has no place in a college campus or any part of civilized society. We have gotten rid of separate facilities based on color and race, when will we do the same with separate and unequal facilities based on gender identity and expression?