The manager of the Long Branch Lagoon Water Park in Dodge City, Kansas reportedly screamed and rushed children out of the women’s restroom and changing area on August 8 after three self-described “bearded, burly” transgender men wearing yellow “Compliance Crew” t-shirts followed state law and used the municipal facilities matching the sex listed on their birth certificates, trans journalist S. Baum reported.
The men neither removed their clothes nor made any crass comments while in the facility, but they had to provide police “uncomfortable descriptions” about their bodies and genitals in order to avoid arrest. The three are part of an activist group that has been entering girls’ and women’s facilities elsewhere in the state (as required by law) to protest the absurdity of Kansas’ transphobic bathroom ban. The police in this incident had neither heard of the ban’s passage last February nor their expectation to enforce it.
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“Supporters of S.B. 244, including Attorney General Kris Kobach and Senate Majority Leader Ty Masterson, billed it as a way to keep men out of women’s spaces; it clearly requires some men to enter women’s spaces,” said the activist group, KS SB244 Compliance Crew, in a press release.
“Segregating people by suspected genitalia does nothing to improve public safety; it does quite the opposite by opening Kansans up to sexual harassment and discrimination. At no point should anyone be asking anyone else what genitals they have in public,” the release added.
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Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly (D) vetoed S.B. 244 last February, but Republicans overrode her veto days later. The law invalidates existing state-issued driver’s licenses and birth certificates with gender markers that do not match a person’s sex assigned at birth, and bans future gender marker changes on those documents.
The law allows penalties up to $125,000 in taxpayer funds against local government entities that fail to enforce the law’s transphobic bathroom ban provision. The law also allows individuals to personally sue violators for up to $1,000 in “damages” and threatens violators with up to six months in jail. The ACLU of Kansas immediately sued over the law; the evidentiary court hearing for a temporary injunction against the law is scheduled for September 29.
“Trans feminine people face the brunt of the KS Legislature’s demonization while trans masculine folks are infantilized and characterized as non-threatening. We believe it’s important to use that relative advantage to work for change,” the trans protest group’s website states.
Charles, one of the protestors, told Baum, “As trans men and transmasculine people, we have a really unique opportunity to demonstrate, with action, visually, just exactly how wrong that [law’s passage] was. That the law does not actually do what it was advertised to do,” which is make women and girls feel safe.
The protest group has entered girls and women’s facilities in a zoo, library, museum, and other parks located in the municipalities of Emporia, Great Bend, Garden City, and Dodge City. While one person complained at the zoo, the other occasions have passed without incident, except for some disapproving looks.
Theodore, another protestor, said that when news reports of their protest spread online, commenters called them pedophiles, threatened rape and violence against them, and spewed anti-trans conspiracies and hatred.
Ray Vieux, another one of the protestors, told Baum that he regularly blends in with other men and has continued to use the men’s room numerous times since the law’s passage. “These laws force me to choose between safety and obeying the law,” he said.
“S.B. 244 endangers all Kansans by allowing whomever-is-in-the-bathroom-at-the-time to file criminal and/or civil charges based on rash judgements of appearance,” the protest group wrote on its website. “Protecting women and children matters! Pointing fingers at trans people does nothing to prevent or solve the serious issue of assault.”
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