Supporters of North Carolina's HB2, which prohibits people from using public bathrooms that don't match the sex on their birth certificates, often argue that trans people could sexually assault people in bathrooms. A recent ad against North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper, who wants to repeal HB2 if he's elected Governor, employs this transphobic argument in the most offensive way possible.
"Any man at any time could enter a women's bathroom simply by claiming to be a woman that day," the narrator warns. "Even registered sex offenders could follow women or young girls into the bathroom or locker room and no one could stop them."
Of course, in reality, there has literally never been a sexual assault reported at the hands of a trans person in a bathroom, according to Mic. And if there were, someone could indeed stop them because sexual assault is already illegal, in bathrooms and elsewhere, regardless of the offender's gender identity.
The North Carolina Values Coalition and the National Organization for Marriage sponsored the ad, LGBTQ Nation reports. "North Carolina has ground zero in the fight to impose transgender bathrooms on the nation in the 2016 Gubernatorial election," its Youtube description reads.
Cooper is running against North Carolina's current Governor Pat McCrory, who signed HB2 into law. The Attorney General is currently ahead in the polls 48.4 to 46.2, according to RealClearPolitics. A Reuters/Ipsos poll found that 38% of voters have negative feelings toward McCrory as a result of his stance on the bathroom bill.
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