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The National Center for Transgender Equality on Wednesday posted an April Fools' Day joke mocking the absurdity of bathroom bills seeking to stop trans people from using the restroom that matches their gender identity.
The National Center for Transgender Equality is proud to announce that it will open a new state-of- the-art laboratory in the basement of its Washington DC headquarters to create transgender people who do not need to pee. The project is being funded with a $1,000,000 grant from the Florida State Legislature, which has spent much of the last few months considering a bill that would make it illegal for transgender people to use public restrooms.
The post takes a direct shot at Florida, where legislators recently introduced a bill that prohibits trans people from entering the bathroom that matches their gender identity, in response to an ordinance passed by Miami-Dade County that prohibits discrimination on the basis of gender identity and expression.
State Rep. Frank Artiles told the Miami Herald that the bill is necessary to prevent "sexual deviants and sexual predators" from walking into a woman's bathroom or shower under the cover of the law. "A man such as myself can walk into the bathroom at LA Fitness while women are taking showers, changing, and simply walk in there," he said. "If I feel like a woman that day, I can be allowed to be in that locker room. I don't know about you, but I find that disturbing."
But trans people say they just want to use the correct bathroom, recently taking up the Twitter hashtag #wejustneedtopee to show their discontent with the state bills:
#transawareness #occupotty #translivesmatter #wejustneedtopee pic.twitter.com/b0f1znAYRh
— Michael C. Hughes (@_michaelhughes1) March 11, 2015
