A coalition of LBGTQ rights groups will be debuting a commercial on Fox News criticising the country’s anti-transgender laws during next week’s Republican National Convention where Donald Trump will accept the Republican nomination.
Advertisement
The minute-long ad features Alaina Kupec, a transgender woman from North Carolina, attempting to use a restaurant bathroom in a staged scene.
The ad campaign coincides with the release of new data on the impact of the public restroom issue on transgender people, including harassment and physical assaults. The bill sparked national debate, generating public outrage across large swaths of the population. It will air on Fox News-surprise!-during Trump’s speech.
The ad depicts a transgender woman being denied access to a bathroom by a restaurant worker.
Since the Republican National Committee has expressed support (pdf) for “bathroom bills” like North Carolina’s, it is particularly striking that the ad will air during the conservative party’s convention.
“This ad cuts through the political rhetoric and simply asks people to consider the serious challenges and discrimination faced by transgender people – discrimination that is still legal in most states”, said Ineke Mushovic, executive director of the Movement Advancement Project, which developed the ad. A male employee at the restaurant, however, stops her from going into the women’s restroom. “Most people have never met someone who’s transgender, so their heads are filled with all sorts of stereotypes”.
The bathroom statistics were released Monday as preliminary findings of the 2015 US Transgender Survey.
North Carolina has been at the center of this controversy after Gov.
“Our newly released survey data shows that 59 percent of transgender people avoided bathrooms in the a year ago out of fear of harassment”.
Advertisement
Eight percent said they’d had a kidney or urinary tract infection or another kidney-related problem because they’d avoided using bathrooms.
