Family Policy Institute of Washington’s “Just Want Privacy”: Lies, Transphobia, and What to Do About It
Another anti-trans petition is now gathering signatures in Washington state, and that’s just what we fucking need, right? More pointless exclusion of our friends, coworkers, and neighbors to soothe our itchies about a world careening beyond our control?
At this point, since bathroom bills are clearly going to whack-a-mole themselves back into Washington state politics every year like a liberty-devouring invasive species, I thought it was time to figure out just who the fuck is behind these bills, what the fuck they think they’re doing, and how the hell we stop them.
Who the fuck? Rip off Just Want Privacy’s rubber mask and you get mean Christians
The folks behind last year’s failed anti-trans efforts are back again, and they are the Family Policy Institute of Washington, via the ballot initiative campaign Just Want Privacy. For everything you need to know about the quality and nuance of their policy, take a gander at their actual logo:
And this is their president, Joseph Backholm. As well as being the dude who registered Just Want Privacy, Backholm is the star of JWP’s video series advising pastors on how to rope their congregations into backing this nonsense:
Let’s ignore the fact that Joseph Backholm sounds like the name of a revivalist preacher with bodies in the basement, and just breeze past his uncomfortable, dead-eyed smile. The Family Policy Institute of Washington is exactly as creeptastic as you’d assume based on the name, with a track record that includes fighting against marriage equality and defending conversion therapy.
So what the fuck do they think they’re doing?
Just Want Privacy, like many anti-trans outfits around the country, alleges that they want to keep women and girls safe by not enshrining in statute that “men” can come into bathrooms and rape them.
The bathroom bill crowd tends to make two appeals: One, trans crime is somehow a special, scary kind of crime that should disqualify trans and nonbinary people from using the right public facilities. Or two, no no no transgender people are fine, they’re so lovely!! It’s just that if we have equal protections, pervy men will feel emboldened to go after our children!!! (Just the girl ones though.)
At the center of this terror buffet is Just Want Privacy’s “Incidents” page, a laundry list of the crimes and controversies that demonstrate how terrible it is to offer our citizens equal protection under the law.
Slight problem: At least a quarter of these incidents have nothing to do with what Just Want Privacy claims they’re worried about. I know this because in my infinite kindness, I decided to do an extreme vetting of JWP’s sources, which you can find in its entirety here:
Here are some highlights:
- Of the 53 sources cited, six represented “double reporting” in which the same incident was covered twice without acknowledging the fact. In other words, three sources were duplicates and were omitted from number-crunching.
- Nine out of the 50 remaining sources suffer from a variety of credibility issues: four were fake news or tabloid outlets; three were blogs whose analyses contained gross misrepresentation of their source material; one is an organization designated an anti-LGBTQ+ hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center; and one is an article that quotes Joseph Backholm, which seemed like a snake-eating-its-tail level of conflicted interest. These credibility-challenged sources comprise 18% of the total list.
- Six (or 13%) of the articles describing one specific incident (rather than a link roundup or general analysis) involved a credible, self-identified trans person. That number drops to four (9%) when you only count trans people who inflicted harm on another person.
- Okay, but what about those emboldened perverts using good laws to do bad things? Of incidents that did NOT involve a self-identified trans person, 72% took place in a state, county, municipality, or facility that protects against gender-identity-based discrimination. That’s 28 incidents, and the percentage drops to just 56% when compared against the total number of sources Just Want Privacy is citing.
- This is where it really gets interesting. Add four cases of trans people breaking laws to 28 cases of cis men doing terrible things in environments with robust anti-discrimination laws, and you get 32 out of 50, or 64% of total incidents.
That means that on Just Want Privacy’s own website, their first and arguably most important platform for convincing Washingtonians that they are capable of making statewide policy, only 64% of their sources are actually about the things they claim to be worried about. Add in the link roundups just to be nice and that’s STILL only 74%. That means a full quarter to a third of their own reporting is, by their own definitions, not relevant to the issues they say they’re lobbying for.
Now here’s the punch line: none of this matters. Even if all their sourcing were perfect, you can’t tell a group of people that in order to qualify for equal protection under the law, they must demonstrate that they are less prone to crime than the rest of the population. You can’t hold the bad actions of a few over the heads of the many.
However, JWP’s fear-dervishing bullshit abso-fucking-lutely infuriates me, because I happen to be a Christian (surprise!). And one thing that Christianity is kind of insistent on is not telling fucking lies, especially not lies that have legal consequences for your neighbors. Do you know how weird it is to wake up one morning and realize you were the person paying attention in Sunday school all along?! It’s VERY VERY WEIRD.
I’m also a person who appreciates women’s spaces. I’ve attended seven years of all-girls education, including at Scripps College where our class speaker was a trans guy named Joss, and he totally kicked the ass of the speaker they brought in from outside but I digress. Do you know why all-girls education is important? Because it teaches children who are told that they need to be quiet, submissive, and agreeable to be accepted that no, they can speak their minds and throw some elbows and that’s okay too. Nobody ever told me that one of the selling points of an all-girls education was that I’d never have to see a dick.
Well this is all infuriating, so what the hell do we do?
I don’t want to leave you feeling helpless, angry, or hangry, so here are my suggestions for Washington-state-dwellers who want to do something about this nonsense.
- Follow Danni Askini on social media. Askini is the executive director of Gender Justice League, a trans advocacy group here in Washington, and offers a lot of really sharp insight into what’s wrong with bathroom bills.
- Add your name to Washington Won’t Discriminate‘s “No on I-1552” Decline to Sign pledge. (I-1552 is the latest frankencarnation of the bathroom bill initiative that failed its signature-gathering test last year.)
- Find your state representative and state senator using this tool. Call them to ask what actions they’re taking to protect trans people in Washington state.
- Not to worry, introverts, there’s a non-calling option too. If you know a specific piece of legislation that you want to contact your rep about (say, a terrible anti-trans one), you can submit a comment online. This is a good step for after you’ve found some LGBTQ+ advocacy groups who can hook you up with relevant bill numbers.
Fashion-conscious allies can also buy this glitter tee, the proceeds of which will go to the Gender Justice League.
My conclusion is: take heart, and stick up for your neighbors. Washington, we hate making eye contact and we get squirrely when anyone tries to talk to us about race, but I truly believe we’re better than this. This year, let’s send a message — no lies, no hate, and don’t frickety-frackin’ discriminate.
