LGBTI fight in the US shifts to a new front – the toilet

"Do I continue using the men's room and break the law?" Comero says he asked himself, contemplating the possibility it could lead to him being targeted with violence, or even prosecuted, "or do I use the women's room and follow the law, and obviously make people uncomfortable."

Though his birth certificate still says female, Comero's appearance clearly corresponds with his gender identity as a non-binary transgender male: from his tightly clipped short-back-and-sides to his masculine jawline.

After discussing the issue with his girlfriend, who he says broke down in tears, fearing the danger he might be in, Comero decided he was best to follow the law and start using the women's room again, as he did before he made his physical transition. He printed out small business cards that he could hand out to women who accused him of being in the wrong bathroom.

"Hi my name is Charlie … I am a transgender man who would rather be using the men's room right now … This is uncomfortable for the both of us," they read.

"I'm not going into the bathroom to advocate for transgender people," he tells Fairfax Media this week. "I'm going in there to use the bathroom."

It has been less than a year since the US Supreme Court, with the support of President Barack Obama, made same-sex marriage the law of the land and made the United States appear a beacon of progress on lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and intersex rights, at least to countries like Australia.

But while equal marriage has effectively been neutralised as an issue, the battle for LGBTI rights in the US has moved to a different front: anti-discrimination and religious freedom bills, and in many places, a very specific fight over bathroom access for transgender people – whether they can use the bathroom that corresponds with their gender (as opposed to the sex they were assigned at birth).

It is an issue that is playing out in cities and states across the Bible-belt south in particular, becoming a rallying point for religious conservatives in an election year, while also making headlines around the world as a counter-movement of protest, which has included boycotts by Bruce Springsteen, Hollywood studios and big business, takes off.

At the centre of it all though are LGBTI Americans trying to negotiate everyday life under these bills as an already stigmatised community, and that most mundane, most human of unavoidable activities – going to the toilet.

"For most transgender people using the bathroom is a stressful thing to begin with," says Comero. "Once this bill passed it really escalated the stress and the worry and the fear exponentially."

The so-called House Bill 2 (HB2) came about after the city of Charlotte – a relatively liberal city in a Republican state – passed an ordinance in February expanding anti-discrimination protections to cover sexual orientation and gender identity, including outlawing the denial of goods, facilities and places of "public accommodation" – such as bathrooms – to people simply for being gay or transgender.

The backlash from some in the religious and conservative political movement was swift.

Republican governor Patrick McCrory's argument against the ordinance followed the blueprint of those heard elsewhere: that it was a matter of privacy and safety, and would allow men to enter women's bathrooms and change rooms for nefarious purposes.

"This shift in policy could also create major public safety issues by putting citizens in possible danger from deviant actions by individuals taking improper advantage of a bad policy," he said, according to the Charlotte Observer.

On March 23, he signed the Public Facilities Privacy & Security Act, now known as HB2, which eliminated anti-discrimination protections for LGBTI people and forced public schools and agencies to segregate bathrooms according to people's sex on their birth certificate.

Chris Brook, the American Civil Liberties Union legal director in North Carolina, said he believed the issue of transgender people and bathroom use had taken a grip in public debate because while gays and lesbians were increasingly visible, the transgender community is still not well understood.

"We all know in 2016 gay and lesbian friends, neighbours, family members, but you might not know a transgender person," he said.

"Knowing somebody is the key here, that you recognise that the transgender community has the exact same desires – on a narrow level to use the restroom in peace, and on a broader level, to be respected and treated as a person with inherent dignity."

Protests began immediately, with condemnation from individuals and companies like Apple, American Airlines and PayPal, the latter of which went on to cancel plans to open an operations centre which would have brought 400 jobs.

The ACLU, in collaboration with other groups, soon announced they would challenge the law in court as unconstitutional.

Joaquin Carcano, a transgender man who works at the University of North Carolina, is the lead plaintiff on their case.

Like Comero, he was forbidden from continuing to use the men's bathroom – but Carcano did not feel like he belonged in the women's bathroom either, and has chosen not to do so. At work, his only options therefore have been to walk for 15 minutes to the campus' only single-occupancy public stall, or use a recently discovered toilet in the basement maintenance area that can only be accessed via a service elevator. It's onerous. He says he's drinking less water to try to minimise bathroom use, and has to factor bathroom trips into the day in a way most people couldn't imagine.

"It's a process, it feels very unnecessary and uncomfortable to feel like you have to take these other steps for something that wasn't an issue months before, that had never come up in conversation," Carcano says.

Both men are clear though that is more than simply a matter of inconvenience or embarrassment for the transgender community, it's one of potential danger and serious mental health consequences.

Forty one per cent of transgender adults in the US have attempted suicide, compared with 1.6 per cent of the general population. The rate of violence faced by transgender Americans is already alarmingly high, with transgender women of colour the most common target of hate-crime killings and transgender people 3.7 times more likely to face police violence.

While there are no known cases of transgender people attacking women and children in bathrooms in the US, as supporters of these bills fear, bathrooms are a common site of harassment and intimidation for transgender people themselves. Seventy per cent of transgender respondents of one UCLA survey in Washington DC said they had been denied access to or harassed or assaulted when trying to use a public restroom.

Carcano, who is Latino, says his fears for the wellbeing of transgender Latinas is one factor motivating him to join the case.

"A lot of them, they're not in a position to challenge the law, or to speak out and defend themselves because of the fear of deportations, or the general fear of the police."

The protest movement was given a boost on April 8, when Springsteen cancelled a show in Greensborough, NC, in support of the state's "freedom fighters". In the weeks since, a flood of other artists have joined him in cancelling shows – Demi Lovato, Nick Jonas and Bryan Adams – while a range of film and TV studios have refused to film in the state.

But supporters of the bill are digging in even as business abandons the state. Republican presidential hopeful Ted Cruz has begun using the issue to flex his conservative bona fides on the campaign trail. After rival Donald Trump said he didn't have a problem with transgender women like Caitlyn Jenner using the women's bathroom, Cruz released a classic scare ad that stated "Should a grown man pretending to be a woman be allowed to use the women's restroom? The same restroom used by your daughter? Your wife? Donald Trump thinks so."

And this week, as protests for and against the law are waged in NC, the city of Oxford in Alabama, home to just over 20,000 people, passed a law harsher than HB2, mandating six months jail for transgender people for using a bathroom corresponding with their gender identity.

Carcano says the momentum against the bill is heartening and he believes it's a matter of time before HB2, or aspects of it, are overturned. But the damage done by the demonising of transgender community is real, he says.

"It's a harsh fight because it's a struggle to sometimes get to this point [as a transgender person] where you can be strong in your identity, you know, it's a process," he says.

"And then you have to fight these other threats. It's exhausting."