Just Want Privacy, the anti-trans group behind I-1515, will host a press conference involving Maya Dillard Smith, resigned ACLU director, a week before Trans* Pride.
Just Want Privacy, the anti-trans group behind I-1515, will host a press conference involving Maya Dillard Smith, the former Georgia ACLU director who resigned over trans people using bathrooms, a week before Trans* Pride. Ansel Herz

In early June, Maya Dillard Smith resigned from her position as interim director of the Georgia ACLU over the issue of transgender people using bathrooms in which they feel safe. On Thursday, the resigned director will be campaigning for Washington State’s proposed anti-trans ballot measure at the University of Washington’s Tacoma campus.

In a statement following her ACLU resignation, Smith said that her children were “visibly frightened” and had questions after three trans women entered a woman’s restroom. (Does this kind of language sound familiar?) Now Smith has launched a website that attempts to legitimize fear of transgender people in bathrooms.

Here’s the description of the UW Tacoma event from Just Want Privacy, the anti-trans group behind I-1515:

This Thursday, progressive female leaders of national influence will come together in support of safe spaces for women, particularly in showers and bathrooms.

Hosted by the Just Want Privacy's I-1515 Campaign and Washington Women's Network, Maya Dillard Smith, Blair Tindall, and Miriam Ben-Shalom will conduct a press conference and Q&A session to address the need to bring into balance the civil rights of women and girls, a critically important but often marginalized piece of the national bathroom debate.

The event will be held at 11am on Thursday, June 16 in the Carwein Auditorium of the University of Washington Tacoma Campus. It is free and open to the public as space allows.

Miriam Ben-Shalom, a lesbian activist who was the first person to be reinstated in the US military after being discharged for being gay, was cut from the Milwaukee Pride Parade after organizers found Facebook posts calling trans women "violent and judgmental," according to Milwaukee's local Fox affiliate. Blair Tindall, a classical oboist and author of the book Mozart in the Jungle: Sex, Drugs, and Classical Music, has called trans rights in bathrooms a "war on women."

The event bills itself as “Women Speak Out,” but a number of women’s groups in Washington State, including groups for survivors of sexual assault, have already spoken out—in opposition to the proposed ballot measure and in support of trans women’s rights. At an event for the campaign against I-1515 in late April, Andrea Piper-Wentland, executive director of the Washington Coalition of Sexual Assault Programs, denounced I-1515. "Discriminating against transgender people does nothing to reduce the risk of sexual assault," Piper-Wentland said.

There is zero evidence that trans people using bathrooms poses any special threat to anyone, children or otherwise. But there is plenty of evidence showing that trans people are regularly targeted for discrimination and brutalized. According to one Department of Justice-funded report, more than 50 percent of transgender people experience sexual violence in their lifetimes.

I've also reached out to the Washington Women's Network co-organizers to see if they have a response to Just Want Privacy chairman Joseph Backholm's comments telling men to follow women into bathrooms. I'll update if I hear back.

UPDATE: UW Tacoma has released a statement about Thursday's event. "The University of Washington strongly supports the rights of all individuals, including transgender people, to be free of discrimination and and to have the opportunity to live their lives to the fullest," it reads. "This includes the basic right of access to bathrooms."