Campus Debate Renewed: Student’s Video of Trans Woman in Ladies’ Restroom Goes Viral
A North Carolina university is conducting an investigation after student Payton McNabb, who suffered long-term physical and mental injuries when a transgender volleyball player spiked a ball and hit her in the face during a high school match, filmed herself confronting a transgender woman in one of the girls’ bathrooms on campus.
“Western Carolina University is committed to providing a safe and welcoming environment for all students. “The university’s primary concern is the safety and well-being of all members of its campus community,” a school representative told Fox News Digital. “WCU is dedicated to following its beliefs and giving all students equal access to education and opportunity. Violations of university regulations or state and federal laws will be handled by the relevant school authority.
“Unlawful discrimination against any member of our campus community is not accepted at WCU.”
Western Carolina did not answer to a follow-up query about the scope of the probe or whether McNabb faces disciplinary punishment. The unidentified individual says, “I’m a trans girl.”
“But you’re not a girl,” McNabb says.
“Interesting; I’ve never had this before. “I don’t know what to say; I’m sorry you feel that way,” the individual says. McNabb then informs the individual that she spends “a lot of money to be safe in the bathroom.”
Seeing men in “intimate spaces can be an extremely uncomfortable and emotionally distressing experience for women,” Independent Women’s Law Center director May Mailman, who represents McNabb, told Fox News Digital. “Including those like Payton who suffered and continue to experience trauma,” Mailman stated. “No matter what men are wearing or how they feel internally, schools can’t forget about their obligation to women.”
Mailman noted that she is concerned that institutions “seem more interested” in “investigating a polite inquiry into what a man is doing in a woman’s bathroom” than dealing with recent incidents of anti-Israel riots on campus.
After the video went viral on X, McNabb said she began receiving threats from students who encouraged others to denounce her to the institution for being “transphobic.”
“Currently, I’m facing reports to the school for alleged ‘transphobia,’ alongside attempts to tear down my sorority, despite it having nothing to do with it,” McNabb said on X, which used to be Twitter. “I believe in everyone’s right to their own opinion, and I shouldn’t face punishment simply because I felt uncomfortable with a man being in our bathroom.”
McNabb was wounded at a high school volleyball game in September 2022 when a transgender athlete on the opposite team spiked the ball and struck her in the face, forcing her to tumble backward and sustain a concussion and neck damage.
“Other injuries I still suffer from today include impaired vision, partial paralysis on my right side, constant headaches, as well as anxiety and depression,” McNabb stated at a news conference last year. “My ability to learn, retain [and] comprehend has also been impaired, and I require accommodations at school for testing because of this.”
In 2016, North Carolina passed the nation’s first “bathroom bill,” requiring people to use toilets based on their biological sex. Since then, scores of identical measures have passed through other state legislatures.
A year later, several provisions of the measure were overturned, and the federal Departments of Education and Justice released guidance declaring that public colleges receiving federal dollars must treat a student’s gender identity as their sex, including in restrooms.
The Biden administration also changed Title IX last month. The new laws define sex discrimination as discrimination based on both gender identity and sexual orientation. According to the regulations, a school cannot separate or treat people differently based on sex, save in certain instances, and critics argue that the move will allow locker rooms and bathrooms to be based on gender identity.