A young woman who lives in one of the West Virginia cities considering a new nondiscrimination ordinance is so fearful of being harassed or attacked that she wouldn't agree to an interview or her name being used for a story.
Yet an ongoing campaign in the town where she lives is meant to instill fear of people like her.
Her mom, who also didn't want to be named because doing so would identify her daughter, said her daughter recently had a panic attack after she heard other members of the community saying they needed to start carrying concealed weapons, if people like her daughter were going to be allowed in women's restrooms.
Her daughter is a transgender woman.
The ordinance, currently being considered in Lewisburg, Martinsburg, and Charles Town, would make it illegal to discriminate against her, other transgender people, lesbians, gays and bisexuals in housing, employment or public accommodations. Six cities in West Virginia currently have similar ordinances.
Opponents are fighting passage of the ordinances by saying the ordinances would allow men to put on dresses, sneak into women's restrooms, and assault women and children.
The woman's mother said she believes that because her daughter was unable to control her biology, she has turned to trying to control everything else, and developed an anxiety disorder as a result - obsessive compulsive disorder. As a child, she had to be pulled out of public school because of bullying, and she still is regularly harassed.
"Every time we're out, we're worried about her safety," her mother said.
The Family Policy Council of West Virginia, a conservative advocacy group, has been using its website and social media to drum up opposition to the ordinances. On Dec. 27, the group posted a photo on Facebook of a stick man peering over a wall, presumably a bathroom stall divider, at a stick woman, with the warning "no men in ladies bathrooms or girls locker rooms."
It's unclear when the Family Policy Council developed an interest in advocating for preventing violence against women. In an interview this week, Allen Whitt, president of the organization, couldn't give one example of another time the organization waged a campaign to prevent violence against women, saying only that the organization had been interested in women's safety since its inception.
"It's a public safety issue," he said. "This isn't a civil rights issue."
Research has shown that transgender men and women are at heightened risk of being attacked or harassed. While it is difficult to pinpoint the precise number, because police and the media often don't report that a murder victim was transgender and did not identify with the gender assigned at birth, transgender people are more likely to be murdered. The Human Rights Campaign, a civil rights group, estimates that transgender women are 4.3 times more likely than other women to be killed.
The National Transgender Discrimination Survey found that 61 percent of transgender respondents reported being the victim of physical assault and 64 percent reported being the victim of sexual assault.
A 2008 survey of transgender and gender non-conforming respondents in Washington, D.C. found that 68 percent had experienced verbal harassment about using the gender-appropriate restroom, and 9 percent had experienced physical assault because of it. One transgender woman reported being sexually assaulted while using the men's restroom.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration also advises letting transgender people use the bathroom that corresponds to their gender identity.
"Restricting employees to using only restrooms that are not consistent with their gender identity, or segregating them from other workers by requiring them to use gender-neutral or other specific restrooms, singles those employees out and may make them fear for their physical safety," an OSHA guide of best practices reads.
Meanwhile, violence against women is much less likely to be committed by a stranger in a bathroom. It's most commonly committed by someone known to the victim. According to a study cited by the National Sexual Violence Resource Center, in eight out of ten cases of rape, the victim knew the person who assaulted them.
And despite the fact that about 400 cities in the United States have implemented similar nondiscrimination ordinances, there have been no documented reports of transgender people using their new access to gender-appropriate bathrooms to assault people.
But LGBT rights advocates say the campaign against the ordinances isn't about logic. It's a distraction and an attempt to use fear-mongering to halt civil rights progress, according to Andrew Schneider, executive director of LGBT-rights group Fairness West Virginia.
"This claim is known as the bathroom predator myth and is meant to scare the general public into believing transgender people are predators," Schneider said. "It distracts from the real discrimination the LGBT community faces every day in employment, housing and public accommodations."
Cynthia Deville, a transgender woman, knows about discrimination in employment.
Deville owned a beauty salon when she lived in Lewisburg. She didn't have much of a choice if she wanted to work as a beautician, because no one else would hire her.
"They had chairs to rent, and they wouldn't even rent a chair to me," she said.
She experienced discrimination from potential clients, too. One woman canceled a pedicure when she found out Deville was transgender.
"I thought, I'm just going to rub your feet," Deville remembers.
She is well aware of the dangers of being a transgender woman, although she tries to push the thought to the back of her mind to keep her sanity.
"I don't go looking for trouble because I knew I could find it," she said.
She's also experienced her share of belittlement. She's been called "he-she" or "it" before.
"You don't choose to give up privilege as a white Anglo Saxon protestant male and take an immediate 25-27 percent pay cut or more," she said.
She also believes the campaign is not based on real desire to prevent women from violence.
"Men that intend to injure or do harm to women or children - they don't need an ordinance to protect them, and they're not going to put a dress on," she said.
Suzanne Carter knows about discrimination in housing. She and her wife moved to Lewisburg about two years ago. They thought they had found a house, until the couple renting it found out their sexual orientations.
"You could hear her audibly gasp on the phone," Carter said.
Carter said the landlords made up an excuse about why they couldn't rent the house. The day after telling Carter it was no longer available, they put it up on Craigslist for rent.
"I was sick," Carter said. "I still am angry about it and it's been almost two years. I was physically ill."
Carter and her wife had to continue taking care of their 1-year-old in a hotel room until they found another place.
Carter grew up Catholic, so she's used to a sense of disapproval, but being refused housing was a new type of rejection.
She had heard that Lewisburg was such a friendly, progressive place. That experience made her want to move.
"When people do things like that, they make you feel like you're second class," she said.
LGBT members of the Lewisburg community and their allies just hope stories like Deville's and Carter's are heard over all the buzz about bathrooms.
Second reading of Lewisburg's ordinance is planned for Jan. 19 at 7:30 p.m., although city officials haven't yet decided on a new, larger venue.
Mayor John Manchester said about 150-200 people, mostly opposed, attended the meeting, while Family Policy Council president Allen Whitt, who attended, estimates it was more like 500.
Manchester said that most of those opposed were not from Lewisburg.
"I didn't recognize many of the individuals," he said.
He supports the ordinance, although as mayor, he does not vote. "I think we're known as an inclusive community," he said. "I think consideration of an ordinance like this would be a real manifestation of that inclusive nature."
Whitt took issue with the fact that public comment is not permitted until second reading.
He also took issue with the ordinance giving LGBT community members the ability to sue over discrimination.
"I'm not sure this group of people needs protection to begin with," he said.
Betsy Walker, a lesbian and LGBT-rights advocate, has seen the signs go up around Lewisburg and the big crowd at the meeting.
"I chose to leave so that the opposition could have a seat," she said.
She just hopes the controversy doesn't fracture the "coolest small town."
"This is about discrimination," Walker said. "It's not about bathrooms."
Reach Erin Beck at erin.beck@wvgazettemail.com, 304-348-5163, Facebook.com/erinbeckwv, or follow @erinbeckwv on Twitter.