Advocates for sexual assault victims worry that repealing the law will lead to increased incidents of violence against transgender individuals.
In one ad, a man peeps through the door of a bathroom stall at a teenage girl changing in a locker room. In another, a mother describes a boy coming into a locker room to change with her daughter.
The ballot committee to repeal Massachusetts's transgender anti-discrimination law, called Keep MA Safe, has made protecting safety and privacy a cornerstone of its campaign.
But advocates for sexual assault victims say they have the opposite fear - that repealing the law will lead to increased incidents of violence against transgender individuals.
"The safety issues I think for transgender people are significant," said Gina Scaramella, executive director of the Boston Area Rape Crisis Center. "The safety issues for the general population are nonexistent."
The law up for repeal, which was signed in 2016, bans discrimination against transgender people in public places and allows a transgender person to use the bathroom or locker room that conforms with their gender identity. A yes vote on Question 3 would uphold the law; a no vote would repeal it.
Advocates for repeal have focused on the potential for problems in sex-segregated spaces.
"The way the law is written, gender identity is a state of mind, that means that any man can say he is a woman if anyone challenges his presence in a women's restroom," said Yvette Ollada, a spokeswoman for the No on 3 campaign.
The law provides guidance for how individuals must deal with a situation where there is a question about whether someone is using the correct facility. Repeal advocates note that there are penalties for not conforming with the law.
"This law, with these penalties the way they are, intimidates women from speaking up when they are uncomfortable with a convicted sex offender or predator in a women's space," Ollada said. "This especially endangers those this law was intended to help."
To bolster their case, the law's opponents point to cases involving men committing crimes against women in sex-segregated spaces.
Ollada pointed to a Plainville case where a man was charged with sticking his cellphone into a women's bathroom stall to take her picture. (The case was later dismissed.) There is no indication that the transgender law was implicated, although Ollada suggested the law could make it harder for store security to remove the man.
The Keep MA Safe website links to a national website that details crimes such as peeping or taking pictures in spaces like dressing rooms and bathrooms. That site lists six instances in Massachusetts, but all involved men presenting as men. At least three occurred before the transgender law was signed.
"In the two years since this became law, there's been no increase in public safety issues. There's no evidence that this law creates any problems," said Debra Robbin, executive director of Jane Doe Inc., the Massachusetts Coalition Against Sexual Assault and Domestic Violence. Robbin said laws are already in place to address privacy violations or assault.
A study conducted in Massachusetts by the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law found no link between allowing transgender people to use the restroom of their choice and bathroom-related crime rates.
"Obviously, what the (No on 3) ad is doing is exploiting a fear," said Scaramella.
Advocates who work with victims of sexual assault say their biggest fear is for transgender people if the law is repealed.
"If people don't have their full rights and freedoms in a society, they're more easily exploited and become victims of violence," said Marianne Winters, executive director of Safe Passage, which provides emergency shelter for domestic violence victims in Hampshire County.
Winters said people who are transgender, or are otherwise marginalized in society, tend to face higher risks of domestic violence. They are more likely to be isolated, which makes them easier targets for violence. They also face discrimination when trying to get help.
According to Massachusetts and national statistics, transgender women are more likely to be sexually assaulted than cisgender women. More transgender women report threats of violence by an intimate partner.
"When a group experiences discrimination, it increases a sense of isolation and decreases the initial trust they have in institutions," Winters said.
Scaramella said similarly, "Context and culture matter a lot in terms of who is assaulted, and when offenders look for someone to assault or exploit, they tend to look for the person they perceive as the most vulnerable."
Carmen Nieves, executive manager of Womanshelter/Companeras, a Holyoke organization that runs a domestic violence shelter in Western Massachusetts, said anyone who identifies as female is welcome in their women's shelter. She has never had any problems with transgender women. "If they identify as a woman, they can come in," Nieves said.
Rebecca Lockwood, associate director of counseling and rape crisis services for the Center for Women and Community at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, said the vast majority of sexual violence occurs between people who know one another.
"Having folks choose the bathroom that corresponds with their gender identity isn't going to increase the risk in any way," Lockwood said. "This idea that either someone masquerading as a trans person or a trans person is suddenly going to open the floodgates for people to be assaulted in the bathrooms, it just doesn't hold water with the research that's out there."
Victim advocates say their concern is that the No on 3 ads will contribute to stereotypes of transgender people as predators.
"They're creating stereotypes that transgender people are somehow out to hurt other people when the data show transgender people are more at risk for sexual assault than cisgender people are," Robbin said.
