Among a bunch of other bizarre themes, 2017 is arguably becoming the year of the “bathroom bill.” This year, 16 states have considered legislation that would in some way restrict transgender people’s right to use public facilities. And just this week, legislators in the Texas House of Representatives passed a new version of legislation that would restrict trans children’s bathroom use.

The way these proposed laws work is weird. Basically, they give state governments the right to (somehow?) check out someone’s assigned sex, and find out if it aligns with the gender marker on the bathroom they are using.

Of course, trans people have been using public restrooms forever, without much of any regulation or even attention to the matter from the general public. It’s only recently that some cities and states have begun to pass laws explicitly protecting trans people’s right to use the bathroom aligned with their gender identity; the “bathroom bills” are arguably a backlash against those protections. And in many parts of the country, discrimination in public facilities on the basis of gender identity isn’t banned at all.

As a result, most trans people deal with the bathroom issue constantly. A 2013 survey of trans people in Washington, D.C. found that 70 percent reported experiencing assault, harassment, or denial of entry while trying to use a bathroom. A more recent national survey found that 59 percent of trans people had avoided a bathroom in the last year for fear of harassment or confrontation, and one in four had been told they were in the wrong restroom (although, as The Outline has reported, statistics on trans people in general aren’t exactly comprehensive).

All of this means that trans folks have had a long time to develop strategies for getting in and out of bathrooms safely.

None of the so-called bathroom bills have actually passed so far, and North Carolina recently repealed parts of HB2, its infamous law that, among other things, would have required people to use public facilities aligned with the sex on their birth certificate (If you typically bring your birth certificate with you to the toilet, please do let us know!).

Also this spring, a thing called the Free Speech Bus was born: a big orange tour bus that hit a number of east coast cities with demonstrations that essentially encouraged people to harass trans folks in restrooms. The message: boys will always be boys and girls will always be girls. The Free Speech Bus is free to say that. But, here’s another refrain for 2017: just because you keep saying it doesn’t make it true.