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Examining the porcelain privilege; no rest in the restroom

By Christopher Curran
Posted 6/8/16

As the social mores in our society have changed so dramatically in the last half-century, understanding what is politically correct or what should be socially acceptable is confounding. Issues that were beyond conception to those of us who grew up in the

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Examining the porcelain privilege; no rest in the restroom

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As the social mores in our society have changed so dramatically in the last half-century, understanding what is politically correct or what should be socially acceptable is confounding. Issues that were beyond conception to those of us who grew up in the 1960s and 1970s are now fodder for public discourse. This revolution of societal acceptance has accelerated too fast to clearly access what harm we could be doing to future generations with our society’s “anything goes” mentality.

Such is the volatile issue of transgender access to public bathrooms. With the advent of a new restrictive state law in North Carolina, the national conversation has centered on fragile facets of this glass menagerie of a conundrum. As a result, North Carolina’s governor has become a target of enmity.

Of course, this subject is not just about a particular category of people being able to use the facilities they choose to. The transgender phenomenon itself is bewildering to most, especially when one considers that adolescent children are now “transitioning” to other desired genders. Thus, a sex reassignment candidate’s age changes the characteristic of the social issue considering that someone younger than the age of majority may not have the presence of mind to make such an irreversible decision.

Similarly, there is an inevitable fear that the transgender preference of restrooms might provide predators with the access to young prey in public bathrooms (while dressing like people in transition).

Furthermore, do we want to teach small children that this situation is normal? A father in Michigan surely did not and his reaction has raised a national discussion. Even President Obama has voiced his expectedly far-left proclamations on the issue and on the fairness of the North Carolina law.

Progressives have tried to couch the issue in terms of great civil rights struggles while avoiding the obvious questions of psychology, and propriety from the viewpoint of children’s exposure.

In a modern world where the formerly abnormal is now normal, our society needs to pause and consider the consequences of the fast-moving changes in mores.

In March of this year, the state of North Carolina passed a law which simply states the following: people are prohibited from using public restrooms not corresponding to the sex on their birth certificates. The biological definition of whether a human organism has a pair of XX sex chromosomes and is therefore a woman, or a pair of XY chromosomes and is therefore a man, are now passé in this new paradigm. Science is now eclipsed by psychology and whether someone identifies as a particular gender.

The governor of North Carolina, Pat Mc Crory, and the majority of the North Carolina legislature do not believe that science should take the backseat to psychology when it comes to public bathroom access. In the response to the “HB2 law,” the progressives and the LGBT community have attacked the state officials for the statute. Seminars and conventions and concerts have been cancelled within the state because of progressive pressure. Opponents have formed adversarial marketing to quell tourism.

Demeaning and denouncing Gov. McCrory’s name has become the battle cry for expressing the ire of the alternative community.

Within the Beltway, McCrory has been attacked repeatedly. In fact, eight Democrat U.S. representatives sent an official letter of umbrage to the governor. Quite erroneously, in an attempt to couple the new law with a sympathetic sentiment, these progressive plaintiffs implied that the new law had unintended consequences to veterans. In the letter they stated, “While rooted in hostility toward the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT) community, HB2 also preempts municipal non-discrimination protections for veterans and the men and women of our Armed Services.” Many legal scholars have said that this connection within the statute is a stretch of interpretation.

Similarly, the methodology used to paint North Carolinians as bigoted has been to pair the transgender bathroom issue with the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s, the fight for the Equal Rights Amendment, the quest for the change in the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy regarding gays in the military, and the pre-Truman segregation of African Americans in the military. This gross grouping is an erroneous categorization.

However, the question of transgender bathroom access is so far afield from the clarity of equivalent rights for all races in America. For that matter, the question of gay rights is pronouncedly different than the question of how we define one’s gender. Having an attraction to one’s own gender is not the same as re-establishing how we determine one’s gender. They are two distinctly different issues.

Contrary to the liberal perspective of “everything is permissible without contemplating the effects on everyone in society,” the group “Citizens for Responsible Government” has expressed legitimate concerns. The idea that public restrooms might be fertile ground for nefarious sex offenders to seek young victims while masquerading as people in transition is a valid question of possible peril for our children. Also, do we parents or grandparents want our children or grandchildren to witness transitional people in the bathroom whose biological gender is actually different from our kids using the facilities?

Directly, this question was pertinent for a father in Michigan. Matthew Stewart, who had three kids under 10 years old in the Southwest Elementary School in Howell, Mich., withdrew his children after his nine-year-old was faced with a girl “transitioning” to a boy. His son and other boys were told by their teacher to face the urinals and the transitional student was told to “look at the wall.” Stewart expressed his distress, “My children are having to choose between embarrassment and intimidation.” The school district had said that they were complying with Title IX, which is the statute that requires equal opportunity for females especially in sports programs.

They also referred to the comments of the president as license to adopt these new policy procedures.

At a recent PBS Town Hall, Obama stated his case: “What happened and what continues to happen is you have transgender kids in schools. And they get bullied. And they get ostracized. And it’s tough for them … My best interpretation of what our laws and our obligations are is that we should try to accommodate these kids so that they are not in a vulnerable situation … The decision to direct public schools to allow transgender students to use bathrooms of their choice was based on law and the best interests of the children.”

The president is right on sensitivity and wrong on policy. First and foremost, the American Psychological Association has stated that a human being’s brain is not fully matured in regard to reason and logic until past age 20. Thus, this begs the question, how can someone in their teens have the presence of mind to embark on the eventually irrevocable process of gender reassignment? Second, since obstetricians and medical examiners define a human’s gender on the basis of biology still, why are we using this alternative paradigm when it comes to bathroom usage?

Politics aside, young people in transition are obviously enduring challenging psychological problems and should be compassionately treated. Equally, students and parents of students should not have to contend with this disruption in their schools. The answer is simple. Provide an available unisex bathroom for transgender kids. An existing faculty bathroom would do just fine for this purpose. In this fast-changing society, not every change is positive. We should take a minute before we accept a possibly detrimental “everything goes” attitude.

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  • Ken B

    This is not a legal issue or a political issue. It is a privacy issue. A person’s sexual orientation is a private matter. A person should not have to openly declare their sexual orientation. In public school buildings individuals should be allowed to use the locker room or bathroom of their choice. “Boys” would use the boy’s bathroom and “girls” would use the girl’s bathroom. To insure privacy urinals should be removed and bathroom stalls should be floor to ceiling with lockable doors. The entrance to hallway bathrooms should be a large opening with no door to allow the sink area to be visible and monitored from the hallway. Using a toilet is a private activity, washing one’s hands is not a private activity. In locker rooms, shower stalls should be larger with a lockable door. An area inside the shower stall should be provided to allow individuals to bring in their clothes and dress up before they leave the shower stall. There are usually several single toilet lockable bathrooms available where transgender individuals have never had a problem using. Let’s keep a person’s sexuality private. The renovation costs should not be unreasonable.

    Saturday, June 11, 2016 Report this