Man, woman, child, stupidity
A Kansas law that imposes broad restrictions on transgender rights goes into effect tomorrow. As NPR's Rose Conlon reports, "the law tethers the legal definition of male, female, man and woman to the sex a person is assigned at birth. It could restrict transgender people's use of a wide range of facilities beyond bathrooms and locker rooms."
State Representative Brenda Landwehr justifies her vote for the law this way: "The idea that my 4-year-old granddaughter would have to go into a bathroom and possibly be exposed to a male, is that right?"
Representative Landwehr apparently forgot to turn on her brain before making that remark.
I know someone whose child was assigned female at birth and is now a transgender man with an impressive growth of facial hair. Testosterone can do that. So now imagine this trans dude with a beard, who looks like and for all relevant purposes is a man, walking into the women's restroom occupied by Representative Landwehr's 4-year-old granddaughter. Because Representative Landwehr says he must. For the sake of the child.
Is there any reason I should not say that Representative Landwehr is stupid?
It works in the other direction, too. A transgender woman looks like and for all relevant purposes is a woman. Neither Representative Landwehr's 4-year-old granddaughter or anybody else would have any idea the trans woman was assigned male at birth. But for Representative Landwehr's meddling, all concerned would be able to attend to their restroom needs without difficulty.
But Representative Landwehr can't resist meddling, and that meddling isn't merely stupid. It's gratuitously cruel, and Representative Landwehr should be ashamed of herself. Such cruelty is a signal characteristic of the right, which can't seem to find within itself to just leave people alone to be themselves. Trans people face all kinds of societal cruelty without the law making their lives even worse. We should all be ashamed.
Copyright (C) 2023 James Michael Brennan, All Rights Reserved
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posted by Mike Brennan @ 8:00 AM
2 comments
2 Comments:
Isn't it more cruel to lie to people by telling them that they can be something that they aren't?
Something they "aren't?" Transgender people's struggles with society involve the freedom to be who they ARE. That struggle typically begins to manifest in early childhood, which suggests the early sense of self is deep and even fundamental. Most parents come to understand something profound is going on, and the best of them, which is probably most, support and assist their children, as does the mainline medical establishment. This is not choice, fad, or fashion. It's a quest to be who you really are. The problem is that the right seems to confuse "who you really are" with just biology, which is not the same thing as gender. And anyway, in nature biology itself is a fraught indicator, since some persons are born with both male and female sex organs, and persons born with female sex organs can even in rare cases have Y chromosomes. Hard lines based on biological indicators cannot be drawn. But trans persons know who they are, and our job is to allow them to be themselves. Why would we do anything else?
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