A law passed by NC Republicans bans the two transgender Americans in the picture above from restrooms that match their physical appearance unless they can get revised birth certificates.
READ THE NEW NORTH CAROLINA LAW HERE HB 2
The bogeyman will get you if you don’t watch out! As a child, I heard that myth from adults who wanted me to be properly frightened of dark places, new ideas and people who looked or sounded “different”. I never met him, but somehow I inferred that the bogeyman was a lot like the Jews, Negroes, Catholics, and Gypsies that we were expected to fear. Children learned, without being explicitly taught, that some of “those people” were nice but many of them were dangerous and “we” should avoid them. When I was a little older, I began to hear about “queers” and the awful things that they did to boys, so if anyone acted “that way” I should stay away from him. Most people of my age learned some version of the myth. If not from parents, it seeped in from the world around us.
By now I’ve been fortunate to have personal and work relationships with individuals from those groups. I learned that there is nothing about their religions, race, culture, ancestry, sexual orientation or gender identity that makes them dangerous or threatening.
The City of Charlotte passed an ordinance which extended its non-discrimination policies beyond the traditionally protected groups to include discrimination based on “marital status, familial status, sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression”. The new rules apply to public accommodations, public transportation, and the practices of businesses that have contracts with the City. North Carolina’s Republican legislature and governor have called the bogeyman back into service to overturn that ordinance.
With only stories and fear-mongering, the Republicans created the myth of the transgender bogeyman who will “get” you or your children if you don’t watch out. Then they called an emergency legislative session and introduced him to justify passing a law that not only overruled Charlotte’s ordinance; it also banned local governments from setting minimum wages and took away existing rights of individuals to file discrimination suits in state courts. By eliminating the role of state courts in protecting many civil rights, they turned discrimination concerns over to the federal government. They did all that in only one day. When you’re running from the bogeyman there is no time for thoughtful deliberation.
In more than 250 American cities that have laws similar to Charlotte’s, there is no evidence of an increase in sexual assaults and no pattern of men pretending to be transgender so they can commit crimes in women’s restrooms. In reality, transgender people are generally the victims, not the assailants. About half of transgender people have been victims of sexual assaults.
Bank of America, Wells Fargo, IBM, Red Hat, and others among the crown jewels of the North Carolina economy want the law repealed. Because of the law, Pay Pal announced today that it has cancelled plans to locate their global operations center in North Carolina. The state lost 400 new jobs. Leaders of these companies are realists who know that discrimination, hate, and fear are bad for business. But the most serious damage is not to the economy. It is to the lesbian, gay, transgender, and bi-sexual people who have been clearly told that they are not welcome in North Carolina.
My niece and nephew are raising a bright, energetic transgender teenager. He looks like a slender teenage boy but because he’s anatomically female North Carolina Republicans insist that he use the women’s washroom. His mother shared these thoughts with me, “As a mom with a transgender child, I feel anything but protected or safe. Quite the opposite in fact. I am a mom and he is my child and I worry about something as simple as him walking into a bathroom. Unfortunately, some people think that a bathroom is related to sexual behavior and predators…Predators are criminals who won’t stop because there is a sign on the door that says men or women only. If criminals obeyed signs, we could use them to get rid of heroin! Seriously? Criminals don’t work like that. As you know, my son is looking at a university in NC. Now, we’ll have to consider whether it is safe for him to travel there and stop for a restroom. It’s sad. Very, very sad.”
Years ago, public acceptance of marriage equality left North Carolina’s Republican leadership behind. Their constitutional amendment to prevent it yielded only unnecessary expenses and animosity. This Deja-vu law is similar. It might be funny if it wasn’t so painful. Sadly, the new bogeyman sports an American flag and a Christian cross on his lapels while he demands laws to hurt people who are different from him. He’ll get you if you don’t watch out.
The “Bogeyman” is a great piece, Bob. Thoughtful and compelling. Thank you for doing it.
The “bogeyman” glosses over the plain and simple reality that sex is a permanent biological trait not subject to change by wish or body modification. Letting so called “transgenders” use restrooms or other facilities designated for the opposite biological sex is just enabling their delusion that their sex is somehow different from their biological sex when, clearly, it is not and never will be. Other people with a basic and reasonable expectation of privacy in bathrooms from members of the opposite sex should not be compelled to participate in the delusions of these “transgendered” individuals. Instead effective mental health treatments should be developed to bring the delusional perceptions “transgenders” have with regard to their sex into conformity with reality. The solution to ineffective treatment is not to abandon all pretense of actual treatment and instead attempt to warp reality at large to fit their delusions. which is EXACTLY what going along with their delusional beliefs is doing.
The “bogeyman” simply tries to dodge the plain and simple reality that sex is a permanent biological trait not subject to change by wish or body modification. Letting so called “transgenders” use restrooms or other facilities designated for the opposite biological sex is just enabling their delusion that their sex is somehow different from their biological sex when, clearly, it is not and never will be. Other people with a basic and reasonable expectation of privacy in bathrooms from members of the opposite sex should not be compelled to participate in the delusions of these “transgendered” individuals. Instead effective mental health treatments should be developed to bring the delusional perceptions “transgenders” have with regard to their sex into conformity with reality. The solution to ineffective treatment is not to abandon all pretense of actual treatment and instead attempt to warp reality at large to fit their delusions. which is EXACTLY what going along with their delusional beliefs is doing.
This article neatly glosses over the obvious:
The most compelling reason not to let so called “transgenders” into the restrooms of the opposite biological sex is that they are not the biological sex that the restroom is designated for. Their completely subjective and self assigned gender is not their actual gender which will forever and always be the gender they were born. That is reality. Their delusions that they are a different gender than their actual biological gender are just that, delusions. The fact that some of these individuals will now have to use restrooms inconsistent with their delusional belief and inconsistent with the modifications they have made to their bodies to try to twist reality to their delusional belief is simply an unfortunate result of enabling their delusional thoughts and actions in the first place. Those delusional thoughts and actions however are ultimately their own, and, nobody else is under any obligation to play along by ignoring biological reality. Nor should we pass laws based on entirely subjective criteria, such as simply what somebody believes their gender to be.
Notable experts including Dr. Paul R. McHugh, the former psychiatrist-in-chief of Johns Hopkins have gone on record to the effect that transgenderism is a mental disorder inconsistent with reality. Dr. McHugh has stated:
“This intensely felt sense of being transgendered constitutes a mental disorder in two respects. The first is that the idea of sex misalignment is simply mistaken – it does not correspond with physical reality. The second is that it can lead to grim psychological outcomes.”
McHugh went on to say:
““And so at Hopkins we stopped doing sex-reassignment surgery, since producing a ‘satisfied’ but still troubled patient seemed an inadequate reason for surgically amputating normal organs,”
and
“’Sex change’ is biologically impossible, People who undergo sex-reassignment surgery do not change from men to women or vice versa. Rather, they become feminized men or masculinized women. Claiming that this is civil-rights matter and encouraging surgical intervention is in reality to collaborate with and promote a mental disorder.”
Of course none of these observations are particularly earth shattering or revolutionary. They are pretty obvious really. Obviously the reality is that one’s sex is genetically determined prior to birth and that sex is permanent regardless of what one believes or how one changes one’s appearance. So called “transgenders” should receive effective mental health treatment to bring their self perception of their sex into consistency with reality as opposed to trying to twist reality to conform to their delusional perceptions. Twisting reality is exactly what enabling them by doing things like letting them use restrooms designated for the opposite biological sex attempts to do, and, it is absurd.
How will one even know if there is a transgender in a closed and locked bathroom stall? All transgenders will have to use stalls in the bathrooms by anatomical necessity. What a stupid waste of taxpayer money! It’s called diversion, which keeps voters eyed on social issues and away from what the legislatures should be doing.
Bob and friends, all of the people I know are disgusted with the attention given to the transgender people. Sure they have a right to hate their original body and to want to be the opposite sex or no sex at all. What problems have they had to bring about this desire for special treatment under the law? No one needs to know when a transgender person uses the wrong bathroom. No police have followed a trans person into a restroom as long as they haven’t exposed themselves on several occasions while in a restroom of the opposite physical genitalia. Don’t tell me that a trans woman tried to use the urinal, and if one did are all the men going to call 911? So a trans man with his original penis wishes to go potty in the ladies room. Have such men been exposing themselves or do they go in a stall like the girls? Does the Randolph County Sheriff’s office have some record of this activity by transgender people or is it that they have come out to say we demand to be recognized?
No, I doubt it, more likely they take care of their needs in private but regardless, I reason that they are different from gays in that trans people not only convince themselves they were born the wrong sex, they take this delusion to the public, demanding they be recognized while a few Doctors are always ready to oblige for a high price. It just does not add up. This argument disregards that poosibility that some may be faking it.
Thanks for the comment. Certainly you’re right that many trans people have been using the facilities designated for their gender identity rather than their birth gender without notice or incident. That alone should clearly make the case that there was no public safety emergency to justify HB 2. NC Republican legislators and the Governor insisted that Charlotte’s ordinance jeopardized public safety by making it legal for people to do what they were already doing. That is how they tried to make trans-people into bogeymen and that is the reason for the column. The city of Charlotte decided to formalize what was already happening through their ordinance. Whether that was necessary or advisable isn’t the point. The ordinance was passed by an elected local government. In response to the bogeyman that they themselves created, the legislature took away the right of all local governments to pass any civil rights ordinance for any group, took away the rights of women and minorities to pursue civil rights claims in state courts, and took away the rights of local governments to create minimum wage standards. Certainly none of those were public safety emergencies. There could have been time for ample debate. While they had the bogeyman in the public eye, they packed the new law with prohibitions of unrelated things like civil rights claims, that they don’t like. So, I don’t see this as being just about the rights of trans gender people. It’s about the rights of individuals and local governments to do things that conservative republicans don’t like. It’s a defense of liberty.
It’s true the Republicans need anything to energize followers. Can you remember when Jesse Helms was being challenge d by Jim Hunf? Every week small donors received mail with a new scare about homosexuals taking over the government. That was coming out of the NCCC, the PAC to hold the Senate.