Yesterday, a bill discriminating against transgender children passed the South Dakota state senate. Of course, the bill didn’t mention trans people specifically. It simply stated that use of school restrooms and locker rooms is limited to people of the same “biological sex… as determined by a person’s chromosomes and anatomy as identified at birth.”
As I’ve pointed out before, chromosomes are not routinely tested at birth, and the appearance of our “anatomy” when we are born has little to do with our appearance later in life. Regardless, what this bill comes down to is what I stated in the title. The people supporting this bill really don’t want anyone with a penis to be in a girls’ restroom. The idea that these adults are even thinking about children’s penises should be seriously disturbing to anyone who cares about safety, privacy, and autonomy.
The bill is awaiting the signature of the governor, who has apparently claimed he’s never met a trans person and doesn’t want to, in order to not influence his decision. Because of course, the people who are actually negatively impacted by this legislation – the girls and women who are bullied, beaten, and killed for attempting to live their authentic lives – don’t count.
Transmasculine people like myself are harmed by trans-antagonistic legislation too, of course. I still fear using men’s rooms, over two years into my transition, and seek out gender-neutral accommodations whenever possible. But I am not generally seen as a threat.
It’s trans women who conservatives and TERFs are convinced are men posing as women in order to spy on, sexually harass, and rape cis women. They have presented no actual evidence of this harassment happening, but continue to promote these hateful lies, which they are projecting onto children as well as adults.
Cis allies sometimes ask what they can do to help trans people. Here’s something you can do. Speak out against trans-antagonistic restroom bills, loudly. If your school or workplace has gendered single-occupancy restrooms, lobby to make them gender-neutral. Call out anyone making jokes about a trans person’s appearance or “anatomy”.
We need to stop this fixation on the genitals of strangers. We just need to pee.
There’s something so amazingly bizarre about elected officials spending time and taxpayers money and implementing “laws” about where children urinate/defecate predicated on “biological sex… as determined by a person’s chromosomes and anatomy as identified at birth.” that its mind blowing.
It seems to me that cultures wherein oppression and discrimination constitute a major factor in their framework…behaviors (“legal” and otherwise) often tump over into the absurd…and sometimes even zany. They would be hilarious if they weren’t so terribly frightening.
The example of this that I always mentally reference comes from the ‘modern’ culture that most can identify as exemplifying murderous authoritarian oppression…Hitler era Germany. Oppression seems to always get whacky (and I’m not suggesting “fun” so much as I am dangerously detached from reality) and to me there’s no better public demonstration of this than watching German military troops marching using the “goosestep”.
I can never watch a film of such a silly and ridiculous exhibition without wondering why everyone wasn’t rolling on the ground laughing. (and I’m not ignoring or forgetting that this was a murderous and hideous regime)
I imagine professional statused white men (or white policemen) standing outside bathrooms in elementary schools wanting to look at children’s pee pees (or checking some “pee pee passport”) before kids are allowed to urinate. Somebody (many somebodys) are only vaguely tethered to reality for something like this to be able to occur.
We’re in deep doo doo (no pun intended).
Please know I’m not ignoring or minimizing the suffering cause by these kinds of stifling absurdities…nevertheless…the silliness (even though it is horrid and dangerous) strikes me strongly.
My finding them funny doesn’t mean I don’t take them seriously or am dismissive of them or that I think they’re harmless. Nevertheless…the zany seems to always eventually crop up when oppressive cultural practices run wild. Maybe it’s a visible or discernible symptom of the deep underlying mental/emotional distortions of a power group in a culture or something.
Inspecting children’s pee pees…that’s the job of a physician…or the desire of a perverted adult…or the play of another child…not something supposedly responsible adult professionals write laws about.
I’m convinced that you have to be emotionally/cognitively warped to be desirous of oppressing others…and I notice that often that warping exposes itself in absurd/ridiculous behaviors. Checking children’s genitals…good grief.
I suspect everyone would be much relieved and happier if white cisgendered men everywhere (and, god help me, I’m one of them) would go somewhere and sit down and shut up and not move again for 20 years or so. We’re pathetic.
Sorry for the length…I started writing and all this just flowed.
“I suspect everyone would be much relieved and happier if white cisgendered men everywhere (and, god help me, I’m one of them) would go somewhere and sit down and shut up and not move again for 20 years or so. We’re pathetic.”
Unfortunately it’s not just cis men but also TERFs (so-called radical cis women who refuse to use the term “cis”) that are involved in this ridiculousness. Strange bedfellows as they say.