It is ironic that so soon after Rachel Dolezal finally admitted the undeniable and agreed that she is, in fact, white, the federal government accepted the Caitlyn Jenner Fallacy and declared that all it takes to turn a male into a female for school policy purposes is feelings, no re-assembly required.
Federal education authorities, staking out their firmest position yet on an increasingly contentious issue, found Monday that an Illinois school district [Township High School District 211] violated anti-discrimination laws when it did not allow a transgender student who identifies as a girl and participates on a girls’ sports team to change and shower in the girls’ locker room without restrictions.
To be blunt, and I mean blunt, this means that if a human being with a fully functioning penis says he’s a girl, a public high school is obligated by the Constitution to pretend he does not have said penis, and he must be treated as a girl and no different from any other girls in all respects. This right that nobody ever heard of before thereby means that the boy-with-a-penis-who-identifies-as-a-girl-without- one is legally able to demand that he is allowed to embarrass, upset and threaten girls who do not have cocks by forcing them, rather than him—oops, her— to dress and shower away from the group.
Everyone except the victimized members of the school’s team are wrong on this one, and there will be consequences. The school was wrong to pander to a nascent transgender social justice warrior by allowing him-becoming-her to be on the girls team in the first place.”Here’s the rule,” they should have said, “The only way we can separate girls and boys is the same way doctors do when a baby is born. How you feel is irrelevant. Which team you want to be on is irrelevant. If you have a penis, which you do, and no vagina, which you do not, then you play on the boy’s teams, or no team at all. Your choice.” Unfortunately, most school are not just run by liberals, but cowardly, intellectually lazy liberals. Nor did they see that transgender activists, like most activists, will push for more and more until they end up alienating many who support their basic argument.
Then there is the boy/girl, who was offered reasonable accommodations by the school, and decided to be a trailblazer for all similarly encumbered self-identifying females [ I made a cheap and vulgar reference here, and deleted it. I am ashamed.] and fight for their right to parade such male accessories in the faces of young women who should not have to be confronted with them in the girl’s shower.
Read my commentary on this problem. I am sympathetic, and I believe that the transitioning male-born kid who is certain that he has no snakes and snails and puppy dog tails inside should be respected and treated with dignity and compassion on his way to her-dom. He shouldn’t be bullied and he shouldn’t be discriminated against. But a rule that holds “No penises in the girl’s shower ” is not discrimination. It is common sense. It is manners.
Nor does transitioning genders make it ethical to be an asshole.
In that her parents didn’t convince the teen that this is badly and unethically overplaying one’s, er, hand, they are at fault too. Now they are supporting this mini-Caitlyn in an unnecessary, selfish, unreasonable and soon to be expensive battle that no school should have to fight.
Then there’s Obama’s Department of Education. The Times’ supposedly conservative op-ed columnist, David Brooks, actually wrote recently that there have been no scandals in the Obama Administration, which can only mean that he feels having the most politicized, inept and incompetent agencies within memory is nothing to be embarrassed about. This department, after roiling college campuses by painting a red target on the back of any male Lothario who has sex with a mutually intoxicated co-ed who says yes and doesn’t remember it in the morning ( or who chooses to forget), faces being tarred as a rapist based on a “preponderance of the evidence” standard. Now, through Catherine Lhamon, the Education Department’s assistant secretary for civil rights, it proclaims,
“All students deserve the opportunity to participate equally in school programs and activities — this is a basic civil right. Unfortunately, Township High School District 211 is not following the law because the district continues to deny a female student the right to use the girls’ locker room.”
Explains the Times:
In previous cases, federal officials had been able to reach settlements giving access to transgender students in similar situations. But in this instance, the school district in Palatine, Ill., has not yet come to an agreement, prompting the federal government to threaten sanctions. The district, northwest of Chicago, has indicated a willingness to fight for its policy in court. The Education Department gave 30 days to the officials of Township High School District 211 to reach a solution or face enforcement, which could include administrative law proceedings or a Justice Department court action. The district could lose some or all of its Title IX funding.
In a letter sent Monday, the Office for Civil Rights of the Department of Education told the Palatine district that requiring a transgender student to use private changing and showering facilities was a violation of that student’s rights under Title IX, a federal law that bans sex discrimination. The student, who identifies as female but was born male, should be given unfettered access to girls’ facilities, the letter said.
The school needs to fight this up through the court system. The case will require good and loyal progressive warriors to take an absurd position, alienating much of the moderate support and even a good chunk of the progressive support the emerging trans community has received. It will give new vigor and ammunition to the radical anti-gay marriage forces, and re-energize complaints about tyranny of minorities, of which this is a wonderful example.
It is all so unnecessary. All ethics principles, including rights, have exceptions, and you recognize them as such, make an accommodation, and never allow an anomaly to weaken a valid principle. You don’t allow the exception to cause people to doubt the principle, right or value.(See: The Ethics Incompleteness Principle) Boys who identify as girls are neither boys nor girls yet, and insisting that they be treated as either guarantees pain and confusion. Sometimes separate but equal is the best accommodation for all concerned.
If the American public doesn’t flip out over this, they deserve to be dominated by the authoritarian government that has been nourished the last seven years. The female students should quit the team, and let Caitlyn Jr. play the sport all by herself. That should be entertaining. If that fails, the school–indeed all schools—should just go to unisex teams in all sports, since it would be the only way to stop the nonsense.
The Democrats, like the Republicans, have taken one extreme and unforgivable position after another to pander to fanatical groups that it is dangerous to pander to. Mike Huckabee says that he thinks the Bible should overrule the Supreme Court. Ben Carter says that Muslims shouldn’t be President; Donald Trump says that we should deport 13 million men, women and children. These positions have consequences, like loss of trust. As defenders of a Democratic administration that has been a failure in ways nobody could have anticipated, the candidates to succeed Barack Obama should be required to either state their opposition to the latest insanity from Education, or lose the requisite measure of public trust by embracing it.
That would be a “gotcha” question indeed, but a very, very revealing one. I would say a decisive one, for a party that endorses this kind of radical, illogical, unfair and extreme application of the law cannot and must not be trusted. However, we all know, don’t we, that the registered Democrats and committed Hillary enablers who ask debate questions will never pose such upsetting questions to the Democrats.
To be fair, the exact same question should be asked every Republican candidate, and I am certain even the most addled of them they wouldn’t need a second to know the only right and reasonable answer.
“Must a school allow a student who is physically male and identifies as a girl and is a member of a sports team to change and shower in the girls’ locker room without restrictions?”
“Of course not.”
[ Note: kudos to the commenters on Ann Althouse’s blog, who virtually unanimously reject the Dept. of Education’s position, and manage to find every one of the many reasons it is progressivism gone bonkers with a minimum of dick jokes. This is a moderate blog with right and left readers (Prof. Althouse is quirky center-left); I think its reaction is a useful gauge. ]
Ethics Alarms 
There is no discrimination on the basis of transgender status. For when everyone is equally required to use the locker room and restroom on the basis of birth sex, there is no discrimination. To say that equal treatment is discrimination would be self-refuting.
I also note that Bill Clinton never took this position.
If you go by birth sex you’re going to end up with the same problem just on a smaller scale. A small fraction of trans people do end up getting sex reassignment surgery after all.
Showers, locker rooms, prisons, homeless shelters, etc. by what you have right now is the fairest option for everyone.
Sounds so obvious, fair and simple!
Not fair, fairest. Honestly such a rule should be unnecessary. Alas common sense isn’t ubiquitous. If trans activists would speak out against those people who obviously abuse the goodwill most people have, there’d never be an issue. Some people would use locker rooms that don’t match their parts, they’d be quiet about it, no one else would ever see anything and very few people would get upset.
However since the requirement to be trans is to say that you’re trans… Here, watch. I’m trans, I can go anywhere I want because I have feelings! No checks, no proof, take my word for it or you’re a bigot. Okay, I’m not trans anymore, if I go in the wrong locker room now I’m a criminal. See how that worked? Rife for abuse.
Back in the day, people in transition got a doctor’s note. They probably would have lost said note if caught er… waving it around. Not that I heard of anything like that happening til the late oughties. All the transsexuals I knew would have been mortified at the thought of things they didn’t want to have being seen.
I can attest to the fact that pre-op trans people, in general, have enough angst seeing their own genitals, let alone letting others see them.
They just don’t let that happen outside a doctor’s office.
Like the requirement to enter a building is to merely say you have permission?
No, that’s not the way it works in schools, either.
Police don’t just take someone’s word for it that they’re not doing a break-and-enter either, even if they’re the owner. They don’t require you to produce the title deeds, but if you’re entering with a sack marked “Swag” and wearing a mask, it had better be Oct 31.
If a child registered as a boy wants to use a female restroom, she needs to make arrangements first. There’s no set rules, there can’t be, given the multitudinous circumstances that can arise.
As for “carry letters” – why do you think that practice was abandoned?
Those who took notice of them didn’t need to see them, and the bigots took no notice of them anyway. They were useless.
You and me both sister. But then we both know the people who are letting their genitals be seen aren’t pre-op while they still are trans people.
“Police don’t just take someone’s word for it that they’re not doing a break-and-enter either, even if they’re the owner. ”
In some cases, they are loudly criticized for doing so, however. It was just such a circumstance that led to the “Beer Summit”.
Or we could simply say either sex segregated facilities for for all or sex integrated facilities for all. Either way, transgendered students would be treated just like everyone else, and the school would not have to inquire into the transgender status of students.
All the media coverage I have seen treats this decision as the only reasonable one. I can only conclude that this represents the mainstream Democratic position.
I think the people in this town need to start a charter school or private school, remove their children from the public school system, and repeal the taxes that pay for the public schools.
I am certain that no candidate would dare endorse this on national TV. Guaranteed.
I missed this amazing exchange on CNN..
By “education,” the CNN smug Periera means “indoctrination.” Her position defies fact and experience. Nobody has to accept that a boy can magically become female by saying that’s how we feels, any more than Dolezal becomes black.
If that sort of thing was tried when I was in high school, we would have chased the freak out with sticks and bricks. And while I did not at the time intrude too much on other people’s business, I might have been tempted to pick up a brick…
Someone is not a freak just because their upbringing never taught them they they are not entitled to to everything they want. That some sacrifices must be made if one wants to both transition and avoid risk to other people.
If common sense can’t resolve the dispute then you handle it through the courts. You do not pick up a brick. You monster.
Logic is wasted on monsters, Valkygrrl.
I wrote that I would be tempted if “that sort of thing was tried when I was in high school,”. I never claimed that it would have been justified. Many people would be tempted to rain down violence on people who desecrate the flag, but certainly such provocation would not serve as a justification.
The school and the students at the time were fortunate that no such thing was ever tried by any transgendered students, or by the Department of Education. We did not need any more reasons to incite violent reactions. (Now that I think of it, there were zero flag desecration incidents at my school.)
You also showed aggression with the word freak. That has what Robert A. Heinlien would have called, a high negative index.
Someone would be depositing his/her money at the First National BONK.
You’re disgusting.
Tell ya what, Chris. I’ll get back to you here the minute your opinion of me becomes important.
Steve-O: for better or worse, Chris was addressing Michael E, not you.
Oh. My bad. I suppose this is going to get messy enough without me stirring the pot.
If this holds, I see a surge of 13 year old boys claiming to identify as girls for locker and shower purposes. And unfortunately some politicians who would still support them.
Well, it would be a opportunity for the rare 13 year old male who hasn’t looked at some Playboys for experiential learning.
“If this holds, I see a surge of 13 year old boys claiming to identify as girls for locker and shower purposes.”
Then you’ve never met a 13-year-old boy. The social consequences of being perceived as “girly” still far outweigh the desire to see boobs.
I’ve never heard of anyone pretending to be trans in order to perv on the opposite gender. It just doesn’t happen; it’s a wild hypothetical, and if this is the best argument against trans inclusivity, then there should be some evidence that this is actually happening, anywhere, ever.
Yes, we always hear that, and it is true, it is unlikely, and it is far from the most compelling reason to find this case irrational. Still, all it would take is ONE case where this happened, and that would be the ballgame. Just one crazy tried to blow up a plane with his shoe, and I’ve had to take my shoes off hundreds of times to get on an airplane. Just one bottle of tylenol was tampered with, and now its a chore getting any medicine bottle open.
I believe that if one agrees that a single instance of the unlikely scenario would be enough to cause a freak-out and procedures to make a repeat impossible, the rational course is to take those measures BEFORE the anomalous occurrence.
If a pervert wants to go into a woman’s bathroom or locker room, what’s stopping them from doing so right now?
And what’s to stop us from prosecuting them for aggressive or harassing behavior even if they do try to use the “I felt trans today” defense?
I mean, I hear a lot here about how gun control laws won’t stop any criminal from getting a gun–and yet policies requiring people to use the bathrooms/locker rooms of their birth gender are somehow the last bulwark against pervs entering those spaces and causing trouble?
I mean, we always
“If a pervert wants to go into a woman’s bathroom or locker room, what’s stopping them from doing so right now?”
Consequences.
“And what’s to stop us from prosecuting them for aggressive or harassing behavior even if they do try to use the “I felt trans today” defense?”
Why is that the bar? A person for all intents and purposes physically male walking around naked in a woman’s shower room is perhaps behavior we’d like to address, even falling short of being aggressive or harassing.
Again, “pervs entering locker rooms” is a straw man. Not the issue, but a good way to deflect the issue, I guess.
Still interested in whether you think the DOE is being rational here.
Don’t normally comment on typos, but this one, ‘ratio-anal’ for rational, seems particularly appropriate given it is descriptive of the DOE.
http://www.torontosun.com/2014/02/15/a-sex-predators-sick-deception
Try looking up the case on CanLii.
You won’t find an R v Hambrook in any court records,
Did Ben Carson actually say that Muslims shouldn’t be allowed to be President, or simply that he wouldn’t support one? That’s a big distinction.
Really? Why? If I say that I would never support a woman as President because of her gender alone, that means that I don’t think women should be President. What else does it mean?
Yes, as Isaac says, very big distinction. You Jack would never support Hilary Clinton as President but you don’t maintain that ‘she shouldn’t be allowed to be … ‘. You may well be about to be outvoted by your fellow citizens, and if so no doubt you’ll sulk, but you will need to respect their right to disagree with you.
Again, what’s the distinction? The distinction between expressing disapproval of a single candidate and a saying that any individual of a given religion is unworthy of election, however, is obvious: one involves measuring character, experience and accomplishments, the other is bigotry. If you think they are the same, you are too dim to participate here. But that’s not the problem…you were just taking a gratuitous cheap shot at the host. No doubt I’ll “sulk”? I have never sulked over an election or anything else.
One more comment like that, and you’re out of here, jerk. You’re lucky you aren’t already.
I misread your question: I thought you quoted the post. He never said, and I never SAID he said that Muslims shouldn’t be allowed to be President(in fact, I wrote a post about it. He suggested that being Muslim alone was a disqualifier. I think that’s dangerously close to bigotry, but defensible. What I wrote was that “Ben Carter says that Muslims shouldn’t be President,” and that’s what he said in his barely awake way.
Sorry for my confusion, but the “really” threw me off.
Good to hear from you.
Currently, it’s not regarded as ethical in the USA to permit genital reconstruction on children who consent to it, if they’re of the age of consent but under 18.
Will you get that changed, to ensure genital integrity of restrooms?
It’s only allowed if they’re too young to consent, and are Intersex.
Now if you are going to insist on genital integrity – what about a pregnant woman with CAH and a penis? Is she going to be forced to use a male locker room?
How about a woman with CAH who is not pregnant? Who bears the blame if she’s gang-raped and left pregnant as the result? It was you who put her in that position. Because of feels.
What about those who, like myself, looked mostly like one sex, identified as the other, but had genitalia that matched neither a standard M nor F pattern?
As regards Michael Ejercito’s comment – they didn’t use sticks on me when I was 10. They used a crowbar. And half-bricks, not full ones, as they’re easier to throw. I was only made aware of exactly how much damage was done much later in life, when I had a CAT scan of my skull.
Crushed brow sinus. Broken cheekbones. 3 separate breaks in my nose that didn’t completely heal properly, more that did. Hairline skull fracture.
Stoning hurts. My only defence was to dodge, use the pile of bricks to take cover, to defend vital organs by placing my arms in the way – and to throw them back, accurately, even if I got hit a few times doing it. I made sure every one was a coconut. That diminished their enthusiasm, even though I’d taken far more damage than they had.
Michael E – if you’d done that to me, I would have tried to neutralise the threat. I’m sorry, and I know it’s not right, but I would not have cared one whit whether I bruised you, broke a limb, blinded you, or killed you. I was desperate, and ten years old.
Now I’d at least make an attempt to use minimum force. You don’t deserve death.
You’d think that 47 years later, I’d forget the details. Lets just say those incidents left an indelible impression, on both my skeleton and my mind.
It never came to that. Nobody in my school at the time went on a crusade to root out transgenders. Any transgenders who attended school at the same time kept to themselves about their conditions. They did not ask to use a specific locker room, let alone try to get the Department of Education to join them in a lawsuit (not that the Clinton administration would have done such a thing).There were at most only rumors.
And you know what? It worked. There were zero incidents of anti-transgender violence during my time at school. Those who were transgendered did not have their education inconvenienced because of their condition.
It is unfortunate that people in your school aggressively sought out transgendered, and possibly any others they deemed misfits. But fortunately for my school in this particular context, nobody asked, and nobody told. That kept things peaceful in this particular context.
And that was good.
Sadly, I know just the kind of school she is talking about. I graduated from a small high school (33 people in my graduating class) in the Texas Hill Country, in a town that was largely a sheep ranching community. Most of the residents, and by extension, students, were descendants of German, Czech and Polish immigrants. Very opinionated and very willing to enforce their opinions as fact. Strangely enough, that was one of my reasons for becoming a psychologist.
“Stay in the closet and we won’t beat and murder you!” Nice.
I personally observed that it worked.
Teaching your children not to assault people for being different also works.
Uh, yeah. Follow the conventions or they get enforced. The geeky kid who keeps quiet and out of the way gets ignored. The one who insists on acting weird attracts trouble like a magnet attracts iron filings. If Charlie Howard had tried to fit in, maybe he’d still be alive today. But he insisted on wearing feminine make-up and lisping and singing “I am What I am” when feeling mischievous, and now there’s a bridge in Bangor called “Chuck-a-homo Bridge.”
And…this seems just to you, does it?
Just, no. Avoidable, yes.
Of course it’s avoidable, but there are two ways to avoid it:
1. Teach your children to tolerate people different from them.
2. Teach your children to hate and fear people different from them, and tacitly approve violence against those people.
One of these solutions is obviously more just than the other.
Or 3. Live within relatively normal parameters and don’t go out of your way to look for trouble. Most folks will leave people who are just a little odd but quiet alone. Look for trouble, and don’t be surprised when trouble comes looking for you.
That is true. But it does not take 2,000 people to assault a person(that was the student population when I went to high school.). It only takes one.
I wonder why it is whenever someone mentions locker rooms that you choose to turn the conversation to bathrooms. That’s an odd toilet obsession you have there. Or a pathetic attempt to throw up a shield that deflects from the real issue.
The child doesn’t have CAH. intersex people are not your shield. People using feels as their sole rationalization do not have CAH.
What do you have to say about exposed penis’ in women’s spaces? Will you say that is acceptable because someone claims feels? When someone on a train whips out his dick and smiles at me on the subway it’s a crime. Why should I have to deal with it if I’m putting on my swimsuit?
As for Michael Ejercito’s reprehensible comment. You know my feelings on male-pattern violence. Never okay. I’ve been consistently anti-violence and pro letting people live with dignity so long as they behave with dignity. Which is apparently why I was told I make trans people unsafe, but you know how it goes.
So what do you mean ‘male-pattern’ violence? So, no rights to self-defense? No ‘just’ wars? Sounds pretty sexist to me.
Yes that’s exactly what I meant and how very clever of you to figure it out. It takes a, er, special kind of mind to pick out self-defense and ‘just’ war out of a condemnation of this.
It also takes a special kind of person to paint an entire gender with the color of an internet comment.
I love when feminists talk about transgendered issues. Absolutely love it. See, there’s this fight going on behind the scenes, where intellectual feminism has recently been trying quietly to push an ideology that biological determinism is actually a social construct. Boiled down to it’s most basic, the idea would be that male or female roles as we know them would not exist had we not raised our children a certain way. This new ideology is having an awful time dealing with Caitlyn Jenner. If there’s no such thing as a male brain or a female brain, how can a person possibly be born in the wrong body? If there’s no such thing as biological determinism, why are these individuals so determined to change their gender? Because trans people show the lie of gender as a social construct, there have been some relatively high profile cases of feminist vitriol spewed at the trans community. This from a group that generally still prides itself on being LGBT friendly. The hypocrisy is on parade, and I’ll never think that feminists alienating people is a bad thing.
Continue!
There is plenty of feminist work being done to reconcile the social construction of gender with the existence of trans people.
But you’re not actually interested in any of that.
No no, Please. I’d love for you to explain it to me. Please describe feminist efforts specifically geared towards trans people. I’ll pop some corn.
The phrase “I’ll pop some corn” doesn’t exactly instill me with confidence that you’re willing to hear what I have to say with an open mind, HT. Maybe try Google?
I want to stand on my record of being open minded enough to not only reverse my positions, but apologize when I’m proven wrong. I apologized to Michael Ejercito recently on a conversation about yes means yes laws, and I did a complete 180 about gender segregated college during the SBC conversation. I just have enough experience with toxic feminism that I think that I could go blow for blow with you on this topic for days, and am EXTREMELY skeptical that you’ll actually be able to produce.
But sure! Let’s play ball. Googled “Feminism” and “transexuals”
Top three returns:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminist_views_on_transgender_and_transsexual_people#Feminist_exclusion_of_transgender_and_transsexual_people
Ok, so what we got is the Wiki page, which has three discreet sections on how feminism and transsexuals have at best an uneasy relationship, and often an overly hostile one.
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/08/04/woman-2
Next, A new yorker article, which includes this nugget: “In one early skirmish, in 1973, the West Coast Lesbian Conference, in Los Angeles, furiously split over a scheduled performance by the folksinger Beth Elliott, who is what was then called a transsexual. Robin Morgan, the keynote speaker, said: “I will not call a male “she”; thirty-two years of suffering in this androcentric society, and of surviving, have earned me the title “woman”; one walk down the street by a male transvestite, five minutes of his being hassled (which he may enjoy), and then he dares, he dares to think he understands our pain? No, in our mothers’ names and in our own, we must not call him sister.”
http://theterfs.com/
And finally, a site that thinks that proves that the “No True Scotsman” fallacy is a way of life, saying that the anti trans feminists are too extreme for them, all the while accepting that the issue exists,
Mmm… Orville… You make my day-yay.
Didn’t know baldness and violence followed the same pattern.
“Now if you are going to insist on genital integrity – what about a pregnant woman with CAH and a penis? Is she going to be forced to use a male locker room? How about a woman with CAH who is not pregnant? Who bears the blame if she’s gang-raped and left pregnant as the result? It was you who put her in that position. Because of feels.”
I just want to point out how serious a red herring this is. First off: Of the 4 million or so births in America annually, something to the tune of 300 might be CAH. This isn’t just making policy that inconveniences the majority for the well treatment of the minority, this is making policy that inconveniences the majority on the off chance your community might win a lottery. Assuming at any one time there are 13 years worth of CAH births in the system, that’s a maximum of 3900 schools affected. I’m not saying there shouldn’t be a policy, but if that policy is that these students use a different room, or that they use the room at a different time. The alternative seems to be having mixed genitals in the same bathroom, but I don’t think you can use the possible rape and pregnancy of a CAH student to argue they shouldn’t be in with the boys while simultaneously disregarding the idea that a person with CAH who chooses to use the girls facilities might rape and impregnate someone.
“What about those who, like myself, looked mostly like one sex, identified as the other, but had genitalia that matched neither a standard M nor F pattern?”
They, and you, have my sympathy. I can imagine what it’s like to feel uncomfortable with who you are, and deal with social stigma for no other reason. The group as a whole punches above it’s weight class in suicide rates, depression and other mental health issues and it needs help. That said, there’s the help we want, and the help we need, and they aren’t always the same. I think the better conversation would be on mental health, as opposed to where we pee. But that’s just me.
“Of the 4 million or so births in America annually, something to the tune of 300 might be CAH. ”
Quick check, though that sounds about right:
” Approximately one child in every 18 000 born in Great Britain has CAH.”
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22241917
CDC 203 figures – Number of births: 3,932,181
So 300 is a generous estimate, at the high end. Which is what you should use. 10/10 for intellectual honesty and research. I had a high opinion of you before, despite our differences, but it’s even higher now.
However, there’s these figures from the (defunct) ISNA.
Not XX and not XY one in 1,666 births
Klinefelter (XXY) one in 1,000 births
Androgen insensitivity syndrome one in 13,000 births
Partial androgen insensitivity syndrome one in 130,000 births
Classical congenital adrenal hyperplasia one in 13,000 births
Late onset adrenal hyperplasia one in 66 individuals
Vaginal agenesis one in 6,000 births
Ovotestes one in 83,000 births
Idiopathic (no discernable medical cause) one in 110,000 births
Iatrogenic (caused by medical treatment, for instance progestin administered to pregnant mother) no estimate
5 alpha reductase deficiency no estimate
Mixed gonadal dysgenesis no estimate
Complete gonadal dysgenesis one in 150,000 births
Hypospadias (urethral opening in perineum or along penile shaft) one in 2,000 births
Hypospadias (urethral opening between corona and tip of glans penis) one in 770 births
Total number of people whose bodies differ from standard male or female one in 100 births
Total number of people receiving surgery to “normalize” genital appearance one or two in 1,000 births
The figures are rubbery, unreliable, with +/- 50% error bars. The crucial ones though are these, aggregating all the many Intersex situations together:
Total number of people whose bodies differ from standard male or female one in 100 births
Total number of people receiving surgery to “normalize” genital appearance one or two in 1,000 births
The accepted figure for those who have genitalia so obviously unusual that they can be mistaken for the opposite sex is 1 in 2000.
“Accepted” doesn’t mean correct. I think though that it’s about right, though neither 1 in 1000 nor 1 in 3000 would astound me. This stuff is not well recorded, if it’s recorded at all.
So multiply your figures by a factor of 10 to gauge the practical scope of the issue.
I can’t say it can’t happen – I can say that women with CAH can’t produce sperm.
They could use donor sperm though, since we’re talking imaginary hypotheticals, like “boys pretending to be trans”. I can’t say that that can’t happen either. I can say that it’s never happened, not in the USA, whether in the 40% of the US with trans-inclusive protections or otherwise.
Rape and pregnancy of a CAH woman is less than a dozen cases I know of though. It’s almost certainly higher, but now we’re in the realm of “things that actually happen” not “imaginary hypotheticals”, so the standard of proof is higher.
1) ME’s comments here, like SMP on the same topic, are off the rails. You can obviously handle them. The important thing is that are not anomalous.
2.We can play gray area hypos all day. I’m good at it it too. Fun. The answer, as in all such situations, is negotiating an accord that is fair to all, recognizing that one individual should not try to create an unnecessary crisis just for the hell of it.
3. I don’t see that bathrooms have anything to do with this issue. Unisex bathrooms work just fine. The rule should be that a trans individual can use either. The women’s rooms are nicer…the men’s rooms are faster.
4. The issue is calling addressing legitimate concern and privacy issues by multiple non-trans persons “discrimination,” when minimal sacrifice by the trans individual is required to avoid a controversy.
5. Even if it made sense legally, it’s insane tactically, and I predict it will detour and harm the cause of trans acceptance. Badly.
“5. Even if it made sense legally, it’s insane tactically, and I predict it will detour and harm the cause of trans acceptance. Badly.”
B-I-N-G-O
I’d like to draw the parallel to gay people for a moment. We won. We got the same legal rights and benefits as every other couple in America. Great victory. But then it wasn’t enough, apparently. We had to force people with the threat of financial violence to bake us fucking cakes. Talk about sore winners. Take it back 10 years. If instead of insisting that our civil unions would be called `marriage` we had settled for civil unions I don`t think that we would have riled up the religious fundamentalists, and this would have been settled a decade ago. But I think the gay lobby, and now the trans lobby aren’t just interested in equal protection after the law, we wanted acceptance and to feel good about ourselves, and to destroy everyone who said anything but. And I understand it, even as I mock it. It`s hard to be the odd guy out. But ramming tough issues down other people`s throats like this is almost designed to make the entire process last longer.
Or create divisions that linger forever.
I’d also add that feeling good about oneself and being a self-made pariah are not compatible. I was also was different in school, but I was never a pariah, or made the school pave my way to acceptance and respect.
I was a pariah, but I never expected anyone to pave my way to acceptance and respect. You choose to be the odd man out, you walk that path.
Roe v. Wade is HOW old again? You can win legally, but to think the issue just goes away then is fooling yourself.
The problem with the end of a long struggle is that the people who invested a lot in being part of the struggle don’t know what to do with themselves when the struggle ends. The Portuguese Reconquista ended 200 years before the Spanish one did and hundreds of Portuguese knights became expatriates in Spain because with the fight over, they didn’t know what to do. A lot of the social justice warriors here don’t know what to do after Obergefell.
Or fail, outright. Remember the Black Panther’s and the Black Muslim movement in the ’70’s and ’80’s, which almost destroyed the gains made by the civil rights movement started by Dr. King. I have a bad feeling that the LGBT folks are stretching to the same excesses those radical agendas used.
The problem is making sure you only persecute the right people.
Situations like this are rare, but unlike the “perverts pretending to be trans” meme, they happen in reality, not just the fevered imaginations of those opposed to such legislation.
http://www.wxyz.com/news/region/detroit/woman-suing-fishbones-after-being-mistaken-for-a-man-and-kicked-out-of-the-womans-restroom
““As I came out of the stall, this gentleman – who was a security guard – came in the bathroom, and before I was even completely out of the bathroom he grabbed me by the arms and pushed me up against the wall, told me that boys aren’t allowed in this restroom,” she says. “This could have happened to anybody. There are lots of females out there with short hair. some people might think we’re boys, but, at the end of the day, we’re not”
How exactly do we protect her, a genuine 100% cis woman, a “real” woman, and not those icky trans and intersex women? Even genital inspections won’t work in all cases. Neither will chromosome tests.
Are we to say to women like her “you’re out of luck, because a rational law that would stop this nonsense would protect groups we don’t like too?”