Have you ever noticed that whenever liberals say that something won’t happen, it happens?asks Benny Huang.
Yeah, I’ve noticed that too. Just weeks after Washington State implemented a new nondiscrimination law that protects “gender identity” a man walked into a women’s locker room at a public pool in Seattle, a possibility that liberals had pooh-poohed when passing the bill.asks Benny Huang as ze ponders the solution to whether we can choose race (can Rachel Dolezal be black if she wants to be?), whether we can “identify” as disabled (“transabled”), and whether we can determine our own age (at least one gender dysphoric man from Toronto — “Stephonknee” (an adopted name) Wolschtt — has decided that he is in fact female and six years old).
Other women were shocked because the man evidenced no outwardly feminine characteristics. This was not a dude carrying a purse and wearing a miniskirt; this was a dude who looked like a dude. He calmly began to undress in front of the women who quickly reported him to staff. When he was asked to leave he reportedly said, “The law has changed and I have a right to be here.” He later returned at a time when several young girls were changing for swim practice.
The police were not called and the unidentified man was therefore not arrested. No surprise there; what would they have charged him with? The law, which opponents claim enables voyeurism, would have been on his side. All he would have had to say is that he feels himself a woman in his heart of hearts. If he had been arrested he would have been able to sue the police for wrongful detention.
Such is the insanity of these transgender “rights” laws which completely abandon the idea that maleness and femaleness are objective realities. Those are just social constructs, they argue, and they can be altered with surgery, hormone therapy, or even just a personal decision to be “true” to one’s self. In order to muddy the waters they speak of gender rather than sex, two words that were once synonymous but have recently diverged. Even transgender activists acknowledge sex as being determined by biology though they afford it little importance. It’s gender that concerns them because gender is entirely self-determined.
Nor is gender binary—an “either/or” decision between male and female. Facebook, a company always on the forefront of deviancy, allows its US-based users 51 options for defining gender including “androgynous” and “genderqueer.”
… In short, the transgender movement’s Big Idea is that no one can tell anyone else what his/her/zir gender is because it’s a personal choice. Though completely bonkers, I can see how this idea would appeal to the Left because it rejects the concept of objective reality and fetishizes self-determination.
I’ve often wondered just how far the Left will extend this principle. There must be a bridge too far but where is it?
… Now I don’t really believe that the Left intends these laws to facilitate voyeurism or sexual assault even though that’s been the effect. What they want is for men who genuinely feel they are women to be treated as women. (And women who feel like men, of course.) They essentially want everyone to engage in a mass delusion because it makes delusional people feel better. They’re still wrong about this. Even if we could filter out the pedophiles and peeping toms from the truly gender dysphoric I’d still be against it because I’d rather not lie to myself. But as a matter of fact we can’t filter them out. If each person has full autonomy to decide whether he is male, female, or something else, then each person’s stated gender identity is sacrosanct and non-debatable.
Guys like Christopher Hambrook can of course be arrested and jailed after they assault women but they can’t be preemptively barred from women’s shelters as a precautionary measure. Which is utter madness, plain and simple.
I can only conclude that in their minds, protecting the delicate feelings of the mentally ill is more important than protecting women and children from pervs.
But what can we do about it?
In A Rape Survivor Speaks Out About Transgender Bathrooms (thanks to Ed Driscoll), The Federalist's Kaeley Triller, states that while feeling
a deep sense of empathy for what must be a very difficult situation for transgender people, at the beginning and end of the day, it is nothing short of negligent to instate policies that elevate the emotional comfort of a relative few over the physical safety of a large group of vulnerable people. …
What About Women’s and Children’s Rights?
… There’s no way to make everyone happy in the situation of transgender locker room use. So the priority ought to be finding a way to keep everyone safe. I’d much rather risk hurting a smaller number of people’s feelings by asking transgender people to use a single-occupancy restroom that still offers safety than risk jeopardizing the safety of thousands of women and kids with a policy that gives would-be predators a free pass.
Is it ironic to no one that being “progressive” actually sets women’s lib back about a century? What of my right to do my darndest to insist that the first time my daughter sees the adult male form it will be because she’s chosen it, not because it’s forced upon her? What of our emotional and physical rights? Unless and until you’ve lined a bathroom door with a towel for protection, you can’t tell me the risk isn’t there.
