Every now and then I get a wild hair up my ass and send a letter to an editor off. I sent this one off today to the Providence Journal (Rhode Island), regarding David Carlin’s Bathrooms for the transgendered. Summing up the article, he stated that providing gender-neutal restrooms that would benefit transgender students is a “lethal cocktail of compassion-plus-stupidity,” and:

…Let me get back to the compassionate New England colleges. They have solved the bathroom problem by doing away with men’s rooms and women’s rooms. Now everybody will use a gender-neutral bathroom. That is to say, men, women and transgender people will all use the same restrooms.

What a splendid institutional improvement! They have improved the bathroom lot of a small (and mentally ill) fraction of the student population, and they have inflicted embarrassment and discomfort on everybody else. Well, not quite everybody else. The politically correct administrators who run many of our colleges will feel a glow of moral superiority every time they relieve themselves in a gender-neutral rest-room.

The French philosopher Jacques Maritain felt that we should be both compassionate and intelligent. One without the other would not do. He summed this up in a memorable phrase that we should all remember: “We must have tough minds and tender hearts.”

America today suffers from what may eventually prove to be a lethal cocktail of compassion-plus-stupidity. We solve little problems that tug at our heartstrings by creating immense future problems. Hard cases make bad law.

Anywho, below is my letter to the editor. It’s probably too long for them to actually post in their hard copy publication, so I thought I’d share it here.

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Dear editor,

David Carlin doesn’t seem to comprehend that the “difficulty [transgender] students face when choosing a bathroom” isn’t superfluous, it’s serious mistreatment and violence. The Transgender Law Center published the document Peeing In Peace, which stated:

For many transgender people, finding a safe place to use the bathroom is a daily struggle. Even in cities or towns that are generally considered good places to be transgender (like San Francisco or Los Angeles), many transgender people are harassed, beaten, and questioned by authorities in both women’s and men’s rooms. In a 2002 survey conducted by the San Francisco Human Rights Commission, nearly 50% of respondents reported having been harassed or assaulted in a public bathroom. Because of this, many transgender people avoid public bathrooms altogether and can develop health problems as a result. This not only affects people who think of themselves as transgender, but also many others who express their gender in a non-stereotypical way but who may not identify as transgender (for instance, a masculine women or an effeminate man).

[More of the letter to the editor after the break]

Read the rest of this entry »

The Whittier Daily News reported in its article Transgender student elected king that Andrew Gomez was elected Homecoming King at Pasadena City College. No big deal you say? Well, Andrew is a transman.

Andrew’s candidacy was challenged…

PCC’s homecoming committee initially ruled Gomez ineligible because of his pierced ear.

But after students complained, lodging charges of discrimination, the committee relented and reversed its decision. Gomez said his election earlier this month as Homecoming King surprised him, even though he initially ran hoping to become a source of inspiration for other gay, lesbian and transgender students.

“I wanted them to feel like they could do something like this, instead of having them feel, `I am not straight so I can’t do this,”‘ Gomez said.

When Tony Covarrubias ran for prom king in Fresno earlier this year and didn’t win the title, Focus On The Family’s CitizenLink titled an article Girl Who Sought to Be Prom King Loses, and the Freepers ran an article with the title “Shemale Runs For Prom King.

When three weeks later a Fresno trans girl wins prom crown — when Chrystal Vera won the Prom Queen title at Fresno’s Roosevelt High School — (Jack T.) Chick Publications wrote a piece entitled Court: Women’s Restroom Okay for ‘Transgendered’ Men, where they wrote:

The sodomite indoctrination in our schools and work places is having some “unintended consequences.” A Pennsylvania court has “opened the door for men, who believe they are women, to come to work in a dress and use the women’s restroom and shower facilities,” according to The Wanderer, a conservative Catholic weekly.

In a Fresno, California high school, a female “transgender” student ran for prom king and lost, but a male “trans” ran for prom queen and won. He is also on the cheerleader squad and stands 6 foot 4 inches in his high heels.

…Our only defense, and the only hope for America, is a revival of Bible-based morality. For that to happen, the rebel hearts must be changed, one at a time.

Soul winners, we need to step up our witnessing. We need to counter the lies of Satan with Gospel Truth. If we haven’t time to speak to someone about the Lord, we can always give him a tract, or leave one where someone will find it.

Apparently, identifying as transgender equates to identifying as a deceiver… a sodomite. And, “we” have to tie the deceit to the bathroom — of course. It’s always the bathroom when it comes to transgender people, isn’t it?

Can’t wait to see what’s written about Andrew Gomez. Well, actually, I can wait — my heart is with him, as I’m sure they’ll be some vitriol.

And as a final side note, please don’t send me any gospel tracts, especially if it should come from Chick Publications. Somehow I won’t feel the love of God when I’m lambasted as a sodomite and one of Satan’s liars.

~~~~~
Related:
* Is It Deceit?
* Is It Deceit? — A Second Look

Emerson University is the latest in a string of colleges and universities to incorporate gender neutral — otherwise known unisex — restrooms into their campus restroom schemas. The narrative for these restroom sign changes for a given campus’s single stall, handicapped accessible restrooms is transgender affirming. or homosexual affirming. As described by the Idaho Family Alliance, gender neutral restrooms:

…the “new political frontier” in the culture war is “the campaign to establish gender-neutral bathrooms in public places.” Said [Executive Director, Idaho Values Alliance Bryan] Fischer, “That means it is not an incidental thing for BSU officials to refer to it as a ‘transgender’ bathroom. If they’d been able to get away with it, homosexual activists would have considered this a great victory in their battle to normalize sexually variant behaviors.”

And, although publications like the Transgender Law Center’s Peeing In Peace advocate for gender neutral restrooms for the safety of transpeople, the reality is that (as described by David Haden, Emerson College’s associate dean of housing and resident life):

Having gender-neutral bathrooms doesn’t take anything away from anyone; it just gives students more options.

Also, as described by representatives of Boise State University about why these gender neutral restrooms are required:

The purpose of unisex bathrooms is to meet the needs of disabled persons who require assistance from an attendant who may be of the opposite sex. They are also often commonly referred to as “family bathrooms” because they serve the same purpose for a parent of a small child of the opposite sex.

The requirement is standard throughout the state and nation, and one can see these sorts of bathroom facilities in other public buildings, including airports, courthouses and colleges/universities.

So, the reality is that unisex, handicap accessible public restrooms may be suitable for transgender people to avoid arrest or violence for peeing in public restrooms, but transpeople not the primary reason why these unisex bathrooms are being built.

So let’s get the narrative right. Society via its building codes requires some unisex, physical disability friendly, single stall restrooms to be built to facilitate the needs of physically disabled people, and for private assistance from an attendant or parent of the opposite sex of the person peeing in the public restroom. Unisex restrooms have the secondary good of providing safe places for transgender and genderqueer people to pee in public facilities without the fear of violence or arrest.

The narrative really is gender neutral, physical disability friendly, single stall restrooms are needed for people who have specific health, safety, and privacy concerns related to using restrooms in public spaces.

When one is born with ambiguous genitalia, how should the parents and/or government determine what is the official gender marker on the birth certificate?

A child was born in Nepal with both male and female external genitalia.  The Ministry of Local Development has asked Bara District Development Committee Office to register the child as “both.”

“Since it is the right of the child to get its birth registered, the personal incidents registration office has been asked to give birth certificate to the “hermaphrodite” child mentioning gender as-both,” the Ministry’s letter dated 24 June stated. The ministry took the decision last Thursday, according to the letter.

The Kantipur Online went on to mention the parents’ suffering at having an intersex child:

The Kathmandu Post in its Saturday issue carried a news report mentioning the suffering of the child’s parents due to refusal of local authorities to register the child’s birth. The parents who suffered much due to the behavior of society, had moved to Kathmandu and knocked on the door of the Local Development Ministry.

It’s a strange thought — the reaction by local authorities to a child born with indeterminate sex/ambiguous genitalia was to just not register the birth.  The local authorities seem to essentially seem to have been saying that this intersex child wasn’t considered one of us homo sapiens. 

What a horrible thought — that having determinate sex is a prerequisite for being considered human.

Two about hu in the news today, if you really wanna know …

From Chinese last names on The World today …

The government of China is worried that the country is running short of family names. Officials say the majority of China’s 1-point-3 million people share just 100 family names. So they’s come up with ways to create more than a million new names. Host Marco Werman finds out how they plan to do that from Paul Crook, a producer with the BBC’s Chinese service.

And from New Fix To The Pronoun Problem in the Hartford Courant …

Some have taken the more extreme approach of devising entirely new pronouns that specify no gender. “Ne,” “hizer,” “thon” “shem” and “herm” are just a few that have come along, and faded almost as quickly. They’re known as gender-neutral, or epicene, pronouns.

The latest such pronoun comes from DeAnn DeLuna, who teaches literature at Johns Hopkins University. Her creation, “hu,” would replace he, she, him, her and his. Because it’s just one word, unlike an entire set of pronouns, DeLuna says its easier to use than other gender-neutral pronouns. And the word (pronounced “huh”), trips off the tongue easily.

Uh, I don’t know about hu, but I don’t think any of this is going to work.