Sunday, January 11, 2009

Gainesville’s Transgender and Bathroom Problem

I wrote this post in response to Ryans questions about Gainesville’s and the Transgender and Bathroom Problem, but it grew into a larger comment which I needed to post here.

Is the author of this post advocating a National Register for all people who express themselves to be Gender Variant? Or just for the Gainesville area? When you write, "Did they register as Transgendered-Americans?”; do we have to make foreign visitors declare their, Sexual Presentation, or Gender Identity before we will let them enter the country? Let’s take this question one step back and ask, "Who gets to medically declare and verify if someone is 'male', or 'female'?" By what means do we medically test the population? By visual inspection, by Genetics, Chromosomally; how far do we invade someone’s personal information in determining someone’s sex? We can't use name, because too many name are gender neutral; we can check by visual inspection, but a person who appears to be female could be male with gonads that didn't descend; testing for chromosomes isn't viable because people have female sex characteristic and could have male chromosomes markers, and then which label would you use. And what do we do with persons who are intersex? Are you really sure there are only two genders? If there would be any way to really count the number of people who express themselves to be 'transgender' you would probable find more than 500 in a population the size of Gainesville. Couldn't there be a hundred variations of gender? Are the people who protest so much so blinded by their own sexual wanderings that they do not want others looking too hard at their lives?

To tell you the truth, as a trans woman, I have been going to a doctor in Gainesville and to the VA Hospital and have never, ever been asked to leave a restroom, even when I was standing in a line to use a restroom. I really don't understand; what do 'real' women do differently in a bathroom than I would do?

Where are the news stories of trans women molesting young girls, there should be thousands of these horror stories, where are they? Who molests young Girls? Pedophiles molests children, not trans people and once we get that difference straightened out in our muddled mush for brains the better society will be. I'll charge you to search news records for stories about who abuses children and you will probable read about our 'teachers' our youth ministers and people who work with children molesting children more than someone who identifies as a trans woman. People’s reasons to transition are not to hunt down girls for any vile, perversion. Gender variant people's urge to transition is real,because there is a dissonance with the sex the brain thinks a person should be (subconscious sex), with the sex characteristics of their body. A "trans person" determination to resolve this dissonance is by transiting genders to match the gender identification with the subconscious sex.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Actually Autumn Sandeen on her blog had a good post about this today,

http://transadvocate.com/autumnsandeen/archives/3239

where she said "If there were documented cases of transpeople having acted like predators in public bathrooms, or documented cases of male predators dressing as women to molest women and children in public bathrooms that organizations like Citizens for Good Public Policy would be citing the cases."

She has made this case several times before and my guess is that the other side isn't listening, and is not interested in anything beyond spreading irrational fear. Sad, but that is how it plays out not just in Gainsville, but now in Massachusettes, Hamtramck, and in Kalamazoo as well.

Shannon