"The notion that we should prevent transgender people from using bathrooms that match their gender identity — and that allowing them to do so would imperil children — is a tempest in a toilet, one of the more ludicrous political causes to gain currency in a while.
It has gained currency nonetheless. The ESPN commentator Curt Schilling advanced it last week by sharing a Facebook post that showed a burly man in unpersuasive drag and said: “Let him in! to the restroom with your daughter or else you’re a narrow-minded, judgmental, unloving racist bigot who needs to die.” ESPN, which had previously cautioned Schilling about unrelated outbursts, fired him."
Republican Senator Ted Cruz's campaign joined in the lunacy.
"The Cruz campaign released an ad with shadowy footage of bathroom stalls, sinister music and dire warnings, printed in large letters, about how vulnerable “your daughter” and “your wife” would be if Trump’s perspective held sway. “It’s not appropriate,” said words that flashed on the screen. “It’s not safe. It’s PC nonsense that’s destroying America.”
I don't know who would be worse, him or Trump. At least Trump reacted rationally, for a change, to this particular hysteria. Unfortunately, on the other side we have ethically challenged anti-Second Amendment Hillary Clinton and too-far-left-to-win, pie-in-the-sky, anti-Second Amendment Bernie Sanders. Sanders has a number of good points, but he's too far left for most voters. Oy Vey!
The NC bathroom law makes no sense.
"I’m guessing that Cruz hasn’t met or read much about transgender people. “Grown adult men” is precisely how many transgender men appear — with beards, muscles, pants — and exactly how they’d look to little girls in the women’s rooms that the North Carolina law would command them to use.
And such legislation tells someone who may well wear a dress to march into the men’s room if her birth certificate said male. That’s a greater invitation to potty pandemonium than letting people make their own calls when nature calls and turn in the direction consistent with the way they conduct the rest of their lives.
How would these potty prohibitions be enforced, anyway? What species of sentry or manner of inquisition would assess the external and internal anatomy of the bathroom-bound? Shall we divert government spending to this? We skimp on money to repair America’s infrastructure, but let’s find funds to patrol America’s lavatories.
Cruz, Schilling and many others are obsessed with — or cynically exploiting — the hallucinated scenario of male sexual predators suddenly feeling emboldened to stalk little girls in public bathrooms, presumably because they could, if caught, claim that they identify as women and belong there.
Here’s a news flash: They’d still be breaking laws. You know, the ones against lewdness and harassing and molesting kids. The ones that govern a male sexual predator whose targets are boys and who already has access to the same urinals that they do.
Besides which, child molesters aren’t famously expert at impulse control: I doubt that they’re raptly watching CNN and patiently awaiting some legislative green light to hunt for female victims by the toilets in public parks. They’re hunting already, and as everything from “Spotlight” to the Denny Hastert case has shown us, the grounds aren’t always the ones you expect, nor are the hunters.
If parents want to get worked up about threats to their children’s welfare and future, how about a more concerted and constructive look at the failings of schools? Or at the lures of sexting? Or at the injuries in contact sports? Or at the junk in children’s diets? Or at the lead in some cities’ water?"
I imagine that the majority of all women strongly prefer privacy in a ladies' restroom. I really doubt they want some weird guy in women's clothing and makeup to join them there.
ReplyDeleteSuggested reading. I hope it's not too complex.
http://gatesofvienna.net/2016/04/rene-girard-on-the-ontological-sickness/#more-39468
Art
Art,
ReplyDeleteThanks for the link. Unfortunately, I don't have the background in the things the author is saying or the patience to sort it all out and see its relevance. What specifically is the relevant point the article makes that you want to convey?