On Being Trans

Miss Netherlands, a trans woman

How long did it take Dick Cheney, vice president under George W Bush and a real “conservative” Republican, to change his thinking about gay rights when his own daughter came out?  What do you think?  A minute?  20 seconds?  Somewhere between 5% and 10% of us are not straight.  That is, 20 million of us are not straight.  Which means that most extended families have a gay member or two.  And when that person came out, the family got behind him or her.  Without blinking an eye.  The person who didn’t was probably ostracized by the rest of the family.  The huge number of families with gay members explains why gay rights is no longer an issue among presidents, senators, House members, and even most SCOTUS justices.

Transgender individuals are different, if only because of their lesser numbers.  The number of Americans who identify as transgender may be as high as 0.5% of the population, or about 1.5 million.  But far fewer have had sex change surgery, roughly 10,000/year, so maybe a few hundred thousand in total, maybe one in fifteen hundred of us.  The U.S. Constitution, specifically the 14^th Amendment, guarantees equal protection under the law, to every American citizen, or even any person living here.  Equal protection of the law – for everyone.  This, despite the fact that various states have passed laws limiting the rights of transgender citizens, whether that means all of those who self-identify as trans or only those who have had trans surgery.  Our Constitution is pretty clear about this issue: equal protection protects gays and lesbians and trans folks and even those who only self-identify as transgender.  Some of us wait for SCOTUS to tell us what to do, but that won't satisfy everyone either.

The U.S. Constitution notwithstanding, there are areas where persons of good will may still disagree.  One such area is competitive athletics or sports.  As long as sports are divided by sex – boys’ sports and girls’ sports, men’s sports and women’s sports – there is a potentially sticky issue here.  A biological male who changes his sex may have a real advantage competing against biological females.  But, ask yourself: what percentage of transgender surgeries affect persons from age ten to twenty-five?  what percentage of transgender surgeries trans from male to female?  what percentage of transgender surgeries from male to female ever gave winning at sports a moment’s thought?  what percentage of these were good enough as boys or men to imagine that they would be winners as girls or women?  In the truly tiny number of cases where a trans girl wants to compete against biological girls, do we really need federal legislation to decide how to deal with this "problem"?  Even so, federal legislation won't be a slam dunk as our two major political parties aren't agreeing on anything these days, and perhaps there are more important matters for Congress to consider.  Why not just let the small number of schools with trans girls participating in sports make up their own minds how to deal with their “problem.”  The same when they compete against other schools, let the two teams hash it out how to deal with the problem (if either school feels it would be unfair for a trans girl to compete, she doesn't compete).

And, of course, which public bathrooms may trans persons use?  For the most part, men would not care if a woman used their rest room.  They might get ugly if they suspected that a woman was a trans woman.  Or that a man was a trans man.  How would they know?  Would they ask?  Guys who look for trouble usually find it.  As for the Ladies room, if a trans man (a person who looked like a man) were to use their rest room, the women would be troubled.  The law notwithstanding that dictated that trans persons use the bathroom of their biological gender.  If a trans woman (a person who looked like a woman) used the women's rest room, the women would probably not notice and not be disturbed.  The only issue here is a legislature telling people what to do.  If someone looks like a man, walks like a man, talks like a man, he is a man.  If someone looks like a woman, walks like a woman, talks like a woman, she is a woman.  Walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, etc.  You may disagree with this logic, but that would not change how the law might handle the issue.  If the trans person is trans by declaration only and not by surgery, then he or she should probably use the bathroom of their biological gender; their comfort is not the only comfort that counts.  Another solution long-term might be gender-free bathrooms.  The last thing we need is more laws telling us how to live our lives.  Brought to you by the political party that used to claim to be against regulation, especially the regulation of our own citizens.

For Americans who see no problem with global warming, with AI (artificial intelligence) and robots taking our jobs if not our lives, with racial injustice, with nativist anti-immigrant populism, with war and peace, with growing economic inequality, with a $32 trillion National debt, maybe we shouldn't be making a federal case out of this question.  It took us a few years for straight Americans to accept our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters (and not all of us have), so maybe accepting our trans brothers and sisters is also just a matter of time.