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Farther Toward a Sex-free Society
A few months ago I wrote about local YMCAs changing their locker room policies to be more inclusive to transgendered individuals (to the exclusion of normal gendered individuals — double digression — shouldn’t the term “non-crazy” suffice here?), and the aftermath was great both locally and in the comments on Ricochet. One of the strongest arguments made in favor of the change (or at least in favor of not getting worked up over it) was that the Y is a private organization which individuals are free to patronize or simply ignore as their consciences dictate. It wasn’t as if this was being mandated by the government. That is, naturally, no longer the case in the People’s Republic State of Washington.
The day after Christmas, Washington state’s Human Rights Commission gave us all a gift of bathroom and locker room desegregation. It is now illegal for business owners like the YMCA or their competition at another gyms to “limit sex-specific facilities such as bathrooms, showers, and locker rooms to persons with the anatomical parts of one sex.” So, the argument that the Y (and everyone else) can do what they think right is no longer valid.
The new rules apply not only to businesses but also to schools. That’s right, if a boy thinks he is a girl (or at least says he thinks he is) he now has a right to change and even shower with anatomical girls whether the girls like it or not. In fact, according to the Family Policy Institute of Washington:
once a man begins to undress in the women’s locker room a person who “expresses concern or discomfort … should be directed to a separate or gender-neutral facility.”
But wait, there’s more! Not only do the new rules exclude women from the women’s locker room should they feel discomfort about disrobing around men, but the rules also criminalize speech.
It is illegal to ask “unwelcome personal questions about an individual’s sexual orientation, gender expression or gender identity, or transgender status.”
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It is also illegal for a business to deliberately “misuse” someone’s preferred pronoun. If a man believes he is a woman, but you refer to him as a “he” anyway, he can sue you.
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It is also now illegal to use “offensive names, slurs, jokes, or terminology regarding an individual’s sexual orientation or gender expression or gender identity.”
What does the Y think of this change, you may wonder? I’m sure they are ecstatic, especially since “[i]n mid-December, prior to the public becoming aware of the state’s new policies, the YMCA once again reversed its own rules to allow transgender individuals unlimited access to the facility of their gender identity.”
Whatever isn’t forbidden shall be required.
Published in General
I tried to figure out exactly what qualifies as a sexual or gender identity as far as Washington’s anti-discrimination law is concerned and found this in RCW 49.60.040:
It’s basically gobbledygook that can mean whatever a person wants it to mean, especially the self-image part.
I don’t go by genitalia – a man who, say, gets his junk shot off in a war is still a man – I go by chromosomes: if you’ve got a Y in there you’re a man. The rest is cosmetic.
How does Bruce Jenner know he’s a woman trapped in a man’s body? And not instead a man-who-feels-like-what-he-thinks-a-woman-feels-like – which is an entirely different thing? How would he objectively be able to tell, never having been inside the head of an actual woman?
I suspect it’s the latter, for this reason: his first actions upon deciding to have a “woman’s body” to match his woman’s soul was to get breast implants, grow his hair long, start wearing dresses, and putting on makeup. Why? Because that’s how a man thinks “woman”. (Or at least this man.)
I know plenty of women with chests as flat as Bruce Jenner’s was. Hair as short as his was. Yet they are definitely all-woman, and yummy. Not a single one would consider breast implants, nor feel less feminine because of her figure. Short-haired women – shorter than his was – still very sexy. My girlfriend has short hair; is she less a woman now than Caitlin?
If he is a woman in there, why not be a woman wearing Chuck Tailors, jeans, and a T-shirt? That’s what my girlfriend wears mostly, and she is totally woman. No makeup either. If BJ really was a woman in there, why not be one who is comfortable with the way “she” looks, just the way she is – isn’t that what we are always telling each other when talking about our self-esteem? Bruce Jenner was a very handsome guy; why not be a very handsome looking woman, one that looks a lot like Bruce Jenner – what’s the difference?
When I recall those scifi movies where a woman and man switch places because of a spell or whatever – and a woman actually is – for the duration of the movie – trapped in a man’s body, she NEVER immediately goes out and orders up some breast implants and size 13 high heels so she can be a “woman” again. No, she shakes her head and then goes forth, doing her best with a urinal, drinking with the guys, remembering not to wait to have her door opened for her, or whatever the tropes are in such high-brow comedy.
I do not understand why most women are not downright disgusted, insulted by how this person evidently perceives womanhood, what makes a woman a woman. That it can be reduced to such superficial characteristics.
I, as most men I believe, have always considered women a mystery, and their doings and interaction between themselves out of the company of men to be a secret forever withheld from me. This is as it should be. If I were to put on a dress, a wig, and some blue eye shadow, I would not expect to be now unquestioningly included in their confidences.
I’m not saying it’s not exciting, mind you, and I do look reasonably sexy in pumps, but putting on a pinafore and a padded bra would not suddenly make me able to hold my own around the gossip table with the Sex in the City cast. Even if I shaved real close.
(Edited to add: Just kidding about that last part – I don’t really think the Sex in the City girls have anything to do with real women.)
Double post madness
You’re a Texan. You’re an outlaw almost by definition. Of course, there is Houston.
I had this concern for Daughter S. A miracle has, however, occurred: she met a very nice young man at her university who hikes and hunts, and is also super-smart, sophisticated, and respectful. I like to think of him as an age-appropriate equivalent of Troy. But they are only in college, so it may not last. At least there are still some young men out there.
Confused.
If Texas secedes, it’ll fill up so fast it’ll make your head spin.
We are, but what to do? Throw mud at him if he should accidentally show up in MT? The only reason I know about him is from all the talk about him on Ricochet.
The answer is pretty long, but the cliff notes version is “Liberalism”.
And the hits keep on coming. Navy Secretary, and former “New South” governor Ray Mabus today ordered the Marine Corps to make bootcamp co-ed, and to make all job titles gender neutral, specifying that the word “man” was to be removed.
Can’t have any men in the Marine Corps. That’s just silly talk.
They have to work fast. They only have a year left to destroy the military.
WC, the reason you haven’t heard and probably won’t hear anything about this from our candidates is that they are trying to avoid death-threats. The opposition in this controversy thinks nothing of actually undertaking to destroy anyone who disagrees with their world-view. Which, now that I think of it, puts them in the same category as Islamist terrorists. Hmmmm… I seem to remember that I did a post on this subject on my own blog a while back.
My wife, ever the optimist, said that at least she won’t have to wait in line for 20 minutes now to use the bathroom.
Cruising.
Well done, sir. And too close to the truth in these times.
How does one know the question is unwelcome before one asks?
The lawsuit that follows. This really does set up a culture of silence.
Wow. You have really nailed this. At least, I share your observations and conclusions. The psychology of what he is doing is just bizarre. In an age when a woman can be anything she wants, his concept of “feminine” is really strange. It is as if he is putting himself in the past as well as in another sex.
When I saw him on the cover of Vogue, I wondered if he had the “exhibitionist” psychological disorder, which used to be in the psyche manuals. Somehow he thinks it is more possible to fulfill that fantasy as a woman; perhaps he is jealous of female supermodels.
He’s old enough to know better.
It’s only mental illness if you think you are Napoleon, not if you think you are Josephine.
FWIW, I work with one. He’s black, though; I’m not sure if that’s significant or not.
Every news story I hear from there lately just confirms I made the right choice in moving back to the Southeast. Yeesh.
That’s something I noticed with the two TG people I knew online. The woman who thought she was a man had shorter hair than I did, was a Marine, held up Superman as her role model, etc. The man who thought he was a woman was giggly and flirty; I never saw a picture of him, but I’m pretty sure he had long hair.
In other words they both conformed to the very gender stereotypes their supporters claimed to be against to a far greater degree than the other men and women in the group.
(And that’s not even bringing up the girl who insists she has no gender at all. I seem to have fallen into an odd crowd.)
There is indeed a phenomenon called “autogynephilia” in which a man is sexually aroused by the idea of himself as a woman. It is sometimes described as “inner-directed heterosexuality.” This was first described by Ray Blanchard; it is often dismissed by trans activists because it does not fit the narrative of “mentally female.”
I am no expert, but this would seem to explain the surprising number of married men who transition and stay married to their wives.
Y’know, I’m gonna admit I’ve had that dream before, and, yes, my transformed self was kinda hot (which was how you knew it was a dream, as I’m not a particularly attractive man to begin with.)
It never once so much as crossed my mind to try and make that dream a reality.
What explains the wives?
I didn’t know it was a named disorder (thanks, Liz!), but I’ve always suspected trans-sexual “women” have a distorted perception of what it means to be a woman, since they find hosiery, high heels, and corsets so appealing.
Um, no, fellas. Nature-made women don’t generally have wardrobes composed primarily of fishnet stockings, spiked heels, and bustiers. Even if the men in their lives would like them to.
It drives me insane. That nasalized whine.
If there isn’t a name for the phenomenon, there should be. We’ve had upspeak, Valspeak, Valley Girl voices infect the country from coast to coast. What do we call what has happened to male voices? Castratispeak?
Thank you The Scarecrow. Yes!