Thursday, April 23, 2015

Haters Propose Initiative To Regulate Where Gender Non-Conforming People Can Pee


Now that heterosexual supremacists and religious fundamentalists have realized they have lost the culture war completely on the question of marriage equality they are moving on to other issues, like "religious freedom" and protecting people who believe they have a constitutional right to deny services and public accommodations to other people due to their "sincerely held beliefs" about marriage. Oh and proposing ballot measures to require executions of homosexuals.

One of these issues the homophobic conservative right is pivoting to is about gender-nonconforming people and bathrooms. You think LGBT people are interested in the genitals of other people? We are nowhere as interested as the Pacific Justice Institute, which is so obsessed with the issue they want to have a multi-million dollar ballot campaign in the heat of a presidential campaign to discuss the politics and biology of sex and gender. What could go wrong, right?

They have filed the "Personal Privacy Protection Act" with the California Attorney General which would amend the California code to include the language:
 Notwithstanding any other provision of law, a person shall use facilities in accordance with their biological sex in all government buildings. 
So, yes, basically they want to make sure that only people with the "right" plumbing get to pee in the right places. Why do they care? Because they want to demonize people they do not like as predators.
This issue of gender-neutral bathrooms enrages (and befuddles) me because isn't it everyone's experience at home that all bathrooms can be used by all people of any gender? Why shouldn't that be the case in public? Why shouldn't ALL bathrooms be private? The idea of "group" bathrooms (i.e. urinals) is the atavistic notion that should be abolished, not the idea that people who and gender-nonconforming or transgender have to get the permission of the state to determine which bathroom to use in a public bathroom. That is insanity. They are convinced that sex is a binary despite all evidence to the contrary that not only is SEX not binary, neither is GENDER. However, they want to put into state law a definition of biological sex that reads:
 Biological sex means the biological condition of being male or female as determined at or near the time of birth or through medical examination or as modified by Health & Safety Code § 103425. 
But what happens if someone's sex is indeterminate (intersexuals) or someone's sex NOW is different from what their sex was determined to be "at or near the time of birth"? I guess no public bathroom for you, if the PPPA is passed by California voters.

One of the proponents of the measure named Kevin Snider is quoted in the Los Angeles Times claims that people who don't believe in the "biological reality of two sexes" are "science deniers." I would definitely put myself in the camp of many people who think there may be atleast five sexes! I think Mr. Snider needs to read up on the latest scientific research on the nature of sex and gender:
Sex can be much more complicated than it at first seems. According to the simple scenario, the presence or absence of a Y chromosome is what counts: with it, you are male, and without it, you are female. But doctors have long known that some people straddle the boundary — their sex chromosomes say one thing, but their gonads (ovaries or testes) or sexual anatomy say another. Parents of children with these kinds of conditions — known as intersex conditions, or differences or disorders of sex development (DSDs) — often face difficult decisions about whether to bring up their child as a boy or a girl. Some researchers now say that as many as 1 person in 100 has some form of DSD.
But, sure, let's have a conversation about which side is denying science and data. Spoiler alert, it is not going to be the group which thinks that sexual orientation can be changed by "therapy."

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