APRIL, 2022 KELLEY KIDD In very recent years there seems to have developed a widespread sentiment that there are not two different and distinct sexes among humans, but a wide variety of sexes. The position of very many Americans is that sexual existence can come in any of the following forms: straight male, straight female, bisexuals, lesbians, gays, trans-sexual men, trans-sexual women, queer and other. The old notion that all people are either male or female, and should be seen and treated as though they were one or the other has been vilified as discriminatory and bigoted. Women and men who take that view are called “transphobic” and accused of denying that trans children the right to become what they are.
In particular the insistence on allowing only sports participation in the sexual category of one’s birth certificate has become a widely denounced practice. We are also told by many vocal advocates that trans-sexual women must be treated exactly as though they were women from birth, that we are asking such people to commit suicide if we deny them access to spaces formerly reserved only for females from birth. Surgery and other medical procedures must be employed to prevent puberty when children who say they are trans also express strong desires for such procedures.
i am an old white liberal who went to jail protesting American interventions in Southeast Asia, and who moved into an all Black neighborhood to position myself to conduct a one man stand against racism and the abuse of the poor. My career for many years has been in low paying work to assist poor folks and those who, like myself, suffer from alcoholism. I am opposed to any form of discrimination which denies equality of opportunity in services. housing, education or job opportunities to anyone on account of their sex or gender identification. Vilification or hatred or contempt for any person because he or she calls self trans is also not to my liking.
That said, I do not believe that a person should be automatically enrolled in sports activities, same sex living or bathing facilities just because the person claims to have transitioned to the other sex or wishes to be treated as a member of the sex other than the one on their birth certificate. And I do believe that virtually all children and adults are either males or females, regardless of whether they feel like the sex that biology has assigned them.
A few sentences from MEDECINE PLUS, a publication of the National Library of Medicine, states truisms that cannot be changed by social movements or public sentiments: “In humans each cell usually contains 23 pairs of chromosomes, for a total of 46. Twenty two of those pairs called autosomes, are the same in both males and females. The 23rd pair, the sex chromosomes, differ between males and females. Females have two copies of the X chromosome, while males have one X and one Y chromosome.” There are rare exceptions, but those exceptions do not lead to inevitable desires to be trans. Those who have XXY patterns in that 23rd chromosome usually have developmental problems like slowness in learning and motor activities.
I do not approve of discrimination against anyone. But I do not discriminate against you by perceiving you as who biology has made you. Race is a matter of perception as there is no sharp genetic or biological line between those we socially label as Black or White. We treat the race issue as significant because it has been a necessary and foundational perception in the creation and maintenance of slavery, the Jim Crow system and widespread discrimination against people perceived to be of the Black race. Our perceptions of difference have led to very real and hurtful differences in every area of American life.
But biology has created a sharp chromosomal difference between the sexes. Pretending that the line can be extinguished by our personal wants and feelings will not change that reality. Trans women will not thereby be enabled to become the mothers of children, even if their presence in women’s restroom and sports teams changes the social realities of both biological and trans women.
I would go very slow on this trans thing when biological women object to total conflation of the the two whenever and to the extent that policy makers insist that conflation is necessary. Conversely I would be intolerant of discrimination in employment and housing against people on the basis of their gender identification.
Journal of Public Law 