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Everything not forbidden is compulsory II

Almost six years ago I wrote a post with the same title as the current post (without the Roman numeral, of course). There I was examining the liberal idea that, if something isn't against the law, everyone else has to cooperate with it in a positive way. The example I used was that liberals assume that, if a minor girl is not legally required to tell her parents that she is having sex, a pharmacist is legally obligated to sell her contraception to enable her fornication.

The most recent examples of a similar attitude arise in the insane context of the "transgender" debate. The assumption is that, if some law cannot successfully be passed by a government entity legislating on the matter of whether biological males must use separate bathroom facilities from biological females, business have zero freedom in this matter and must "not discriminate" against people claiming to be the opposite sex.

This, of course, doesn't follow. State and local governments could simply be silent on the matter altogether while permitting local businesses to decide how to handle this. I suppose, with the insanity growing, that city government buildings and employers would have to have some policy, but this might even vary from one city to the next or one supervisor to the next, reflecting local mores.

But I often attempt to convey to libertarians that if someone is determined enough to press an issue, government can get involved in almost anything, and is likely to. If the state and local governments tried to remain neutral in the situation I just described, and some local business were having trouble making a man stop using the women's restroom, then they might end up having to call the cops to evict the man for trespassing. Or they might have to be allowed to use their own private security guards to exercise force to evict him, and the usual permission for use of force by private business security guards would have to apply.

But on the other hand, if the government unit insists on "non-discrimination on the basis of gender identity," then the security guard would be the one committing assault. (Similarly, if suicide is fully legal and not even a prima facie indicator of mental health problems, and you wrestle your suicidal friend to the ground and take away his gun before he shoots himself, you're the one committing assault and subject to arrest.)

The latter is what just happened in Washington, D.C. A security guard (who happened to be female) evicted a man who thinks he's a woman (whom all news sources I can find refer to in resolute, Orwellian lockstep as "a transgender woman" and "she") from the bathroom. The security guard was under the impression that no D.C. law requires that men be allowed to use the women's bathroom.

The D.C. police disagreed. They came when called and arrested the security guard for assault. She also may get extra charges for having committed a "hate crime," because her hustling the man out of the store was accompanied by "transphobic insults."

A striking point about all news stories on this is that not a single one actually addresses the guard's claim that no law required her to allow the "transgender woman" (cough cough) to use the women's bathroom. I did a little googling and can't find anything absolutely conclusive, but various transgender advocacy sites indicate that D.C. does have non-discrimination ordinances concerning public accommodations in restrooms that include the T in the alphabet soup.

If this turns out to be true, then this is a straightforward and obviously crazy effect of such non-discrimination ordinances: If any private business tries to apply sane policies on not letting men use the women's bathroom, they could be on the hook not just for discrimination but for assault as a hate crime.

But I find it ominous that the news stories don't even address it. They act as if it's just obvious that the guard must be wrong and that non-discrimination on the basis of "gender identity" is now the law everywhere except in certain benighted enclaves like North Carolina. That, of course, is not legally true. Not everywhere has equally crazy laws, and this matter hasn't been formally federalized for all private businesses, though the Obama administration is working on that.

Meanwhile, this sort of insanity is coming not only to all local businesses but also to a Christian college near you if it doesn't apply for an exemption from Title IX on religious grounds, given the Obama administration's "new interpretation" of Title IX to mean that men who "identify" as women have to be assigned dormitory rooms consistent with their "identity" and allowed to use all shower rooms, bathrooms, etc., as if they are women.

There was a story recently that various groups were trying to "shame" Christian colleges for applying for Title IX exemption. On the contrary, it should be a badge of honor.

The next time someone tells you, perhaps apropos of what he thinks he's heard about North Carolina, that this is about the government "allowing" transgender people to use a particular bathroom, send him this story. The transgender agenda represents a massive intrusion of government coercion into the private sector. This involves fines and arrests for refusal to cooperate with that agenda, which is a strictly insane agenda.

Apropos of which, anyone remember this story? To refresh your memory, a man in Olympia going by the name of "Colleen" was appearing in full frontal nudity before a minor girls' swim team while sitting about in the locker room and sauna. The media portrayed this poor "transgender woman" as being persecuted because at some point, someone asked him to leave. But that didn't last. Evergreen State University said they had to let him continue doing it. To be clear, "Colleen" still has, er, all of his male appurtenances. In a Facebook thread I mentioned this case to a leftist interlocutor, who expressly declared that there was nothing inappropriate at all about little girls' seeing a biological male fully exposed in a shower room or locker room. After all, the nude can be art, yada, yada. So, yes, if anyone asks, it is the agenda of the leftists on the transgender issue to require minor girls to put up with having biological men expose themselves to them in shower rooms. In other words, they want a loophole you can drive a tank through to be put on all laws about indecent exposure, even to minors. And, lest I be unclear, I don't care if "Colleen" and his ilk are merely lunatics who feel like women and who are "just" exposing themselves to women and girls "in the course of" using a locker room.

Businesses engaging in venue shopping should bear in mind these types of requirements and this implication. And non-profits and educational institutions should resolutely eschew government money. Otherwise, cross your fingers and hope the jackbooted thugs don't happen to notice your hateful practices.

Comments (42)

Just as a point of reference,this person (https://twanzphobic.wordpress.com/2016/04/27/the-miracle-of-twanzition-the-before-and-after-photos/) is a transgender woman.

Alright, here's a more elevating link on the subject:

http://www.mmisi.org/ma/25_04/kirk.pdf

"The most recent examples of a similar attitude arise in the insane context of the "transgender" debate. The assumption is that, if some law cannot successfully be passed by a government entity legislating on the matter of whether biological males must use separate bathroom facilities from biological females, business have zero freedom in this matter and must "not discriminate" against people claiming to be the opposite sex."

Shouldnt simple trespassing laws be sufficient? Granted that would take some common sense that that sign that says "men" means men and not also delusional biological females who are impersonating being a man. A degree of common sense that is clearly in short supply. It only makes it that much worse that any jurisdiction that would pass a law that clarifies that the women's room is for real women and the men's room for real men, will only be declared as a hateful, bigoted place that passed an "unconstitutional" law that targets "LGBT" people.

"Meanwhile, this sort of insanity is coming not only to all local businesses but also to a Christian college near you if it doesn't apply for an exemption from Title IX on religious grounds, given the Obama administration's "new interpretation" of Title IX to mean that men who "identify" as women have to be assigned dormitory rooms consistent with their "identity" and allowed to use all shower rooms, bathrooms, etc., as if they are women.

There was a story recently that various groups were trying to "shame" Christian colleges for applying for Title IX exemption. On the contrary, it should be a badge of honor."

Its just nuts we even need these exemptions. Not that they are long for the world. Hard to imagine them lasting even the first year of the next Clinton administration.

"To refresh your memory, a man in Olympia going by the name of "Colleen" was appearing in full frontal nudity before a minor girls' swim team while sitting about in the locker room and sauna. The media portrayed this poor "transgender woman" as being persecuted because at some point, someone asked him to leave. But that didn't last. Evergreen State University said they had to let him continue doing it. To be clear, "Colleen" still has, er, all of his male appurtenances. In a Facebook thread I mentioned this case to a leftist interlocutor, who expressly declared that there was nothing inappropriate at all about little girls' seeing a biological male fully exposed in a shower room or locker room."

If only there was a security guard to throw "Colleen" out. We live in a mad world. I have to wonder how many leftists would object to a "transgender man" appearing in full frontal nudity in front of little girls. I would not imagine this particular interlocutor would object, but there has to be some out there that insist "transgender men" are real men and also that little girls should not be exposed to male nudity. This particular story is a good example of why the link I provided earlier should be a go-to example of who a "transgender woman" can be. Make them explain why little girls should have to see that "transgender woman" nude.

Shouldnt simple trespassing laws be sufficient?

Good question. The answer is, it depends. If the jurisdiction has no non-discrimination laws that mention "gender identity," then prima facie, yes, simple trespassing laws would support the business.

That's clearly what the security guard at the grocery store in D.C. thought was the legal situation.

It looks like maybe she (the security guard) was wrong, though, and D.C. maybe does have a non-discrimination ordinance concerning "public accommodations" that lists "gender identity" as a protected class. In that case, trespassing laws are not sufficient. The analogy the leftists want for all such circumstances is race. The non-discrimination laws imply that if your security guard throws out a man using the women's bathroom or locker room, and he claims to identify as a female, this is like treating black people as trespassers on your business.

But there's another angle to this: The Obama admin. is blatantly re-interpreting laws that refer to non-discrimination on the basis of "sex" to include "sexual identity." *So far*, the Obama admin. is only aggressively applying this to recipients of federal funds. But if either the federal administration or some state or local jurisdiction tries this with public accommodations laws, then all businesses everywhere in the country will have to allow the transgender insanity, because every business in the country is in some jurisdiction that forbids discrimination in public accommodations on the basis of "sex" at the federal, state, and/or city level.

There are all sorts of ironies to this, some of them pointed out by North Carolina in its laudable countersuit. For example, Title IX is all about protecting women in colleges, etc., etc. Up until now, Title IX has been interpreted and applied in an aggressively feminist way--for example, to require more women's sports teams, to require that women be given all sorts of opportunities to accuse people of sexual harassment, and so forth. With the intrusion of the transgender agenda, North Carolina pointed out that they could reasonably be considered in violation of Title IX, since colleges would be creating a hostile, harassing, and dangerous environment for women by putting biological males into their bathrooms, shower rooms, locker rooms, and even dorm assignments.

In any event, the twisting of laws against discrimination on the basis of "sex," which were originally about treating biological women as a protected class, into laws making the "transgendered" into a protected class, could be a game-changer. This practice, if it spreads, will make it unnecessary to pass new non-discrimination laws.

This fits into my point about the way that the journalists didn't even bother _investigating_ and addressing the security guard's claim that "they didn't pass the law yet." Shouldn't they have been curious about this? It was the first thing I wanted to find out. But it's assumed that, magically, the transgender agenda has now been imposed across the country on all private businesses.

I thought that the non-discrimination ordinances that include "sex" as a protected class interpreted this category in biological terms (as with race, ethnicity, and age) and not according to some non-biological concept of gender, in which one can identify as having a female gender even though their biological sex is male. The whole point of this controversy, I thought, is that the left has some non-biological concept of gender that they want to label as a protected class along with the biological category of "sex," which would require new legislation.

You're being too logical. The left wants power. Leftists want to do what they want to do, and force upon the rest of the world what they want to force upon it, as quickly as possible.

If law enforcement and the courts will let them get away with simply grabbing power by saying that "sex" now means "gender identity," then they will do that. Why not? Changing the meaning of texts is old hat for the left, which has been doing it with the Constitution for many decades. Now they're just getting started on laws, when even the bother of passing a law is too much to bother with and when the executive branch is on their side.

Lydia, if your leftist interlocutor thinks that male frontal nudity in front of little girls is merely equivalent to artistic nudity, how far is he from supporting interactive 'art'? We have slid down the slippery slope so far and so quickly that anything seems possible now.

May the Lord God have mercy on us all.

I have to wonder how many leftists would object to a "transgender man" appearing in full frontal nudity in front of little girls.

I do object to that. On the other hand I don't object to them using bathrooms because bathroom stalls have doors. I don't know who came up with the phrase "bathroom bills" but it doesn't normally suggest consideration about showers. As for stopping this, I would pursue judicial acknowledgement that a reasonable accommodation (such as a private shower and dressing area) is vastly preferable to the alternatives. I would also attempt a stricter legal definition of transgender, the word itself indicates an objective transition of some sort, not simply "how you subjectively identify". Since it is officially classified as a dysphoria it also should require an official diagnosis by a clinician or social worker.

No one objects to them using bathrooms. What we do object to is males using female bathrooms and vice versa. And the doors on public bathroom stalls typically provide less than adequate privacy, and little to no actual security. They're not designed that way. Besides, it's easy to imagine a man (who "thinks he's a woman") posting himself in a bathroom stall waiting for his next unsuspecting victim, who might easily be a six year-old little girl. Those are the kinds very real possibilities that concern us.

Terry,
And the doors on public bathroom stalls typically provide less than adequate privacy, and little to no actual security.

More people have been shot by dogs than have been assaulted in bathrooms by transgender people. So I reject your "very real possibilities" as a justifiable premise.

Who said anything about assault? I was responding the "full on nudity" issue Lydia raised and you said you object to. But as I've also pointed out under a related post, we have never been in this situation before when perverts who say they identify as the oppoaite gender are practically invited into public bathrooms to prey on unsuspecting child victims. "Oops!, I'm sorry little girl, Iforgot to lock the door."

Terry,
Who said anything about assault?

If you are assuming predatory motives (which you are) it isn't a big stretch, especially after you brought up the security of stall doors.

Step2, first of all, whether you like it or not, non-discrimination laws in public accommodations *do* apply to showers, bathrooms with visible urinals, changing rooms, dormitories, including dorms for women's shelters, and locker rooms. I realize that you want to propose something more moderate, but you need to realize that your political co-belligerents have *never* proposed any halfway house for accommodation where there is normally less and more modesty in the type of facility. Never. And never will.

Second, there are additional privacy reasons for sex segregation even in bathrooms with stalls, without my even having to bring up the predator issue. Here are just a couple: Bathroom stalls deliberately don't come down to the ground because people can get locked inside them. Anyone with a substantial number of kids has probably had reason to be grateful for bathroom stalls that aren't floor-to-ceiling. The doors get stuck and sometimes you have to tell a child to crawl out underneath, distasteful as that is. This creates a feeling of lack of privacy in a public bathroom, and it's legitimate not to want to extend that lack of privacy to people who are _biologically_ of the opposite gender. Nor is that matter changed if we stipulate that one would "only" be sharing the bathroom with people who are biologically of the opposite gender if they have a major psychological problem that makes them feel extremely uncomfortable with their bodies and makes them think they are of the opposite sex. One's legit. desire for greater privacy isn't somehow allayed if one says, "Only people who are really psychologically messed up in this way would be sharing the same bathroom with you while possessing male equipment." Second, I don't know what other uses men make of bathrooms, but women often do things like adjusting under-clothing and nylons, breast feeding, breastmilk pumping, and even crying (when upset) in the women's bathroom, sometimes even in front of the mirrors or in the open area. Having a psychologically messed-up biological man who has "gender dysphoria" come in while one is doing anything of the kind is, yes, legitimately more upsetting and off-putting than having another woman come in, even if you don't know her.

Third, not only will your co-belligerents on the political side not accept a reasonable accommodation of the kind you mention, but building separate single-occupancy bathrooms in addition to sex-segregated bathrooms is going to be unreasonably onerous for many businesses.

And fourth, even if a business did provide such a bathroom, it is still utter insanity to fine them or render them liable to lawsuit if their employees call a customer who looks like a man "he" even when he says to call him "she" (as is now the state of law in New York City). Or if the businessman fires a male employee who shows up in drag, or refuses to hire a transvestite or a person with "gender dysphoria" _because_, yes _because_ he has this particular form of psychological disorder.

Returning to bathrooms, there simply is no obvious requirement in justice for every business that provides (as a courtesy to its customers) a public bathroom to accommodate people who have this particular psychological disorder. None.

We can think of many other disorders that people have. Businesses don't have an obligation in law to provide private quiet rooms because some customers have agoraphobia and need to get away somewhere suddenly. Businesses don't have an obligation to provide at least x number of bottles of hand sanitizer, conveniently located, to accommodate those with obsessive-compulsive disorder. Noisy businesses don't have an obligation to figure out a way for people who are sound-sensitive to shop there. And on and on and on.

People who have this type of psychological disorder related to their sex organs just happen to be the victims du jour for the left, and now everybody has to compass land and sea to accommodate them. The reason why they, rather than any of the people mentioned in the previous paragraph or any of a zillion other psychologically messed-up people, have been chosen for this special solicitude is not far to seek: It is the goal of the left to force people to say absurdities and bow to a bizarre, radical, anti-realist agenda concerning sexuality. It is a sheer power grab. There is no other interpretation possible at this point.

Does the NY law allow people to just not use pronouns at all? I'd like to think if nothing else, someone could just use the person's name to refer to a man who insists that he be referred to as a "she". Maybe even just their last name if one does not want to use their feminine sounding preferred name.

I'm not at all suggesting this solves the problem of that despicable "law". I am just wondering if there is a loophole of sorts for sane people.

Since it is officially classified as a dysphoria it also should require an official diagnosis by a clinician or social worker.

Step2, although I appreciate your recognition that a person feeling like he ought to be a female even if he has male organs is a "dysphoria", you should realize that this notional category as a dysfunctional condition, this characterization, is not internally consistent with the rationale that the leftist trans community uses to claim a right to be treated as "how they feel". Now that they have embarked on the pathway out of the "old fashioned" notion that you are what your physical organs say you are into the arena of "you are what you feel", there ceases to be ANY normative boundaries or categories at all. The first sign of this is that we have people proposing that there are more than 2 genders, it's up to 71 at this point. Soon (I can't believe it hasn't happened yet), people will start claiming "gender" categories that have NOTHING to do with sexual organs in any sense, not even remotely or derivatively: "Oh, yes, my gender is blond taxi-driver, and my significant other's gender is vegan foot amputee."

Much more importantly, there ceases to be any principled rationale for calling the condition a "dysphoria" OTHER than a person feeling uncomfortable about the dichotomy between feeling ("being") one way and feeling ("being") another way at the same time but in different senses. What about the people have the multiple feelings and just don't feel uncomfortable about it? What if the "discomfort" is all due to a social expectation (a psychologically mistaken one, according to the new theories) that "you must express your identity under one gender or the other"? If "gender" is a social construct, a way of socially organizing people, all you have to do to alter the landscape in which something is a "dysphoria" is to alter the social expectation: when we no longer (and this must be just around the corner, right?) socially expect and organize people to adhere to "this or that, one or the other" about sexual orientation, and about the people you "associate" yourself with, when we no longer categorize the landscape as consisting ONLY in square or round pegs, when we accept that people come in "all sorts of sizes and shapes" in terms of their preferred associative experiences, we will eradicate the landscape in which these people will feel out of place merely because their physical organs are inconsistent with SOME members of the group that they prefer to associate with.

This is, indeed, exactly what we are finding among people who have take to home the eradication of "gender" as being a bi-polar concern: they don't associate their ambivalent experience as being a DISORDER, it is just a matter of experiencing differently at different times or in different senses. And under the principles advanced by the trans movement, this is far more logically consistent. Sometimes you feel hot, sometimes you feel cold, this is OK, you don't have to consider yourself a "hot person" and _reject_ your experiences of being cold because you often feel hot. Psychiatrists should not be treating a trans person so as to "achieve" some changeover from one sex to the other, they should be treating them to accept their multi-valent experience as "normal to them". There is, under their own standards, no objective reason to call the multi-valent experience a "dysphoria" that needs the "correction" of no longer experiencing the ambivalencies, it needs the correction of accepting the ambivalencies as "normal for who I am".

Indeed, once you realize that a person with male organs can "feel like a woman", and this is just as legitimate a set of experiences as any other person, you realize that only some portions of the class "woman" have so-called "female" organs. More correctly, the category of persons who "feel like a woman" CONSISTS IN some people with a vagina and some people with a penis, and BOTH are, just as legitimately, members of the class. There is, then, no "standard" physical way of belonging to the class, no normative sense in which one portion of the class are "the real thing" and the other portion of the class are "not the real thing" (until they have made changes to their bodies). BOTH are, simply, "women". So, stop trying to insist that the women who have a penis must DO SOMETHING to be fully accepted members of that class. They just have a slightly different way of being a woman. Get over this obsession with organs, already.

Lydia,
This creates a feeling of lack of privacy in a public bathroom, and it's legitimate not to want to extend that lack of privacy to people who are _biologically_ of the opposite gender.

I honestly don't understand that when referring to the stalls. Either you are nakedly exposed or you aren't.

Second, I don't know what other uses men make of bathrooms, but women often do things like adjusting under-clothing and nylons, breast feeding, breastmilk pumping, and even crying (when upset) in the women's bathroom, sometimes even in front of the mirrors or in the open area.

That is a much better criticism, except for the bit about crying, but most liberals already believe breast feeding should be perfectly acceptable in public. Granted that many/most women may prefer to do so in private but since not every business has a public restroom it isn't always an option, and in any event these scenarios could be resolved by having a small dressing room/privacy area replace an extra sink or stall.

Third, not only will your co-belligerents on the political side not accept a reasonable accommodation of the kind you mention, but building separate single-occupancy bathrooms in addition to sex-segregated bathrooms is going to be unreasonably onerous for many businesses.

Most businesses don't offer showers or changing areas, so I'm not asking for anything onerous from most businesses. For those businesses that do offer those options it could be handled with tax credits or some such thing.

And fourth, even if a business did provide such a bathroom, it is still utter insanity to fine them or render them liable to lawsuit if their employees call a customer who looks like a man "he" even when he says to call him "she" (as is now the state of law in New York City). Or if the businessman fires a male employee who shows up in drag, or refuses to hire a transvestite or a person with "gender dysphoria" _because_, yes _because_ he has this particular form of psychological disorder.

A. Most of that would be solved by having an official diagnosis required; they would be much more likely to pass as the gender they identify with. B. I've indicated before, albeit many many years ago, that I'm okay with transgender job discrimination only when the position requires interactions with customers. For "back office" jobs where they only interact with other employees and suppliers it should be treated like other handicaps.

It is the goal of the left to force people to say absurdities and bow to a bizarre, radical, anti-realist agenda concerning sexuality.

It is absurd to call post-op models Geena Rocero or Andreja Pejic males and tell them their DNA requires them to use the men's restroom. If people are so worried about older men leering at or harassing younger girls, they should also worry about how dangerously cavalier it is to send a close mimic of a teenage girl into a public restroom of his biological sex.

Most of that would be solved by having an official diagnosis required; they would be much more likely to pass as the gender they identify with.

False. The medical diagnosis would be that the person has this condition of dysphoria. What the person then appears to be to the public is an entirely separable question. I see virtually no relation of probability here at all.


they should also worry about how dangerously cavalier it is to send a close mimic of a teenage girl into a public restroom of his biological sex.

An obvious solution is for the teenage boy not to mimic a teenage girl. What a thought. It's not like he has to. And if his parents have been treating him with hormones as a minor to try to make him look like a girl, this should be regarded as child abuse. It's most unfortunate that it isn't.

In any event, let's face it: If this teenage boy you are imagining walked into the grocery store mentioned in the main post, and he really did look like a teenage girl, the security guard wouldn't have known he wasn't a girl. In real life people quite naturally go by immediate appearances. Nobody has time to do anything else. But the transgender movement *as it actually exists* is not satisfied with that.

When I joined a gym, I used the properly assigned locker room, and even then, I felt no need to "expose" myself to anyone. Geez, use a dang towel!

More people have been shot by dogs than have been assaulted in bathrooms by transgender people. So I reject your "very real possibilities" as a justifiable premise.

The threat isn't a full on tranny raping your daughter, but a child molester who claims to identify as a woman following her into the bathroom and raping her. The left created this issue for both us and people like Bruce Jenner by going the totally non-judgmental "you are what you feel like you are" on this issue. Ironically, this overreach is probably going to be the thing that makes transgendered people not get what they want because it is so obviously ripe for abuse by sexual predators that it is indefensible.

Jerry Sandusky got caught raping a boy in the locker room by one of his staff members. So it's not hard at all to imagine a man walking into a bathroom or locker room, committing the act and getting away with it especially when the victim doesn't even know him.

Great piece Lydia! I think the idea that what is not forbidden becomes compulsory, follows from a false conception of liberty that is prevalent in society today. The correct conception of liberty is to believe that you have a right to live your life as you please, so long as you don't infringe on the rights of others to live as they please. That is all, and that is it! Unfortunately, our society has lumped in a whole lot of other conceptions into its definition of liberty, like: discrimination, fairness, equal opportunity, feeling socially accepted, etc. I realize that all libertarians are not the same (I just joined recently out of the Paul/Cruz vein of the GOP since I couldn't in good conscience support Donald Trump for President), but I think most do understand this concept, and that we need to get that out to the public.

Great to have found your blog Lydia. Hope you are well. It's been a long time since the BBC days in Clark's Summit.

C. Matt, sorry, but I am not thrilled at all about a guy walking around with just a towel around his waist in a locker room with my daughters, while they are dressing and undressing as well. Your mileage may vary. (Said with a heavy dose of irony.)

In any event, in shower rooms if people don't shower in a swim suit, which some prefer not to, it is _very_ hard to maintain full privacy. My experience at the Y is that I'm often seeing naked women getting in and out of the showers. Some of us prefer more privacy even with members of the same sex and hence never shower naked in a public shower room. But it's supposed to be allowed. The alternative to their getting out of the shower naked and drying off is a lot of reaching out an arm to grab a towel and then awkwardly standing inside the shower stall drying off and putting on dry clothes, even though the floor of the shower stall is soaking wet.

And aside from showering there's the small issue of getting out of a wet swim suit and into dry clothes to go home, unless one wants to ride/drive home in one's wet swim clothes.

These are practicalities. If we're going to have public bathing places and changing rooms at all, it's absurd to suppose that we can mix people with different sexual organs and not have exposure going on.

The medical diagnosis would be that the person has this condition of dysphoria. What the person then appears to be to the public is an entirely separable question. I see virtually no relation of probability here at all.

Anorexia is another body image disorder but according to you it could be easily fixed by telling them all they need to do is not starve themselves and exercise less, what a thought. If someone comes in who is in fact morbidly obese and says they are anorexic, a clinician is going to officially concur with their self-diagnosis and require no evidence of anorexic behavior. You and Lucy van Pelt should set up shop together.

Step2, dysphoric behavior, as we all know from actually running into transvestites and other "transgender people," doesn't remotely come close to being the same as really appearing realistically to be a member of the opposite sex. "Dysphoric" behavior includes transvestitism, wearing makeup, asking to be called by a name of the opposite sex, and the like, but that is not even *close* to "passing" as a member of the opposite sex. That's (part of) why they ask "doctors" to help them by giving them surgery and hormone treatments to alter their otherwise healthy bodies. Even these greatly vary in the extent to which they actually make the person appear to be the member of the opposite sex. (And in my opinion should be grounds for loss of a medical license as malpractice.)

Obviously, the security guard in the main post could tell this was a man. Whom we're now all supposed to refer to as a "transgender woman" and treat as a sad victim.

Dave Perry, nice to hear from you!

I certainly agree that the totalitarian impulse manifested in "everything not forbidden is compulsory" should be anathema to any self-respecting libertarian. That's one reason why it has been, to put it mildly, ironic and interesting to see the official libertarian party supporting various aspects of the gay agenda such as homosexual "marriage" which are _obvious_ attacks upon personal liberty.

I've often said that every self-respecting conservative should have a strong libertarian streak, and I'm very pro-market. On the other hand, I don't believe that libertarianism as an overarching ideology can be fleshed out into a coherent political philosophy, as my example of suicide in the main post hints at. What we need instead are well-informed social conservatives with a healthy respect for freedom and a healthy suspicion of government power, not to mention actual _knowledge_ about economic matters instead of the economic magical thinking typical of liberals, third-wayers, and some cringily ignorant social conservatives. So what I'm really in favor of is a strong fusionism.

All of this mess about gender points to the death of common sense and the ascendency of a politicized psychology. Anorexia is not the same as transgender dysphoria, because no one every directly died from transgender dysphoria, but many have died from anorexia. They simply have different teleologies. I am sorry, but crosses exist. They have to be lived with. The use of the term dysphoria is even wrong and why should I accept it - because some pseudo-scientific sounding psychologist said so? This is a false appeal to authority. In fact, such people are not merely dsyphoric. They are delusional and their delusion leads to dysphoria. If I think I should be identified as a chicken, can I have you locked up or sued because you refuse to accept it - because I feel like a chicken?

Bad science.

Good science can displace bad science, but that would imply that we have even the vaguest notion of the distinction between the two in this case. If you want to sue or lock up anyone, lock up the idiot enabler, "scientists," who are perpetuating this nonsense (I am not referring to true physiological hermaphrodism, obviously, but non-material feelings-based results). We know that 50% of psychological studies are non-replicatible, so this is a poor basis to change society. Call them out (the psychologists, sociologists, and liberal elite). Make them put up or shut up. Sue, sue, sue until they get the idea that bad science will not be tolerated. Laws be damned. No one has a responsibility to obey an unjust and immoral law (of course, they will just try to get rid of morality or re-define it, as well). What, you thought Christ was kidding about people putting you to death thinking they are doing God's work? Some will go to jail, some will be put to death before all of this is over.

All of this is a consequence of a loss of a sense of an objective reality that has been growing since the early Twentieth-century. This is (forgive me, Lydia) science done by English majors. We have the same problem in theology, these days and I am sick of it. I don't want to try to politely argue with a Postmodernist. Once a theory is discredited, it should not be allowed to return, except in the event of compelling evidence, yet these notions of, "gender," etc. continue on and on because there is no true self-correcting mechanism as there is in science. This is bad laws based on bad metaphysics.

Sorry for venting, but some days this idiocy is just too much.

The Chicken

P. S. Where is my bathroom, eh?

This is (forgive me, Lydia) science done by English majors.

No, no need to apologize. You're completely correct. Postmodernism has come into the real world and is determined to remake the real world in postmodern fashion. It is, frankly, terrifying. I saw a story today about "the pup community," referring to men who think they are puppies. Everything that should be a reductio ad absurdam is instead being embraced as the next insanity that we all have to recognize and accept. The "mere" homosexual agenda starts to look so 90's compared to the trans agenda.

By the way, I forgot to respond to DR84's suggestion that people trying to live and operate businesses under the new tyranny in New York City simply refrain from using pronouns at all. DR84, I agree: That's got to be what you try. After all, if it's a customer, you don't have all _that_many opportunities to refer to him in the third person. You could always self-consciously keep saying, "This customer" or "this person" over and over.

Next move of course is to say, "Hey, you're talking in a stilted way to try to avoid using pronouns for me. I am going to report you for discrimination."

In an employee situation, this would be pretty much impossible. If you're working with someone as a fellow employee or as your employee on a day-to-day basis, I don't see how you can do without _some_ working idea of what sex he belongs to.

In a customer service situation, it would also likely become impracticable in a service-based industry where you are spending a lot of time with the customer. E.g. Suppose you're an interior decorator and are consulting with a couple involving "trans" people about how they should redecorate their house. It's going to become extremely problematic to have no normal pronouns with which to refer to them. You would have to try using their names over and over again, but still, if you're working with them on this project day after day...well...issues will arise.

And let's face it: Normal plumbers and contractors just aren't going to think ahead to these situations. If the plumber says, "Ma'am" or "miss" to the "wrong," vengeful person when fixing a toilet, a complaint is going to be made.

"Dysphoric" behavior includes transvestitism, wearing makeup, asking to be called by a name of the opposite sex, and the like, but that is not even *close* to "passing" as a member of the opposite sex.

It can include tranvestitism but someone can be a transvestite without having dysphoria. If they are a transvestite because they have a fetish for opposite gendered clothing it isn't a dysphoria. If they are a transvestite because they are rebelliously non-conformist it isn't a dysphoria. At some level there should be a disgust or sense of wrongness with their biological sex for it to be a dysphoria.

Anorexia is not the same as transgender dysphoria, because no one every directly died from transgender dysphoria, but many have died from anorexia.

The main point of comparison is indirect deaths through suicide. After heart attacks, suicide is the second leading cause of death for anorexics.

Furthermore, about your replication statistic:
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/351/6277/1037.2.full

P. S. Where is my bathroom, eh?
Wherever ostriches go to put their heads in the sand :)

The replication statistics problem is not going to be solved by one or two conflicting meta-studies. I will counter your counter-claim with a balanced wait-and-see comment (with at least 10-15 co-authors) from the same issue of Science:

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/351/6277/1037.3

What is more strongly known, especially with regards to medical research, is that the
criteria commonly used in medical research is inadequate to ensure statistical reliability. The expert in the field, right now, is John Ioannidis. His research, which is widely accepted by the medical community (and should be by psychiatry and psychology), had argued that up to 90% of medical research is badly structured, statistically. Here is an overview article:

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/11/lies-damned-lies-and-medical-science/308269/

We have much higher and more stringent criteria in the physical sciences for reproducibility and I suspect that few medical experiments could pass them.

I have seen this effect first-hand in humor studies. There is a widely touted claim that humor/laughter has medical benefits: can elevate endorphin levels, cure certain illnesses, etc. The famous book, Anatomy of an Illness, by Norman Cousins purports to show how he cured a connective tissue illness by humor. What few people know is that he wrote a follow-up book, before he died, refuting this claim. The movie, Patch Adams, started a movement where some medical schools have courses in therapeutic humor. Guess what, I know some of the people who do this sort of research and have seen how it is over-sold to the public (not by them, but by others). The best meta-statistical analyses we have, one by Martin and Svebach and the other by Ruch are scathing in their criticism of these results. I talked to the guy at a conference who performed the widely cited endorphin study and he only had FIVE test subjects. This is hardly statistically valid and, yet, the experiment (which had to be done real-time) cost $100,000 in 1980's money.

Again, I read study after study on humor psychology and we don't even have a universally (even near universally) agreed upon theory of humor. How can one test for something one cannot define? At least I and others are starting to narrow in on a realistic theory, but how many papers have been written from unsound premises?

With regards to the gender issue, I have more than enough real experience working with interdisciplinary research to know that there is nowhere near rigor in this area. There is no consistent theory of gender, no reproducible baseline, so each study tacitly and quietly assumes a particular metaphysics which may or may not be valid, but it does influence the types of questions asked and expected responses.

I'm sorry, but this is, ver likely, poor research getting big headlines. I've seen it before. Unlike in humor studies, however, victimology is very high, so suffering gets attention, even if it is poorly diagnosed.

Richard Feynman, the Nobel laureate in theoretical physics gave a commencement speech at CalTech with the title, Cargo Cult Science. It should be mandatory reading for every researcher:

http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/51/2/CargoCult.htm

Gender studies is cargo cult science at this point, I think. It is a poor reason to alter norms that have been consistent for hundreds of thousands of years.

The Chicken

Paul,

I think my latest comment got stuck in the moderation cue (where, maybe, it belongs :) ).

The Chicken

If they are a transvestite because they have a fetish for opposite gendered clothing it isn't a dysphoria. If they are a transvestite because they are rebelliously non-conformist it isn't a dysphoria.

And here we get into the paradox of most "subcultures:" they want to be distinct and nonconformist, but often expect society to accommodate them. It is not enough that we don't sanction them for flying their freak flag, we must let them hoist their freak flag on the same pole as the state and national ones.

MC,
I'm unable to respond to your points since they seem fairly scattershot. You are dismissive of medical research generally as well as psychiatric research and gender studies. Since you seem to recognize that anorexia is a real medical condition I'm guessing you don't dismiss most psychiatric diagnoses as hocus pocus but you are making a lot of sweeping claims.

My comments are not scattershot by any means. I did not mention anorexia in my last comment. I addressed issues of scientific methodology. As for anorexia, which I mentioned in a different comment, eating is not a matter of belief that one has a need to eat. The belief that one is female when all the evidence suggests otherwise has no analogy with anorexia, which is well categorized by not eating - which defies nature, but does not deny it, as many gender disorders do. I excepted genuine physical hemaphrodism as an exception.

My criticism is with methodology and metaphysics. I cited several articles to read. There was nothing scattershot in what wrote. Many of the modern topics-du-jour simply use poor science to justify them.

The Chicken

MC's comments hardly seemed scattershot to me (although scattershot is useful when aiming at a nearby but elusive target). Here I'll highlight the core of MC's comment, which pretty clearly derives, down thread, from Step2's initial introduction of "official diagnosis" as the key indulgence by which biological men may not be barred from entering women's restrooms.

With regards to the gender issue, I have more than enough real experience working with interdisciplinary research to know that there is nowhere near rigor in this area. There is no consistent theory of gender, no reproducible baseline, so each study tacitly and quietly assumes a particular metaphysics which may or may not be valid, but it does influence the types of questions asked and expected responses.

Two sentences of admirable clarity, as far as I can tell.

One thing that strikes me is the remarkable contrast and irony in regnant liberal doctrine on sexual assault. On the one hand we are enjoined to assume the guilt of every undergraduate male who so much as eyes a young lady in an indiscreet manner, to such a level of stridency that basic rules of due process can be instantly set aside; while here we are invited to rest assured that no possible harm will come from permitting any mentally ill male, who declares his identity female, to enter a women's restroom. Step2 adds only that this is all fine, so long as the poor man finds a quack doctor who will agree to eventually mutilate his genitals, in order to prove the strength of his feeling.

Step2's decisive unwillingness to address Lydia's central point, from the OP to various comments, is also striking. That central point is the total unwillingness of the Left to compromise on anything at all. Not only do Step2's allies want to make it illegal for a private businesses maintain restrooms corresponding to biological sex; they want to make any public dissent from their view illegal.

But I guess this extraordinary, totalitarian stridency is unworthy of comment among moderate liberals.

MC,
The belief that one is female when all the evidence suggests otherwise has no analogy with anorexia, which is well categorized by not eating - which defies nature, but does not deny it, as many gender disorders do. I excepted genuine physical hemaphrodism as an exception.

That is an interesting take on it but one I disagree with. Anorexia generally afflicts a younger demographic but is a disorder so strong that the leading cause of death is from heart attack. Defying nature and denying nature is a distinction without a difference in my book, but the anorexic body image is extraordinarily resistant to evidence suggesting they aren't severely overweight. As a side note, the recent spate of bathroom bills do not make exceptions for hermaphrodites, meaning they may not be able to legally use any public restroom depending on how the law is worded.

My criticism is with methodology and metaphysics.

Yes, but you were expanding it to such a level that it could conspiratorially be used against nearly any medical condition. I mean, why not say that the methodology and metaphysics of modern cancer diagnoses and treatments are deeply flawed, poorly justified cargo cult science used by quacks?

Paul,
...while here we are invited to rest assured that no possible harm will come from permitting any mentally ill male, who declares his identity female, to enter a women's restroom.

I didn't claim there was no possible harm, getting out of bed and driving to work entails possible harm; but unless you are worried sick about your chances of being shot by a dog I'm trying to place that possibility in perspective.

Not only do Step2's allies want to make it illegal for a private businesses maintain restrooms corresponding to biological sex...

So I'm invited to criticize every strident, totalitarian overreach which your conservative allies do? This should be fun. Let's start with the North Carolina bill which crushes subsidiarity under its tar heel. It prohibits municipalities in North Carolina from enacting anti-discrimination policies, setting a local minimum wage, regulating child labor, or making certain regulations for city workers. The legislation also removes the statutory and common-law private right of action to enforce state anti-discrimination statutes in state courts.

...they want to make any public dissent from their view illegal.

To be honest I don't know how the New York ordinance hasn't been overturned on First Amendment grounds, it seems to be a clear violation. The only time I can recall taking any position on government enforced speech codes was on the question of trademarks using offensive terms, never against individuals.

totalitarian overreach which your conservative allies do? This should be fun. Let's start with the North Carolina bill which crushes subsidiarity under its tar heel. It prohibits municipalities in North Carolina from enacting anti-discrimination policies, setting a local minimum wage, regulating child labor, or making certain regulations for city workers. The legislation also removes the statutory and common-law private right of action to enforce state anti-discrimination statutes in state courts.

Yeah, that's really totalitarian! I mean, it's right out of some Orwellian dystopia!

Step2's concern for "subsidiarity" is so touching and so hard-working. Why, he's been complaining for years about the micro-regulation of every business by non-discrimination laws at the federal level and demanding that all such laws be repealed down to the municipal level, where they should be left absolutely open to any degree of craziness, including allowing discrimination on the basis of sex and race. That's ol' Step2--a kind of odd, consistent, principled, advocate for municipal-level-only regulation.

Okay, maybe not.

"Yes, but you were expanding it to such a level that it could conspiratorially be used against nearly any medical condition. I mean, why not say that the methodology and metaphysics of modern cancer diagnoses and treatments are deeply flawed, poorly justified cargo cult science used by quacks?"

Did you read the article on Ioannidis? Much of modern medical research is flawed, but fortunately, certain things in medicine, particularly in biophysics and physiology are more closely tied to the physical sciences, which have much tighter experimental proofs, so not all of medicine is as suspect as certain areas where definitions are foggy and rigor is suspect. Despite the fact that there have been male and female since the beginning, it seems highly odd that gender issues are being raised, now. Nothing being supposedly discovered in 2016 about these issues, outside of genetics, which no one is arguing about, couldn't have been raised in the 1940's - heck, we discovered the nearly impossible-to-understsnd laws of quantum mechanics and general relativity by then, but the matter of who is male and female eluded us?

This whole issue is based on the assumption that emotions are the gateway to truth, which is an inconsistent assumption. I do not believe that psychology has shown the depth of maturity to deal with these issues impartially. One day homosexuality is a disorder in the DSM-2 (if I recall) and the next day it is a life choice? Show me the science that made that flip-flop possible. Radical reassament of a scientific theory requires radical proof. Where was the radical proof that they got it wrong the first time? Likewise, with regatds to gender issues, where is the radical proof that we got it wrong, the first time? No. This is political agenda infecting science, which is exactly Feynman's caution regarding cargo cult science.

The Chicken

So I'm invited to criticize every strident, totalitarian overreach which your conservative allies do? This should be fun. Let's start with the North Carolina bill which crushes subsidiarity under its tar heel.

Municipalities are typically implemented under state law (constitutional and statutory) as corporations. They are therefore creatures of the state government under law every bit as much as businesses which, as Lydia notes, you are not shy about regulating.

Furthermore, what they did was subsidiarity. If a lord wants to do X and the people want to do Y, in most cases the King can licitly override the local lord and permit Y to be done.

It is rather fun to hear Step2 invoke subsidiarity as a reason to rebuke NC state for its suppression of city-level ordinances about bathrooms. One wonders whether Step2 is willing to invoke the same in support for city-level ordinances that enforce, let's say, "sexual-organ-bathroom-consistency"?

It is, of course, trivially true that _every_ law at a higher level ipso facto overrides local (or lower level) discernment on the subject. Hence, subsidiarity is "defeated" by every law at a higher level...unless one notes that the principle of subsidiarity is not that every law should be made locally, but that every law ought to be made at the lowest level at which the common good(s) at issue can be well regulated. There is no possible way of getting around asking the questions of "which goods are at issue with this law" and "can these goods be well regulated at a lower level" for a proper application of subsidiarity.

And, once you ask the questions, it becomes rather obvious that a ramshackle hodge-podge of different rules for bathrooms from town to town across a state is going to be a real problem. People pass through different local jurisdictions on a daily basis, sometimes passing through several in daily trips. Having to switch gears in each one, and be subject to arrest or other legal penalty for not knowing the local law and following it, is ridiculous.

That said, I would be interested to see someone try this experiment: make 4 kinds of bathrooms and locker rooms. (1) and (2) generally for those with female organs, (3) and (4) generally for those with male organs. The difference between (1) and (2) is that (1) is strictly for those with female organs, and who do not wish to share bathrooms with those with male organs. (2) on the other hand is not strictly for those with female organs, but may be used by males (i.e. those with male organs who consider themselves male) or females (i.e. those with female organs who consider themselves female) or by those with female organs who consider themselves male, or by those with male organs who consider themselves female, but it's primary designation is "female" so as to render a predominance for those with some kind of affinity with female. (4) is the same sort except for males: it can be used by anybody, but is designated _primarily_ for males _in_some_sense_. (3) and (4) would have urinals, (1) and (2) would not. (1) and (3) are set aside based solely on physical organs, not on "gender" whatever that means (or has ceased to mean), and (2) and (4) are open to anybody. I wonder whether the trans movement would protest this on any rational grounds at all. (I assume they would protest it, I just don't think most protest would be on rational grounds: (1) and (3) categories are based on physical organs, which is NOT "gender" according to the trans movement and so cannot constitute gender-based discrimination. (2) and (4) are open to anybody so there is no gender discrimination involved. The secondary objection I would expect would be on requiring a trans person to bathroom alongside someone they are uncomfortable with, and such an objection falls remarkably flat.)

The general point is that if someone has a internal constraint - for WHATEVER REASON whether rationally sound or mere personal preference - about inhabiting bathroom space with certain categories of others, requiring that person to modify their own bathroom use to accommodate the others who don't have that constraint is LESS RATIONAL than requiring the others to modify their behavior to accommodate those with the said constraint: not having that constraint implies, as such, being willing to share bathroom space with someone with a different physical arrangement, and the only way a "female with male organs" can OBJECT to bathrooming with others with male organs is if they object to bathrooming with themselves. So, make some bathrooms available for people who DON'T have such hang-ups, and let them annoy or not others in the same boat - leaving those who operate under constraints alone.

Did you read the article on Ioannidis?

I did read it and there were two mentions of cancer specifically. There was no mention of biophysics and physiology, so I’m wondering what you read that justifies your conclusion.

Nothing being supposedly discovered in 2016 about these issues, outside of genetics, which no one is arguing about, couldn't have been raised in the 1940's…

While testes were known for millennia to be important for masculine trait development, sex hormones themselves were not discovered until the 1920’s and an outline for how they actually affected sexual development in the body took decades longer to figure out. Obviously I’m not including theories of brain/mind interaction which are literally all over the place.

…heck, we discovered the nearly impossible-to-understsnd laws of quantum mechanics and general relativity by then, but the matter of who is male and female eluded us?

If you think the laws of quantum mechanics are laws instead of theories, or that we have a clear understanding of them, I’ve got some bad news. It is fair to say that quantum theory has a robust body of supporting evidence, in the same way evolutionary theory does, but I’m not expecting intelligent design proponents to abandon their project anytime soon. More importantly for this argument however is that there are five major classes of interpretation of quantum theory and at least thirty specific interpretations of quantum theory.

One day homosexuality is a disorder in the DSM-2 (if I recall) and the next day it is a life choice? Show me the science that made that flip-flop possible. Radical reassament of a scientific theory requires radical proof. Where was the radical proof that they got it wrong the first time?

Freud himself was pessimistic about the prospects of treatment for most homosexuals but more importantly didn’t consider homosexuality a perversion; he called it an inversion and viewed it as an arrested sexual development. After Freud there were two influential psychoanalysts who helped re-pathologize homosexuality, Sandor Rado and Irving Bieber. It was the result of much better, evidence based science which removed the classification from the DSM. The Kinsey Reports and the book Patterns of Sexual Behavior were major factors. Combined with Evelyn Hooker’s classic study which convincingly challenged the view that homosexuality was intrinsically associated with pathology, there became a majority who treated sexual orientations as variations along a spectrum.

Furthermore, what they did was subsidiarity. If a lord wants to do X and the people want to do Y, in most cases the King can licitly override the local lord and permit Y to be done.

No, it wasn’t. It is ludicrous to claim that the governor and legislature of a state is analogous to a king, that even if the public approves of bathroom access discrimination they are also supportive of other kinds of discrimination, or that the law passed isn’t a politically motivated overreach by any standard. They could have crafted the state law narrowly, so that it only affected this particular issue of bathroom access based on gender identity but no, they had to make sure the state is the final word for all discrimination law, remove the ability to sue in state courts for workplace discrimination (including race, sex, religion and age), and throw in a few unrelated issues.

That's ol' Step2--a kind of odd, consistent, principled, advocate for municipal-level-only regulation.

It turns out I’m as consistent as conservatives are. When a municipality is aligned with my policy preferences I’m supportive of subsidiarity and when they aren’t I’m not. There was one ordinance, since recalled, in Oxford, AL which temporarily set a biological sex bathroom policy for all private businesses in their city. Was there even a peep of conservative outrage over that ordinance? Didn't think so.

Was there even a peep of conservative outrage over that ordinance? Didn't think so.Was there even a peep of conservative outrage over that ordinance? Didn't think so.

Would such an ordinance, "enforcing" what had already been custom for a great many generations, have disturbed or caused dispute with existing customs in and around nearly all other municipalities? No, not much a'tall. And, because conservatives get their name from conserving not just "principle" but also the actual content of customs, it seems pretty reasonable for conservatives to accept such a law. Seems like "consistency" to me, not hypocrisy.

The Kinsey Reports and the book Patterns of Sexual Behavior were major factors.

To my recollection, the Kinsey Reports have been so dis-reputed that this being a "major factor" counts as a major strike against it all by itself.

Even Wikipedia admits directly that Kinsey falsified data, misrepresented findings, presented single-source interview anecdotes as broadly collected from multiple sources, etc. Not to mention that he encouraged sexual experimentation between researchers and subjects.

The man was a pernicious quack; his "research" was riddled with errors, manipulations, and deceptions. Tony's last sentence is amply justified.

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