I hesitated responding to the many letters and articles in last week’s Citizen related to genders and bathrooms/locker rooms, but in the end this is such a target-rich environment I could not help but drop a couple of my own thought bombs.
First, to my conservative friends that see this as a gross overreach by a federal government hell-bent on controlling every aspect of our lives, you are correct. Ultimately that is what all governments do.
It was government that defined and codified the very conservative laws that are now under fire. If you think about it, it’s government that requires separate men’s and women’s public restrooms.
The base reason that the left is pushing such draconian changes as this is to further split the masses, for a split society is easily ruled over. If you are fed up with D.C. and want your state’s rights back, then laws must change to break the money flow from us to them and back with sweeteners and strings attached. Until we all stop accepting federal money (enabling the extortion), we will be beholding to Washington.
But please, as you state your revolt against this particular affront keep Jesus out of it. I just don’t recall any lesson from Jesus that discusses gender. My take is that if Jesus were to show up at your door today and you said, “Lord, what say you of this government mandate that we allow men who live as women to go into women’s bathrooms?”, I think that his reply would be something like, “You fool! I suffered and died to save your eternal soul and your hair turns white over where your neighbor defecates!”
Now to my friends on the left who are all about making sure that every single person be made comfortable all of the time regardless of how that makes the many others feel, remember that we live in a society, not in personal bubbles. Also know that there is no legal definition of gender that does not equate to biological sex and yet you support mandates based upon that non-definition.
Even if one decides to modify their appearance to look like the opposite sex, they are still the gender that they were at birth. Even if one goes so far as to surgically turn their parts inside out, the chromosomes of their cells remain the same (pesky science).
The attempted re-definition of gender not equating to biological sex is just the latest move to redefine our language to create rights where none exist. And the sociological split widens and government power grows.
As to the individual, my opinion of this attraction of this whole gender redefinition for many is that it’s primarily a symptom of people struggling for identity in this ever-more anonymous world in which we live.
Terms like gender fluid, pangender, or gender neutral scream idiocy. As for those who are born as a male or a female but feel trapped in the wrong body, ponder this: if you are born male but insist that you feel that you are a woman, you can only be projecting.
As a male, how can you possibly know what it “feels like” to be a woman? As a female, you cannot know what it “feels like” to be a man. I cannot know what it feels like to be a woman or for that matter even another man (or a dog or a cat or a flea).
I feel what I feel and you feel what you feel. We are all individuals with our own likes and dislikes, attractions and distractions. Your gender has nothing to do with it until YOU decide that it does.
But how do we as a society even consider supporting in any manner gender self-definition inconsistent with biological sex for children of school age?
In our society, a person under 18 years cannot enter into a legal contract or vote or drink alcohol and is guaranteed health insurance under their parent’s policy until they are 25. Yet we are expected to support through public policy these children who know nothing of life to decide that they know that they are “trapped” in the “wrong” body? This borders on sociological insanity.
Overall we are an accepting people. Most of us really don’t care if you are an adult guy who feels better in a dress than in clothes from the men’s section. The issue is that just because you have decided that for yourself does not now mean that we all must change basic sociological rules to satisfy your self-comfort … or you would think that such simple sense would reign.
Acceptance must be a two-way street and in the interest of social harmony everyone must make concessions. It just does not seem to me too great a concession for those adults who choose to self-identify as something other than their biological sex to not expect to have unfettered access to public changing rooms where those 99 percent of us who do identify gender with our biological sex may be disrobed. It should not even be an issue of argument in primary and secondary schools. It just looks too much like common sense.
As for public bathrooms, who cares? Use the one that’s available and where your presence will not make everyone else in the room any more uncomfortable than they already are for being there. It’s a bathroom, not a chapel or a meditation room or a single’s club! When you need to go, you need to go.
If we are not prepared as a society to make all public restrooms unisex, then just do what most guys do … look straight ahead, don’t talk, and do your business!
Alan Felts
Peachtree City, Ga.
