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Katy Grimes

Transgender bathroom and sports bill: Who is confused?

Transgender students in California will now have the right to use whichever bathrooms they prefer, and participate in either the girls’ or boys’ programs and sports teams, because of monumental legislation signed by Gov. Jerry Brown on Monday.

AB 1266 by Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, D-San Francisco, amends the state’s education code, and requires that in addition to accessing the bathrooms of their choosing, each student will have access to sports teams, and programs “consistent with his or her gender identity,” rather than the student’s biological gender.

A boy who self-identifies as female could use the girls’ bathroom, even if he is anatomically male.

Do you see a problem with this?

Imagine a hormonal middle school or high school-aged boy who just wants the cheap thrill of looking at girls undressing in the locker room, or taking showers. (This would be just about every 13-year-old boy)

The libidinous lad will now be able to claim he is really a transgender.

So, for a few days he dons a dress, jewelry and makeup, and uses the girls’ bathrooms and locker room. When the gig is up, and his face breaks out from the makeup, he claims he is back to his old male self, and tells school officials he realizes he is still just a boy.

Expectation of privacy 

Lawmakers who supported this bill claimed they merely wanted to protect civil rights by creating special laws for transgender persons. However, the bathroom is usually a place where there is an expectation of privacy. So the question becomes: Whose civil rights are being protected and whose are being trampled?

Allowing students of one gender to use facilities intended for the other could invade the other students’ privacy, especially when there is a viable alternative.

How many transgender persons are there?

The Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law reports there are only 0.3 percent transgender persons in the entire United States population, which is hard to believe.

But there are 6.2 million elementary and high school kids in California’s public schools. Based on the Williams Institute numbers, roughly 18,600 students in California schools identify as transgender. Really? I seriously doubt this.

The requirement to treat transgender students the same as all other students is also perplexing. That is exactly what most schools are already doing. It’s only when parents and special interest groups sue that these issues escalate.

While the Los Angeles Unified School District and San Francisco schools have already adopted “Transgender and gender variant students, ensuring equity and nondiscrimination” policies, the LAUSD acknowledged Ammiano’s “legislation cannot anticipate every situation that might occur with respect to transgender and gender variant students.”

Washington State passed such a law in 2006, and has run into a big problem.

“Parents in Washington state became outraged last year when their young daughters, who participate in their local swim club, discovered a male sitting naked in the sauna ‘displaying male genitalia,’” the Christian News Net reported last fall. However, police and school representatives of Evergreen State College alike said there wasn’t anything they could do about the situation because of state law.

The transgender “student” is 45 years old.

Comfortable with natal gender

Research suggests that many children gradually become “comfortable with their natal gender,” an American Psychiatric Association task force reported in 2011. But the goal of any treatment should be to help the child adjust to its reality, the APA says.

The transgender condition was added to the APA diagnosis manual of mental disorders in 1980. In the newest edition of the manual, the condition has been renamed ‘Gender Dysphoria.’

In the private sector, employers are required to make “reasonable accommodations” for persons of all legally protected categories. One reasonable accommodation for a transgender employee would be exactly what the school LA and San Francisco schools have offered —  allowing someone identifying as transgender to use a private bathroom instead of the common facilities.

Even if AB 1266 had only the best intentions in mind, how does this impact the many other children in the public schools? Young minds aren’t yet equipped to grapple with issues like gender confusion. And adults can hardly figure it out.

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