Laws that discriminate against transgender students could become more common as ignorance fuels fear.
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“[The American Psychiatric Association opposes] all public and private discrimination on the basis of actual or perceived gender identity and expression and urges the repeal of discriminatory laws and policies….Therefore be it further resolved that APA calls upon psychologists in their professional roles to provide appropriate, nondiscriminatory treatment to transgender and gender variant individuals and encourages psychologists to take a leadership role in working against discrimination towards transgender and gender variant individuals…”
APA, resolution, “Transgender, Gender Identity, & Gender Expression Non-Discrimination,” 2008
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Well, if some Virginia lawmakers have their way, the legislature will snub its collective nose at the American Psychiatric Association and most reputable professional human services and educational organizations. Recently, Republican Delegate Mark Cole of the Virginia House of Delegates proposed House Bill 663 that would require all people in public buildings, including schools, to use restrooms corresponding to their “correct anatomical sex.”
This bill, if passed, would have the effect of prohibiting transgender and intersex people from going into the restroom facility matching their gender identities. The bill defines “anatomical sex” as “the physical condition of being male or female, which is determined by a person’s anatomy.” Referring to schools, the measure states:
“Local school boards shall develop and implement policies that require every school restroom, locker room, or shower room that is designated for use by a specific gender to solely be used by individuals whose anatomical sex matches such gender designation.” Violation carries a $50 penalty.
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How would such a law be enforced? Civil rights advocate Tim Peacock argues:
“[A]dults would be required to inspect children’s genitals before they use the bathroom. This is what the conservative movement has devolved into: forcing children to allow adults to examine their genitals out of misplaced fear that transgender kids and adults might commit a hypothetical never-before-seen act of violence or sexual aggression (that would still be against the law with or without transgender protections).”
The current bifurcated restroom designation throughout our country contradicts the realities of peoples’ sexed bodies, gender identities, and gender expressions. Many intersex people define neither as “male” nor as “female.” Which restroom must they choose, or which are they allowed to choose?
But trans* and intersex people have exposed the truth regarding this fabrication we call “gender roles” as a social construction, one which our society ascribes to each of us as it assigns us a sex at birth.
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The “sex” designation typed onto many trans* peoples’ official records assigned to them at birth simply do not accurately and integrally reflect their actual gender identities. They had no power or control at the time of their birth to list the category that most matched their actual gender identities, and many laws today make it extremely difficult and expensive to permit any changes.
Gender must be seen as a continuum rather than as constituting binary oppositions. Doctors assigned me “male” at birth, but I define myself more as gender-fluid. While I do not specifically identity as “trans*,” I never related to the “he, him, his” personal pronouns. I feel uneasy when anyone refers to me as “a guy” or as “a bachelor,” when men want to talk “man to man,” or tell people to “man up”! These terms are simply social artifice and hold no meaning for me.
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Other states in addition to Florida have considered similar laws. In Texas, for example, a proposed bill, HR 2801, includes a provision that would offer students $2,000 for reporting and claiming “mental anguish” for having to share restroom facilities with students of another assigned sex.
These proposed laws will further marginalize and intimidate trans* and intersex people. But trans* and intersex people have exposed the truth regarding this fabrication we call “gender roles” as a social construction, one which our society ascribes to each of us as it assigns us a sex at birth. With the label “female” assigned at birth, society forces us to follow its “feminine script,” and with “male” assigned at birth, we are handed our “masculine” script to act out. As scripts are given to actors in a play, gender role scripts also were written long before any of us entered the stage of life. In fact, they have little connection with our natures, beliefs, interests, and values.
Those who bully in society and filtered into the schools often fulfill the social “function” of establishing and reinforcing the socially constructed scripts handed to them when they entered the performance.
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If we challenge the director by refusing to follow our lines, and when we tell the truth about this human lie about gender roles, the director (society) doles out harsh, often fatal punishments. Members of the trans* community often suffer the consequences of other truth tellers of the past. Nearly every two days, a person is killed somewhere in the world for expressing gender nonconformity. The vast majority of murders are of trans* women of color.
Murderers of trans* people react in extreme and fanatical ways at the direction of the larger coercive societal battalions bent on destroying all signs of gender transgression in young and old alike in the maintenance of gender scripts. Most of us function as conscious or unconscious co-directors in this drama each time we enforce gender-role conformity onto others, and each time we relinquish our critical consciousness by failing to rewrite or destroy the scripts in ways that operate integrally for us. Those who bully in society and filtered into the schools often fulfill the social “function” of establishing and reinforcing the socially constructed scripts handed to them when they entered the performance.
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With this in mind, each time we rewrite the scripts so as to give an honest and true performance of life, each time we work toward lifting the ban against our transcending the gender status quo by continually questioning and challenging standard conceptualization of gender roles, then will we begin as individuals and as a society to experience life to the fullest with our humanity and our integrity intact.
I am proud of and thankful to trans* and intersex people for courageously calling into question this social myth of gender roles, the boxes society places us into as it imposes upon us all our gender scripts. Trans* and intersex people have opened the boxes for all of us to ultimately obliterate the gender status quo of binary oppositions by demonstrating the visible ways, the options upon an enormous gender continuum, one that does not depend upon a sex assigned to us, a sex that is imposed and forced upon us by others. Trans* and intersex people have shown us the essential fluidity of gender.
Trans* and intersex visionaries, who are persecuted in their own time, will one day be perceived as the prophetic truth tellers they definitely are. Until that day, the harassment, the marginalization, the fear, the violence, the murders, and yes, the hate- and fear-inspired legislation must end. It is up to us all to work toward this on a daily basis.
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Photo: Getty Images