By Marc Jampole
The latest Trump-GOP assault on human and civil rights has arrived: the rollback of Obama administration rules that have allowed transgendered students to use the schools’ public bathrooms of the sex with which they identify.
The latest Trump-GOP assault on human and civil rights has arrived: the rollback of Obama administration rules that have allowed transgendered students to use the schools’ public bathrooms of the sex with which they identify.
Legal arguments on the issue seem always to reduce to the
question of whose rights are more important—the transgendered person’s right to
use the bathroom of choice or the rights of those offended to they think that a
person of another sex might be in the bathroom with them. I was originally on
the wrong side of this issue, believing that
bathroom use should follow the genitals. A close gay friend of mine
pointed out the danger to transgenders who want to appear in public looking
like the sex with which they identify and thus risk a beat-down if they use a
bathroom that corresponded to the sex on their birth certificate. Moreover, when we consider that all pertinent
female business is conducted in stalls and that a transgender with female
genitals would have to use a stall in a men’s room, we realize that the harm
caused to others is imaginary in all senses of the word, whereas the harm suffered
potentially by all transgendered people is very real.
Making the trangendered use the bathroom of the sex on their
birth certificates thrusts on them a decision between four terrible choices,
all informed by rejection and fear: 1) Appear
in public as what you are and do not use the bathroom, no matter how badly you
have to go; 2) Appear in public as what you are, use the bathroom and risk
harm; 3) Appear in public “in hiding” by dressing like the sex on your birth
certificate; 4) Don’t go out in public. By contrast, no such terrible decision
is thrust upon those who object to the transgendered using the bathroom of the
sex with which they identify. First of all, it is extremely unlikely they will
encounter a transgendered individual, since so few exist. Secondly, if they do
encounter one wherever the location, they won’t know the person is
transgendered for certain, even if they suspect or think they know. For the
most part, the offended party has to be consciously looking to be offended and
consciously inferring something offensive.
A “who’s harmed” analysis thus falls heavily on the side of
protecting the rights of the transgendered.
At the heart of the transgender bathroom issue, however, is
the basic meaning of human dignity in our society. The dictionary meaning of
dignity is the quality of being worth something, of being honored and esteemed.
In other words, dignity is intricately tied to society and to interactions
between people. Dignity is the feeling we have that others respect us as free
and individual, consider our feelings, think we are law-abiding, are not
laughing at us and do not think we have committed a social mistake.
All dignity, in the bathroom and elsewhere, is mostly a
social construct. In some societies, people have no problem doing their
business in the open in front of others. And even in our society, we have a
sliding scale of what we’ll do and who we’ll do it in front of. Things that are
okay in front of a sibling or lover might not be okay in front of strangers.
What’s okay at age five may be taboo at age 15. We may temporarily suspend our definition of
bathroom dignity when in the armed forces or on a camping trip. Lyndon Johnson sat
on the can with the door open talking to aides as a sign of his power over
others.
As
a society, Americans put a price tag on bathroom dignity when we decided not to
make public bathrooms a series of small water closets or a big room with a
number of completely closed off stalls. These private rooms would enable public
facilities to become unisex. In both Spain and
the Netherlands, I found that the stalls in public bathrooms were almost
everywhere individual rooms with real locks and even door knobs; and when they
were mere stalls, the walls and doors extended from floor to ceiling.
Even in the one or two public bathrooms in which there was space at the top or
the bottom of stalls, it was never more than an inch or so. And in both
countries, the toilets were always well stocked and clean—even in bus and train
stations. Spanish and Dutch societies display respect for the individual
reflected in the privacy they give everyone to do what is a very private action
for most people. Contrast with America, where high school students in many
public urban high schools today have to sit on the porcelain throne in a
low-walled, doorless stall.
In America, we would rather cut corners, save a
little money and provide less private public bathroom facilities. If Americans
valued dignity in the bathroom as much as the Spanish and Dutch do, the
challenge of accommodating the bathroom needs of the transgendered in public
places wouldn’t exist.
A failure to value individual human dignity results
in placing the hypothetical rights of those offended by the thought of seeing a
transgendered person in the bathroom over the real rights of the transgendered,
who will certainly lose dignity by looking like a woman in the men’s room, or
like a man in the women’s room. They may also lose a pound of flesh or a few
teeth, as well. Safety issues aside, a thirst for dignity is at the heart of
the desire of the transgendered to use the bathroom of the sex with which they
identify.
By contrast, the emotional component of being
offended by a transgendered person in the bathroom is anger, which may be
caused by a variety of factors: because the transgendered person is different,
because the viewer’s religious sensitivities have been offended, perhaps as a
reaction to her-his own confused sexual feelings that contradict what her-his role
models say is morally right.
Thus, by not allowing the transgendered to use the
bathroom they want to use, the Trump administration has said it values the anger
of some over the dignity of others, which is par for the course for
Trumpty-Dumpty. It’s worth noting that lots of thinkers have proposed the idea
that if one group is denied dignity or the concepts associated with dignity by
a society, everyone in effect is denied it. No one has ever said that about
being denied the right to be angry, although the right to express anger in
legal, nonviolent ways is protected under the First Amendment. It’s in the
nature of a free society to favor the rights of those who offend more those who
take offense.
Let’s speak truth to power. Those who want to
overturn the Obama transgender rule are doing so for religious or moral reasons.
They want to impose their religious value system on the rest of the country. At
heart, they oppose all forms of sexuality except heterosexual relations, and
those should preferably be between a man and woman who are married to each
other. If they can’t outlaw the transgendered, they want to chase them into
dark corners, not only so they won’t have to see them, but also to make the
lives of the transgendered harder than they already are. Moreover, opposition to transgender rights
serves as wedge for a slew of other prejudices - against gay marriage, other
LGBTQ rights, abortion, birth control.
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