Balancing the rights of transgenders and vulnerable girls7 min read

The problem with this whole North Carolina bathroom issue is that we have two populations we are trying to protect – transgenders, who suffer discrimination, and girls, who could be exposed to adult male nudity or worse. Where is the solution for both? This isn’t just about bathrooms, but locker rooms as well.

Feds side against children, for trangenders

U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch, on behalf of the government, sued North Carolina for “state-sponsored discrimination.” Here’s her speech.

Notice that she only talks about fairness and inclusion, but not the safety of children. She denies any risk to children with such a law.

The Problem of Rape

In November 2015, The Federalist ran an insightful article entitled A Rape Survivor Speaks Out About Transgender Bathrooms:

There are countless deviant men in this world who will pretend to be transgender as a means of gaining access to the people they want to exploit.

The fear is not that trangenders are rapists, but that others will take advantage of this new loophole. And liberals don’t seem to care at all. Until it happens to their own kid. The author of the Federalist article continued:

Do they know that more than 99 percent of single-victim incidents are committed by males? That they are experts in rationalization who minimize their number of victims? Don’t they know that insurance companies highlight locker rooms as a high-risk area for abuse that should be carefully monitored and protected?

Don’t they know that one out of every four little girls will be sexually abused during childhood, and that’s without giving predators free access to them while they shower? Don’t they know that, for women who have experienced sexual trauma, finding the courage to use a locker room at all is a freaking badge of honor?

Again, it remains to be seen if such fears are warranted, and statistics on the 18 states with gender neutral bathroom policies are hard to find. But the illogic of ignoring it sounds like this:

While some have proposed a third option for transgender people (single-occupancy restrooms and showers), this option has been largely struck down, and employees are prohibited from suggesting it, as it is considered discriminatory and emotionally damaging to a group of people who are working so hard to fit in. The solution? Anyone can use whatever restroom he or she wants without being questioned.

Gender Rights Trampling Children’s Rights

Remember the days when children were allowed to work in factories? Me neither, because progressive countries have long since outlawed child labor.

But the new progressivism could give a damn about children’s rights, which seem to always be trumped by the sexual and gender rights of adults. Protect the child in the womb? No, the woman has higher rights of choice. Want to commit gendercide by aborting your female fetus, or kill off 90% of Down’s syndrome babies? No problem! Your choice!

Do children have the right to be protected from seeing opposite sex nudity or sexual predators? No. Less important than transgender rights!

Is it ironic to no one that being “progressive” actually sets women’s lib back about a century? What of my right to do my darndest to insist that the first time my daughter sees the adult male form it will be because she’s chosen it, not because it’s forced upon her? What of our emotional and physical rights? Unless and until you’ve lined a bathroom door with a towel for protection, you can’t tell me the risk isn’t there.

Putting College Women at Risk

Putting such laws in place in colleges, where young males are at the peak of their sex drive, may not be such a great choice either, but the North Carolina suit is already having that effect, since the funding they want to cut university funding as well.¹

The risk of sexual assault may be real at universities. Recently, the University of Toronto reversed its transgender policy after a few peeping incidents.²

The Bathroom Predator Myth

According to a coalition of over 200 organizations in the US, calling themselves The National Task Force to End Sexual and Domestic Violence Against Women, the risk of increased predation of the vulnerable as a result of liberalizing bathroom access is a myth.³

Some argue that we are constantly bombarded by exaggerated fearmongering from left and right, creating irrational fears of allowing kids to play in parks by themselves or walk to and from school, or even waiting in cars. They say that stories of children being abducted for child trafficking in the US is not a reality at all.⁴

Paranoid moralizers, busybodies, authority figures, and local news reporters have all played a role in drumming up bizarre support for the idea that an unsupervised child is an endangered child. The American public—and in many cases, local law enforcement—have bought into the notion that sociopaths are lurking around every corner, ready to abduct any child left alone for more than a second.⁵

Is the fear of increased predation a reality? Leftist women, who are very sensitive to sexual abuse on campuses (I’d hate to be a boy negotiating intimacy on college campus today – “is this ok? Is this ok? Is this ok?”) don’t think so. But they are not known for wanting to protect children.

This is the crux of the argument – we believe that transgender people are discriminated against. Will allowing them to choose their bathroom (haven’t they been doing that all along anyway?) put our children at risk? It may take years to find out. I can’t find any studies on this anywhere yet, but schools reporting on their own experience say they have not had any problems.⁶

Balancing Human Rights

As it is said, your right to swing your fist ends where my nose begins. No one has unqualified rights. We must prioritize and balance competing interests. In this case, we should prioritize protecting children, and find some other equitable solution for gender confused, er, transgender people.

U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch talked about the dark days of racism as an analogous situation. However, a closer analogy can be drawn between the unborn and slavery – both were considered non-persons, property to be disposed of, and owned by others.

I look forward to the day when we recognize the human rights of the unborn (who are being killed, not just told where to pee), and when people say “what about the right of the young girls” and liberals will give the same answer they give to the bathroom issue. “Not a problem.”