The "Woman" "Fathers" a Son ... A Testicular Conundrum

The Obama administration's Friday letter -- from the Departments of Justice and Education to school districts around the Nation -- posits constructions of two anti-discrimination statutes, and on the basis of those constructions directs school districts that they must allow individuals to use toileting and showering facilities based on their self-perceived gender identity, rather than limiting access to such facilities based on sex.

Proponents of such actions appeal yet again to the struggle of African Americans for basic civil rights. That appeal should fall flat just as the unfounded interpretations of federal statutes by this administration do fall flat.

Race has been understood to be an immutable characteristic.

I suppose adventures, such as the social experimentation in "Black Like Me" are suggestive of a chameleon like quality to race, but the daily application of pancake or black face to change one's "race" suggests more the immutable character of race.

Sex, likewise, has been understood to be an immutable characteristic. It continues to be such. And, in fact, the transgender kerfuffle doesn't change that.

Take a child, growing up in a boy's body, that "feels" like she is a girl. Give her loving parents that accept this construct of her personality and support her long term goal of transitioning to life AS A WOMAN. The right hormone suppressive drugs are administered. She wears clothing that, in her construct of the feminine, accords with her image of the female. Eventually, at some advanced age, say, 24-25, she has modification surgery often called reassignment surgery. Because the doctors asked politely, she allowed her testes to be donated to science.

She now thinks of herself as a woman. She may, to some greater or lesser extent, resemble a woman.

Is she a woman?

Unbeknownst to her, her doctors transmit her testes to a reproductive research facility. They are part of a research protocol to develop donor testes for survivors of testicular cancer. Ultimately, "her" testes end up in the sack of a guy that thinks he's a guy. A successful transplant, "his" testes from "her" begin producing spermatozoa. He impregnates his wife. The wife gives birth to a son.

Was our misfortunate child a woman?

Does the genetics of it all escape you?

You think that Republicans are all over the bathroom issue? Why is it lost on you that this brouhaha began when the City of Charlotte amended its ordinances, added "gender identity" to its city antidiscrimination laws, and stripped away from private businesses the previous legal protection they had from discrimination.

I should the hell hope that Republicans are all over OVERTURNING the inane stupidities of progressive social engineers run amok.

And, no, Eisenhower was not demanding that a black kid that thought he was a white kid be treated like a white kid would be treated because, as this new movement seems to demand, Eisenhower insisted that the black/white boy's self-conception must be respected.

What Eisenhower, and the law, demand is that we recognize that treating governments treating people differently based on racial classifications violate the color blind Constitution.

UPDATED: The British Foreign Office Warns About Dangers From American Bathroom Privacy Laws

but not about the dangers of being shot or killed in lead- and red-riddled streets of America's bloody, Democrat-controlled cities, including Chicago, Baltimore, and Washington, DC.

In England, a soldier returning to his base is murdered in a cold-blooded attack by a radical Islamic terrorist.

In England, for the first time, sex crimes reported in a single year have surpassed 100,000. The murder rate is skyrocketing.

In England, cybercrime is up.

In England, the problem of how to kill someone, complicated by the difficulty in obtaining a handgun, has been resolved by resort to the cutlery drawer, and you can actually research the areas of London bearing the highest risk of knifing attacks.

Yet, in England, dear old friend and long-time ally England, the Foreign Office has another danger on its mind. Not radical Islamic terrorist attacks at home, not rape or other sexual violence, not cybercrime, and not cutlery attacks. Rather, the Foreign Office wants English subjects traveling to the United States, particularly gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered travelers to be aware of the dangers of traveling in North Carolina and Mississippi.

Here’s the travel advisory update on the Foreign Office’s USA travel advisory page:

 

“LGBT travellers may be affected by legislation passed recently in the states of North Carolina and Mississippi.”

“May be affected by legislation.” There’s a helpful bit of guidance. I wonder just how LGBT travelers may be affected?

Here in North Carolina, for example, we have not had a spate of attacks on visitors from the UK, or at least, if we have had such, it has been ignored in the news media. We certainly haven’t had a spate of attacks targeting gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgendered Brits, and I’m fairly confident that if we did, that too would be headline news.

So, I am, again, left wondering what dangerous condition might threaten British LGBT travelers in North Carolina?

Inexplicably absent from the travel warnings for the USA-bound Briton are some rather dangerous places, including Chicago, Baltimore, and Washington, DC. Just whom must the powers that be in Chicago, Baltimore and Washington, DC know in Britain's Foreign Office to keep a justifiable and sensible travel advisory from being issued for UK residents headed to those dark and bloody grounds? Crimes, particularly murders, in those three cities alone, drove a spike in violent crime in the USA in 2015, and the murderous jungle of Chicago is on pace for another banner year of bloodletting. Here's a link on the role those three cities played in America's violent crime spike last year. As that article mentions:

About half of the increase in murders is attributed to Baltimore (up 63 percent), Chicago (13 percent), and Washington, DC (51 percent). Violent crime reports in general ticked up 3.1 percent in 2015, largely due to substantial increases in Los Angeles (up 25 percent), Baltimore (19 percent), and Charlotte (16 percent).

Far be it from me to suggest that Britain's Foreign Office does a disservice to Britons traveling to the USA by their warning ... a warning that is oblique and unhelpful in any event for its lack of specificity about the dangers presented to LGBT travelers ... yet, it does seem strange that the kind of "steering" of travel destinations that may result from such a warning just might land unsuspecting Britons in such shooting galleries as Chicago, Baltimore, and Washington, DC.

_______________________________________________________________

As of at least June 23, 2016, the British Foreign Office Travel Abroad Warnings no long advise Britons traveling to America of the dangers inherent in traveling to a nation that maintains sex segregated toileting and showering facilities in public places.

Apparently a cooler head prevailed.

In place of that warning, others that seem to make more sense, are now being fronted. Included are hurricane season warnings, the Pulse shooting advisory, and Zika virus exposure risks.

Oddly absent yet is any specific warnings about the dangers attendant to visiting cities with Democratic Party mayors and city councils. Nothing about the fact that Chicago is on track to hit 300 gun murders this year and perhaps 4000 nonfatal casualties. Oh, there is this caution:  "You should be alert to the dangers of car and street crime." That guidance would be greatly enhanced in its helpfulness if it distinguished between the risks of street crime in Mayberry versus street crime in Chicago, Baltimore, and, for example, Washington, DC.

Complete the Following: Here I Sit All Broken Hearted ...

If you're rhyme sense led you to complete that sentence with "tried to poop and only farted," then you might live in North Carolina.

On the other hand, if you finished that rhyme with, "a pretty girl walked in just as I farted," then you probably live in a more sophisticated State, perhaps one where urinating in public is now lawful, or in which an end is being brought to the provision of gender-separated toileting facilities.

Something to think about in this whole bathroom imbroglio:

The fellow that was waiting, surreptitiously, and then peeping at the little girl.

He was a guy. He didn't think he was a girl trapped in a guy's body (thus, he didn't think he was "transgendered" or, as the DSM might call it suffering from "gender dysphoria"). He was, no doubt, perverted (no offense to my radical Islamic friends who take no issue with 7-, 8-, and 9-yo girls being married off), but his sexual orientation appears to be straight or heterosexual.

Given the wide stance of a certain Alaskan Senator, I don't doubt that there is a certain amount of isogender peeping too. It's just that the early stories of apparently criminal activity following North Carolina's bathroom law involve "straight" men peeping and videotaping in women's bathrooms.

Why am I mentioning this fact?

Because, TBH, there is justifiable anger about Cities like Charlotte threatening businesses that address the risks of such crimes by providing gender specific facilities and unsurprising angst from the "transgendered" community over being targeted by the corrective law. As with all these kinds of disputes, at a certain level, they are a distraction. They generate mucho fuego. They divide in ways that i don't think most people would be proud to admit.

If we applied certain fairly sensible and enduring principles, there would be little anger or angst, and what there would be, I think most folks would recognize would be the product of folks that enjoy the triumph of their demands over the desires of others.

For example, what if Target had only one person facilities. Admittedly, when the kidneys are bursting, you hate seeing a line and to do its best job of serving its customers, Target might need to have multiple one person facilities. But that approach would guarantee everyone a modicum of privacy.

As an alternative, Target could have two kinds of multi-person restrooms, but not identified by the gender of use. One set of restrooms could just have urinals and sinks. Anyone that could relieve nature's call with a urinal would have the option of using such a facility, whether they identify as male or female, or whether someone else would identify them as male or female. The other set of restrooms could be equipped with commodes in stalls and sinks. If your "business" required the assumption of a more restful pose, then this would be the restroom for you. Now, I would not go with the stall-less commodes, but if Target chose to do so, it would be its privilege so to do (and a great way of reducing restroom use too!). I might agree with the idea of floor to ceiling stall walls.

It seems to me that, in virtually every circumstance, either of these approaches turns down the heat (turns down for what?), and facilitate movement (including of bowels and minds). There is, however, one small group that might object:

Some part of the transgendered community and their supporters are not just looking for a place to drop a deuce. They are looking to assert their right to poop amongst those who share the gender with which they identify. Seriously. If one-person facilities were to be the order of the day, that would not be the accommodation sought by the potty partisans. Rather, what they seek is that all objection cease to the presence of a person whose body screams out to others "man" but whose mind mews "woman" in a toileting facility designated for female users (and vice versa).

We have seen this ideological tyranny before.

The struggle over slavery produced such a clash: slave-holders, in Lincoln's view, would have never been satisfied until all objection was silenced to slavery and until those who had objected to the inhuman practice acknowledged slavery as "morally right and socially elevating."

The abortion issue has produced an identical ideological clash. It offends the ardent defenders of a woman's right to choose to show photographs of aborted babies, sometimes even tasteful Lennart Nilsson-style photographs of children in utero. Such photographs bear witness to barbarism and to humanity in indisputable ways, and so supporters of the right to homicidal eviction of babies will always demand two things: an admission that abortion is a moral good, and a denial that children before birth are human persons.

So, returning to the porcelain perturbations, we really just have to decide one key question:

Are we for, or against, liberty?

If we are for liberty, then we leave Target free to make itself inhospitable to families concerned about the safety of their children and to the survivors of rape and other sexual traumas. If we are for liberty, then we leave ourselves free to conduct business with persons of like thinking.

Liberty, then, is the guiding principle that resolves this dispute.

Charlotte struck hard against the liberty of private places of business when it stripped away a previous ordinance provision that allowed private businesses to provide sex-separated toileting and bathing facilities. The State of North Carolina swatted the Queen City on the hind side with the bathroom privacy law.

But if Charlotte had respected liberty to start with, this kerfuffle would never have gotten going.

The Boss Wants To Boss Carolinians About Restrooms ... But Demands Private Potty and Shower on Tour

North Carolina's recently enacted bathroom bill is causing quite a stench.

PayPal reacted by announcing that it would drop plans for a processing center in the States ... while providing no indication that it would discontinue doing business in Saudi Arabia, where homosexual acts are punishable by the death penalty.

San Francisco and Washington, DC, and New York announced bans on nonessential travel by government employees to the State ... taxpayers in those jurisdictions can send thank you notes for the savings to my attention.

But, and more disappointing to folks who don't really care whether they're listening to good rock and roll or great rock and roll, Bruce Springsteen announced the cancellation of his scheduled April 10th show in Greensboro, North Carolina.

Bruce announced his cancellation on the front page of his website, brucespringsteen.net. Here's a screen capture:

Springsteen objects to the State of North Carolina correcting a change in the law that the City of Charlotte attempted to foist on its citizens, including businesses that transact business with the City or that provide services inside the City. Charlotte opened fire with its sweeping ordinance changes, which included striking down this section of the existing Charlotte Ordinance:

Sec. 12-59. - Prohibited sex discrimination. 

(a) It shall be unlawful to deny a person, because of sex, the full and equal enjoyment of the goods, services, facilities, privileges, advantages, or accommodations of a restaurant, hotel, or motel. 

(b) This section shall not apply to the following: 

(1) Restrooms, shower rooms, bathhouses and similar facilities which are in their nature distinctly private. 

(2) YMCA, YWCA and similar types of dormitory lodging facilities. 

(3) A private club or other establishment not, in fact, open to the public.

Yes, that's right. The Charlotte Ordinance used to permit sex-based discrimination on access to restrooms, shower rooms, bathhouses, similar facilities, YMCAs, YWCAs, similar lodging facilities, and private clubs. The change in the Charlotte ordinance stripped privately owned businesses of the power to maintain separate toileting and showering facilities, and lodging facilities, based on sex. You know those days, when there were "Men's Rooms" and "Women's Rooms" at restaurants, movie theaters, clubs, and the like. Charlotte stripped out from its laws the exemption allowing separate facilities.

That is what provoked the State to act.

I realize there are hard cases out there. I understand that there are individuals who suffer a kind of body dysmorphia, and do not feel themselves to be the gender that their plumbing suggests that they are. And, candidly, I have never been one to check other folks in the restroom I am using to make sure that we are all just guys here. (Of course, former House Speaker, Denny Hastert, with his recliner set where he could look into the shower stalls in the boys locker room at the high school where he was the wrestling coach proves that some folks will do just that.)

Some of what is at play here, it seems to me, is not so much whether someone who identifies as male is using the men's restroom, but that someone who identifies as male is demanding the right to be told it is okay to use the men's bathroom despite obvious, well, equipment issues. The same, of course, would hold for the transgendered born in a man's body but identifying as a female. There is a meme circulating on the web these days suggesting that we have all likely used the same public restroom facilities at the same time with a transgendered person. I happen to think that is likely true. So the controversy isn't really over the fact of such uses. It is, as I suggested, over a demand for recognition of the right to do so.

Now, about Bruce Springsteen.

Well folks who are from below the Mason-Dixon Line, we are often viewed as the backward stepchildren of the Nation. So we are privileged to be taught right from wrong by the likes of the Boss and his E Street Band.

Well, we would be taught right from wrong, if, of course, they demonstrated this new openness and gentleness they find shockingly absent in the potty law.

Evidence exists, however, to the contrary. Evidence that damns Bruce's teaching. Evidence that Bruce values privacy in the potty and the shower. Evidence that he values that same privacy for his wife, for his kids, for his band mates.

The Smoking Gun website has gathered special conditions riders from many famous performers over the years. For example, they have the rider showing that Luciano Pavarotti required venues to provide him with a golf cart for transportation within venues and they also have the rider showing that Van Halen required M&Ms as part of their "munchies" but warned venues "absolutely no brown ones."

As it happens, the Smoking Gun received the Bruce Springsteen rider for its 2002 tour. And it is in the rider that Springsteen's hypocrisy is revealed. There, Ts crossed and Is dotted, Bruce demands private potty and showering facilities for himself, and the same for his wife, and for the E Street Band. He also demands a private potty for his kids, who get their own backstage room. Here's that rider excerpt:

You can see that excerpt, and the riders for his wife, for the band, and for his kids, on the Smoking Gun's website here.

A wag once said that hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virtue.

Springsteen's hypocrisy is to demand of you what he does not demand for himself, that you surrender concern for those joining you in the bathroom and in the shower. I'm all for learning, but I think I'll wait for another teacher.

Thom Tillis Gives a Report, I Give Him a Report Card

Senator Thom Tillis​ (R-NC) sent me a report on his first year in office.  It came from a "donotreply@" email address. Okay. I'll say it here then.

My report on your first year in office:

Obamacare still in place?
Check.

Obamacare enforcement mechanisms fully funded?
Check. 

EPA costly clean coal regulations proposed and adopted?
Check. 

EPA enforcement budget fully funded?
Check. 

Executive action on amnesty for childhood arrivals still under way?
Check. 

Full funding of executive action related agencies and programs in place?
Check. 

Executive action on amnesty for family members of childhood arrivals still under way?
Check. 

Full funding for executive action on amnesty for family members of childhood arrivals in place?
Check. 

Using up the lives of men and women in foreign wars and adventures?
Check. 

Reducing retirement benefits for the used up lives of men and women after dispatching them to our foreign wars and adventure?
Check. 

Massive federal purchasing of ammunition continuing apace?
Check. 

Continued threats and impositions on the natural right of self defense and the second amendment right to keep and bear arms?
Check. 

Continued confirmation of America loathing, brown nosed Obamanauts to positions of federal power and prominence?
Check. 

Impeachment underway?
Nope. 

Oversight bringing executive branch to heel?
Nope. 

Budgetary restraints in place.
Nope. 

Times being what they are, I have not produced this report in red ink. I realize doing so might constitute a trigger for you.

On the bright side, I don't pen this note to your constituents: "Gets along well with Democrats!"

There, Senator Tillis, is your actual 2015 year end report.

You get an "F."

It goes with a "You."