Getting their arms around the transgender issue is a big problem for researchers in the United States. Out of a total population of 324.4 million people, there are about 125.9 million adult women and 119.4 million adult men. The estimate of the transgender population is approximately 700,000 people. To capture a more complete portrait of the population, newer surveys are beginning to frame the transgender question in two steps, first asking about gender assigned at birth and then about current gender identity.
The transgender teen from Virginia, Gavin Grimm, will have his/her case heard before the Supreme Court within the next 30 days. Gavin was born a girl but has a gender identity of a man and he wants to use the boy’s bathroom in his school. He refused any accommodation by the school to use a single-stall bathroom or the bathroom in the nurse’s office.
One issue at the center of North Carolina’s bathroom Bill 2 is safety. Supporters of House Bill 2 tend to focus on people born male who later transition to female. Sexual predators could just say they are a transgender person and easily gain access to potential victims. It used to be that authorities judged who belonged in which bathroom by an objective criteria – their anatomy. But then, the Obama administration declared that “gender identity” is determined by an individual’s sense of gender.
To put the tyranny of the minority in perspective, as mentioned, there are about 700,000 transgender people within the U.S. representing about 0.3% of the entire population. That means that the safety, privacy, and common decency for the 99.7% of the American population are sacrificed on the altar of political correctness and “feel good” policies for a tiny fraction of the public.
Indecent exposure, sexual battery, assault, molestation, sex with minors, and rape are all crimes in almost all jurisdictions in the United States. It shouldn’t take a rocket scientist to see that telling men that they can suddenly decide they “feel” like a woman and thereby use a woman’s restroom is a slippery slope. How does the “feeling” of a gender dysphoric man take priority over the safety or your wife, daughter, mother, sister, or girlfriend.
I am not against accommodating transgender individuals but they also have to give a little in their demands. Many transgender individuals can be easily identified by the characteristics toward the gender they have associated with. For their safety, they need to be protected from assaults by males or females in their own respective bathrooms. A recent survey found that more than 70% of responders have been denied entrance, assaulted or harassed when attempting to use a public restroom of their identifying gender. The issue of transgender bathroom rights has to be approached responsibly with an eye to the safety of all parties.
