The Trump Administration and America’s Transgender Moment
by Ryan T Anderson, National Review:
Who knew that removing the federal government from debates over school bathroom policies would be considered an assault on LGBT rights? That’s the argument activists made last week when the Department of Education (DOE) announced that it would begin enforcing Title IX the way the federal government always had, up until the second term of the Obama administration. That’s when the Obama DOE announced that the word “sex” now meant “gender identity” — and ordered schools to open up their bathrooms, locker rooms, showers, and dorms accordingly.
It’s understandable that many ordinary Americans recoiled at this transgender mandate. Most Americans — including those who identify as transgender — aren’t activists and want to find ways to peacefully coexist. Most can understand why a man who identifies as a woman doesn’t want to be forced into the men’s room but also understand why women don’t want a man in the ladies’ room. These concerns are even more heightened when dealing with students.
New transgender policies raise five distinct areas of concern — privacy, safety, equality, liberty, and ideology — and the Trump administration is right to reject the radical Obama policies in favor of letting local officials work to find reasonable compromises.
It shouldn’t be hard to see the privacy concerns that arise when men who identify as women can enter female-only spaces. When changing for gym class, most high-school girls don’t want to see or be seen by boys who identify as girls. The reason we have separate facilities in the first place is not because of “gender identity” but because of the bodily differences between males and females. This privacy concern is particularly acute for victims of sexual assault, who testify that seeing naked male bodies can function as a trigger.
Preventing sexual assault is another major area of concern. Public-safety experts explain that predators abuse gender-identity policies to gain access to victims. The concern is not that people who identify as transgender will victimize women but that perverts will use such policies to do so. Indeed, after Target changed its policies to open bathrooms and fitting rooms to people of both sexes, men disguised as women were caught doing just that.
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