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Certain Irrelevancies
By lindamuralidharan on 2016-06-04 17:06:35
Mnnn..yes, it is human nature for individuals and groups of individuals to have different priorities. So I certainly respect the
desire of many to watch sitcoms when I might like the crime dramas. Some might want to spend a lot of time with the
competition shows while I look for history and news commentary with some background facts. Some might spend a great
deal of time creating crafts for sale, going to craft fairs, gossiping with friends and neighbors, cooking up a storm, going to
the gym while neglecting to study ways of reducing murders or gun violence or homelessness, etc. Others might be very
involved in using new and better ways to protect our environment while others are engaged in their spare time in ball room
dancing. I respect any such endeavors. Insofar as I know the hobbies and interests listed here do not in and of themselves
harm anybody. However, my apparent naivete once again leads me to puzzlement that people place as priorities energy
devoted to fending off imaginary or misunderstood behaviors by other people.
"Transgender students deserve the rights of anyone else. It does not mean they get to use the girls' room if they
are a boy."
Dan Patrick, Texas Lieutenant Governor Many know that Texas and several other states such as North Carolina have passed
laws....some signed by the respective governors and some not...that either forbid protections for LGBT people or refuse to
pass protective laws to begin with. In other words, some parts of our society do not want protections written in to law. In
one state...I think North Carolina is the only one yet to go this far, the law now says no governmental entity can protect their
rights..... North Carolina undid the civil rights law of one city and said from now on no local governmental entity can have a
protective law. I have been distressed for weeks now as news reports of the variations of the laws are reported, as more and
more states get into the act, as certain companies and sports institutions threaten to boycott these states, and as I read about
the irrational comments of citizens and officials alike. The efforts to prevent transgendered females of any age from using a
bathroom normally designated for females has really taken matter off the charts in my opinion. [caption
id="attachment_8484" align="aligncenter" width="600"]
aaa ery ia F. as, BE i t! Abe]
Two protesters hold up signs
against passage of legislation in North Carolina, which limits the bathroom options for transgender people, during a rally in
Charlotte, N.C., Thursday, March 31, 2016. The rally drew around 100 people at the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Government
Center. (AP Photos/Skip Foreman)[/caption] I wasn't really sure what I could add to the issue, and then the quote from this
Texas official jumped out at me as the last straw. I feel compelled to discuss the lack of logic in his statement as well as his
apparent misanthropic tendencies. First, as too few of the apparently paranoid folk seem to think through, we do not have
reports of lesbian oriented transgendered women. I suppose there may be some, but so far the transgendered women I have
met or heard about seem to be heterosexual. They would not want to assault a female anyway...in a bathroom or in a back
alley. And while unfortunately women who identify as lesbian commit crimes just like the population as a whole .... some
small percentage....rape in public places by lesbian persons is not reported to be a significant part of crime in this country.
There have not been reported any sexual assaults by transgendered women using public restrooms or campus restrooms so
this is both an illogical and a statistically unlikely fear on the part of folks wanting these laws imposing the restriction Mr.
Patrick would like. Next a transgendered woman is not a boy. The transgendered female student or female adult is female.
That is the whole point. Those with rigid thinking, no imagination, bigoted views of those who are different, or outmoded
interpretations of various religious texts may stick to a concept that one particular human organ defines who you are. J am
neither transgendered nor homosexual but I try really hard to empathize and to learn about the view of people who are. I
don't have to mimic them in order to accept their rights. I gather there are various reasons why one transgendered person
determines that an sexual reorientation operation needs to be done as soon as feasible along with hormonal therapy and other
adjustments while some individuals live with a sexual organ that is counter to their sense of self and manage quite well. I
don't pretend to know all the possible situations or feelings but I read and watched biographical films and TV programs
made from the point of view of transgendered persons of varying ages. By definition, a transgendered woman is not a boy or
aman. In the case of the above quote, the Lieutenant Governor is telling school districts to violate Federal law if need be
and block transgendered students from using bathrooms that do not "match" the birth certificate gender designation of the
person. All kinds of ridiculous claims and statements have been made from wanting to keep children "safe" from predators
with such laws and in regard to how men (some whom I know personally) would have loved as a teenagers to dress as a
female and go ogle or worse females in the girls' bathrooms on campus. What would they actually see? For one thing.
(There are stalls with doors, remember.) For another, the civil rights protections are not for males playing dress up. They
are for persons who live their lives as the self identified gender. A high school male who dressed up in his sister's skirt and
blouse would be laughed out of court if he protested being directed to the boys' room. However, it is my guess that few
people are even monitoring such things except to the extent that all this fear mongering and publicity has created a few self-
appointed vigilantes here and there. That will eventually die back down since this was a solution in search of a problem. It
did not find one. It has, however, found a lot of ill will, wasted ink, wasted tax payers dollars and the pitiful exposure one
more time the extent some politicians will go to milk a phony issue if it gets them votes. Especially phony issues that are
designed to turn one set of the population against another. Another issue that is rarely explored in relation to this issue is a
condition formally known as hermaphroditism. While it has a number of variations and qualifiers in specific medical
diagnoses, the essential definition relates to a small percentage of persons who are born with ambiguous clues as to sexual
identity and usually that involves the presence of at least some female and male sexual organs in the same person. I recently
spoke to a woman who shared her story at a church organization function that I attended. The woman experienced drug
abuse and jail time in her youth (as a result of confusion and often rejections) and now in mid life is functioning well as a
citizen, musician, and person who wants to share her story to help others. Despite possessing both male and female organs,
she herself has always identified as a woman and has faced discrimination as a result. I was invited to attend the evangelical
organization's annual meeting by a friend. I was stunned and pleased that people with this particular religious orientation
would have a speaker who is closely related to the transgender issue. Perhaps because the church women see her as not
having made an arbitrary choice since here birth ambiguity is documented. Still, this is a step in the right direction. Also it is
informative to study an ancient custom in many Polynesian cultures that involved showing respect for people who were
ambiguously gendered or even specifically lived life as the opposite from the birth determined gender. In Hawaiian culture,
the term for this person is "mahu". Mahu were often honored in those states and given specific roles in society. After white
people..missionaries, settlers, business people...so cruelly stripped Native Hawaiians of both the positive and the negative
features of their original culture....there has been prejudice and bullying toward LBGT people until quite recently when the
respect for the "mahu" has been revived to a degree. The movie "A Place in the Middle" describes the experience of a
talented student who does not think she is a boy...she has been considered a girl since birth....but she likes and craves certain
activities that are usually reserved for boys. For example, she is excellent in performing hula with the boys' version as
opposed to the female hula style performances at her school. She prefers being part of the "kane" or male version of hula.
SCENE FROM “A PLACE IN THE MIDDLE"
This young woman actually
sings the accompanying traditional chant better than any of the boys. Her teacher, a transgendered woman as shown in the
picture below, has helped to make this film about the young woman. It can be obtained for free along with teaching
materials for classroom use. I believe the film can be viewed on line as well.
These are important issues to prioritize in a positive way since so many children today are bullied, often skip school, and
even commit suicide because they are not accepted for whatever difference about them is perceived by other parents and
students. Here in Hawaii there is still resistance to showing this wonderful film in public schools. There is still much work
to do here to convince our Board of Education to allow the film in any or all public schools. In the film, the young woman
is shown to be well accepted by her peers..which may be partly attributable to her own combination of humility and
charisma and to the atmosphere established by her hula teacher or Aumu hula as we call such a person in Hawaii.
The following link describes some of the current issues in Hawaii related to people whose gender and sexual behavior
choices are not well understood or accepted. My concern stated at the beginning of the post is that so many people choose
what I believe are irrelevant and harmful priorities. As I said there are so many ranges of choices from sailing to studying
older cultures to studying civil rights or the life cycle of whales for either our vocation or our leisure pursuits, and I don't
accept that it is reasonable to prioritize actions that hurt others, that promote ignorance, that preach intolerance.
: I suspect that even where such exclusionary bathroom laws are official policy, that nobody on a
school campus ‘really has time to check that that 11 year old girl headed for the girls' bathroom is walking around with a
male organ underneath the clothing.....whether someone is pulling a prank now that this issue has been given so much
publicity or whether the person has been allowed to "be" a girl since she was 4 years old despite some body features that
might convince the skeptical otherwise. Every child deserves to be treated with respect. If we do, those children will grow
up to respect others and we will have less crime and suffering.
