Saturday, May 4, 2019

The Next Culture War and Who Will Lose It

The Next Culture War and Who Will Lose It
By Ronald G. Pittenger
The next culture war is already under way. It started with communal bathrooms, locker rooms, and showers, specifically who gets to use which ones. It will end unhappily for someone for reasons no one expected or predicted.
When the Obama administration published guidelines telling public schools they had to allow users to decide which restrooms they were allowed to use based solely on what each individual perceived as being his/her gender, there was (and still is) a lot of resistance. The Trans community hailed this as a major victory. The more traditional among the populace decried it as an unneeded intrusion into private spaces. The very liberal thought it was a wonderful step forward (Yeah, let’s stick it to the Man!); the very conservative thought it was an abomination. The vast majority didn’t get too excited either way, but quietly resolved to be judicious about using public facilities, to go in pairs, and make sure there was a way to secure the stall door.
The only “perfect” solution is to have a bunch of one-person restrooms with lockable doors that afford every user individual privacy. The obvious problem is the cost of building 50 individual bathrooms instead of 4 communal ones. This would be expensive, but possible.
Then, the apple cart wasn’t simply tipped over, it was up-ended. Transgenders would also be allowed to participate in the sports of their perceived genders regardless of their genetic makeup. For the moment, ignore the locker room and shower issues of team sports. There are already multiple cases where genetic men–those with both X and Y chromosomes and no surgical adjustments to their physiques– who perceived themselves as women have won racing and weight lifting events they wouldn’t have previously been allowed to compete in. 
Obviously, the XX chromosomed women they beat felt cheated because they were cheated. The whole point of having women’s sports is to compete within their peer group of other genetic women. They weren’t looking to compete against “all” others.  If a man wakes up in the morning and decides he’s a woman that day, nothing prevents him from competing in his preferred sport as a woman that day. Perhaps tomorrow he’ll change his mind, but by then, today is a memory. And, there is the rub.
There is a substantial body of law to “guarantee” fairness of financial support to WOMEN’S sports. How long will it take for some unhappy women’s soccer team coach to bring suit under Title IX because her team has to compete against genetic MEN on an opposing “women’s” team? It will be fascinating to listen to the legal arguments for and against. If the transgendered win, that is pretty much the end of “women’s” sports. The sports will continue to exist, but those involving strength and endurance will be dominated by “women” who aren’t female.
But, that still isn’t the end. Does anyone remember the Equal Rights Amendment? The one that was never approved by the states back in the 1970s? A whole lot of women who supported it are still trying to get it passed (even though it expired back in the early 80s at the latest). If that trans athlete can decide for him/herself whether or not to be a woman today, how does that fit into the treatment of gender in the workplace? Can a potential employee apply as one gender (or both?) and then work as the other? Can they switch from day to day? If not, why not? And, since there is general agreement that very few positions actually have a legitimate requirement for an employee to be a particular gender, why should the employer care what sex the employee really is by chromosomes? So, the Equal Rights Amendment is off the table, too.
Notice that the only losers in these scenarios are the women. The men involved would’ve been no worse off either way. The only potential winners will be the lawyers.
Retraining humans out of hundreds of thousands of years of evolution, the practice of finding “things that work,” will not be easy. Perhaps we need to simply designate a third sex option: Ambiguity. Men–who have the proper biologicals to be men–should use the Men’s spaces and participate in Men’s sporting events. Women–who have the proper biologicals to be women–should use the Women’s spaces and participate in Women’s sports.  The Ambiguous can use their own spaces and participate in their own sports. That’s fair to everybody.
People aren’t interchangeable like dollar bills.
For reading of some real life examples (links may not be live; if not, copy and paste) go to: https://pjmedia.us18.list-manage.com/track/click?u=ea4927843b5a26908b2f004fa&id=56186b8e06&e=9ade260061
and
These are merely the first two examples that came to mind. No doubt there are others.

No comments:

Post a Comment