North Carolina and LGBT

North Carolina's governor signed a law barring local jurisdictions from passing laws which allow  trans sexual people who have penises and testicles from using public bathrooms designated for women.

If you find this bizarre or confusing, join the club.

This fight, from the ACLU perspective is about discrimination against a reviled group which only wants respect.  It is for some, similar to the old "Whites Only" or "Colored" bathrooms. 

But it's not that simple and it's not clear what the real issues are. 

I have tried, unsuccessfully to explore the complexities of this before, which span biology, law, ethics and culture.

That "LGBT" includes trans sexuals is an alliance of emotion and/or sympathy, but while  lesbians, male "gays" and a bisexuals have so much in common as to be almost indistinguishable on many levels, the trans sexual is a horse of a very different color.

Most of us would agree that homosexuality is not a "choice" but an innate biological state, something a person cannot and often would not want to change about himself or herself. There are some authorities, like Paul McHugh who might argue that sexual attraction and identification may be more fluid and malleable over the course of a person's life and there may be many influences on all this, but few people with experience in this realm would call it a "choice" or believe "deconditioning" or psychotherapy would work or should be recommended.

Trans sexuals might be described as people who feel the gender they've been handed (assigned) in life is wrong for them. The common expression is, "I'm a female trapped in a male body" or "I'm a male trapped in a female body."

Some make a distinction between "trans sexual" and "transgender"  by saying the trans sexual is a person who feels the wrong sex has been assigned whereas the trans gender may not feel this way.  But these are distinctions which are often blurred and there is much confusion about who belongs to which group. If you are a lumper rather than a splitter, this  group is heterogeneous: Some may be "pseudo hermaphrodites"  i.e. people whose external genitalia (clitoris, vulva, penis, scrotum) do not match what is inside or do not match the chromosomal sex in their cells--46 XY for males, 46 XX for females.)  Some of these pseudo hermaphrodites have biochemical enzyme deficiencies which result in "masculinization" of external genitalia and some have receptor dysfunction which means testosterone simply bounces off their cells and this results in feminine external genitalia (i.e. clitoris, vagina, vulva.) 

In the case of the biochemically disordered pseudohermaphrodites, there is sometimes a transition from female to male external genitalia at puberty, and the individual "grows" a penis and musculature develops. With some conditions (e.g. congenital adrenal hyperplasia) infants thought to be males will resolve to a female phenotype, often with biochemical and surgical therapy.  

All these different types of conditions may be subsumed under the rubric "trans sexual," although some would make distinctions between trans gender people (who may or may not feel they have been assigned the wrong sex) and trans sexuals (who always feel themselves to be the wrong gender). Got that?

But many, if not most trans sexuals have no biochemical enzyme deficiencies or receptor dysfunction. Why they have "gender dysphoria" is not understood, for the most part. They are simply males who think they would be happy as females or vice versa.

Not all male to female transgender have their penises and testicles removed. They may simply get estrogen therapy, but their anatomy remains unchanged.

Now consider when such a person decides to use a public bathroom.

In this country, we have segregated the sexes. This is not true all over the world.
In this country we have laws against public nudity and against men displaying their penises to women, whether or not they do so in a sexual way. Why we have these laws is more difficult to understand, but it has to do with cultural norms, and we might want to change these.

But to paper over the truths about all this and simply claim the North Carolina legislature was acting out of hate, intolerance of LGBT is wrong.  There may be resistance to the "T" part of LGBT but not to the homosexuals. Nobody is saying gay women should not be allowed into women's bathrooms.

The LGBT community has welcomed in trans sexuals. This is understandable because both homosexuals and trans sexuals/ transgenders have faced adversity and even hate based on their own sexual preferences. But it is a perilous linkage when faced with bathroom privileges possibly dorm assignments or trans genders in the military.

We ought to think these things through and not simply start screaming.