Picking Your Gender

The civilian Secretary of Defense, Ashton Carter, has now declared -- conspicuously absent the uniformed Chiefs of Staff -- that transgender people would be accepted into, and allowed to remain in, the military and "allowed" to operate in their non-genetic gender.

Now, I don't suppose that I have a strong opinion on who should and should not be serving in the military.  Smarter people than I, with stars on their shoulders, can make that determination in the best interest of the defense of the people of the United States, which needs to be the paramount criterion in such a thing.

What I do have an opinion about is the extent to which people other than the transgender person should have to be affected by the ability of someone to decide for themselves what their official gender actually is.

This would not matter if there were no distinction between genders.  I'm not just talking about discrimination, I'm talking about distinction.  We do indeed have rules and laws that affect the genders differently; we have situations (e.g., rape) wherein we look at them differently because of a serious distinction between the genders -- men are preponderantly stronger, bigger and more muscular, and the influence of male hormones produces very different drives from those produced by female hormones.

I have unbounded sympathy for those who are actually suffering from the psychological conviction that they are of a different gender from that of their chromosomes.  As I repeatedly say in those pieces on this site that touch on the matter, I am significantly concerned about how our accommodation for such individuals invites fraudulent gender portrayals to capitalize on that accommodation.

For example -- I am old enough to have registered for the draft and actually been subject to it at a time the draft was active, while in college.  I was status 1-A (immediately subject to being called into service) for a year in 1971-2, but was not called up in that year and went to the back of the line.

We were at war then and we are at war now.  The only difference is that the draft has been suspended as far as active call-ups are concerned. It could be reinstated tomorrow (I would not favor it, but that's a separate column).  But it would be reinstated only for males.  There has only ever been a draft of males.

Suppose tomorrow we find ourselves in need of reinstating an active draft.  The law has never been suspended, so at age 18 every male has been registering for it.  The law still requires that "U.S. citizens or immigrants who are born male and have a gender change are still required to register."  But that has not been tested in the courts, because registering is still just a paper exercise.

But what if the active draft resumes, and the law stays the same?  How soon before some genetic male files suit claiming that they should not have to register, let alone be subject to call-up, because he now regards himself as "female" and therefore outside the intent of the law?  And when they do sue, what will the courts find?  Would it not be a lot simpler, since we have had a registration but no active draft for 40 years, to just draft everyone and not just males?

I'm very concerned about what happens when the courts start weighing in in this stuff.  Because I do not want to see the court system bend in terms of self-identification.  I mean, I'm perfectly OK with people going out and portraying themselves in daily life as something other than their gender of birth in "daily life."

My worry is what happens when actual, official government entities -- and particularly the courts -- start to recognize something that smells like a right to declare defining characteristics that are not genetic, like, say, "height.".  Because once that has the tone of "official", then others are forced to allow their lives to be affected.

The "Seven Sisters", for example, are seven women's colleges and universities in the northeast -- well, five now, Smith, Wellesley, Bryn Mawr, Mount Holyoke and Barnard, along with the no-longer-women-only Vassar and Radcliffe (itself now just a part of Harvard) -- with long histories of being bastions of female education and liberalism.

The five remaining Sisters that are still devoid of Y-chromosomes must be twisting themselves into pretzels right now.  As devoted leftists, their administrations must be outwardly committed to the whole equal rights thing and to wanting the best for transgender people.  Until, that is, one of those transgender people thinks that, as a "decided female", Wellesley is the college of choice.  And someone is going to have to room with that person.

What do you decide to do when you discover that your daughter, who had dreamed of going to a Seven Sisters school and gets admitted, finds out when she gets there that she is going to room with someone with male body parts?  Does Wellesley Admissions ask in their surveys to incoming freshmen, whether they'd be fine rooming with a genetic male?  Or do you just get surprised?

And who then sues if they tell you, the parent of the actual female, that we all have to be tolerant and inclusive and diverse, and your daughter is going to room with someone born male and you had better like it?  And if the courts somehow make a ruling that we have to recognize a choice in gender, then how far can that go?

Whose liability is it when someone fakes being transgender and rooms with your daughter and attacks her?  Better yet, look at Bruce Jenner, now "Caitlyn."  He calls himself transgender, shoot, he's the poster child for transgender people.  But he is not gay -- he is attracted to women!  Does Wellesley take him?

My blood type is O-positive, the most common of all.  That is a matter of inheritance and genes.  But tomorrow, I might decide that I "feel" like B-negative and cannot identify with being O-positive any more.  What is my blood type?  And who gets to sue if I walk in to a Red Cross center and somehow instead of typing and cross-matching, they take my word for it and mark my donated blood as B-negative?  I mean, I really felt B-negative.  In fact, I feel that right now.

Do transgender people get their birth certificates changed?  Is that even possible to change a document of fact from a hospital retroactively?  So then what happens if an escaped criminal fakes a gender change and goes back to get his birth certificate changed and disappears?  Who is complicit in any subsequent crimes?

Am I asking too many questions?  Should the courts be asking them too?

Copyright 2016 by Robert Sutton
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