Name:   copperline - Subject:   a couple of case examples Date:   5/14/2016 9:59:39 AM

You’re right, a lot of people fear this will make it possible (even likely) for someone to abuse their kids.   I just don’t think this law will have any impact on that concern one way or the other.  Trans people aren’t “peeping toms”, the number of voyeurs out there who actually get off watching other people in the bathroom is probably really small.  And the straight guy who dresses up like a woman, waltzes into the girl’s locker room to take a peek… well, he will continue to be pretty easy to spot.

I have known 2 couples who were raising trans kids.   Both were educated, professionally trained people who really loved their kids & struggled with the issues that nature had presented them with.    One couple’s child was born a boy, but by age 8 the parents had become convinced of the child’s sincere belief that he was gender-disordered.    It was really interesting to hear them talk about it.   Mom said she had begun to notice that ‘he’ was a ‘she’ from a really young age, and as the child matured, the identification with female traits, interests, and feelings was just growing stronger.   They decided to let the child begin to dress & conduct themselves as a female, and this included talking to the school about accepting the child’s chosen sexual identity.    A fight erupted among other parents who appealed to the school to prevent this child from having contact with their children.   They wanted this child removed from school altogether, never to return.  The parents were accused of ‘perverting’ their own child when they were trying to accept what nature had presented them with.    This was not fair to any of them nor was it reasonable to think that this little girl posed any danger to the other kids.  She was just like any normal little girl who liked horses and played with dolls.   The school’s accommodation was not a big deal, she used the rest room in the nurse’s office… a compromise that should have satisfied everybody’s concerns.   The family was making plans for an eventual hormone therapy & surgical sex-reassignment, but the cost of this is extremely high…. And not covered by medical insurance in most cases.

The second couple had an even more complicated situation.   Their child was born a hermaphrodite, having both male and female sex organs.   They had to choose which sex their child would be and after extensive consultations with medical experts regarding whether the child was ‘more male’ or ‘more female’, made the decision to proceed with a series of surgeries to remove female genitalia and commit to the male identity.   Over the first years of his life, he then had numerous constructive surgeries.   The next big looming problem was whether they had in fact chosen the sexual identity that would be consistent with the child’s innate psychology, something that would not be revealed until several years had passed.   As he got older, would he feel like a boy or would he feel he was female?   There was no way to know what the child’s psychology would be, only what the external sex organs would look like.    I lost touch with them over the years, but reckon that this child would be about 30 years old now.   In a small way, his case underscores the absurdity of the North Carolina law… which bathroom would you use if you were born with both sex organs?

A law like this may seem really odd to most of us because episodes like this don’t happen very often… and where they have occurred, it was (naturally) kept very quiet and private.  Maybe if not for that, we might see that acceptance of these folks isn’t all that big a deal.   

The public outcry to this is chock full of fear & misunderstanding right now.  It’s an over-reaction.   I don’t think there is any danger to the general public here.