In a fit of sanity yesterday, the Legislature’s interim committee on the South Dakota High School Activities Association declared itself pointless and refused to recommend either of the draft bills proposed by conservatives to razz transgender students.
This interim committee came into being because the SDHSAA enacted a sensible policy last year laying out a clear approval process for transgender students to join the sports teams that match their gender identity. SDHSAA is still tweaking that policy, but culture-warrior Republicans want to strip SDHSAA of its school-district-based authority and make transgender kids drop their pants for genital inspection. (Good grief, the things some Republicans make me write.)
Rep. Roger Hunt (R-25/Brandon) captures the angst of a dying generation in one despairing cry:
“We’re just changing our whole culture. This is one step in that direction,” Rep. Roger Hunt, R-Brandon, said about allowing the SDHSAA policy to stay in place [Bob Mercer, “Legislative Panel Lets Athlete Transgender Policy Rest,” Mitchell Daily Republic, 2015.10.30].
For once, Roger Hunt is right. Yes, Roger, we are changing our culture. In your South Dakota, people who look and think like you set the standards and bully those who don’t fit. In our South Dakota, a kid with a girl brain in a boy body gets to choose her pronouns, her bathroom, and her basketball team. In our (our, as in all of us) South Dakota, we won’t call that kid a misfit; we’ll call her a South Dakotan and say, “Play ball!”
Yes, Roger, we are changing our culture… for the better.
Gracious comment, Cory, and dead-on.
Rog the dodge is an equal opportunity offender. The man reeks of hate and deception, in other words, the perfect republican lawbreaker. Corruption takes a back seat when this turd is around http://womensenews.org/story/campaign-trail/061104/lawmaker-funnels-750000-abortion-ban-campaign Roger hates womenfolk and he is not real sure about the transgender except they could possibly be one of them womens, so the hate begins with him or her, who knows about rog without an inspection.
Mr. H, I don’t pretend to understand all the girl brain in a boy body business and wonder if this is your annual Halloween joke blogging. But if it is not you need to not try and pretend that Mr. Hunt represents anything except a small fringe group of whack jobs and Mr. Hunt, who needs a new style of shampoo and hair treatment for that scalp problem, I’m just sayin…, doesn’t represent more than a few who are insaner than most.
No Halloween joke here, Grudz. And I contend that the quote I highlight from Rep. Hunt represents the angst of a larger portion of our legislators and the general population than just the fringe to which you ascribe him.
Cory wrote:
>“In your [Roger Hunt’s] South Dakota, people who look and think like you set the standards and bully those who don’t fit. In our South Dakota, a kid with a girl brain in a boy body gets to choose her pronouns, her bathroom, and her basketball team.”
It sounds to me like, from your perspective, a girl in a boy’s body shouldn’t have to share a bathroom or locker room with boys’ bodies, but a girl in a girl’s body should.
Feel free to correct me if I’m misunderstanding you.
You are misunderstanding me, Kurt, but good effort to rebut.
The whole bathroom/locker-room-sharing issue is based on a fear of ogling, right? We don’t want boys sneaking in and looking at girls undressing, right?
But let’s generalize: the fear is that X will get to look at bodies that titillate X, right?
If that’s our concern, then we really don’t dare have any shared locker rooms or bathrooms, right? Otherwise, we need to have a monitor at the door asking every student, “What turns you on?” then shunt the hetero boys to one room, the hetero girls to another, the gays and lesbians into separate smaller rooms in opposite-sex pairs, and the bi kids to solitary confinement.
For that matter, can we even let kids sit next to each other in high school? You’ve got Peter Wolf sitting in class fantasizing about Angel’s soft fuzzy sweaters, too magical to touch. Titillation! Begone!
Or maybe we just need to get over it. I’ll bet the trans kids are way over it. They aren’t looking to spy on others’ titillating parts; they’re looking to suit up and play basketball.
Roger Hunt fantasizes about seeing ANYONE naked besides himself.
Does Hunt want to shoot Native Americans on sight? How about lynching African Americans? Those activities were and apparently are still a part of whitey wingnut’s “culture.”
Gawdalmighty,you’d think wingnuts would force boys and girls to shower together so none of them become attracted to the same sex and become “that way.”
Okay, what sort of perverted mind actually thinks a teenage boy would “pose” as transgender knowing he would be demonized by people like Hunt, he would not be able to date girls, he would be made fun of by the bullies in school, and he would have to wear female clothing and makeup every school day, all just to look at girls in a locker room?
Doesn’t sound like much of a reward for changing an entire lifestyle, especially in the age of free nude photos everywhere on the net and on TV.
Rog the dodge is sweaty weird to come up with those kinds of fantasies. Makes me wonder what kind of lifestyle he has forced himself to lead and for that, I pity him.
It frightens me that in Iowa, a state from which Mr. mike is from and which is next door to our great state, they would leap from ogling to shooting on sight and lynching. Even Mr. Hunt would never subscribe to such thoughts.
” I don’t pretend to understand all the girl brain in a boy body business”
Fair enough – but it’s actually pretty simple. It’s literally true.
.
A sex difference in the human brain and its relation to transsexuality. by Zhou et al Nature (1995) 378:68–70.
Our study is the first to show a female brain structure in genetically male transsexuals….
Male–to–female transsexuals have female neuron numbers in a limbic nucleus. Kruiver et al J Clin Endocrinol Metab (2000) 85:2034–2041
The present findings of somatostatin neuronal sex differences in the BSTc and its sex reversal in the transsexual brain clearly support the paradigm that in transsexuals sexual differentiation of the brain and genitals may go into opposite directions….
Sexual Hormones and the Brain: An Essential Alliance for Sexual Identity and Sexual Orientation Garcia-Falgueras A, Swaab DF Endocr Dev. 2010;17:22-35
The fetal brain develops during the intrauterine period in the male direction through a direct action of testosterone on the developing nerve cells, or in the female direction through the absence of this hormone surge. In this way, our gender identity (the conviction of belonging to the male or female gender) and sexual orientation are programmed or organized into our brain structures when we are still in the womb. However, since sexual differentiation of the genitals takes place in the first two months of pregnancy and sexual differentiation of the brain starts in the second half of pregnancy, these two processes can be influenced independently, which may result in extreme cases in trans-sexuality. This also means that in the event of ambiguous sex at birth, the degree of masculinization of the genitals may not reflect the degree of masculinization of the brain. There is no indication that social environment after birth has an effect on gender identity or sexual orientation.
The difficulty is trying to explain this to scientifically illiterate legislators.
Cory wrote:
Not right. Right. Not right. Not right. Yes.
zoe, i think don kopp has some kind of advanced forestry degree or training. so much for that idea.
disclaimer-kopp the “spelunker” is former dist. 34 legislator (R) and (speculating) likely knows grudz quite well, so also likely shares his trans view :)
leslie – well, I hope the two *do* know each other. And that the estimable Grudznik passes on the message.
That trans girls really *are* girls. Just born looking superficially male.
Which as you can imagine, is a pretty dreadful situation to be in, even if they’re lesbian. So very many suicide if they can’t get something done about it.
The thing is, not many people know about the biology here. Many think they do, but what they “know” just isn’t so. Those who do know the situation, who have studied the neurology and psychology, face an uphill battle going against “common sense”.
As was done when most thought the Earth was flat. As was done when most thought the Sun went round the Earth. Both are “common sense”, both are wrong.
The thing is though, that on this one, if we don’t get the message across, kids will continue to die. So it’s a bit more important than planetary morphology or orbital mechanics.
If not fear of ogling, then what, Kurt? (Feel free to move this conversation to today’s post on Fred Deutsch’s locker room legislation, if you like, as it extends this very discussion.)