The legislation takes aim directly at trans individuals using the restroom or locker rooms, threatening those who “knowingly” and “willfully” enter facilities designated for the “opposite biological sex” with prison time. A first offense would count as a misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in jail. Those caught using the bathroom in repeated offenses, however, could be convicted as felons and face up to five years in prison.
It’ll be interesting to see how this aligns with the Full Faith and Credit clause for someone who updates their birth certificate from another state that allows for that then uses the bathroom that aligns with said certificate.
I think it’s even more than just people who would be classified as intersex
There are various markers for sex: DNA*, hormonal levels/profile, gonadal tissue, gametes, the shape of the genitals, and even the shape of the skeleton. Probably more that I’m just not bringing to mind right now
And it would be pretty unusual for any one individual to have all of those markers point unambiguously in one direction
So the first question is - if it’s going to be law that people have to be divided into two precise categories according to their biological sex, what marker is being used to determine which category they fit in
If pressed on this, transphobes often default to gametes, with a fudge to the effect that people who don’t produce gametes should be judged by what gametes they would produce if their reproductive systems were producing gametes
Okay, so, someone goes into one public toilet. Someone calls the police on them because they don’t think they’re a biological match. The police turn up…how are they going to determine what gametes that individual would produce if they produced gametes?
Because you can’t just select a marker and not have a test to determine who fits where, can you?
Which means, logically, what are we looking at? Genital inspections. Because that’s realisically the only test which can be administered
So does this law have an exception for children? Or are they enshrining in law that it’s okay for adults to force children to show them their genitals? To protect kids, of course. There’s no possible way that could have any negative consequences
But even that’s not the point, really, horrible and disgusting though it is. The point is that they don’t know and haven’t thought about what they actually mean when they use those terms, and they certainly haven’t thought about the actual consequences of the law
There’s basically two options - unthinking transphobia, or “I don’t actually care about this issue, but I’m making a big deal of it because I’m otherwise unelectable and if I can make people worried about ‘for the children!’ and paint the other side as paedophiles I might get elected again even by people who disagree with me on literally everything else”
And trans people suffer and are put in danger in the short-term, as do cis people who don’t fit into whatever narrow prejudices the general public have about gender expectations, and children of whatever sex/gender are put in danger in the slightly longer-term
*which in and of itself is a lot more complicated and nuanced than just X/Y
I was recently listening to a video of a call-in show where someone called in and made this argument that sex should be defined by what gametes they’re “supposed to” produce. Supposed by who? The host said that’s not science, that’s fortune telling. Someone in the comments said they were an intersex chimera (male and female twins fused together in the womb) so which sex were they “supposed to” be?
I am, as far as I know, a cisgender woman. Though I’ve never actually had my chromosomes tested. But I have facial hair, a secondary sex characteristic normally associated with men. If I don’t trim or shave regularly, I get a full beard. People who see me in public probably assume I’m trans. When I use public bathrooms, I fear being attacked because I’m mistaken for trans. Fortunately, that doesn’t seem to happen in my area. If I were in Idaho, would I now have to carry my birth certificate to prove I’m female? Would I have to have my genitals inspected? Would I have to go to court and prove I’m female?