From Bathrooms To Bedrooms, A Study Shows

It’s not like I didn’t warn you.

The discussion was framed to grab the low-hanging fruit. What’s the big deal about a sincere transgender high school student wanting to use the bathroom that matched his identity? Who really cares about where he pees? And, indeed, the answer was that most of us didn’t, and couldn’t get too up in arms about it.

The strategic choice of making bathrooms the hill to die on was a very smart one. Combined with the fact that most people with even an iota of humanity harbor no ill will toward a transgender teen. For crying out loud, live and let live. And indeed, Gavin Grimm was quite a remarkable person. What sort of horrible person wouldn’t want to accommodate such a fine human being. And they are, most assuredly, human beings. Just like you. Just like me. And deserving of the respect and kindness that any human being deserves.

But the push wasn’t about where a transgender teen could pee, but whether the word “sex” in Title IX included discrimination against transgender students. If so, then the full panoply of Title IX law and regulation, whether real or the mythical expansion to peer-to-peer sex policing on campus for whatever could be jammed into the vagary of “sexual harassment” would protect them as well.

A new study has just been released about “discrimination” against transgender people.

New Research Shows a Vast Majority of Cis People Won’t Date Trans People

A recent study attempts to quantify the extent of trans discrimination when it comes to romantic and sexual relationships.

There were some oddball posts at offbeat sites expressing the outrage of straight guys disinterested in sex with trans women. After all, if a guy liked someone, found the person attractive and was ready to make his move until he realized the person shared his anatomy, what else could it be but discrimination? The reasoning is not unsound.

But we’re now looking at the next natural step in the progression, scientific research premised on the notion that this isn’t merely how people feel, but discrimination.

Considering the discrimination trans people face on a daily basis, it comes as no surprise that trans people are overlooked when it comes to dating. Two Canadian researchers recently asked almost 1000 cisgender folks if they would date a trans person in a new study published in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships. This is the first study to ever attempt to quantify the extent of trans discrimination when it comes to romantic and sexual relationships.

It would be uncontroversial to assert, for example, that lesbians prefer their sex partners to have vaginas. That’s pretty much the deal with being lesbian, and aren’t they entitled to prefer whomever they prefer? But if they choose not to date a woman with a penis because they’re just not into such appendages, are they discriminating against transfolk? Yes. Of course they are.

We discriminate all the time, which will come as a shock to people whose grasp of discrimination is visceral and horrifying. We choose to date people we find attractive. If you’re into dad bods, great. If you’re not, that’s fine too. But you are discriminating against dad bods, whether you want to admit it or not. And it’s fine. We all discriminate. Not all discrimination is wrong, or evil, or in any way offensive. Heck, I discriminate against chocolate ice cream and in favor of maple walnut. Does that make me a racist?

Obviously, no one can legislate or regulate whom you find sexually desirable. If you’re not into vaginas, then no law or rule is going to make them appeal to you. But that doesn’t mean you can’t be punished for your “sin.”

Joe meets Lola, and they take a shine to each other.  Joe asks Lola on a date, and Lola affirmatively consents.  Joe goes back to his dorm, and is subtly informed by his roommate, Enrique, that Lola is quite the excellent sweeper on the college’s men’s curling team.

Joe is confused. He’s a bit slow. So Joe texts Lola and asks, “Lola, are you on the men’s curling team?” Lola responds, “you bet I am. Can’t wait to see you tonight, dreamboat.”  Joe, never one to miss a trick, replies, “I didn’t know you were a dude. Sorry, but I’m not into that sort of thing.”

Lola is crushed. Joe was so adorable. Lola is now hurt, angry and offended that Joe refused to go on the date solely because Lola was a biological male who identified as a woman. There was no other reason for Joe’s cancelling the date. That’s sex discrimination.

Seems silly, right, and yet as the academic research pursues this as transgender discrimination, who will be so bold on campus, whether student or academic, to stand up and say, “hey wait a minute, this is nuts. It doesn’t work that way.” As reason is swept under the rug in the rush to build a “better world,” even if it can only exist in the minds of the terminally woke, the trend is undeniable.

There is no conceptual ledge to prevent this scenario from becoming very real. If discrimination against transgender people is sex discrimination under Title IX, then its only a few baby steps to accusations of sex discrimination. And, of course, the remedy is drastic, as sex discrimination is intolerable on campus.

The knee-jerk reaction, “so you’re saying it’s okay to discriminate against transgender people” is unavailing, but what one should anticipate from the unduly passionate, even if they aren’t themselves ready to get excited by any particular form of genitalia. It’s far easier to argue the point on an existential basis than staring at an unwanted penis.

How to accommodate this variation on a theme presents peculiar problems that won’t be solved by rhetoric or ad hominem. And yet, the fix for violations of unacceptable sexual discrimination is already well-established. Now we have the empirical study to show that it’s not a matter of human desire and preference, but transgender discrimination.

From Bathrooms To Bedrooms, A Study Shows curated from Simple Justice