Sex is assigned at birth when the doctor or midwife checks a box identifying a baby’s exterior anatomy.
Gender is what society does to the baby after that. Gender is roles and behaviors society deems appropriate. Snakes and snails and puppy dog tails, sugar and spice and everything nice, etc.
But not every baby conforms to what others perceive them to be. Babies tend to grow up and fall in love, sometimes with someone of the opposite sex and a generation older than they are. Sometimes with someone they will never meet but see in the movies. Sometimes with a person who has the same parts, but a different skin color, religion or political persuasion. It’s quite difficult to get seven million people lined out the way we assume they should be. Not just difficult, but crazy, futile and a time stealer.
Sex isn’t the problem, as that’s how we relate to others. Are we looking for someone to support us? Someone to hold us? Someone to obey us? Someone to motivate, cheer, believe or hang out with us? That person or people likely exist, but reasons for locating a best pal are individual and scattered, like snowflakes.
Gender identity is a person’s sense of being male or female. It could easily have nothing to do with the box the doctor checked. Sexual orientation is about whom you are attracted to, the person you fall in love with.
But gender identity is you. Your memories, aspirations, strengths, flaws and phobias, not your structure. It’s special and convoluted and as personal as you want it to be.
Transgender people can be straight, lesbian, gay or bisexual. A person who transitions from male to female and is attracted only to men would identify as a straight woman. A person who transitions from female to male and is attracted to men would typically identify as a gay man.
Transgender people are not hurting anyone, yet people can’t wait to hurt them. Why average people cherish being different, but don’t want others to be, is a philosophical question, not a legal one.
Bruce Jenner made it publicly known that he felt inside his head, heart and soul, he was a woman. He underwent mental and physical therapy. His family mourned the loss of Bruce, then embraced a woman named Caitlyn Jenner. She had done her best to be a man and it simply didn’t work out for her, so at 66, she finally got to where she was happy. Surely that’s a plus in this lifetime.
This issue is not about bathrooms. Goodness, public bathrooms used to be holes in stone benches situated over creeks where Romans and Greeks and Egyptians, men and women, would sit side-by-side and converse as part of their day. It was communal and as easy as buying a chicken hanging from a rope. It was natural, hygienic and an experience people looked forward to. Our fear is not about bathrooms, though we admit our digestive system has been startled by all this.
Last week we received a letter cussing the President of the United States for saying public schools had to allow boys to use the boys’ bathroom and girls had to use the girls’, and information checked on their birth certificate could simply be outdated information. Wine bottles all over the United States were uncorked.
Do we really think our president would do anything to endanger school children? My stars, the man has done everything in his power to protect and serve all people of this country. He was simply saying that those who, because of hormones they got while their mothers were pregnant, or genes they got from great-grandpa, or preferences they reached on their own, were as much a part of the American family as those who have different genes and grandpas.
To equate a person’s chosen gender with perversion is as naïve as thinking because a clergyman is bound by commandments, he will not be a weekend adulterer or identity thief.
And writing a letter and having it printed in a local newspaper is protected by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. Our forefathers did not make a provision for tasteful-only letters, but there is a legal requirement to not print libelous (injury to reputation) letters.
Printing that letter is also protected by the First Amendment. It is only staggeringly irresponsible journalism if an editor is actually a censor. In which case there would be no reason to have the First Amendment.
Mary Pat Boian
There is a “positive” part of this. The people of eureka springs (i hope that i may become one of them)now know of this threat. And can be prepared. I think that it would have been a good idea to point out that threatening to kill someone publicly is problematic. Should an accident happen to a person when this uh…creature is anywhere near, it could be prosecuted as a planned event.
The other point is that now people who live in, or plan to visit (as i do) will know to be aware ands prepare accordingly. I do not normally go armed. But with such people around, i am seriously considering it.
That’s a shame. She claims to be a “christian” but she, and creatures like her (i can not bring myself to call her a human) are the reason that i turned my back on religion.
Ms. Boian, it would behoove you to go back to middle school and learn the difference between the First Amendment and threatening speech.
This was a threat not only to transgender woman but to cis woman who do not look like woman…I have a shaved head and am not feminine. That letter said to me this woman can and will shoot me if in walked into the same bathroom as me….so I am now carrying a weapon of my own…I should not be afraid to go to a public restroom.. I was gay bashed very badly when I was 17 and this letter has triggered my PTSD of that…thanks…
I have two comments to make: First, I believe it would have been more responsible to have printed this editorial one week ago when you published the “threat” letter without comment. That letter caused much pain and fear to many Eureka Springs residents in the past week. Second, I believe that letter contained a very real and specific death threat to not onlyTransgender residents and tourists but also to individuals who could be mistaken for the opposite gender. Therefore, that letter was not protected by the first amendment. I’ve seen newspaper editors in other cities handle similar letters by either refusing to post them (you do have a choice as to which letters you publish, after all), or by publishing them with an attached disclaimer. I was shocked that you chose to do neither. Your belated and somewhat self-serving response fell flat, in my opinion.
Susan Osborne
When a newspaper chooses to print a call to murder a class of people, and does not state that is wrong to murder a class or group of people, that newspaper is helping spread the terror of the letter writer against that group of people. I suggest a search of World War II history concerning what happened to classes and groups of people that were selected for murder when no one had the moral or community values to stand up for those minorities.
Good job, Roxie…..I submitted a response as well. Susan Osborne
It’s your newspaper and you can print what you want. Its not like this woman hasn’t threatened other people in our community. Sunlight is the best disinfectant and having been finally revealed,she can quietly slip back beneath the rock from whence she came.