Transgender debate about stopping left’s attempts to redefine reality

Forget health care or taxes. The current public-policy discussion with the farthest-reaching societal implications is on transgender issues.

At its core, that debate is on as to whether feelings should be treated the same and even elevated above scientific realities.

This debate isn’t just happening nationally. Last week, the Clark County School District announced it is creating a plan for gender-diverse students that may include requiring teachers to use a student’s preferred pronoun and allowing biological boys to change in a girls’ locker room.

Throughout human history — and until recently in our own country — biology determined gender. If a child had a penis, he was a boy. Thanks to scientific advances, we know that the presences of a Y-chromosome in a human produces a host of other physical changes in males.

This means gender isn’t a social construct. It is the scientifically verifiable biological difference between males and females.

In contrast, a radical subset wants gender identity to be equivalent to biological gender. The American Psychological Association defines gender identity as “A person’s deeply-felt, inherent sense of being a boy, a man, or male; a girl, a woman, or female; or an alternative gender … which may or may not correspond to a person’s sex assigned at birth or to a person’s primary or secondary sex characteristics.”

I don’t care if you identify as a ladybug. The conflict has come because the left is demanding that society treat someone’s gender identity — aka their feelings — as being on par with the scientific and objective reality of gender.

That’s the root of the conflict over whether a biological boy should be allowed to use the girl’s shower. Our society has decided that boys and girls shouldn’t be forced to take off their pants in front of members of the opposite sex. CCSD will violate that privacy — while claiming not to — if it allows how a boy is feeling to determine which shower he uses.

So, it’s OK for a biological boy to use a boys’ locker room, if he feels he’s a girl. But biological girls have no grounds to complain about feeling uncomfortable for being made to change in front of a biological boy who claims he’s a girl. Is privacy a big deal or isn’t it?

The New York City Commission on Human Rights has gone even further and announced fines of up to $250,000 for calling a man “he” if he prefers to be called “she,” “zie,” or “ey.” That is something you should read about in George Orwell’s 1984, not the newspaper, but these are the stakes in the transgender debate.

The left has declared feelings trump science and wants to make thoughtcrimes illegal. Those are high stakes.

Victor Joecks’ column appears in the Nevada section each Sunday, Wednesday and Friday. Contact him at vjoecks@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-4698. Follow @victorjoecks on Twitter.