The North Carolina governor and legislature has taken the position of declaring transgender people aren’t real in recent court filings. It’s costing the state millions to continue to legislatively prohibit transgender people from using bathrooms associated with their gender identities in government buildings, as well as prohibiting local government entities, such as cities and counties, from enacting local antidiscrimination protections based on sexual orientation and gender identity.
Another sports body has removed prestige sports events from the state. The NBA had already withdrawn the 2017 All Star Game from Charleston. Now the NCAA has withdrawn several championship games from the state.
The NCAA’s Board of Governors, in their statement explaining their decision, stated “The Association considers the promotion of inclusiveness in race, religion, sexual orientation and gender identity as a vital element to protecting the well-being of student athletes, promoting diversity in hiring practices and creating a culture of fairness.”
It took just short of 24-hours for Gov. Pat McCrory to respond with a statement.
“The issue of redefining gender and basic norms of privacy will be resolved in the near future in the United States court system for not only North Carolina, but the entire nation,” the governor said. “I strongly encourage all public and private institutions to both respect and allow our nation’s judicial system to proceed without economic threats or political retaliation toward the 22 states that are currently challenging government overreach. Sadly, the NCAA, a multi-billion dollar, tax-exempt monopoly, failed to show this respect at the expense of our student athletes and hard-working men and women.”
Hard working men and women don’t include transgender men as men and transgender women as women. What Gov. McCrory is asking for is no consequences for legislatively taking the position that trans men are women and trans women are men, and using government to act on that position to discriminate against transgender people.
I seem to recall originally that the arguments in North Carolina against transgender people using public restrooms associated with their gender identities was that “transgender pretenders” would use antidiscrimination laws to pretend to be transgender women to enter public restrooms to engage in predatory behavior against non-transgender women and girls.
In their most recent court filing, North Carolina’s filing stated about gender dysphoria, which the state called gender identity discordance, the following: “What is missing is sound science to show that gender identity discordance is not a delusional state.”
And, ”The gender discordant individual is given protected civil rights as if the discordant gender identity is innate, when there is no credible science to prove such, and in fact, much credible science to refute it.”
In other words, the state of North Carolina is putting forward the position, much as scientific flat-earthers, that transgender people aren’t real. They’re of the opinion that transgender people are self-deluded liars. It doesn’t matter that the major psychiatric, psychological and medical organizations agree that gender dysphoria is real, and that many, including the American Medical Association, have stated that transgender people shouldn’t be discriminated against based on their gender identity.
If people define a situation as real, it is real in its consequences – that’s the sociological definition of a situation. The situation is that businesses consider the anti-LGBT discrimination going on in North Carolina related to HB2 is real, and there should be consequences.
As a result of consequences this coming academic year, there’s going to be a lot less singing of “We Are the Champions” in North Carolina.
