In a series of new regulations, New York City human rights officials have threatened sanctions to landlords, employers, and businesses who prevent cross-dressing men from using the ladies’ room, under provisions against transgender discrimination.
Yet knowing who is cross-dressing and who is not has also become more complicated, since the same new guidelines also ban the gender “discrimination” of dress codes that require men to wear ties and women to wear skirts to the workplace.
The newest attempt to enforce gender fluidity also forbids those in positions of authority from using a male pronoun such as “him” or “he” for a man who prefers to be thought of as a woman.
An article in the January/February issue of The Atlantic alleges that as a nation, America now believes by large margins that people should “get to define their own gender, irrespective of biology.”
The only fact the article offers to back up this monumental claim is that a survey at the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law found that between two-thirds and three-quarters of Americans support barring discrimination against transgender people—which is a far cry from believing that gender is a subjective construct.
There was an enormous outcry when Glamour magazine awarded cross-dresser Bruce Jenner the “Woman of the Year” title in November.
In a biting commentary, author Nicole Russell wrote that by choosing Jenner as woman of the year, “Glamour endorses the idea that men are better at being women than we are.”
“Apparently real women can’t cut it, so we’ve got to import men into our ranks to win awards,” Russell wrote. “Jenner might feel like he is a woman,” she said, “he might want to be a woman, he might be living as a woman, but thoughts do not generate biology or reality.”
New York’s new regulations define gender in such a way as to have it mean virtually anything anyone wants it to mean, since it no longer has any grounding in biology.
In the new code, gender is defined as one’s “actual or perceived sex and shall also include a person’s gender identity, self-image, appearance, behavior or expression, whether or not that gender identity, self-image, appearance, behavior or expression is different from that traditionally associated with the legal sex assigned to that person at birth.”
While the new guidelines lay out the legal protections of transgender and “gender-nonconforming” New Yorkers, they make no provisions for women who would prefer biological males not share their lavatories or locker rooms.
The code, in fact, says quite the opposite.
It requires that “individuals be permitted to use single-sex facilities, such as bathrooms or locker rooms, and participate in single-sex programs, consistent with their gender, regardless of their sex assigned at birth, anatomy, medical history, appearance, or the sex indicated on their identification.”
When other people, however, “including, for example, customers, other program participants, tenants, or employees, may object to sharing a facility or participating in a program” with a transgender person of the opposite sex, such objections “are not a lawful reason to deny access to that transgender or gender non-conforming individual,” the code states.
Reuters claims that about 25,000 transgender and gender non-conforming people live in New York City, where they have an ardent advocate in Mayor Bill de Blasio.
“Today’s new guidelines strengthen those laws by ensuring that every transgender and gender non-conforming person in New York receives the dignity and respect they deserve,” Mayor de Blasio said in a statement Monday.
Mayor de Blasio, a hero of the National Organization for Women, who ran for office on a platform of “gender diversity,” set up a special Commission on Gender Equity last June.
The new regulations, which stipulate sanctions of up to $250,000 for violations, have drawn predictable praise from social activists.
“By issuing some of the strongest and most comprehensive legal guidance in the country, New York City has taken a major step toward ensuring that transgender and gender non-conforming New Yorkers can enjoy dignity, respect and access to opportunity in our city,” said Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union.
Follow Thomas D. Williams on Twitter @tdwilliamsrome.
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