It’s time for me to say something about a controversy that seems to be in the news almost every day, some of the issues regarding people labeled as Trans. I have several qualifications I believe permit me to speak about the issue. First, a life-long commitment to human rights. Second, more than fifty years of association with issues of community health, including fifteen years as a commissioner on the Community Health Board of Washtenaw County (Michigan). Third, thirty years as a manager of staff who included every imaginable variety of human expression. Fourth, decades of experience teaching students of every imaginable background. And fifth, but hardly last, more than forty years of marriage to one of the world’s experts on issues of gender and sex. While I certainly can’t claim her scope of knowledge, much of what I have learned over those decades comes from being willing to soak up the knowledge she has shared with me.
Almost daily now the news provides some sort of story, complaint, or fracas having to do with people we now designate as “Trans.” Trans people represent a tiny minority of our population (credible estimates run from .5to 1.5%) so why is there such a furor over them, and why do so many people harbor hateful feelings about them?
Not so long ago it was fashionable to demean gay people, deny them their civil rights, even imprison them for what we now know of a scientific fact is simply their human nature. Before that, prejudice against Jews was common and in the open–golf and business clubs which could legally exclude them, for example. Go back far enough and you can even find outrageous prejudice against left-handed people. Many of these bigotries have fallen out of fashion, so it seems like Trans people now garner all that hatred which has nowhere else to go.
As near as I can tell, many of the people who are outspoken about their prejudice seem to be motivated by a distaste for the notion that Trans people have “done this to themselves.” Two aspects seem to get most of the attention. Which public toilet should a Trans person be allowed to use, and should men who have transitioned be allowed to compete in women’s athletics. The notion is, of course, completely absurd that a person would voluntarily surgically remove their genitalia in order to use a different bathroom or compete in an athletic event. But that is how prejudice works.
To demonstrate that it is prejudice without any rational basis, we have only to consider the scientific truth that there are Trans people who are born that way. To put this in a way that some might understand, some Trans people are that way because God made them that way.
In recent weeks, I’ve been posting on social media about two types of Trans people described in the Talmud, a work of the Jewish religion from the period 350 CE to 550 CE. The Talmud recognizes two types of Trans people. First, people who are born with both sets of genitalia, male and female. These are called “androginos” in the language of the Talmud, the more modern term is “hermaphrodite.” The second type is a person who is born with neither sexual genitalia. The Talmud refers to these people with the term “tumtum,” probably the most common modern term is “eunuch.”
In every passage where these intersex categories is listed, the Talmud demands that the people be treated with respect, that their communities support them. I find not a trace of prejudice or hatred in any of these texts.
Various legislatures, including Congress, are either considering, or have actually passed laws which restrict Trans people in some way according to their “biological” sex. My question is, I think, very simple. What bathroom does a eunuch or a hermaphrodite have to use? If a eunuch or hermaphrodite wishes to compete in athletics, which team do they have to play on?
Now, once you realize that politicians can’t possibly answer that question with laws, can they really be trusted to do the right thing for people who have resolved to adjust their sex or gender via the means modern medical science offers?
These two categories but scratch the surface. There are dozens of intersex possibilities because our genetic makeup is not limited to “XX” or “XY” configurations. As often seems to happen with prejudice, legislators either from their own personal ignorance, or because they are responding to mob psychology, will be content to satisfy their need for contempt or hatred of their fellow human beings. But we have won some significant battles against prejudice in recent decades, so I am not without hope that we will win again in this realm.