CATE O’BRIEN | OPINION EDITOR
I cannot understand people’s incessant insistence to control others’ actions and identities. Recently, the Trump administration revealed that they intend to constrict the definition of gender to “sex as either male or female, unchangeable, and determined by the genitals that a person is born with.” And the biggest question I have in response to this proposal is, “Why?”
No, seriously. Why is this the concern of the administration right now? Who does this proposal benefit? Because the only people it directly affects are transgender individuals, and I doubt any of them would say that the new definition is beneficial to them. Perhaps proponents of the narrower gender definition hold the belief that transgender individuals experience their gender the way they do because they suffer from a mental disorder and so believe that this legislation would be for trans individuals’ own good.
There is a good repository of research forming to suggest that trans individuals’ brains respond similarly to the cisgendered brains of the gender they identify as. These studies suggest transexuality is a legitimate experience, not a mental disorder. But even if transexuality was a mental disorder, this new definition wouldn’t actively help trans individuals overcome their supposed disorder in any way. It would not provide any support for trans individuals at all, instead bluntly informing them that they are wrong about the only thing that people should not be wrong about: themselves.
Therefore, the new definition would negatively affect transexual individuals; and, honestly, it wouldn’t affect anyone else. Anyone who identifies as the gender they were assigned at birth would not be affected by this definition or any of the ramifications that may come from it unless they personally know a trans person.
So who is this benefiting, aside from the population of people harboring transphobic thoughts and feelings? No one. This definition is not based on what is best for the American people. It’s based in fear, ignorance and backwards thinking. Those who are supportive of this definition have no stock in the issue. They are not the individuals who have struggled with the confusion, body dysmorphia and societal judgement that can come with living openly as a transexual person. So why are these the people deciding the fate of those they know nothing about?
St. Norbert Times 