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Guess what? Conservative CA Group Blows Chunks!

The School Success and Opportunity Act is a real nice law in the Great State of California that pretty much says that you don’t need a dick to play boys basketball. To be more specific, the law requires that California public schools respect students’ gender identity.This will enable students to participate in any school activities, sports teams, programs, and facilities that match their individual gender identity instead of just by the naughty bits that they were born with.

There are some of you out there will find this law way too radical (and not in the cool Californian way). Maybe you are the type of person who pines away for the days of lining up in elementary school according to sex or wearing girdles everyday a la Mad Men and to you I say. please, go fuck yourself. What? I said please. But seriously folks, transgender is a real thing. It’s not just for funky movie characters in dated movies anymore. But hey, don’t take it from me,the American Medical Association has written policies for physicains dealing with transgender people. And the American Psychological Association took Transgender out of their Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (5th ed.) because (as my gay brother would say) Duh, Buffy—it’s NOT A DISORDER.

You know what really  is still considered a disorder? ADD,ADHD, OCD and many other diagnosis that people trip all over themselves to assist kids whom are affected (or are at least legally obligated to assist thanks to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. For the record, education law blows HOWEVER it’s hard to deny that there are long lists of laws and lawsuits designed to protect individuals with disabilities, as to the efficacy of these laws, well, er..I’ll save that discussion for after I’ve consumed A LOT of red wine.). As of yet, there is no blood test to determine that an individual will be gay or transgender or autistic or experience life in one of 10,000 ways that are different from you or me. Since somewhere around the third page of the Bible, or however you mark time in your neck of the woods, people have looked different, understood things different and been simply develop differently. Heck, there are people born all kinds of wacky ways, sometimes it’s obvious before you are even born, like limb reduction defects and sometimes you can’t see it until a few years later, like Huntington’s Disease which manifest later in life.

Of course there are those, I call them haters, who have a ridiculously misguided petition to halt The School Success and Opportunity Act becuase transgender isn’t “biblical” (and we all know the Bible is a highly regarded medical journal) so it must be a man made “issue” and nothing to do with god.

Let my people go!
Let my people go!

After all, we were made in the image of a god so powerful and masculine that he had to covertly impregnate a teenage girl because he couldn’t get a date of his own. Anywho, these people are just pissed that a law like The School and Success and Opportunity Act exist and of course they are brandishing about petitions to call for a public referendum. It’s their right to do so. Go team Freedom Haters!

The real shitty thing is that they may repeal this law next year. The really un-shitty thing is that they are just wrong. Wrong Wrong Wrong. Not everyone is born transgender, not everyone is born with one leg but you don’t say “If the good lord had intended you to walk, he would have given you two good legs!” although I’m sure Benny Hinn would think so.

From what I’ve read about Privacy for All Students, they believe that this law will invite predators into their children’s bathrooms. This kind of statement displays a pitiful lack of understanding for the words “transgender” and “predator”. Maybe they need a dictionary? Maybe that would clear all of the confusion up for them. Frankly, I couldn’t care less if you want to be a moron on your own time, but if you want to change public policy (and changing a law is public policy makin’) you had better know something about the people your legislation will address.

katiea

Katie Anderson is a freelance writer and improv theater instructor. Her work has appeared in Alt Daily , HuffPost Parents and Laughspin.com. Anderson has written comedy for Panties in a Twist: All Female Comedy and a weekly live stage show, Second City This Week in Los Angeles. She is currently working on a practical guide for parents and caregivers of autistic individuals to be published sometime in the next few years (get off her back, it's hard to write a book). Katie holds a BA in Psychology from The Ohio State University. She lives with her academic rock star husband, one of her three kids and two very spoiled cats in Virginia. Follow her on Twitter @ improvperson.

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4 Comments

  1. Just to be clear, the DSM V reclassified Gender Identity Disorder as Gender Dysphoria and put it in its own chapter (notably the only one that doesn’t use “disorder” or “dysfunction”). It did not remove it entirely.

    This is a controversial move (since its inclusion still means being trans is not normative), but supporters justify it because inclusion in the DSM V will probably facilitate medical intervention for those who desire it more than would complete removal. There’s a good discussion of this topic in the interview with Jerome Wakefielf on this episode of the Rationally Speaking podcast.

  2. I think it is a leap to go from “disorder” to “dysphoria” but I see your point. Regardless, it is amazing that people in California could be so willfully ignorant and frankly just so fucking mean. Thanks for the podcast link, I’ll definitely check it out!

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