2024-09-28
It is a bit ironic that the "bathroom wars" began in Charlotte, NC, my home state.[1] While we war over whether or not a man is a man, or just seems that way, North Carolina's motto remains engraved in stones around the state: Esse quam videri, which is Latin for "to be, rather than to seem".
Like I said - ironic.
Of course, I think both sides of the argument could use the motto to their liking.
But there is a more interesting note about the transgender issues of today: how often it is a matter of male identity - i.e. men wanting to become women.[2] While of course the data can be confusing, estimates put the desire for males to become female as nearly three times as prevalent as females wanting to be males. We have seen this played out in the actual movement. Long before Bruce Jenner presented himself to the world as a woman (after fathering multiple children with multiple wives and living the glory of an Olympic champion), there was George Jorgenson, an American GI that returned after World War II and began living as a woman and undergoing surgery to suit, becoming a media spectacle perhaps more sensational at the time than Jenner is now. You have probably also noted that Drag Queens are more prevalent than Drag Kings.
What is clear: this is more predominately a male issue, which is why extreme feminists, like Mary Daly of Boston College, are rather suspect, thinking this to be just another way for men to gain control of female territory. "Transsexualism," said Daly, "is an example of male surgical siring which invades the female world with substitutes."