This Bill of Rights is specifically meant to address folks who are “transitioning” from male-to-female or female-to-male.  The process requires a lot of time, money, effort, and multiple surgeries.  It also requires a lot of evaluation – psychological and physical – of the individual who wants to transition.  I don’t know all the details, but the permission getting and surgeries take at least 2-3 years.  These rights are meant to protect individuals during that process.

You might ask, is this necessary? I certainly think so.  Many (most?) members of the general public see these folks as deviant and causing problems, as unable to fit in.  But they only know about this group of folks from the movies, and mainstream movies often treat these characters poorly, in much the same way that past generations of movies (and people) used to treat “Indians” and “Negroes” poorly.

In reality, these folks are sometimes targets of violence because they’re different.  For folks – like myself – who buy into broad conception of “justice” (or “social justice”), this bill offers protetction for a group of folks who face substantial challenges in fitting into our society because of the way we’ve shaped our rules.  We’ve decided that there are only 2 groups, “female” and “male,” and that everyone needs to fit nicely into one group or the other.  When a woman (or girl) seems to be violating those rules and we don’t like it, we call her a “dyke” or a “bitch” or a “lesbian.”  When a man (or boy) doesn’t fit, he gets called a “pussy” or a “fag.”  And some people get violent, lethally so.  (Remember, Matthew Sheppard was killed by 2 “straight” men who went to a gay bar to find a gay man to beat the crap out of.  The killers said that they had never been assaulted, or even hit on, by a gay man.)

In current American culture, these folks don’t have a “category” or “box” that is accepted by the general public.  In part, this is because our culture only has two categories – female and male.  We’ve made these categories very important in very many ways – it’s among the first questions we ask about newborns (“girl or boy?”) and many people get annoyed when they meet someone who has a gender-ambiguous name (“Taylor”, “Brandon”) or when they accidentally refer to someone as a member of the wrong sex (guys named Carroll, for example).  And some people get very upset when they can’t easily categorize somone, especially on a “basic” dimension like sex.

What’s more,  we expect people to fit into these categories reasonably  well.  Unlike other cultures, we don’t have a category for people who genuinely believe and feel that they got the “wrong” biology.  You can find these “third” genders in many cultures, and Wikipedia provides a solid overview (here).  So, without an easy way to “locate” themselves, they have to spend a lot of time and energy trying to figure out where & how they can fit in, explaining themselves to other people, and worrying if other people will reject them simply because they don’t fit into our 2 category system.  (Seriously.  What do you do when someone tells you that they are a political “independent”?  Biracial [like our president]?  Do you push for a better established category?)

But pushing someone to be more like a “typical” woman or man doesn’t really make big-picture sense. Being more typical often means being more stereotypical, and in the US, we often say that we don’t like stereotypes or people who follow stereotypes.  Here in the US, we’re all about individuality and freedom, aren’t we?   If these people are just expressing themselves and who they are, what’s the problem?  Why don’t we – as a culture – accept them?