Boyle column: HB2 engenders hate, intolerance

We do love a boogeyman, don't we?

Over the long course of human history, we've made a practice of demonizing groups and treating them horribly, whether it's Jews, immigrants, indigenous peoples, gays, blacks, Yankees, rednecks or Chevy lovers. We've just got to fear, if not outright hate, others that are different from us.

Which brings me to the idiocy of House Bill 2, the now nationally infamous bill the North Carolina General Assembly passed in a matter of hours to put Charlotte in its place — and in the process force transgender people to use a bathroom corresponding to the sex listed on their birth certificates, regardless of the sex they identify with now. Oh, and the bill eliminated a host of state workplace protections that prohibit various forms of discrimination, a matter which Gov. Pat McCrory, who rubber stamped the bill, has tried to address with an executive order.

Besides contravening Republicans' alleged support of business and localities' ability to rule themselves, the bill is simply an affront to basic human dignity and plays on the worst of the right's fear-mongering tendencies.

Let me ask you a couple of questions:

Where do you think transgender people were going to the bathroom before this whole controversy blew up?

Before the controversy, were you aware of any cases of transgender men or women assaulting young children in bathrooms? Did we have a wave of such incidents in North Carolina? I'm not saying it's never happened, but were you aware of a case, much less a wave?

Had you ever let a young child go into a public restroom by himself or herself before this controversy?

The answer to the first question is transgender folks have been going to bathroom that corresponds to their gender identity and not necessarily their genitalia for years. You've probably been in the stall next door to a transgender person who was, well, using the facilities, as we all need to do from time to time — and decidedly not molesting anybody.

Just as with alleged voter fraud that the Republican General Assembly and McCrory "protected" us from, we have no evidence of a transgender crime wave against children in North Carolina. This seems so painfully obvious that I shouldn't have to state it, but pedophiles commit these crimes. "Transgender" does not equal "pedophile," just as "homosexual" does not equal "pedophile." It just doesn't, and attempting to make a correlation is just disingenuous at best and fear-mongering at worst.

As the father of two sons, I can tell you I didn't let them go to the bathroom by themselves until they were probably 11 or 12. My concern was not transgender people but rather pedophiles or the mentally unbalanced who may want to harm someone.

The cruel irony in this miscarriage of justice is that transgender people already have a rough row to hoe, and they're frequently the victims of hateful comments, stares and yes, assaults. This comes after a lifetime of feeling — knowing — that they were born to be the opposite sex, then struggling with accepting this truth and then having the courage to live as a man or a woman in a society that shames them for it.

Asheville resident Allison Scott is one of those who's lived it.

"Obviously, an entire group of people cannot be responsible for a certain section of criminality," Scott told me. "Stating that is just ridiculous. Saying an entire group of people is responsible for all crime of this type fits into a narrative that is not accurate."

A.J. Marsden, a former U.S. Army surgical nurse who is now an assistant professor of human services and psychology at Beacon College in Leesburg, Fla., specializes in areas including human sexuality and health psychology.

"As far as I know, there isn't any correlation," she said, when I asked her about any link between transgenderism leading to child sexual abuse.

While some critics say transgender people are not "born that way" and simply choose a "deviant" lifestyle, Marsden, who holds a doctoral degree from the University of Missouri, said that is simply not true.

"Really, all the literature and research is showing transgender people really do have a biological difference from other people," Marsden said. "Women who identify as men have more testosterone, and men who identify as women have more estrogen. It’s an actual hormonal difference that causes them to identify with the opposite sex."

In short, "they’ve always felt different," she said.

Scott, 41, said she started living as a woman three years ago and fully living as a woman on the last frontier — her job in information technology — last June. But she has been transgender "since I was born."

Before the HB2 ruckus, she, like other transgender people, went to the bathroom she identified with.

"We’ve been using the bathroom where we need to be all along — the one that we identify with," she said.

Since the blowup, the mood has changed.

"Before HB2, I'd never had a threat," Scott said. "Now, I've had people threaten my safety; people have given me death threats. This hateful language about transgender people being sexual predators, it’s stirring everything up. I think before, people would have felt ashamed to say it, but now they feel emboldened. It's putting people’s lives in danger."

Scott also keeps a handful of statistics nearby, gleaned from the U.S. Department of Justice. They include:

• Approximately four-fifths of rapes were committed by someone known to the victim, and 47 percent of rapists are a friend or acquaintance.

• Approximately 50 percent of all rape/sexual assault incidents were reported by victims to have occurred within 1 mile of their home or at their home.

• Just 18 percent took place in a public area, such as a commercial venue, parking lot, or park.

Obviously, we all want to protect children from heinous crime. But correlating such offenses to transgender people is just off the mark, downright dangerous and it protects no one. It has cost us millions of dollars in lost business and jobs here in North Carolina, though.

And it has engendered intolerance and hatefulness.

"I think it’s a fear, it’s a negative stigma," Marsden said, adding that she traces the phenomenon back to fear-mongering in the 1950s and '60s about homosexuals. "In one of my classes, I show this public announcement form the 1950s that depicts homosexuals as pedophiles and rapists, and says if you use a public restroom you have to watch out for homosexuals because they’ll rape you. Because that was so ingrained in the 1950s and '60s, I think we're still seeing the last remnants of that homophobia and stereotyping from those days."

Scott said she recently had a person tell her she "should go stuff myself in an oven. It was amazing to me. That kind of hate is right there on the surface now. It’s terrifying," she said.

Which leads me to a final question: Is this the kind of state we want to live in?

This is the opinion of John Boyle. Contact him at 232-5847 or jboyle@citizen-times.com