The Right To What?

In the 119^th Congress this year, a new member joined from the state of Delaware. Immediately, a controversy began about where this new member would be seated, in the restroom. Rep. Sarah McBride, Delaware’s only representative in the House, claims to be transgender. Representative Nancy Mace introduced a bill to ban transgender members of Congress and employees of the Capital from using restrooms that were in line with their self-professed gender identity. A ruling by Speaker of the House Rep. Mike Johnson said that single-sex facilities were allocated by biological sex.

Writing in The Nation magazine in an article entitled “The Right To Pee Is Everything”, Grace Byron subtly chided McBride for giving in to a “far-right campaign. McBride “rolled over” to bathroom regulations. To Bryon, who identifies as transgender, the ability to use the bathroom which conforms to one’s gender identity is not an issue of personal choice, it is the heart of a fight for basic civil rights.

“The ability to be in and of the world requires the ability to use the bathroom,” Byron writes. Everyone must eliminate bodily waste. Bathrooms are privatized but must be seen a civil right, especially to the transgender person.

In reading Byron’s article, several problems emerge with the transgender philosophy.

First, no right in our society is absolute. Every one of the rights guaranteed in our Constitution has limits. One may keep and bear arms, but fully automatic weapons have been banned for many years. Congress, businesses, and individuals may regulate who uses their facilities. However, the courts are divided on whether Title VII of the Civil Rights Act applies to categories of gender identity.

Second, Byron equates transgenderism with characteristics such as race. The bathroom, according to this article, has been used to demean the dignity of marginalized people. Restricting bathrooms to biological sex would be another act similar to Jim Crow legislation in the South from a thankfully bygone era. Byron makes the mistake of equating transgenderism with characteristics one is born with such as race or national origin, so called innate characteristics. Transgenderism is not based on innate characteristics which are determined by genetic makeup. This is interesting in that Bryon writes that transpeople should fight for their rights without engaging in a discussion of “essential personhood.” Sex is a factor of essential personhood.

Finally, and perhaps most darkly, the rights desired by transgender individuals supersede all other rights of all individuals. The right to the bathroom of one’s choice to eliminate waste by a transgender person is greater than the right of women to privacy and security in their spaces. If a man walked toward a public women’s restroom and began to open the door, he would be restrained. If a man wearing a dress, flats, and a wig did the same thing, Grace Byron suggests that is an exercise in existential freedom and must be respected. Transgenderism suggests that existence takes precedence over essence. There is no essential human nature, according to the existentialist. Existences can shape our nature. It thus becomes easy to see the connection between this philosophy and transgenderism. Existence which would be a function of biology becomes malleable and one can “present” as whatever one likes, and therefore, use the restroom facilities which coincide with that existence.

There are flaws with Byron’s contention that to deny the transgender a particular bathroom is an attack on basic civil rights. A full-throated view of man, in the Christian worldview, must take into account both human creation as man and woman by God and human sin and frailty as well. Transgenderism is an attack on the creative aspect of man by God and a diminishing of man’s sinful nature which has produced separation from Him. For anyone who holds the Christian worldview, transgenderism must be opposed.

Note: I have tried in this article to contend with Byron’s ideas. However, I have not tried to be contentious with the use of pronouns which for both Byron and Rep. McBride would be male. Truth supersedes and sometimes conflicts with a person’s perception of oneself.