Sex and gender identity clash as protected characteristics
I can't believe this has occurred to none of the ACLU types.
I have long agreed with the argument that you can't legally protect sex and legally protect gender identity at the same time because they are at odds with one another. And for most people -- the ones not driven insane by green hair dye, that is -- how that all plays out in the real world is obvious. I'd spend three paragraphs laying out, for one example, why pretending a man is a woman takes rights away from women, but intuitively we know this is true. For instance, if you give a "trans woman" a spot on a women's powerlifting team, that's a woman's spot on a team that you've just handed to a man... and it's powerlifting. It's not like the woman you shut out to make room for the man can go compete on the men's side. (And this has actually happened in New Zealand. A white man displacing a Maori woman, mind you. Great optics there, genderdorks.)
Stuff like that. Anyway. You know what I mean.
This other thing I thought of is completely different.
Basically, it goes like this: You can't outlaw discrimination on the basis of sex or sex class and also prohibit discrimination on the basis of gender identity at the same time.
Okay. It's overdone but let's use restrooms as an example. Here's how it plays out.
Scenario A: The law says that only female people can use the women's restroom and acknowledges that "trans women" are not female nor women. Thus, who gets to use the women's restroom is determined by discrimination on the basis of sex.
(This is one reason I have had doubts for a while about the Equal Rights Amendment. If they never finish ratifying it, I think we need to scrap it and start over. Some kinds of sex discrimination are necessary to keep what peace there ever is between the sexes.)
This kind of sex discrimination also tends to be protective of female people; even if a man does go into the women's restroom, female people can call the cops on him without getting in trouble for "hate crimes." But the point is that this is legal sex discrimination.
Scenario B: The law says that only people of a woman gender identity (it's not a gender identity, but the hypothetical law says it is) can use the women's restroom and claims that "trans women" are women. Thus, who gets to use the women's restroom is determined by discrimination on the basis of gender identity. The way this works in practice is that some male people have a woman gender identity and some male people do not have a woman gender identity (again, it's not a gender identity, but let's say it is for this example). So you're discriminating on the basis of gender identity, telling the men without one that they have to stay out of the women's.
Gee, I thought it was bad to discriminate on the basis of gender identity.
To add insult to injury, actual women can't tell which men have the woman gender identity and which don't. When you allow legal recognition for gender identity, you can set any standards you want that will pass a vote. In a lot of jurisdictions now, they've decided that any man who merely says he is a woman has a woman gender identity. This causes a lot of trouble.
Everyone acts like you can protect both under the law, but that's not actually possible. Crime statistics tell us that we see a lot more men assaulting women in women's restrooms than we see men assaulting men with woman gender identities in men's restrooms. I will never stop being confused and furious that our legal system cares so much more about the burning doghouse (remember the burning doghouse?).
I mean, I know why they think that way, but it doesn't make the situation any better.
Genderdorks would argue that Scenario A is also discrimination on the basis of gender identity, since real women get to use the restroom that "aLiGnS WiTh ThEiR gEnDeR iDeNtiTY." Except I don't have a gender identity, and a LOT of women I know don't have one either. I don't use women's restrooms to prove I'm a woman. I don't think I'm less of a woman if I have to use the men's. And I have used the men's, so this is not hypothetical. The only reason I had any particular feelings about it is because men have been known to attack women in restrooms and all I had to do was fucking pee, the women's was closed for cleaning, and I don't see why women should be punished for that. But as for the idea that it would have made me doubt my womanhood? Nah. If anything it intensified my sense of that because that's just women's reality, having to worry about where we might be attacked. That worry is less intense at some times than others but it never wholly disappears.
If men were routinely attacking trans-identified men in the men's room, it would be a 24/7 news cycle beating it into our heads about how this is somehow women's fault. I never even see news stories about it, and I would. I have no doubt things like that were happening fifty years ago, but fifty years ago normal men also thought trans-identified men were gay (as in male people attracted to male people), which back then was usually true. Straight men have lightened up a lot about the existence of gay men, though, and we actually have some federal hate crime laws with teeth now. (None of them, by the way, prohibit women saying that "trans women" are men. The First Amendment would prevent that sort of law being enforced. Just so we're clear.) So it's not a safety for "trans women" issue anymore. It's a straight men with dicks want to be closer to the objects of their porn fantasies issue. I am tired of seeing videos shared on social media showing dick owners beating off in women's stalls. I don't see them often, but once is too much and we passed that threshold years ago.
So this is not a clash of rights I care to ever resolve. You can't protect both sex and gender identity, because gender identity is a figment of people's imagination designed to break down barriers against predatory men. No one in their right mind or with the right intentions would ever protect that.