Transgender activists need to figure out: Is it okay to allow boys to access girls' bathrooms and locker rooms?

It's not the question you think it is.

In Virginia this week, tons of students are walking out of their schools in protest of the governor’s new transgender rules. As someone with a bona fide hate of anything and everything school-related, I can’t say I mind it when the kids cut loose and ditch class. That’s always a win in my book!

But of course they’re doing it for a truly dumb reason: state Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s office has repealed earlier transgender regulations put in place by the previous Democratic administration. Henceforth in Virginia, students will have to used the bathrooms of the sex they are rather than the sex they “identify” with, and schools will no longer be allowed to conceal transgender “identities” from the parents of students who profess those “identities.” That’s why everyone’s so mad.

The bathroom thing really seems to be the sticking point. Transgender activists are obsessed with the bathroom thing. Aside from genital mutilation, I guess, it’s pretty much the sticking point of the transgender zeitgeist. In a nutshell, transgender ideologues believe that people should be permitted to use bathroom facilities corresponding to the sex they believe themselves to be rather than the sex they actually are, e.g. a boy who believes himself to be a girl should have full and complete access to the girl’s room at school—the bathroom as well as the changing rooms—no questions asked.

They can’t really be moved on this topic. So I’d like to try a different approach, namely asking transgender proponents this question: Are you okay if a boy is allowed to use the girl’s bathrooms and changing rooms at school?

It’s not a trick question. I’m not trying to spin some sort of semantical web here, like I’m not trying to entrap anybody in a complex socio-linguistic gotcha-funnel. What I mean is: If a young boy—not a “trans girl,” but a boy—decides he wants to use the girl’s restroom at school, should he be permitted?

I think the possible answers are revealing of the essential practical flaws of the transgender zeitgeist (to say nothing of the philosophical ones).

• One of two possible responses could be: “No, he shouldn’t be allowed to use the girl’s restroom. He’s not a girl. Only girls are allowed to use the girl’s room.” Which raises the obvious question: Why? Why can’t boys use the girl’s room? Well, obviously, bathrooms have for centuries been segregated by sex in order to provide privacy and safety for the people using them—most importantly women and girls, for whom the vulnerability inherent in going to the bathroom poses significant safety risks that are mitigated in large part by a single-sex environment. So boys aren’t allowed in girl’s rooms because the presence of males in those environments poses elevated safety risks to girls. But if that’s the case, why should a “trans girl,” (i.e. a boy who thinks he’s a girl) be any different? He still presumably has all the same body parts, the same physical advantages, the same hormonal system as every other boy. All of the factors that elevate his risk profile in those environments are still present even if he “identifies” as a girl. Why permit him but exclude the other?
  
  (You could argue, based on either principle or data, that “trans girls” pose less of a risk to girls than “normal” boys do, or even no risk at all. But of course how are the girls in question supposed to tell the difference? Even if you agree with transgenderism in theory, it still requires you in this context to demand that women and girls ignore potential warning signs of predators in intimate spaces—we’re essentially asking them to shoulder a considerable mental burden, and an even-more considerable amount of risk, in order to accommodate males in spaces that were once solely meant for females. It’s a lot to ask.)
  

• The other possible response, so far as I can figure, is, “Yes, a boy should be allowed to use the girl’s room, but only if the girls in question are comfortable with it and give their consent.” Which doesn’t sound like the greatest idea (though it’s certainly better than the alternative). But it does raise the question: If girls can refuse to allow boys in their restrooms because they’re unwilling to shoulder the risk factors present therein, why can’t they make the same judgment call about “transgender girls” who pose essentially all of the same risks? Why do we allow refusal for one and not for the other, if the risk factors are present in both?

Maybe there’s another answer here that I’m missing, though I doubt it. I would be curious to hear transgender apologists try to resolve this tension. I don’t think they can, but at the very least if they try it might make them think a little more deeply about an incredibly important issue of which they’ve apparently only thought shallowly up until now.