POINTERS AND SETTERS

When I was a teenager, I went to a hunting-themed restaurant. When it came time to visit the restroom, I saw that the signs on the doors depicted bird dogs. One door had the picture of a pointer and the other the picture of a setter. I chose the door with the pointer on it, and when I got inside, I found a line of urinals along one wall. The restaurant's humorous reference to the structural differences between men and women made it very easy to distinguish the men's room from the women's room.

Oddly enough, restrooms have historically been designed to accommodate the external plumbing of the "gender" using them. Lately, in a move for gender equity, buildings have begun installing "family" restrooms which are essentially unisex rooms designed to accommodate parents with small children. Now the ruling has come down from Mount Olympus, er Washington, that the external plumbing of the users of bathrooms is irrelevant to whichever bathroom they choose to use, and if the recipients of government grants want to keep on getting government funds they'd better get with the program and let people use whichever bathroom makes them feel better.

Transgendered people have been around at least since the seventies. When I was a public defender, I represented a woman who disclosed to me that I had gone to high school with him. It was something of a shock back in that day and age, but my client had submitted to the necessary medical procedures and was living with her boyfriend. A few years later an acquaintance of mine moved away from town, had a sex-change operation, and became a lesbian.

I never followed either one of these people into a bathroom, but I don't think they caused a stir by entering a women's room and using the facilities as "setters." I don't really see how something like that could be aproblem unless the transgendered individual marched into the bathroom beating a drum and loudly proclaiming "I am transgendered!" That seems to me to be about the only way anyone would notice, unless the transgendered individual was some sort of a reality TV star.


The very real problem with letting people equipped with external plumbing who claim that they "feel like a woman" use the women's room is that there are a lot of dirtbags among the ranks of the pointers who would be happy to use such a license to go into women's rooms for the purpose of voyeurism and sexual harassment.

I propose a gender-neutral solution to the problem. Take down all signs everywhere which refer to the "gender" of the users of the bathrooms. No "Men's Rooms," no "Women's Rooms." Put up signs saying "Pointers" and "Setters." Those who came into this world fully equipped for pointing and who have not had that equipment surgically removed, regardless of "gender," would be required to use the "Pointers" room. All others could use the "Setters" room. Those who feel uncomfortable in either place can opt for the "family" bathroom.

EGALITARIANISM AND THE MILITARY

We are the most egalitarian society in history. Women serve in combat units in the military, and the openly gay are now allowed in the military. Back in the stone age (WW II) our military allowed only heterosexual males into combat, thereby denying countless women and gays their egalitarian right to get themselves killed while carrying a rifle in combat. Our heterosexual males were so enthusiastic about availing themselves of this opportunity that most of them waited to be drafted instead of running right out and enlisting.[1]  We've fixed all that now by doing away with the draft and making our military a laboratory for experimentation in egalitarianism. Do we live in a great country or what? We do have a few problems relating to this exercise in egalitarianism,[2] but surely the effort we expend in getting these issues worked out is not going to compromise the military’s combat effectiveness.

The suggestion is now made that we cannot be truly egalitarian until we allow transgendered individuals into the military.[3] There is no mental health bar to allowing the transgendered into the military. The American Psychiatric Association just took a vote and abolished the mental disorder formerly known as gender identity disorder. Just look it up in the DSM V.[4] If someone is  not comfortable with being transgendered, that person may have a mild case of gender dysphoria,[5] but that’s nothing to worry about. The only real problem would be the hormone therapy.[6] We’d have to figure out some way to accommodate that. I’m sure that we can find a way to keep our transgendered soldiers in combat supplied with their regular dosages. It wouldn’t compromise combat effectiveness at all.  

I don’t think the APA should stop with gender identity disorder. They could greatly increase the number of potentially available soldiers by taking a vote and abolishing other mental illnesses.  

Our next step down the path of egalitarianism in the military should not come from the APA, though.  The American Medical Association has to help us do away with the ban on diabetics and asthmatics. If it doesn’t strain our logistical capabilities to keep the transgendered in combat supplied with their needed hormones, then it should be no problem at all to keep diabetic soldiers supplied with their insulin and asthmatic  soldiers supplied with their breathing therapy.  All we really need to do to make this happen is to have the AMA meet and vote that diabetes and asthma are no longer diseases. The APA did it. Why can’t the AMA do it too?

And while they’re at it, they can help remove an old stigma I suffered when I tried to enlist in the military during the Vietnam War. I want the AMA to vote high blood pressure off the list of diseases. I was denied entry into the military simply because I had an alternative blood pressure, and that certainly flies in the face of true egalitarianism. I’m sure the Army could have kept me supplied with my daily dose of blood pressure medicine when they sent me to Vietnam. Keeping soldiers supplied with necessary therapeutic drugs in a war zone should have been no problem at all.

I applaud our military’s ongoing experimentation with egalitarianism. I’m sure it has our enemies shaking in their boots.