First item: \u00a0Lila Perry<\/strong>, the \u201ctransgirl\u201d whose decision to begin changing for gym class in the girls\u2019 locker room rather than the private room provided for him\/her sparked a walkout of classmates, and ultimately ended in him\/her dropping the gym class, but not before saying: \u00a0\u201cthey are claiming that they\u2019re uncomfortable. I don\u2019t believe for a second that they are. I think this is pure and simple bigotry.\u201d<\/p>\n This is now being reported all over, but the first report I saw this in was Gawker<\/a>, which links to a news item from the local station<\/a>.<\/p>\n First observation<\/em>: \u00a0Perry\u2019s defenders are legion, and, indeed, claim that teenage girls have no reasonable grounds to object to a, let\u2019s say, penis-person in their changing room with them. \u00a0When pushed on the fact, in multiple comment sections I\u2019ve read, they claim that in such a changing room, everyone huddles in corners and changes as quickly as possible, with as much effort as possible to ensure that they remove as little clothing as possible, as invisibly as possible, or even they suggest that everyone changes in stalls anyway.<\/p>\n This is not the gym locker room I remember. \u00a0Separate individual stalls? \u00a0So many \u201ccorners\u201d that each person is afforded privacy?<\/p>\n At the local pool, sure, there are a couple separate changing stalls in the women\u2019s locker room; some people use them, others don\u2019t. \u00a0(I do.) \u00a0The pool was also recently remodeled and includes private \u201cfamily\u201d changing rooms. \u00a0But is this the case at the gym that you work out at? \u00a0And with the minimal amount of changing time before and after gym class at a high school, you\u2019d need enough stalls to accommodate every kid at once, which is patently unrealistic.<\/p>\n It is appallingly callous to say that girls must be required to change alongside an individual who, when all clothes are off, is physically a boy.<\/p>\n Second observation<\/em>: \u00a0there are some still photographs of Perry\u00a0at the Daily Mail<\/em><\/a>. \u00a0(The article speaks of bathrooms \u2013 but prior reporting indicated that this is a locker room issue; perhaps the notion of changing in a locker room for gym class didn\u2019t translate well to the UK so the distinction was missed?) \u00a0Perry reportedly \u201chas identified as female since age 13 and came out as trans last school year,\u201d according to Gawker. \u00a0One thing that many people have commented on is the wig, which really looks like a costume, and makes the \u201cfemale identity\u201d look like role-playing. \u00a0If Perry had \u201cidentified as female\u201d at age 13, even prior to asking for formal recognition at the school last year, one would have expected him\/her to have begun to grow his\/her hair (heck, many boys have long hair).<\/p>\n But, more than that, Perry is rail-thin<\/em>. \u00a0This could simply be a matter of a body type, but it\u2019s also possible that it\u2019s a body-image issue, whether clinically anorexia or not.<\/p>\n Third observation<\/em>: \u00a0remember back when the whole issue was spoken of as a \u201csex-change\u201d? \u00a0A man would announce that after years of silent suffering, he was going to become a \u201cshe\u201d; protocols required wearing drag for a fixed length of time, and then the requisite body parts would be reshaped. \u00a0The need to admit a \u201cman into a woman\u2019s bathroom\u201d was spoken of as temporary, for this transition period, prior to surgery; after the surgery, we\u2019re told, this is a non-issue as the individual simply looks like a very large and masculine woman.<\/p>\n Now this notion of a \u201ctransition\u201d and a \u201csex change\u201d is out. \u00a0Get with the program! \u00a0The instant a man declares himself to be a woman, we\u2019re told, he is<\/em><\/strong> one. \u00a0Whether his body conforms is entirely beside the point, and to reject somone\u2019s claimed status because their genitals don\u2019t match up, is unacceptable bigotry. \u00a0Whereas one of the grounds for transsexualism had been that a \u201ctranswoman\u201d finds having a penis to be unbearable and horrifying, we\u2019re now told that it\u2019s wholly optional and none of our business for a \u201ctranswoman\u201d to have it removed.<\/p>\n Which sounds quite a bit like \u201cI am what I say I am,\u201d which ultimately becomes a declaration that sex and gender are irrelevant, which then means \u2014 why change? \u00a0Why, if you\u2019re a man who wants to wear dresses, do you need to announce that you are a woman? \u00a0Or, if you\u2019re a woman who finds breasts to be burdensome, why not just have a reduction surgery?<\/p>\n Oh, I know that the rejoinder is that it\u2019s not simply a desire to announce a different identity, but that the transgender community would say that the desire is so deep-seated that it surely reflects something inherently \u201cfemale\u201d (or \u201cmale\u201d) about the brain itself. \u00a0But why (with due regard for the particular issues of intersex individuals) should \u201cbrain-orientation\u201d (to the extent this is the case) win out over chromosomes and even anatomy in determining, as far as law and demands for social treatment are concerned, who is male and who is female?<\/p>\n Second item: \u00a0testosterone<\/strong>. \u00a0It\u2019s now been reported in multiple places (e.g., Slate<\/a>), and even made its way into Megan McArdle\u2019s blog<\/a>, that researchers have now documented the effect of testosterone on the brain. \u00a0Per the Slate description:<\/p>\n