Tuesday, June 29, 2010

The consequences of bigoted laws...

One of the great things about living in Nashville is the series of "greenways" that dot our city. These are wonderful places to walk or ride your bike and my partner and myself have been taking advantage of several of them recently to get a bit of exercise. The paved trails tend to be rather lightly used this time of year as the heat keeps most people inside, but we normally run across a few brave souls willing to put up with the heat and humidity and even the occasional down pour as they enjoy some of the more scenic areas of our city.

Today my partner and myself went for a long walk on one of the more popular greenways and along the way we enjoyed wonderful views of the Cumberland River, a refreshing rainshower, and one of the most beautiful things we have seen in Nashville. We were passed by several cyclists as we walked but one will always stand out in my memory. This particular cyclist was a woman, not terribly young and she didn't have the body of a super model, but she was propelling herself along the rolling hills along the banks of the Cumberland in a truly wonderful way. In an obvious attempt to be as comfortable as possible this woman had shed her shirt, and her bra, and was enjoying the heat and the sun and the rain in a way that many of us guys get to enjoy very regularly but that most women, at least in Tennessee, aren't allowed to. Yes, this woman was out in public and she was completely barebreasted, in Tennessee it is against the law for a woman to show her breasts in public unless she is nursing a child but this woman wasn't breaking any laws. You see this woman was transgendered.

In my home state, unlike most states, a transgendered person is not allowed to change the gender listed on their birth certificates and other state issued documents like driver's licenses. This is terribly wrong. The medical community and most of the world has come to terms with the simple fact that our genitals do not always represent who we are and that sometimes individuals need to correct mistakes that nature made. In Tennessee however our legislators have decided that we must all be forced to live with the gender the doctor wrote down on our birth certificates minutes after we were born, no matter what we discover about ourselves in the years to come. So if you are born male in this state you will always be male no matter what.

This creates an interesting quandary. You see the woman we encountered on our walk was born a man and so the state says that she is still a man even though anyone who sees her today will immediately recognize her as a woman. State law also says that it is perfectly legal for a man to cycle in a park without wearing a shirt and having his chest fully exposed, of course a woman has to keep her breasts covered or she risks being arrested. The woman we saw today though is considered to be a man by the state however and so if she was stopped by a police officer all she would have to do is show her drivers license to the officer and the officer would have to let her, and her uncovered breasts, go on about their business.

Transgendered men and women have been fighting for years to change Tennessee law so that they can correct the gender on their birth certificates and other documents. I realized today that the women of our state who are male to female transgendered persons should take advantage of our states stupidity and feel free to walk around with their breasts exposed whenever they feel like it. Maybe they could organize a large group of women who could meet and lay out in the sun on the grounds of the state capitol. This might finally make our legislators realize how ridiculous their stance is on this issue, then maybe we could find ways of showing them how ridiculous their stances are on many other issues as well.

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