To the editor:

I have a confession to make. I — a biological cis male, assigned male at birth, who identifies as male — used the single occupancy ladies’ restroom at work the other day. I did it knowing that as of last week, it’s a crime in the state of Ohio, but I didn’t have a choice. The men’s room was out of order, and I am 62-years-old in the middle of an eight-hour shift. My bladder can only hold so much for so long.

I say I had no choice, but I suppose I could have just gone in my pants. I’m pretty sure that’s still legal. I’ll do that next time, so I can stay in line with the law.

Enough with the silly jokes, I know the bill doesn’t apply to grown adults. It’s only aimed at isolating and humiliating vulnerable children. Republicans in Ohio have to start small before they build up to gender-policing adult toilets.

It’s disheartening to live in such an unenlightened state. Before the election, I asked that people look into a few things before re-electing our red-hatted anachronisms. Among the concepts I asked voters to research is the reality that gender is a spectrum. Obviously, our politicians are incapable of using Google, but I’d hoped that Ohio’s voters could manage a simple glance at Wikipedia.

Not only did too few voters bother to read the facts, but in the last two weeks, two frequent correspondents wrote this paper to proudly announce that they still deferred to what they learned in third-grade science class from an underpaid public servant who taught from a BoE approved textbook that hadn’t been vetted by the Kinsey Institute, let alone by an expert in the intersex or gender dysphoria or any of the rainbow of conflicting ideation in between.

Simply put, gender and sex are different things, and neither is binary. Yes, in basic terms, chromosomes come in Y and X and they dictate gender, but there are many many things your elementary school science curriculum left out.

For example, they told me molecules were the smallest unit of a substance. Then I learned molecules are made of atoms which are even smaller. Later I learned about the atomic nucleus and electrons. Still later I learned about ions. Then much later I learned that photons are so small they have no measurable mass. And just recently I found out about Plank lengths and the breakdown of physical laws.

You learned about chromosomes at the age of 9. That’s great. When did you learn what an allele is? Can you define nondisjunction? Peptide? What’s the distinction between enzymes and polymerases? I have no idea, but I defer to those who’ve studied these concepts.

Don’t be satisfied to remain reactionary. If you lack understanding on a topic, don’t pretend you know the answers. Politicians, especially Republican politicians, may defer to your comfort level, but your discomfort with another person’s identity isn’t a valid reason to discount that person’s well-being. Seriously, it’s not.

J. David Core

Toronto