the consequence of leaving interpretation to the supreme court and not to the actual experts in the field is that we get stupid ass beliefs like this in the court. justice clarence thomas believes:
- dysphoria is a mental illness for which treatment of transition should not exist;
- gender identity to be mutable, or fixable to a cisgender society (the basis of conversion therapy);
- sex is binary, a belief that ignores the realities of millions of intersex people across the country. sex is bimodal, sure. that is not the same as it being binary. for a court so focused on interpreting the meaning of words he's doing a pretty piss poor job of it;
- trans citizens are not considered "fellow citizens", and therefore it is morally justifiable to discriminate against them because they do not qualify as part of the public simply by being trans;
- and on a broader level, that the existence of trans women is somehow an innate threat to the fabric of society. he does not stop to imagine what trans men in society feel, because they don't exist in his mind. the only possible trans person is the imagined transfem criminal who takes space away from cis women like it's a zero sum game of womanhood.
he presents a view of gender identity that is barely past the eighth grade in terms of biological context. while this is the majority view of the american populace, a fact on which we as activists must work, to have this view in the supreme court is not just ignorant- it is actively dangerous. a supreme court justice who does not know what he's talking about should not be allowed to rule on the lives of millions of americans, and yet his ruling is the final say on it. this is not a healthy democracy. justices are not infallible gods and it is high time they stopped acting as though they were.
