May I Walk With You? Transgender issues

In this article I want to raise some questions that for me surround the transgender issue that has been in the news and offer some commonsense solutions. First, I am not against transgender people. I have empathy for those who do not identify with biological gender as determined by organs observed at birth and by chromosomes. Holy smokes! How does one adjust to that? In the least it must be very confusing, especially when family and friends do not accept flexible gender identity. Until we, and the transgender person accept them, they feel crazy, a mistake of nature, somehow corrupted, simply because they seem different.
Carl Jung, the protégé of Sigmund Freud and Alfred Adler explained that every male has female tendencies (anima) and that every female has male tendencies (animus). What he seems to say is that everyone is, to different degrees, both male and female. This is born out in the fact that every male has the female hormone estrogen, and every female has testosterone. Many males experience the growth of minute amounts of breast tissue during puberty, while many women display male characteristics, too. We see this played out in adult life, too. Some women prefer truck driving while some men like to be chefs.
Because of social conditioning, individuals suppress their tendencies toward the gender they were not born with. Traditionally little boys play with trucks and mechanical things and little girls play with dolls. Girls were rewarded for being “sugar and spice and all things nice” and boys were rewarded for being “frogs and snails and puppy dog tails”. Girls were expected to grow up to be like St. Mary and boys were to grow up to be like St. Joseph.
Most people are assigned a biological gender at birth as either male or female. I say ‘most’ because there are exceptions to that because some children are born with genitalia that cannot be easily identified as male or female, however rare it might be. This is quite different when it come to psychological and social gender identity. Here we must rely on the self-report of the individual, because it is not biologically observable.
The question: should biological males compete in sports with biological females? Should biological females use the biological male’s bathrooms? Yes! Let me qualify that statement. If the sport does not depend upon strength and endurance, let them compete. Sports such as badminton, bowling, pool, pickle-ball, and ping-pong may depend more on skill than swimming, bicycling, golf, basketball, and racing which depend more on strength and endurance. Let them compete in these sports. But not in sports that depend on strength and endurance.
Some claim that it is mean and intolerant not to let biological men who identify as women to compete with women. I think it is mean and intolerant of the transgender person to insist on competing with women when they have the distinct advantage of being biologically stronger with more endurance. I am for letting biological males compete only with biological males. Let people use the bathroom designated by biology. It is mean to elderly women to insist they use a bathroom frequented by biological males. Transgender people also need to practice love and kindness. We all need to be more tolerant and considerate.
“May the Lord bless and keep you. May He let His face shine upon you, be gracious to you and give you His peace.”