Gender Identity is a Fiction

USA Today reports:

Last year, the state of Florida banned gender-affirming care to transgender people under 18 and restricted it for adults in one of several measures from Gov. Ron DeSantis and Republican state legislators that targeted the state's LGBTQ+ population.

On Tuesday, a federal judge blocked most of it.

"Florida has adopted a statute and rules that ban gender-affirming care for minors, even when medically appropriate. The ban is unconstitutional," Tallahassee-based Senior U.S. District Court Judge Robert Hinkle wrote in his order.

"Gender identity is real," Hinkle said, pointing out that all major medical associations support it and that even the defendants, speaking through their attorneys, admitted it.

What does he mean by saying it is real? I read the order.

With extraordinarily rare exceptions not at issue here, every person is born with external sex characteristics, male or female, and chromosomes that match. As the person goes through life, the person also has a gender identity — a deeply felt internal sense of being male or female.11 For more than 99% of people, the external sex characteristics and chromosomes — the determinants of what this order calls the person’s natal sex — match the person’s gender identity.12

The elephant in the room should be noted at the outset. Gender identity is real. The record makes this clear. The defendants, speaking through their attorneys, have admitted it.14 At least one defense expert also has admitted it.15

As far as I can see, the claim "is real" is not based on any scientific or medical facts. It is not clear that any male has a deep internal sense of being female, or vice-versa.

For some, the denial that transgender identity is real — the opposition to transgender individuals and to their freedom to live their lives — is not different in kind or intensity from the animus that has attended racism and misogyny, less as time has passed but still today. And some transgender opponents invoke religion to support their position, just as some once invoked religion to support their racism or misogyny. Transgender opponents are of course free to hold their beliefs. But they are not free to discriminate against transgender individuals just for being transgender. In time, discrimination against transgender individuals will diminish, just as racism and misogyny have diminished. To paraphrase a civil-rights advocate from an earlier time, the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.

The judge is not applying any text in the Constitution or any other law. It is just based on his own ideas about trends in justice.

So what is this evidence of animus, comparable to enslaving Blacks?

This record includes overwhelming evidence that the House sponsors and a significant number of other House members were motivated by anti-transgender animus. ...

Perhaps the best evidence of this is another statute passed on the very same day as the statute at issue here. Florida Statutes § 1000.071(1) declares it the “policy” of every Florida public school from kindergarten through twelfth grade that “a person’s sex is an immutable biological trait and that it is false to ascribe to a person a pronoun that does not correspond to such person’s [natal] sex.” Under Florida Statutes § 1000.071(3), an “employee or contractor of a public K-12 educational institution may not provide to a student his or her preferred personal title or pronouns if such preferred personal title or pronouns do not correspond to his or her [natal] sex.” So a high school teacher, for example, who has lived and been known as a woman, but who, unbeknownst to her students or others at the school, is a natal male, must be called “Mr.,” not “Ms.” The only possible purpose for a legislative mandate outing such a teacher is animus against transgenders. A majority of both houses and the Governor signed off.

So that is the animus that is just like Black slavery. Calling a male teacher "Mr."

No, it is confusing and disruptive for cross-dresser teachers to impose their sexual fantasies on students.

There is no clause in the Constitution saying that no one can ever be motivated by animus. And it is legal, so far, for a school to block cross-dressers from using the classroom for their drag shows.