Governor Pat McCrory of N.C. is at it again. His camp released another TV ad yesterday (9/7/16) posing the rhetorical question, “Are we really talking about this?” The question came on the coattails of his claim that while he was “busy raising average teacher pay, creating new jobs and cutting taxes, other folks were actually pushing to make our schools allow boys to use the girls’ locker rooms and showers.”

Yes, Pat. I’m going to go ahead and answer your rhetorical question. We are still talking about this – a conversation that you began.

McCrory actually has a captive, scrutinizing audience with me because I happen to both 1.) work in the public school system, where he falsely persuades North Carolinians to think he has been raising teacher pay averages (but what he doesn’t say is that his “teacher pay average” averages in all school staff, including administration), and 2.) I’m the parent of a little boy who wears dresses. So I’m listening, Pat. You’re talking directly to me. And yes, I will continue to “really talk about this” – the conversation that you started.

While McCrory’s latest ads and interviews seem to be slyly excluding the phrasing about multiple occupancy public restrooms, referring instead mostly to locker rooms and shower facilities, “the bathroom bill” is still the underlying theme playing on the fears of the uninformed. Lest we forget, when they made HB2 into law a few months back, McCrory and his people dubbed it “The Public Facilities Privacy & Security Act, officially called An Act to Provide for Single-sex Multiple Occupancy Bathroom and Changing Facilities in Schools and Public Agencies” aka, “The Bathroom Bill.”

Just this summer, at a town hall meeting in Cary, NC on August 26, McCrory said, “I don’t think our principals and our superintendents should be subjected to allowing a boy who thinks he’s a girl, but is still a boy, to be able to enter a locker room shower or bathroom facility. It’s a respectful disagreement, but it’s not a disagreement that I should be disrespected for having.”

I’ll just leave that one alone. Kick it around in your brain for a while and you’ll get a headache.

On July 22, the NBA announced its decision to pull the 2017 All-Star game out of North Carolina in protest of HB2. To this, McCrory responded on a talk-radio show, “I strongly disagree with their decision. To put it bluntly, it’s total P.C.B.S. … it’s an insult to our city, and an insult to our state.” He further announced that he believes the NBA is practicing “selective outrage.”

One could take this in many directions, but probably the worst part is where McCrory declares that transgender people wanting equal rights is analogous with being “politically correct.” He questions, “does the desire to be politically correct outweigh our children’s privacy and safety?” Well, Pat, it’s actually not political correctness to believe that LGBTQ+ youth shouldn’t be bullied at school. It’s not political correctness to believe that we should offer these kids protections that we would expect all of our kids to have. Besides, federal court has already ruled that HB2 violates federal law, and has since blocked UNC from enforcing provisions. Hell, even the Governor can’t enforce his law in his own mansion, as several transgender female advocates have used the Ladies Room there in plain sight of security guards with no issue.

People are leaving the state in droves because of Governor McCrory. I’m choosing to stay put. I will not let this man chase me out of my beloved home state. I’m staying to see him led out of office and replaced by someone who can begin to repair and restore the state that I love so much. I’d also like to address McCrory directly. Lord knows I’ve already sent enough e-mails that go unanswered, so, what the heck? I’ll just focus my energy blogging about it instead. So, here goes:

Pat McCrory, I am sickened by your continued use of phrases like “a boy who thinks he’s a girl, but is still a boy,” or one of your other favorites, the infamous “boys in dresses” description that you give to legitimate transgender people. Pat, allow me to direct you to a little education. We’ll call it Transgender 101. Lesson one is simple: Transgender girls are girls. They are not “boys in dresses.” But to really understand transgender people, or Native American “two-spirit” people, or gender non-conforming people is much deeper than that. We’ll save that for another day. Right now, the issue I have with raising a young, impressionable, gender non-conforming boy, is why do you feel the need to use and repeat the phrase ad nauseam, “boys in dresses?” Why not “girls in pants?” I’ll tell you why not. Because the assumption of blockheads like you, Pat, is that ALL boys are predators, and women are meek, lowly figures who need protection at all costs, especially in public restrooms and locker room facilities.

My husband and I were blessed with one of each type of child: a cisgender 16-year-old male, a cisgender 14-year-old female, and a gender non-conforming 10-year-old boy who prefers all things sparkly, pink, frilly, and soft. He is on a journey right now. In fact, he has been all of his life. He is sorting through his gender identity and right now he identifies as neither male nor female, but some combination of both. It’s a notion I wouldn’t expect you to understand (I can hear you right now saying, “bless his heart, he’s so confused”) but actually, my husband and I see this as a gift, and so does he. There is no confusion. Regardless, because he’s a gender-bender, my son is actually one of those “boys in dresses” that you keep taunting, and I’d like you to know that he is the exact opposite of a predator. Anyone who knows my son will vouch for his peaceful, loving, accepting spirit, and avoidance of confrontation. In fact, with this climate you’ve recently created, he’s so scared for his own safety right now that he doesn’t even use either restroom in public. He looks for gender neutral, or family bathrooms so that he can avoid confrontation of any kind.

I promise you, Pat, when my gender non-conforming child actually works up his nerve to wear one of his beloved dresses in public, HE is the one who has to fear for his safety. Because you, Governor McCrory, are only interested in protecting a minuscule fraction of society (women whom you perceive as needing some sort of predator protection in public accommodations), you don’t protect the greater good; you don’t seem to understand that a transgender man who opts not to have bottom surgery (that means having a penis built onto his body), but for all intents and purposes looks and dresses exclusively male on the outside, is now guaranteed to be in the women’s restroom, because he was born without a penis. A very masculine looking man going into the women’s room, because that’s the law. I give a sarcastic slow clap in your general direction for managing to vote IN to law exactly what you were trying to vote OUT of law.

McCrory, you have hand-fed the very ignorant monsters who perpetuate this perverted predator in the restroom myth. YOUR people are the dangerous people. Not “boys in dresses.” Boys in dresses are not yet the same thing as transgender girls, but they’re still in some stage of transformation. Boys who wear dresses in public (which is, yet again, different than “drag queens,” or “cross-dressers,” – refer back to Transgender 101, basic vocabulary) are some of the bravest, fiercest, most sincere souls walking this earth. Do you have ANY idea how much bravery it takes for a young boy to wear a dress in public? It takes balls of steel, and I’m not sure how much more “manly” it gets than that.

Pat, YOUR people are the monsters, the predators. YOUR people are the ones to fear, the ones who would laugh at, question, or have a physical altercation with my young son, or me, or his dad, because he chooses to wear a dress. And this isn’t even happening in public bathrooms. The damage he endures happens out in public, in broad daylight.

Pat, you have no idea what you’re doing. You are completely blind to the irony of the situation you have created, when just months ago, no one was the wiser, and transgender people peed beside cisgender people all along. No true, harmful incidents have ever occurred because some man decided to slap on a dress in order to peep in women’s stalls. Despite your law, which is completely unenforceable, “peeping” is a totally separate issue, and is still a crime, regardless of who’s doing it.

My husband and I cannot flush you and your legacy down the toilet fast enough at the polls this season.

#WeAreNotThis