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Heather Brown, a third year Business student at Trent University, is no transphobe. She takes a live-and-let-live approach in gender matters.

But Trent has instituted a policy of gender-neutral washrooms, and Brown balks at sharing intimate space with members of the biologically opposite sex. She discovered that expression of her discomfort is more than unwelcome on her campus; it has literally become a forbidden opinion. More on that subject anon. First, an eventually relevant digression to a TV vignette that popped into my head when Heather contacted me with her story.

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Transparent, the popular Amazon Prime series, is the story of an aging man, Mort, who comes out as “Maura,” the woman he has wanted to be all his life.

Much of this comedy-drama’s brilliance lies in its protagonist’s appearance. The series writers didn’t opt for a young, androgynous subject who could easily “pass” as a biological woman, and whose outward presentation would bolster the politically correct understanding that gender is fluid, detached from biology.