Editor,

This is in response to the letter from Joseph Moreland of Oak Harbor labeled “Gender neutral bathrooms are a bad idea” in the October 11 Whidbey News-Times.

I have no opinion regarding gender neutral bathrooms, as I have not studied the subject. But I do disagree with Mr. Moreland’s discussion of genetics. While most people have the normal 46 chromosomes (22 normal pairs = 44), plus the sex chromosomes X and Y (either XX or XY).

In school we learned about XX (female) and XY (male). Life would beeasy if everything always worked according to a simple plan, such as with XX or XY as the only possible combinations of chromosomes. But life is not quite that cut and dried. There are many variations that happen. Around one percent (more or less) of the population carry some of those variations. If you google “XX, XY, other?” you can learn about some of those variations, XXX, XXY, XYY, and simply X. Even with the usual two there are variations: Men can have XX, and women can have XY. Sexual development is determined not only by the X and Y chromosomes, but by many of the genes found in other chromosomes that control hormones which in turn determine how the body develops.

About 99 percent of us have the pairs XX or XY. But it is cruel to try to insist that those members of the roughly one percent with gender dysphoria are somehow wrong or weird, or that it is all in their head.

They are people just like the rest of us. Try to be a bit less sure of your opinion without doing some research.

Norm Samuelson

Oak Harbor