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‘That’s ridiculous—and besides, how are they possibly going to implement it?’ was the first thought that crossed my mind as I listened to NPR detail North Carolina’s new “bathroom law.”
Unfortunately, my second thought was “uh oh—I know how—or rather, where.”
The only place the state will be able to effectively enforce its new law will be in schools, where emerging identities are carefully scrutinized and policed.
And if so, North Carolina’s new law will, in effect, serve only one purpose: to dictate shame-inducing gender norms during adolescence, a crucial developmental period.
As is well known, the cultural narratives associated with laws transmit both social and practical knowledge, reinforcing values and expectations. Experiences are distilled through social stories that filter the world, framing and connecting parts, linking past to present and future.
In addition to this, though, stories keep our brains regulated.
Louis Cozolino (in his seminal work The Neuroscience of Psychotherapy) outlines how stories literally prompt the interrelating between hemispheres in the brain. According to him, narratives foster a ‘connectivity’ that knits together and coordinates different areas (notably the frontal, temporal, and parietal lobes), facilitating the processing of diverse sensory input. This integration is responsible for producing what is called “homeostatic balance” (an internal state necessary for effective brain functioning).
If stories themselves integrate the brain, then the specific stories we tell integrate the brain in specific ways.
Our personal 'specific ‘stories’ are rooted in early infancy, when the habit of “storying”—of languaging emotions and linking them to experiences—begins. Caregivers assign words to our expressions, creating neural pathways between different hemispheres in our brain (so-called “affect labeling”). This blending of affect with cognition prompts feelings about thoughts and thoughts about feelings. As we grow, feelings paired with words are situated in stories, furthering the integration of the biological-social self.
Consider, now, the “social stories” HB2 tells, and how the neural circuitry of transgender youth is being integrated on the basis of its narrative. Feelings (shame, inadequacy, even fear) paired with words (transgender, identity, and ‘bathroom’) are transmitted across synapses, and the information they integrate serves to encode shame into the very functioning of these developing brains. Put differently, meanings, constructed socially, are being transcribed into the very circuitry of young people's brains, so that the values surrounding transgender identities come to inform neural pathways. (What must it be like to have “dread” coded into the urge to use a bathroom, to have to weigh potential backlash against potential humiliation—situating both within personal struggles for gender identity—each time ones feels the need to urinate? )
In being denied social stories that integrate them into the fabric of community, transgender individuals become a sidebar in others’ stories. It can only be hoped that with the swift response of public figures like Bruce Springsteen, no less than the Michael Jordan and the NBA, as well as faith communities, corporations like PayPal, and even Donald Trump the narratives of HB2 have been sufficiently interrupted, so that shame, humiliation, and inadequacy will not necessarily be integrated into the identity narratives cohering in transgender youths.
