On Wednesday, we had our quarterly All Staff meeting, where we were trained on harassment. The lawyers have move away from calling it "sexual harassment", because there are protected classes beyond sex these days: race, national origin, age, family status, and locally, gender identity.

Because I'm a smart ass, all I could think during the training was "Who can we harass?"

But more seriously, I think there are situations when gender identity and sex as protected classes conflict. Say, for example, you have single sex patient rooms at a health care facility. A male-to-female transgendered person is admitted to the hospital and demands to be placed in a room with other women, and the women currently occupying the room feel their rights are violated because they now share a room with someone who may or may not be easily perceived to be a woman. Who would win that?

Another issue: the organization I work for offers women-only housing. What if one of these women comes out as a transgendered person and begins living as a man, but wants to stay a part of that community? Some women who have history of domestic violence feel secure only in a single sex environment, and having a man living there could potentially be very harmful to members of that community.

I have no answers. Just smart ass quips and comments.