Dr. Jim Sears, a co-host of the CBS
show The Doctors, has warned that transgender girl Coy Mathis
might walk around the girls' bathroom with her genitals exposed.
Sears, a pediatrician, made his remarks
during an appearance on CNN Newsroom.
Mathis is the 6-year-old transgender
girl who has been barred from using the girls' bathroom at her
elementary school. The Transgender Legal Defense & Education
Fund (TLDEF) filed a complaint with the Colorado Civil Rights
Division after Mathis' parents, Jeremy and Kathryn Mathis, were told
in mid-December by the Fountain-Fort Carson School District 8 that
she could no longer use the girls' bathrooms that she had been using
for the past year at Eagleside Elementary School in Fountain, where
she is a first-grader. Mathis is currently being home-schooled until
the situation is resolved.
(Related: Six-year-old
transgender girl Coy Mathis files discrimination suit.)
“I have three kids, a daughter and
two boys, and as when my daughter was that age, I would have been
very uncomfortable if there was a boy with a penis walking around
their bathroom,” Sears
said on Wednesday's show. “And you say that the stalls are
private. You know, at that age, most boys especially will use the
bathroom then leave their pants down while they walk to the sink to
wash their hands and then pull it up. So it's going to be very
uncomfortable for the other girls seeing a penis in their bathroom.”
The other panelists on the segment
expressed support for Mathis' position and appeared outraged by
Sears' insistence on describing Mathis as a boy.
(Watch
the entire segment at MediaMatters.org.)