Katherine Svenson seems like a nice lady. She's old, and on the school board of Delta County, Colorado, between Grand Junction and Aspen. But she's concerned, see, about these transgender kids, whatever they are.

At an October school board meeting, Svenson sought to reassure... somebody, apparently... that the great Delta County would not go all coastal liberal when it comes to defining who gets to use the school potties:

Massachusetts and California have passed laws relating to calling a student, irrespective of his biological gender, letting him perform as the gender he thinks he is, or she is. I just want to emphasize: not in this district. Not until the plumbing's changed. There would have to be castration in order to pass something like that around here.

Now, it may just be that Katherine was thinking aloud about implementation problems with Colorado's recent ruling against transgender discrimination in the schools Maybe she just wasn't thinking clearly about the mechanics of sexual identification, or of sex reassignment surgery, which are two separate things. (How does one castrate a woman, pray tell?)

It may also be that she was grasping for a word to articulate her complicated feelings, and off the cuff, the best she could do was refer to a practice generally associated with animals, criminals, Renaissance-era contraltos, and Medieval guards for concubines.

It may be any and all of those things. While an inability to grasp a concept or elucidate one's thoughts don't portend well for a policy maker, they're better than just being an old-fashioned gender essentialist who's afraid of the rapey girly men.

Oh, wait, that would explain this, though:

When questioned about her controversial comments by KREX, Svenson was unapologetic.

"I don't have a problem if some boys think they are girls, I'm just saying as long as they can impregnate a woman, they're not going to go in the girls' locker-room," she said.

Yep, let's not take that obvious risk of sexual violence and physical victimization. Let's just cut the boys' balls off.