An old classmate of mine mentioned on Facebook that he had a 5-6 inch growth spurt after he graduated. This whole time I’d been thinking of him as this short guy, but he’s over 6 foot now.
It was a fast moving thread while magellan was here.
In the same way that diarrhea is “fast-moving”.
Not to mention have a $5000 bounty put on their head for doing what seems natural. But I guess that unless there is a doctors note specifically saying its bad, there is absolutely nothing wrong with singling out a student for harassment and humiliation.
It caught the trade winds, so to speak? Or perhaps… the circumtroller current? I supposed if he’d stopped it dead, it would have been the trolldrums. Because, you know, Magellan. Nautical stuff and all that.
I didn’t personally have an IEP but I knew people who did. The closest thing to a medical accommodation I had in school was for food allergies. Obviously I needed a doctor’s note to carry the epinephrine on my person. The only issue with physical access was that I wouldn’t sit for lunch with kids eating PB&Js. It’s not the greatest analogy which is why I didn’t use it.
Which is great! Gender dysphoria is an invisible disability and a controversial one, at that. But if the school hadn’t agreed to the accommodation, wouldn’t the next step be to bring in your therapist’s recommendation? Along the lines of, if X isn’t allowed to use the bathroom of her choice, it will adversely affect her mental health.
The chain of events in this particular case are, 1) the student socially transitions near the end of 5th grade, including a “gender support plan” w/ the school changing her name and pronouns and giving her access to the nurse’s single-stall restroom 2) the student spends sixth grade holding it in because of inconvenience and stigma, 3) student enrolls in a new school for seventh grade (starting today) which won’t let her use girls’ bathrooms due to the new law.
My take on it is that their strongest argument is the one least developed. The general case is fine, but they don’t seem to do well moving from general to specific. That’s an important step, IMO the most important. But I’m not a lawyer. This is not my area of expertise and I don’t assume to know more than the lawyers for SAGA. I’m not hostile to the moral issue. I’m trying to understand why they picked this battle plan.
~Max
When I graduated from high school I was barely five feet tall. I grew six inches within the next year. Unfortunately, it stopped there, and I topped off at 5’ 6".
I don’t think so.
Consider if the great state of Ohio passes a bathroom ban (which they’ve been itching to do). My school wouldn’t care if I presented a doctor’s note because they were already letting my kid use their preferred bathroom without one. The state wouldn’t care if I presented a doctor’s note because there’s no exemption in the law for one.
So why would I bother?
I mean if that wasn’t the case. If the school had never let your kid use their preferred bathroom.
ETA: That’s what the lawsuit is for! Even this Idaho law requires schools to provide reasonable accommodations. Then it turns around and arbitrarily declares that use of the “wrong” sex-segregated bathroom while other people are in them is not reasonable. I could envision a court decision striking down that section, and the “bounty” section, and leaving the rest intact.
~Max
You’re supposing that the school, prior to the Idaho law, had a policy that they would only allow transgender students to use the bathroom of their choice if they had a note?
No. The doctor’s note is to make the lawsuit stronger. I am also saying the school did not previously let the student use the girls’ bathrooms. AFAIK the named plaintiff has never used a girls’ bathroom at school.
~Max
I understand that they didn’t previously let her use that bathroom. I’m not understanding why anyone would present a doctor’s note that nobody was asking for to people who didn’t care to see one.
“To make the lawsuit stronger” I’ll leave to the lawyers. I’m not one of them, and I’d assume the lawyers in this case know what they’re doing.
I also assume the lawyers know what they’re doing. I’m trying to understand why. Why didn’t they directly allege that access to the bathroom is part of Ms. Roe’s treatment plan? That way they can establish a direct impact the policy has on her specifically, without first making her suffer months of school without access so she can testify on the harm it causes her, and without tying up the trial and the case as a whole on the validity and legitimacy of Ms. Roe’s suffering. (As actually happened in the 4th and 11th circuits, where the poor kids had to testify in front of the world about UTIs and suicide attempts.)
~Max
But like, if the school wouldn’t let my kid use the elevator when they broke their leg, and hobbling up the stairs every day caused emotional distress, do you think the first thing I should do in order to sue is get a doctor’s note explaining that hobbling up stairs with a broken leg is inadvisable?
Maybe that’s something that needs to be litigated in the courtroom, but unless the school was like, “Well gee, if you’d had a doctor tell us that then maybe we would have reconsidered,” I don’t see the point.
I think I would get an ADA lawyer, and the first thing the lawyer would probably say is to get a doctor’s note. Especially if instead of an obviously broken leg it’s a less visible disability.
~Max
Not a Republican move, but there isn’t a better thread to put this in; FIDE has banned trans women from competing in women’s chess meets.
Because, you know, AMABs clearly have an innate biological advantage when it comes to moving little tokens around on a board. This is insulting to trans women AND cis women.
This is a weird one. You wouldn’t think that testosterone would hugely influence proficiency in chess
My very basic understanding is that at competitive levels men outperform women at chess because they’re much more likely to play it, and start it at an earlier age. In other words, it is a result of social structures rather than innate biological differences. In response to this disparity, women’s chess tournaments have come about in order for the ladies to have a space to compete, albeit it at a lower level - so far so good.
Perhaps the ICF’s reasoning is that a biological man could have grown up as a boy, taken up chess early, risen through the ranks of competitive chess-dom as a man, then suddenly ‘jumped’ over to the women’s category in order to get a shortcut to success. This does seem like a somewhat extreme scenario to risk assess, though…
Just like all those guys who get their manly bits whittled so they can win a high school track meet.
Oh, wait, I got it. The female brain is inherently inferior giving trans women an unfair advantage. The Queen’s Gambit was after all, a work of fiction.
It may sound extreme to sensible people, but AFAICT it’s a pretty standard type of rhetoric among self-described “gender critical” opponents of transgender rights.
The thinking seems to be that AMAB people get the overall experience of male privilege in much of their lives, and therefore transgender women should not be allowed to compete in events/contests designated for women. Because those gender-specific restrictions were put in place to redress sexist bias against women and sexist bias is rooted in sex-specific characteristics. Or something; the train of thought does not make a whole lot of sense to me either.
Although in this particular case, ISTM that the issue may just be that the federation is concerned about “strategic transgender identification” by dishonest “trophy hunters”. However, the asymmetry of the new rules also seems a bit weird:
Soooo… If you come out as transgender female, you can’t compete in women’s chess events until the federation reviews your status, or something. But any competition titles you won while officially male-identified remain in effect.
If you come out as transgender male, AFAICT you can compete in men’s/open (query: is there a difference?) chess events. But any competition titles you won while officially female-identified are now null and void.
This does not seem logically consistent to me, but I’m not a competitive chess player myself and maybe am just not thinking the requisite number of moves ahead?
The only rationale I can think of for the ICF to make that decision is female competition is not open to males, but so-called male competions are open to females. It is an odd distinction for something that should not be divided by sex in the first place, IMHO.