It again comes down to;
Please show us actual examples of this being an issue.
Because these are completely different problems to care about.
The “problem” for people who cling to traditional notions of sex and gender is that they feel uncomfortable pooping next to people of the opposite sex. The problem for trans people is that they are required to use the wrong gender’s bathroom. Even if this did not lead to harassment, violence, ridicule, etc., it would still be just another of many wrong-genderings a young trans person is likely to be subject to in a given day.
Easy. Just tell them that this policy doesn’t allow boys to use the girls room. It allows girls to use the girls room.
To the extent there are cis-girls who are too afraid to poop near trans girls, then they need to be helped to get the fuck over it. Conflating that issue with the problems faced by trans girls forced to use the boys restroom reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of the stakes here, IMHO.
Why? Because the federal government should defer to parents, not 6-year-olds, when determining which gender the 6-year-old is.
Title IX was well intentioned, but I don’t think it was meant to allow 6-year-olds to decide which gender they are. If Congress really wants to take that authority away from parents, then let Congress pass a new bill that does so.
Ha! And they say that liberals are the ones who always worry about protecting people’s “feelings”. If “safe zones” are an abomination, then they are an abomination in bathrooms, too. Grow the fuck up.
No, they were never justified. They might have been prescient, but they weren’t justified.
Ok. It wasn’t clear to me that your concern was about families in which the parent and child disagree about the child’s gender. That’s why I asked for clarification.
Administrators can and should exercise reasonable discretion about whether a claimed gender identity is sincere. In NYC elementary schools, the rule is to follow whatever gender the child consistently asserts at school, which implies some period of time in which the child consistently identifies before they receive accommodations appropriate to that gender. Presumably, part of that inquiry involves parental input. But I disagree with you that parental input ought to be 100% determinative.
If the parent of a trans kid wants to traumatize them by forcing them to adopt the opposite gender, they can pay for Catholic school. Our public schools ought not play any part in that.
This assumes that in the absence of any legislation that parents should and do have the power to determine the gender that will be used to identify their school-age child. I don’t think that’s a good assumption. Instead, the default rule for all kinds of identity–from religion to sexual orientation–is that people self-identify. Since Title IX is silent on the subject of how to determine a person’s gender, it is the burden of people claiming that parents ought to control the issue to pass legislation to make that happen.
But why stop there? Shouldn’t parents also be empowered to determine the race, religion, and sexual orientation of their kids? If a ten-year-old wants to identify was Caucasian instead of Latino, as Catholic instead of Hindu, or as straight instead of gay, shouldn’t his parents have to give permission, in your view?
We’re not going to do this exactly right, because, most likely, there is no such solution. But we can do a damn sight better.
I’ve seen some examples of that, but I think it stems from the belief that pre-schoolers can’t be trusted alone in a bathroom.
Of course they’re constrained by popular opinion. Then and now. Transgender rights aren’t constrained by North Carolina’s popular opinion because civil rights are an American issue and the popular national opinion is the North Carolina laws are unjust. Anti-transpoopers are upset their view is no longer the national one, or the town of Charlotte’s, and they have no problem gerrymandering whatever boundaries of consensus they might to get their way. Their view deserves scorn, their tactics equally so.
I WISH they’d try to make this a ‘wedge issue’ on the national stage. Laugh I will. Most heartedly.
Bit late at this point, but just for clarity: the above is completely correct. The position attributed to me by the bigoted, lying shitpot who started this thread is not one that I’ve ever actually held.
So you admit to wearing a Corrosion of Conformity leather jacket and liberty spikes wig. Or is it your real hair?
I would be hard pressed to assign a percentage, but I think it should be same for other things that parents routinely decide for their children and which the children might strongly disagree:
Going to the dentist or doctor.
Which school they go to: public or private
What types of clothes they are allowed to wear
What their bedtime is.
Whether they are allowed to play after school before doing their homework.
Just to be clear, is that your personal opinion or is that what you think the law says? I am focusing on what I think the law says (and I’m open to being corrected if I’m interpreting it incorrectly).
If it’s going to play a role in how the schools treats the child, yes. If it’s “raise your hand if you’re X” being asked informally in a classroom, then no.
At the upper age ends, I have no problem deferring to the child. At sixteen, I think the child should get more deference. At age 6, the parents more. How things work out in the middle, I’m less clear on. But this is not a new problem wrt age appropriate responsibility. We might have one set of rules for elementary schools, another set for middle schools, and yet another for high school.
Dude. I totally ignored the rest of Miller’s post after the “completely correct” bit, because I’m so psyched that I’m imagining him correctly.
Czarcasm, is my mental picture of you similarly on-point?
Ugh. You’re fuckin shit at paraphrasing, DA. Transgender rights have been part of LGBT since the mid-eighties. That does not translate into saying that “transgender rights were next as soon as they got gay marriage taken care of.” What a stupid fuckin way to engage in a conversation. Can you do better and are just not trying, or is that seriously the best you can do?
The glasses aren’t horned rimmed…but I do wear a bow tie when I dress up.
Booyah!
You got me, I wasn’t actually making a legal argument there. Just pointing out the hypocrisy of the NC legislature.
What I meant is that the NC legislature is accelerating the rate of trans rights progress by forcing the issue, not that other rights would be somehow rolled back. By codifying discrimination into law, they have created a nucleation point for court cases. They could have stalled things by simply killing proposed laws making sexual orientation and gender identity protected classes. Instead, they are ensuring that there will be plenty of court cases making their way up the chain.
This post makes me sad, in exactly the same way watching Clint Eastwood debate an empty chair - and* lose*- made me feel sad. So pathetic.
The wig is my mod hat.
Except that’s based on a misunderstanding of how government works in the US. The relationship between the feds and the states is not analogous to that between the states and cities.
My recollection is that changing gender on birth certificates, in states where it is allowed, is done for non-intersex minors only when there are the three criteria used by therapists with respect to gender identity (consistent, persistent, and insistent gender behavior), and there is documentation from a Masters-level therapist, and agreement by the parents/guardians (unless the child is an emancipated minor). Even then IIRC it’s very rarely done for children under 16.
I’m sure one can Google and find a case of a non-intersex younger child being able to change their gender on a birth certificate, but I would opine that it would be a highly unusual situation.