# What's the answer, transgendered students in high school gym dressing rooms. **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [September 5, 2015, 10:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-answer-transgendered-students-in-high-school-gym-dressing-rooms/730083 "2015-09-05T22:04:09Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![JRDelirious](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jrdelirious/32/9531_2.png) [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2015, 1:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-answer-transgendered-students-in-high-school-gym-dressing-rooms/730083/41 "2015-09-06T01:07:03Z")
That time, **Chronos,** has not arrived. And as mentioned neither has the time when TG status has to just be accepted on someone’s mere say-so. > [@Martian Bigfoot](#): > > If you were an anatomically make, openly transgender student at a high school somewhere in rural Bumfuck, where would you feel safest? In a room full of girls? Or in a room full of potentially aggressive male jocks? I know what I’d pick. > […] > Are the other girls being harmed by, as **even sven** put it, knowing that a penis is kind of nearby? Probably not. They may be vaguely uncomfortable. But they’re most likely not in actual physical danger. Exactly. The girls’ safe space is for now the safe space for a trans girl. If only the culture were so that we could say the converse… ☹ Then again… > [@Habeed](#): > > But it isn’t free. You are asking “normals” to now accept anyone who declares they feel like a girl into their locker room. > […] > Is a minor bit of discomfort seeing a “girl” with possibly a stiffy in the locker room checking you out, spread among 100+ “normal” girls, worth making that one “girl” feel less uncomfortable? 1. Again the whole deal about TG being just “anyone declaring they feel like a girl” 2. Really, “stiffies” is what you come up with? ---
**Author:** ![jz78817](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jz78817/32/1028_2.png) [@jz78817](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jz78817)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2015, 1:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-answer-transgendered-students-in-high-school-gym-dressing-rooms/730083/42 "2015-09-06T01:09:58Z")
> [@even\_sven](#): > > This shouldn’t be an issue. um… have you ever even _met_ a teenager? ---
**Author:** ![Don\_t\_Panic](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/don_t_panic/32/398_2.png) [@Don\_t\_Panic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Don_t_Panic)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2015, 1:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-answer-transgendered-students-in-high-school-gym-dressing-rooms/730083/43 "2015-09-06T01:12:46Z")
> [@Habeed](#): > > It just feels totally arbitrary and capricious to celebrate one kind of “deviance” with pride parades, grudging tolerate several other kinds, and to imprison for decades/scarlet letter mark another. It’s totally random and I doubt anyone who isn’t normal “chooses” to be that way. It’s not arbitrary. If we had pride parades for serial killers, rapists and child molesters, or one but not all of those categories, then it would be. Call us back when you see one. I mean, seriously, do you need this explained to you? Sometimes I feel like I’m talking to bigoted four years olds around here. Do you genuinely not understand the difference, or do you just want to stir something up? ---
**Author:** ![Habeed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/a587f6/32.png) [@Habeed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Habeed)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2015, 1:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-answer-transgendered-students-in-high-school-gym-dressing-rooms/730083/44 "2015-09-06T01:19:13Z")
> [@Martian Bigfoot](#): > > It’s not arbitrary. If we had pride parades for serial killers, rapists and child molesters, or one but not all of those categories, then it would be. > > Call us back when you see one. > > I mean, seriously, do you need this explained to you? Sometimes I feel like I’m talking to bigoted four years olds around here… What I’m saying is that modern thinking is that **none** of these people can help it or make themselves normal. We don’t expect gays to stop sodomizing other gays any more. We don’t expect trannies to stop dressing like a girl. We cater to their needs. So why don’t we have isolated compounds to keep pedophiles away from kids, and serial rapists away from women, where the compounds are not intended to punish? Instead, we declare the people who rolled one kind of deviance “evil” and lecture them on how they shouldn’t have raped a woman they were left alone with/molested a kid and severely punish them for decades, while we hold rainbow parades for another kind of deviance. No one chooses their desires. That’s all I am saying. If we respect the rights of gays, we should feel sympathy for Jared Fogle. If we want to hate Fogle, we should hate gays. One or the other. To do both is to be logically inconsistent. ---
**Author:** ![Don\_t\_Panic](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/don_t_panic/32/398_2.png) [@Don\_t\_Panic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Don_t_Panic)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2015, 1:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-answer-transgendered-students-in-high-school-gym-dressing-rooms/730083/45 "2015-09-06T01:27:31Z")
> [@Habeed](#): > > No one chooses their desires. That’s all I am saying. If we respect the rights of gays, we should feel sympathy for Jared Fogle. If we want to hate Fogle, we should hate gays. Christ on a pogo stick. Look, before I waste time explaining the concept of “harm” to you, very slowly, as if you were a toddler: Bigots are fine, in my book. They can be argued with. Stupid people are fine, too. They can be explained things too. But bigots pretending to be stupid are freaking annoying. I want to make it clear (mods, take note) that I am absolutely not accusing you of belonging to one or more of those categories. But before engaging further in this debate, I would like to know which one, if any, I’m dealing with. So, I’d appreciate if if you helped me clear that up. ---
**Author:** ![Habeed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/a587f6/32.png) [@Habeed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Habeed)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2015, 1:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-answer-transgendered-students-in-high-school-gym-dressing-rooms/730083/46 "2015-09-06T01:33:54Z")
> [@Martian Bigfoot](#): > > Christ on a pogo stick. Look, before I waste time explaining the concept of “harm” to you, very slowly, as if you were a toddler: > > Bigots are fine, in my book. They can be argued with. Stupid people are fine, too. They can be explained things too. But bigots pretending to be stupid are freaking annoying. > > I want to make it clear (mods, take note) that I am absolutely not accusing you of belonging to one or more of those categories. But before engaging further in this debate, I would like to know which one I’m dealing with. I know you’re going to lecture me and say that Fogle’s actions “harmed” the kids he did not actually abuse, just looked at pictures of and possibly indirectly supported the abuse of those kids, and that he “harmed” the 16 or 17 year old fully developed women he had consensual sex with. (even though we as a society are totally cool with those same women having sex with boys their same age. In some states. And in some states, actually, we are totally cool with 16 year olds having sex with 90 year olds) But, Fogle must not have been able to help it. Why else would he have taken such incredible risks? He must have felt unsatisfied having sex with 18 year old women or looking at regular porn. (I don’t see how, but who are we to judge?) So he went where his desires took him. Yet, the man who has the same desire to stick his penis up the wrong hole on another man, we celebrate with parades. Ok, so maybe one set of actions can be argued as more harmful than others. Neither individual choose to have this incredibly powerful desire to commit such an action. So why don’t we handle both situations using the same principles? We sit here and condemn Fogle when we know damn well that gays can’t help it, so why should we have expected Fogle to do any better? ---
**Author:** ![Don\_t\_Panic](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/don_t_panic/32/398_2.png) [@Don\_t\_Panic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Don_t_Panic)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2015, 1:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-answer-transgendered-students-in-high-school-gym-dressing-rooms/730083/47 "2015-09-06T01:46:38Z")
**Habeed** , I’d be happy to debate your assertion that letting gay people have sex with who they want to will lead to child molesters running wild in another thread, if you want to start one. I can explain to you how one man’s wrong hole is another man’s favorite hole over there. But since that has nothing to do with dressing rooms, maybe we should keep this thread on topic. I don’t want to junior mod, mind you, so I’m just throwing it out as an idea. Right. Back to dressing rooms, then? ---
**Author:** ![AnaMen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dfb087/32.png) [@AnaMen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AnaMen)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2015, 1:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-answer-transgendered-students-in-high-school-gym-dressing-rooms/730083/48 "2015-09-06T01:58:34Z")
> [@madsircool](#): > > This works for me. The student in question was given a private room, but that wasn’t good enough. This particular individual is probably just trying to make a point and get some attention. ---
**Author:** ![Habeed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/a587f6/32.png) [@Habeed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Habeed)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2015, 1:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-answer-transgendered-students-in-high-school-gym-dressing-rooms/730083/49 "2015-09-06T01:59:15Z")
> [@Martian Bigfoot](#): > > **Habeed** , I’d be happy to debate your assertion that letting gay people have sex with who they want to will lead to child molesters running wild in another thread, if you want to start one. I can explain to you how one man’s wrong hole is another man’s favorite hole over there. But since that has nothing to do with dressing rooms, maybe we should keep this thread on topic. > > I don’t want to junior mod, mind you, so I’m just throwing it out as an idea. > > Right. Back to dressing rooms, then? The reason it’s related is that we’re taking an extraordinary step to treat better someone who ends up with abnormal sexual desires. And we take extraordinary steps to treat as badly as we can people who end up with a different, abnormal set of desires. I’m questioning the logic in doing so - I’m saying we should be coherent about it. We could go either way on what to do - as I said, we could say that the desires of the majority of the girls in that locker room to not potentially see a penis trump that of the trannie. Or we could go the other way, but we need to just send pedophiles and rapists to the oil rigs of Alaska or something instead of locking them up, and make that trannie dress in private isolated from both genders. ---
**Author:** ![JRDelirious](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jrdelirious/32/9531_2.png) [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2015, 2:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-answer-transgendered-students-in-high-school-gym-dressing-rooms/730083/50 "2015-09-06T02:02:23Z")
You really want to make it about that it is just wrong and broken and defective and equal to child molesters and rapists, don’t you? Your use of the words “normals” and “trannies” is quite the hint. ---
**Author:** ![DocCathode](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/doccathode/32/18773_2.png) [@DocCathode](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DocCathode)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2015, 2:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-answer-transgendered-students-in-high-school-gym-dressing-rooms/730083/51 "2015-09-06T02:12:37Z")
**Habeed** Off the top of my head, I can’t remember whether the Mods here consider tranny to be hate speech or if it’s use is permissible but frowned upon. ---
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2015, 2:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-answer-transgendered-students-in-high-school-gym-dressing-rooms/730083/52 "2015-09-06T02:14:43Z")
> [@even\_sven](#): > > When I say “it’s not an issue”, I mean that high school girls generally don’t expose themselves in the locker room, nor do they tend to do a lot of recreational looking. I remember lots of shimmying into clothes under towels. I’ve already responded to this. If women and girls are going to change clothes, use the toilet, or shower in a public building, they’ll typically want to do it in a space where there are no men or boys nearby. Even if they’re not getting fully naked in front of another person, they’ll still want to do it with no men or boys nearby. And this is a perfectly rational thing to want. Is this really so difficult to understand? ---
**Author:** ![Habeed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/a587f6/32.png) [@Habeed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Habeed)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2015, 2:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-answer-transgendered-students-in-high-school-gym-dressing-rooms/730083/53 "2015-09-06T02:16:03Z")
> [@JRDelirious](#): > > You really want to make it about that it is just wrong and broken and defective and equal to child molesters and rapists, don’t you? > > Your use of the words “normals” and “trannies” is quite the hint. Is this not factually the case? The straight dope answer is the thing that differentiates a “normal”, a gay, a trannie, or a rapist, is certain genes and then certain random factors in how sections of brain tissue come together. Absolutely none of these things are under the control of the person who becomes one of these “labels” I am using, and it appears that the desires, as governed by the corresponding pieces of brain tissue, are enormous. This trannie doesn’t feel just a slight itch, easily overcome, that he is a girl, he feels an overwhelming urge to identify as female. If it were a slight mental “itch”, we wouldn’t have this thread. Ditto a gay, a normal, or a rapist. Believe it or not, but the “straight dope” answer is that given it’s totally involuntary and governed by nature, not any kind of conscious control, is that it is ignorant to hate “deviant” people - of any kind, even the “bad” kinds - for what they want to do/what they end up doing. I ain’t saying we shouldn’t take practical actions to protect ourselves as a society. We can’t be letting rapists lure unsuspecting women over and over into private places, we either cage the rapists, make sure that every woman can easily determine if a man is possibly a rapist, or we isolate them. We can’t be letting kid abusers do the same thing. We can’t be sending trannies into locker rooms to be flicked with towels and beaten with locks in a sock by high school jocks. The point is, since all of the above classes are people are pure biological phenomena with absolutely no elements of free will, we need to be consistent about things. If we’re going to call Mr. Fogle evil and gleefully hope that he is raped in the rectum by violent prisoners, we should be hoping that this trannie has to stay in the locker room full of jocks and get beaten. And vice versa. ---
**Author:** ![Don\_t\_Panic](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/don_t_panic/32/398_2.png) [@Don\_t\_Panic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Don_t_Panic)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2015, 2:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-answer-transgendered-students-in-high-school-gym-dressing-rooms/730083/54 "2015-09-06T02:24:20Z")
The thing is, **Habeed** , we’ve tried having societies where everyone was shoehorned into a narrow definition of “normal”, to satisfy other people’s particular OCD. They were really boring to live in for most people, and really sucky for the rest. BTW, you can hate gays, or transsexuals, or people who don’t like bacon (I mean, that can’t be normal, surely) as much as you want. No one is telling you otherwise. Most of them probably aren’t all that crazy about you, either, so it’s only fair. The question is whether you should be allowed to tell them what to do, as long as their actions don’t infringe on your life in any way whatsoever. Personally, I can’t see why you should. Although, I sort of admire the energy of busybodies trying to bend the world their arbitrary will. I would make a lousy bigot. I’m just too lazy. My take is: Is anyone being hurt? No? Fine, let’s all leave each other the fuck alone, then. With the dressing room issue, there is at least a real conflict, with divergent interests and interesting conflicting points of view. But I’m coming at it like this: Can we come up with some practical compromise that everyone can live with? What if we do X? Everyone OK? Fine, back to leaving each other the fuck in peace. Also, locking up people who don’t like bacon in locker rooms full of rapists is just not a practical solution to anything. For some people, it’s more about principles, I suppose. I get that. Maybe I’m just too practical-minded. ---
**Author:** ![Asimovian](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asimovian/32/172_2.png) [@Asimovian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Asimovian)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2015, 2:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-answer-transgendered-students-in-high-school-gym-dressing-rooms/730083/55 "2015-09-06T02:31:07Z")
**Habeed** , “tranny/trannie” is often used as a pejorative, and as such, is not to be used in this thread as a descriptor. This is an official moderation instruction to discontinue this use. ---
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2015, 2:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-answer-transgendered-students-in-high-school-gym-dressing-rooms/730083/56 "2015-09-06T02:31:50Z")
> [@Gatopescado](#): > > What about the parents? Do/should they get a say in all this? I don’t know about the law in Missouri. In California, in 2013, the State Assembly passed a law saying that school students can use the bathroom and play on the sports teams “consistent with his or her gender identity, irrespective of the gender listed on the pupil’s records”. Parents of children at public schools were given no say whatsoever in the matter. A ballot initiative was proposed to overturn this law. Supporters of the ballot initiative collected 620,000 signatures, more than enough to legally qualify for putting it on the ballot in 2014. However, Debra Bowen, the Sec. of State in CA, and her allies [used legal tricks to have some of the signatures declared invalid and delayed the process, thereby preventing the people of California from voting on the measure](http://ballotpedia.org/California_Referendum_on_AB_1266,_Transgender_Student_Participation_Based_on_Gender_Identity_(2014)). So in short, at least in that case, the state went to great lengths to prevent parents from having any say in the matter. ---
**Author:** ![Habeed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/a587f6/32.png) [@Habeed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Habeed)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2015, 2:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-answer-transgendered-students-in-high-school-gym-dressing-rooms/730083/57 "2015-09-06T02:45:16Z")
> [@Asimovian](#): > > **Habeed** , “tranny/trannie” is often used as a pejorative, and as such, is not to be used in this thread as a descriptor. This is an official moderation instruction to discontinue this use. I apologize. If you read the post 2 above your moderator instruction, you can see how I am using it as a well understood shorthand and am specifically explaining how I don’t feel we as a society should “hate” individuals of transexual orientation as it is not rational given the biology behind it. ---
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2015, 2:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-answer-transgendered-students-in-high-school-gym-dressing-rooms/730083/58 "2015-09-06T02:46:29Z")
> [@t-bonham@scc.net](#): > > I have relatives who, for generations, knew they had a right to “a school bathroom and locker room that’s entirely free from” those black people. Even the entire school was free from them! > > Then the courts & politicians took that right away! And it was there for generations, without harming anyone. (Except the n\*\*\*ers, and they don’t count.) That’s totally irrelevant to this thread. ---
**Author:** ![Habeed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/a587f6/32.png) [@Habeed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Habeed)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2015, 2:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-answer-transgendered-students-in-high-school-gym-dressing-rooms/730083/59 "2015-09-06T02:57:11Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > That’s totally irrelevant to this thread. Is it? If you can’t demonstrate a physical danger - such a transexuals being likely to use their access to the girl’s locker room to commit rapes - you are left with one party feeling uncomfortable that another party is there. Until desegregation, white people were trained to feel uncomfortable if black people were present. We now think there isn’t any increased physical danger (although there actually technically \*is \*evidence that blacks commit more crimes, it’s not so much higher to justify segregation) and so people saying they don’t want blacks in their locker room are ignored. ---
**Author:** ![Don\_t\_Panic](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/don_t_panic/32/398_2.png) [@Don\_t\_Panic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Don_t_Panic)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2015, 3:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-answer-transgendered-students-in-high-school-gym-dressing-rooms/730083/60 "2015-09-06T03:13:20Z")
> [@Habeed](#): > > Is it? If you can’t demonstrate a physical danger - such a transexuals being likely to use their access to the girl’s locker room to commit rapes - you are left with one party feeling uncomfortable that another party is there. > > Until desegregation, white people were trained to feel uncomfortable if black people were present. We now think there isn’t any increased physical danger (although there actually technically \*is \*evidence that blacks commit more crimes, it’s not so much higher to justify segregation) and so people saying they don’t want blacks in their locker room are ignored. The heck? I think I sort of agree with you about something. (Please don’t say that your practical solution, in order to maintain logical consistency, is to ban black people from locker rooms. Please don’t, please don’t, please don’t…) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-answer-transgendered-students-in-high-school-gym-dressing-rooms/730083.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-answer-transgendered-students-in-high-school-gym-dressing-rooms/730083.md?page=4)