I just realized how awful that comes across. It’s due to the fact that I was, in fact, openly ogled by two lesbian girls in high school, and ended up having to hide in a bathroom stall to change. I hated it.
We all deserved some privacy is my point.
You dont have to apologize. Its the mindlessly PC folks that should. You were harassed.
The moral argument would be that when you have an opportunity to help people, at basically no cost to yourself, taking that opportunity is the right thing to do. Why hurt people when you can make their lives better?
The practical argument is that transgender people have something to contribute to society. There have been transgender doctors, scientists, artists, soldiers and authors. When we make it hard for these people to reach their full potential, everyone loses and the world becomes a bit less rich.
Who is being harmed here, and who should we look to protect?
Has anyone considered the possibility that the kid wants to use the girls’ changing room not to make an abstract statement, but for immediate and practical purposes of safety?
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. Keep in mind that in a dressing room, you are often in a vulnerable position, maybe naked, in a secluded space, with limited access to help or places to escape to if something should happen.
If the purpose of segregated dressing rooms is to protect women from male aggression, sexual or otherwise, then this kid probably needs that protection more than anyone.
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.
So I say let the kid use the girls’ dressing room.
But it isn’t free. You are asking “normals” to now accept anyone who declares they feel like a girl into their locker room. You make 99 girls feel uncomfortable to satisfy the warped desires of one person. I don’t think the ratio is even 1:100 actually, transgender is rarer than that.
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?
I guess that’s a value judgement, but I’m just pointing out that society is brutally unfair in so many other ways, why make an exception here? What compelling reason is there?
Sadly, understanding human nature, for every one real TG there will be 1 or more fakers. Where does the right for females to be secure in their changing location trump the right of someone who considers themsef TG? Is there a true test to determine that someone is really TG?
Let the students decide. If most of the girls are cool with it, it’s a go. If the majority oppose, the transgendered will have to be accommodated elsewhere. But she shouldn’t have to change with the boys!
It’d be like a lesson in democracy for them! I suspect in all such cases it’s a handful of the tightly wound making all the noise, and come to find, they are in the vast, vast minority!
If you’re willing to fake being transgender for a chance to a see a naked lady, then, hey, maybe you’ve earned your ogle.
Since most students of any orientation are uncomfortable with public nudity it is an issue. But from my understanding showering after PE has almost stopped. Maybe its a problem that doesnt need a solution. Except on hot days.
Adolescence is a weird period.
I think in most cases the transgendered student has been offered a private dressing room in the girls’ locker room, so it’s not about safety.
This works for me.
First you compare trans folks to serial killer and kleptomaniacs. Now you say they have warped desires.
Madirscool
As has been said in so many other threads on transsexuals, you don’t just walk up to the principal, say “I’m transgender!”. You have to see a therapist for a long time first. The same is true of getting hormone therapy and reassignment surgery.
Very good.
Lest anyone think that I’m a bleeding heart liberal: I want to go on record as saying that I’d be uncomfortable with sharing a dressing room with someone who is openly and unrepentantly a known serial killer. Kleptomaniacs? Probably OK, as long as they don’t steal my particular shoes.
In a world where transsexuality is viewed as gross or abhorrent, this might work: Few boys would be willing to bear the label of “transsexual” in exchange for getting to see naked girls. But we’re increasingly not living in that world. In a world where transsexuality is viewed as just something that happens sometimes, and has no value judgement attached to it, there’s very little incentive for a horny hetero cis boy not to fake being transsexual in order to sneak a peek.
But again, this isn’t really an issue about transsexuality to begin with: Homosexual kids can already sneak a peek at their preferred gender, without having to fake or claim anything. And if we have a problem with that, then we need some new solution, like individual rooms for all.
It’s either individual rooms for all, or everyone in a big room together.
I do hate it when long standing systems of differences break down. It’s a pain in the butt for people designing buildings.
Well, from a broader view, none of these things are something someone can help. Nobody “chooses” to be transgender - who in their right mind would do so? Nobody “chooses” to be gay, for the same reason.
Well, if during “character creation”, god rolls a dice, then He rolls up like 80 “normals”. For every 100 people, he probably rolls about 10 men who will rape a woman if given an opportunity and who just can’t help themselves. Some studies suggest it might be more like 50%.
He probably rolls up like 5 gays, 3 or 4 pedophiles, 1 trannie, one person who is attracted to animals, and a really small number of people who are sexually attracted to shoes or something.
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.
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.)
What about the parents? Do/should they get a say in all this?