No, but next time we have a gay pride parade, there should be a buncha folks dressed like pedo bear, a line of free candy panel vans, and a bunch of “rape culture” frat boys carrying around racks of stolen panties. We’re celebrating diversity, right?
Fine, whatever. I’ll start organizing that, if you take care of the serial killer parade.
Their are girls playing on my sons hockey team and they change in front of each other. They both take their shirts off and the boys are bare while the girls wear some sort of sports bra/undershirt. For bottoms both seem to wear a type of boxer short.
Its not considered polite to stare at anyone and I make it a point to not be in the room when they are changing.
I believe that’s the old “separate but equal” solution. And I believe the Supreme Court ruled that out 60 years ago.
Because the very practice of separation identifies those separated as inferior in some way.
Also, the court found that “equal” was almost never equal in practice.
I’d suspect that the private room offered to this student was not equipped like the typical high school locker room, with lockers, changing benches, showers, toilets, etc. Most likely a handy storage room for equipement, that they hastily rearranged to have a bit of open space.
No, it was a private faculty restroom and the complaint is that it is “dehumanizing” to use a “gender neutral” facility.
Separate is NOT equal in this case, sure–most girls would be pretty happy to have a private bathroom in high school and do not insist on changing near each other.
“Susie, everyone thinks you are a freak and they are uncomfortable with you around, so we’ve decided to give you a private dressing room where you won’t bother people by existing.”
“Oh, goody goody gumdrops!”
Forcing other students to change next to someone they are uncomfortable around will fix that?
If people don’t want you around, that’s unfortunate, but making them be near you is not going to change their minds.
Lila Perry also insists that the hundreds of girls protesting are actually NOT uncomfortable and are just pretending to be because they are bigots.
Habeed, this argument doesn’t work, and you know exactly why.
We don’t put rapists and child molesters in jail because they are different and different is bad. We put them in jail because they hurt people.
Gay people don’t hurt people by being gay. Transgender people don’t hurt people by being transgender (and no, I don’t count hurting their delicate sensibilities).
So your big mystery is now solved. This is why there are gay pride parades and not murderer parades. Can we stop with this inane and irrelevant analogy?
Looking at everybody’s posted experience in high school showers, all I have to say is, man, I went to a weird high school. It may have been different in the girl’s locker room, but there was no particular body modesty on the boys’ side, even with showering taking place.
I’d bet that a significant number of the people who are upset are not convinced that the person is transgender, and that he’s a straight guy who’s figured out a genius method of seeing naked teenage girls. There’s also the issue that the transgender student might be gay as well.
Even if the student was claiming to be a gay male and not transgender, these people would still be freaking out. Don’t even talk to them about the possibility of lesbians in the shower room…
You know, it’s not actually illegal to be transgender. Could you stop with the comparisons to criminals?
Some of these types of people aren’t “deviant”, they’re just different. Celebrating diversity and differences is a good thing, particularly if it’s random and capricious… if you’re messed up and there’s nothing to be done about it, which would you rather do? Be miserable, depressed, unhappy, and live in a box, or celebrate your weirdness?
Do you see the distinction between being different and hurting someone because of it, and being different and not hurting someone?
Actually, it will. The military has proven this repeatedly–first when units were racially integrated, and second when gay folks were allowed in the military. One of the best ways of changing people’s minds about wanting you around, assuming that their objections are not based on specific unpleasant aspects of your personality, is to be around them.
The student insists that the girls are not “uncomfortable,” but instead lying bigots. I don’t think they will soon be BFFs if sufficient force is applied.
Those specific kids? Probably not. Trans folks and cis folks in general? I think this is an excellent way forward.
Teenagers, especially teenager girls, are always weirded-out, creeped-out, and bothered by something, especially when it comes to who is and isn’t looking at their bodies. Sometimes they are reasonable (my middle PE teacher would always linger just a wee bit too long while we’d be undressing). But most times it’s just self-imposed paranoia and self-consciousness.
If many teenagers had their choice, they’d vote to have separate locker rooms for the “cool kids” and the “losers”. Because ew, who wants to look at half-naked uglies who wear granny panties, amirite? LOL!! Girls going “ew!” over stupid stuff is nothing new.
This is just my mean, heartless way of saying I don’t give a fuck what those kids feel like. People feel all kinds of ways–doesn’t mean they are being rational and that policy needs to cater to them.
Both. Also , I wouldn’t want a transgirl exposed to locker room behavior either - THAT wouldn’t be healthy.
I have an issue with locker rooms to start with. When my daughter was in seventh grade, she was harassed (by other cis girls) in the locker room. Its an easy place, out of the teachers direct supervision, to harass - which is the official hobby of middle schoolers to start with. I’m lucky, my child’s body image is pretty secure and she felt comfortable speaking up to us. So we (my husband and I and she) went to the PE teacher and they addressed the issue (they moved my daughter’s locker closer to where she could be watched and away from her tormentors). Those two things aren’t always true in middle schoolers.
If it were me, I’d fix the issue of transkids in locker rooms - and others - by dumping PE altogether as a requirement. I know there is an obesity epidemic, but if anyone believes that the kids who need the exercise of PE are using PE to get the exercise - and not just walking around the track when they should be running, or making a half hearted attempt to play basketball, I have a bridge in Brooklyn for sale.
So when YOU are the one concerned, it is “reasonable,” but the concerns of others are irrational?
The only student in this situation asking to be catered to is the one insisting that a private dressing room is “dehumanizing” and that nothing will do but undressing next to girls.
Which may be kind of unfair. I do see among some a propensity to throw around the b-bomb if someone does not immediately have a scales-off-the-eyes unreserved conversion the moment they are informed they are wrong. However, let’s grant they ARE sincerely uncomfortable about it: The answer may ***still ***be “well, too bad it makes you uncomfortable. Deal with it.”
Or maybe that.
However I can emphatize with Dangerosa’s position – the girl’s locker room may be a safer space for the TG student but there was absolutely NO guarantee it would be pleasant.
Then private dressing rooms would be in order, but this student has deemed gender-neutral rooms too “dehumanizing” to use. I understand why this child would think that to be neither male nor female is not to be human, as society smashes this into our faces at every opportunity, but it is simply not true. We are people, not genders.
Personally I did not like PE, as I was harassed in the locker room and on the playing field, but getting rid of it is not the answer. Most people need exercise and walking around the track IS exercise. Sitting in a chair for an hour only to get up and walk to another chair in a different room six times a day is not a good alternative. There are a lot of ways PE could be fixed without throwing it out altogether.
This same issue has come up in the adult workplace, specifically an on-site gym in a federal office. People are trying to be respectful, but yes there are issues and concerns. https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/atwork-advice-barbara-is-back-and-now-she-wants-to-use-the-locker-room/2015/08/12/e6c28914-4050-11e5-8d45-d815146f81fa_story.html
If everyone gets equal gender-neutral spaces that would be fine with it. But individual segregation has too loaded a history.
Also, transgender is NOT being “neither male nor female”.
Honestly, with a daughter and a son around that age, I’d say the girls locker room is less safe. Oh, she won’t get beat up, but if you want your body imaged questioned, hanging around middle school girls is the way to do it. I suspect that suicide is as big a risk or bigger for these kids - and girls are much, much crueler than boys when it comes to psychological abuse.