Posted on 11/05/2015 9:09:37 AM PST by Kaslin
High school locker rooms are not places kids go to feel comfortable and relaxed. Baring your entire body to classmates and adults -- friends, enemies, strangers, coaches -- is a disagreeable obligation for most students. But for decades, the desire of adolescents for privacy has been deemed irrelevant.
That's no longer the case in Palatine, Illinois, where the public school district had to decide how to handle a transgender student who was born male but lives as a female.
The youngster's choice is clearly not a passing fancy or a ruse to shower with the girls, as Mike Huckabee might suspect. Her passport identifies her as a girl, which is what she looks like. She had her name legally changed. She's getting hormone treatments.
The school district has largely accepted her identification, letting her play on a girls' sports team and use the girls' restrooms. But it draws the line at the locker room, where it says other students must be protected.
Its solution is to provide a private space this student must use to change clothes. Several curtained areas were recently set up for the benefit of anyone who wants more privacy. The transgender girl, however, would have no choice.
This remedy doesn't satisfy the Office for Civil Rights of the Department of Education, which this week decided that restricting locker room access to "Student A" is a violation of Title IX, which forbids discrimination on the basis of sex in education programs. The policy means "providing services to her in a different manner, subjecting her to different rules of behavior, and subjecting her to different treatment on the basis of sex," it said.
Critics may say: Of course it does, because she is different. But mere difference is not enough to justify different treatment. Women differ from men, blacks differ from whites, and Catholics differ from Jews. Yet all are entitled to equal treatment.
The least enlightened approach would be to say that anyone born male should be treated as male, no matter what. But that solution has its own problems. Would girls be any more comfortable changing clothes alongside a girl who identifies as a boy, and is undergoing physical transition, than a boy who identifies as a girl?
Another option is to treat transgender kids as a third sex, assigning them to separate facilities. But that would officially stigmatize them as freaks. It would also exclude them from some normal activities, like boys' or girls' sports teams or other clubs.
What does that leave? Either treating Student A as a girl for all purposes, as the government insists, or for all purposes but one, as the school district has chosen.
The latter approach may look perfectly reasonable, and the district deserves credit for going as far as it has. But other districts in the area have found there is nothing to fear from the option recommended by the feds. The suburban Daily Herald did a survey and found that two large high schools, Barrington and Stevenson, report no complaints about letting transgender kids have normal access to the locker rooms and restrooms they choose.
The Palatine district says its goal is "to protect the privacy rights of all students when changing clothes or showering." But the same reasoning would justify separating gay kids from straight ones, lest the straight ones draw unwanted gazes. In practice, adolescents (like adults) have easily adjusted to what once would have been seen as an awful intrusion.
The district's concern about privacy is oddly narrow. Until recently, kids who prefer not to expose their bodies to anyone were obliged to change in restroom stalls. The superintendent acknowledges that most students don't shower at all, presumably for reasons of modesty.
When they have to disrobe, some students have friends shield them behind a towel or hold towels in their mouths to cover their fronts. Until Student A came along, privacy was not a district priority.
The feds' solution is a sensible compromise. It suggests that the district provide curtained changing areas, available to all, without forcing anyone to use them. As it happens, Student A says she would be happy to use them as long as she has a free choice.
If the district is serious about privacy, it can offer more spaces that cater to the needs of modesty. It might also post signs stating a locker room rule that most kids already know: Keep your eyes to yourself.
Is that what locker rooms look like now?
Where’s the lockers?
Is it my just perception or do we only hear stories about transgender (?) males going into women’s locker rooms? How come a like number of reports don’t talk about transgender girls going into boys locker rooms? There must be some physiological issue here, because surely there isn’t any voyeurism going on?
Again here I notice the author uses the term youngster, but gives the example of a male who wants to be treated as a female.
Get YOUR children out of the government indoctrination centers - NOW!
Good point and good questions. I wish I had the answers. I am amazed it has gone this far.
I wonder is this transgender ‘boy’ will be able to contain his arousal when in the presence of ‘girls’?
A lot of teenage girls are confused in a variety of ways. Confused girls are nothing new. [The same is true for boys.] A lot of teenage girls wear jeans and a t-shirt, so that is nothing new. What is new is pretending that putting a dress on someone with male anatomy somehow changes who they are.
In all the cases that have made the news, how come no girl wants to change close in the boy’s locker room?
So, the transgender boy may be also into girls - not guys. Would that result in a problem in the showers, e.g. possible erection? If yes, wouldn’t that be sexual harassment in that setting?
We really don’t need to go there in public schools.
Solution. Stop taking federal dollars and do whatever you want to do. It’s the addiction to federal dollars that gives them all the power. If parents understood the alternatives I’ll bet they would work together to find a funding solution that didn’t involve federal dollars.
“Is it my just perception or do we only hear stories about transgender (?) males going into women’s locker rooms? How come a like number of reports don’t talk about transgender girls going into boys locker rooms?”
Well, this psychological condition is almost exclusively a male phenomenon. That isn’t to say there aren’t women who like to crossdress, but those are mainly lesbians who are not affected with actual “gender dysphoria”, but just want to look butcher in order to make it easier to attract other women. Obviously a butch lesbian wouldn’t have much interest in getting into the boy’s locker room.
Male “transgenders”, on the other hand, are often heterosexual (like Bruce Jenner, they are still attracted to women even after they ‘transition’), at least on the surface. So I don’t think it’s any wonder that they want to get into the girl’s locker room.
I’m not at all surprised at this from Steve Chapman.
Exactly. You are too logical for these people.
If a person has XX chromosomes, they are a female...
If a person has XY chromosomes, they are a male....
This is SCIENTIFIC FACT.......
It doesn’t matter what you think or what you say the brain thinks...
The real fact of the matter is which chromosomes you have...
It doesn’t matter either if you have something surgically removed, added, or altered...
Again, the ONLY real fact is your chromosomes....and that cannot be changed...
Unfortunately, that’s true.
yes, and yes.
Another option is to treat transgender kids as a third sex, assigning them to separate facilities. But that would officially stigmatize them as freaks.
***
They are freaks, Mr. Chapman. Now, step away from the bong.
No need to do this anymore, just pretend to be transgendered.
I used to date a guy that told me about a classmate walking around with a woodie, in the locker room. I was so clueless back then that my boyfriend had to explain to me why they beat the shit out of him.
One of my daughters asked me, "What would you do if I was transgender?" I replied, "How would we tell?"
Then I said, "If that's something you feel you have to do to get attention, knock yourself out, but we're not going to call you Albert or anything."
That is child abuse to the worst degree.
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