{"id":4486,"date":"2016-05-15T07:52:29","date_gmt":"2016-05-15T13:52:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/?p=4486"},"modified":"2016-05-15T07:52:29","modified_gmt":"2016-05-15T13:52:29","slug":"the-transgender-locker-room-guidance-power-and-punishment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2016\/05\/the-transgender-locker-room-guidance-power-and-punishment.html","title":{"rendered":"The transgender locker room “guidance”, power, and punishment"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File%3AHK_%E5%A0%85%E5%B0%BC%E5%9C%B0%E5%9F%8E_Kennedy_Town_%E5%A3%AB%E7%BE%8E%E9%9D%9E%E8%B7%AF%E5%B8%82%E6%94%BF%E5%A4%A7%E5%BB%88_Smithfield_Municipal_Services_Building_%E6%9B%B4%E8%A1%A3%E5%AE%A4_changing_room_Sept-2011.jpg;<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s an article, one of many, about the Obama administration\u2019s decree on transgender students: \u201cObama Administration forces transgender bathroom rules on every school in America<\/a>.\u201d \u00a0The key bit comes as a quote from the Washington Post:<\/p>\n

The directive comes from two top administration officials: Catherine E. Lhamon, the assistant secretary of education for civil rights, and Vanita Gupta, head of the Justice Department\u2019s Civil Rights Division. It will put state and local officials and higher-education institutions on notice that they risk losing federal education aid if they limit students to areas or teams based on their gender assigned at birth.<\/p>\n

The action comes just days after the Justice Department and the state of North Carolina filed dueling lawsuits over a new law requiring individuals in that state to use bathrooms based on their birth gender.<\/p>\n

Citing Title IX, which prohibits sexual discrimination at educational institutions that receive federal funding, the two officials warn that the obligation \u201cto ensure nondiscrimination on the basis of sex requires schools to provide transgender students equal access to educational programs and activities even in circumstances in which other students, parents, or community members raise objections or concerns.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs is consistently recognized in civil rights cases, the desire to accommodate others\u2019 discomfort cannot justify a policy that singles out and disadvantages a particular class of students,\u201d reads the letter, which was obtained by The Washington Post.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The bottom line: schools have been told they\u2019ll have Title IX funding pulled unless they permit declared transgender or gendernonconforming students full access to restrooms, locker rooms, sports teams, and overnight accomodations and dormitories conforming to their declared gender, and protect them from any form of actual or perceived harassment, or lack of acceptance, from staff or fellow students.<\/p>\n

All of this rests on an administration declaration that Title IX\u2019s protection against discrimination on account of sex also encompasses protection against discrimination based on \u201cgender identity.\u201d \u00a0And it rests on a further understanding: \u00a0that one\u2019s sex\/gender is determined based on one\u2019s perception, not on one\u2019s physiology. \u00a0 Hence, \u201ctransgender girls\u201d are not simply \u201cboys who feel like girls\u201d but \u201creal girls\u201d who should be treated as such, and vice-versa, because, in the Administration\u2019s interpretion, it\u2019s illegal to treat one \u201ckind of girl\u201d different than another.<\/p>\n

In ordinary circumstances, it\u2019s poor rhetoric to resort to \u201cdictionary definitions.\u201d \u00a0It\u2019s the classic introductory paragraph in a high school essay. \u00a0But here\u2019s how the online Webster\u2019s dictionary defines \u201cwoman\u201d<\/a>:<\/p>\n

an adult female human being<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

and what does \u201cfemale\u201d mean<\/a>?<\/p>\n

of or relating to the sex that can produce young or lay eggs.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This, of course, has nothing to do with how one perceives onesself. \u00a0But in 2016,\u00a0the\u00a0claim of \u201cidentity\u201d has become enough, according to \u201ctrans\u201d advocates, to \u201cbecome\u201d a given gender \u2014 whether male, female, or some concept of Third Gender.<\/p>\n

Certainly it wasn\u2019t that way, not too long ago, when the terminology consisted of \u201csex changes\u201d and \u201cbecoming male\/female\u201d as a result of hormone administration and surgery. \u00a0Now that\u2019s been replaced by \u201cgender confirmation surgery\u201d and the insistence that such a person really is a girl<\/strong> (or a boy) regardless of chromosomes, or hormones, or genitalia, from the moment that person \u201cfeels\u201d\/\u201didentifies\u201d that way, or, really, from birth, on the expectation that this feeling\/identiy has always been there, even if the individual was unable to understand or articulate it. \u00a0Hence, the outward appearances of such a person, rather than the inward \u201cidentity,\u201d are the \u201cbirth defects\u201d to be remedied with surgery, or even are irrelevant, so that we see floating around the internet claims that it\u2019s bigoted for a man to be unwilling to date a \u201cgirlfriend with a penis.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fundamentally, the claim is this: \u00a0something in your biology controls how your brain perceives your gender. \u00a0If you \u201cidentify as a woman\u201d \u2014 even if born male \u2014 then, this thinking goes, you truly\u00a0are<\/strong> a woman, because that\u2019s something hardwired in your brain, not a voluntary choice, in the same way as sexual orientation is determined to be hardwired \u2014 in each case due to genetics or the consequences of in-utero development.<\/p>\n

But this is just one claim, one way of viewing what it means to be \u201cmale\u201d and \u201cfemale.\u201d \u00a0There is nothing particularly more \u201cright\u201d about this than the opposite claim that one\u2019s sex, for humans as for all animals, is based on chromosomes, and reasonably classified into which type of the species, childbearing or not, one is, with an asterisk only for individuals who are intersex due to a chromosomal abnormality, or as a consequence of in utero<\/em> development. \u00a0The fact that various local governments have accepted the concept of becoming the opposite sex, legally, under various conditions (requiring surgery, hormones, or merely a declaration) is a matter of, well, law<\/em>, and has to do with a balancing of interests and a creation of a legal concept that isn\u2019t in line with biological reality.<\/p>\n

And the treatment of children in school is a balancing of interests. \u00a0It is not as simple as a declaration that \u201ctransgender girls are girls, full stop.\u201d \u00a0Should a preteen girl be obliged to change in locker rooms alongside (to sidestep terminology) individuals with penises? \u00a0Should a girl be assigned a \u201ctransgirl\u201d roommate on a school trip, or, upon reaching adulthood, as a college roommate? \u00a0Is a girl a \u201cbigot\u201d for being unwilling to change in front of a classmate with male genitalia? \u00a0What if that girl is from a religion that is particularly concerned with issues of modesty, such as Islam, and with the (in)appropriateness of girls viewing male genitalia, and vice versa? \u00a0And, no, it is simply not practical to ask schools to undertake the massive remodeling project (both in terms of cost and added space required) to provide individual, wholly private changing and showering stalls for each student in gym class.<\/p>\n

What the Administration has done is such a shocking overreach that it\u2019s hard to comprehend. \u00a0This is not a matter of \u201crights\u201d or a simple issue of a proper application of existing, settled law. \u00a0This is the brute-force creation of law.<\/p>\n

And their declaration, knowing that local school districts will have to fight back, and will generally prefer to cave than fuss with the expenditures it requires, and are at risk of like-minded judges confirming the Administration\u2019s declaration \u2014 well, it seems like nothing other than a raw exercise in power, and a punitive one at that, meant to strike back at conservatives, with the declaration that schoolchildren, and their parents, have no right to traditional sex-segregated changing spaces.<\/p>\n

After all, why this shift, from \u201csex is based on physiology, but we allow legal sex changes as an accommodation\u201d to \u201ca transgirl is a girl and has the legal rights thereof\u201d? \u00a0It\u2019s not a matter of science. \u00a0Science can claim that the feeling of one\u2019s \u201ctrue sex\u201d may be deeply hardwired, but the determination\u00a0that the self-perception trumps the physiology of penis, uterus, etc., is a decision, not of science, but of society and law.<\/p>\n

And once you shift from the notion of accommodation and decent treatment for people in difficult situations (that is, individuals who would experience real, significant, and lifelong distress if unable to undergo the set of procedures labelled \u201csex change\u201d and be treated by others and receive legal recognition as the other sex), to demands of \u201crights\u201d, you can access that language that says that your opponents are bigots whose concerns are not to be balanced but disregarded \u2014 which, of course, gives you power.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Image: \u00a0a generic locker room, from \u00a0https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File%3AHK_%E5%A0%85%E5%B0%BC%E5%9C%B0%E5%9F%8E_Kennedy_Town_%E5%A3%AB%E7%BE%8E%E9%9D%9E%E8%B7%AF%E5%B8%82%E6%94%BF%E5%A4%A7%E5%BB%88_Smithfield_Municipal_Services_Building_%E6%9B%B4%E8%A1%A3%E5%AE%A4_changing_room_Sept-2011.jpg; By Limysei1235 (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-sa\/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here\u2019s an article, one of many, about the Obama administration\u2019s decree on transgender students: \u201cObama Administration forces transgender bathroom rules on every school in America.\u201d \u00a0The key bit comes as a quote from the Washington Post: The directive comes from two top administration officials: Catherine E. Lhamon, the assistant secretary of education for civil rights, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":4384,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[374],"tags":[149],"class_list":["post-4486","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-transgender"],"yoast_head":"\nThe transgender locker room "guidance", power, and punishment<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Here's an article, one of many, about the Obama administration's decree on transgender students: "Obama Administration forces transgender bathroom rules\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2016\/05\/the-transgender-locker-room-guidance-power-and-punishment.html\" \/>\n<meta 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