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What’s Wrong with the World is dedicated to the defense of what remains of Christendom, the civilization made by the men of the Cross of Christ. Athwart two hostile Powers we stand: the Jihad and Liberalism...read more

The Real War on Women

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Comments (29)

This isn't just a meme that I'm sharing, a la Facebook. Though I worry about admitting to it, this is my original content, and thus makes sense as a blog post.

Does the Obama decree make it explicit what it means to treat student's consistent with their gender identity? What if a school just does not have facilities for students with that gender identity because they do not have facilities for any gender identity?

So often we are expected to just assume these things, and too often we do and play into their hands. In this case, we are expected to assume that, for example, all those girls (real, biological girls) gender identify as girls. Why should we make that assumption? Why should we assume they have a gender identity at all? Just because some boy claims a girl "gender identity" it does not suddenly follow that all those girls also claim a girl "gender identity".

Perhaps one of the most subversive things we can all do is to refuse to take on either a sexual orientation/identity or gender identity. Just say that we dont have one. We are men and women, not sexual and gender identities.

DR84,

"Perhaps one of the most subversive things we can all do is to refuse to take on either a sexual orientation/identity or gender identity. Just say that we dont have one. We are men and women, not sexual and gender identities."

Brings to mind Matthew 19 (“Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female.') Someone I know had the impish suggestion of labeling all restrooms with a male sex organ or a female sex organ -- not ideal for the kids, but I kind of like the idea just to mess with the social justice warriors. What do you mean our restrooms are not inclusive -- we want everyone to use the facility that is designed best for their biological needs -- that's why we provided the helpful labeling!

DR84 the Obama "guidance" goes on for pages, and yes, it does say exactly, in excruciating detail, what the administration means by "treating students consistent with their gender identity." And it would definitely make it impossible for a school to have separate boys' and girls' facilities and maintain those consistently. I was listening to a talk-show host read quotations from it the other day. I suppose a school could make _all_ the boys and girls shower and change in the same area, but I'm quite sure that isn't what you mean by saying that no one has a gender identity!

This should have a really big impact on Christian colleges that take federal funds. Wonder what they'll do. Room men with women in the dorms?

As it shows above, the document makes it clear that a "transgendered person" is one whose gender identity doesn't match the sex on his or her birth certificate. It further explicitly says that a transgender female is someone whose "sex assigned at birth" is male, but who identifies as female. It further says that, to receive Title IX funds, you must allow transgender females to use any female bathroom or locker room if you have them available. You may also not ask questions of transgender students that you don't ask of everyone else.

The only ways not to have effeminate boys in your locker room are by having individual locker rooms or by foregoing Title IX funds.

Next up: randomly drawing transgender roommates at college.

Smart governor: change birth certificate to "has penis" or "has vagina" instead of "male" or "female". Then claim "we stopped assigning sex at birth. A person cannot claim they are transgender female here (i.e. a person 'assigned' a sex at birth), because we never assign anyone a sex. They can claim 'female with a penis' if they wish, that's their concern".

Then re-designate state institutions' bathrooms and locker rooms as "with (penis)" and "without", and refuse to call it a "sex" distinction at all. It's an organ distinction, and since that distinction DOES NOT distinguish between males and females (they say) it cannot possibly be a sex distinction.

Revise dorms. Let one dorm be "for those who have a penis and only wish to room with those who have a penis", same for those without, and a third for those willing to vary the matter. Cease to call them "mens' dorms" and "women's dorms".

Someone on Rod Dreher's blog suggested that, if no other options can work (such as Tony's suggestion), we can wreck havoc by playing by the rules. There is no objective basis to determine if someone is "transgender". Accordingly, one can claim to be "transgender" and not even have to pretend or believe in it at all. It is simply their rules and we are just going along with them. So, wreck their system by getting as many people to identify as "transgender" as possible. It would help if enough boys could just say they are girls and play on the girls basketball team for example. Make the lives of the administrators extremely difficult and anger all the parents. I have been intrigued by this option. We know their rules are flat out stupid, incoherent, and unworkable, why not show them by example?

If there are clear moral reasons why we should not, I would be interested in knowing*. I am struggling to come up with any. This to me involves no deception or even believing that people are "transgender" or anything like that. One only has to follow their rules and expect them to follow them in return...i.e. if you say you are a "girl" they have to treat you like a "girl".

*Obviously we would not want to encourage boys and girls to actually use the same locker room or bathroom at the same time even if they are allowed to. This seems to be the only possible flaw here so far as I can tell.

Obviously we would not want to encourage boys and girls to actually use the same locker room or bathroom at the same time even if they are allowed to. This seems to be the only possible flaw here so far as I can tell.

And it's a biggie, isn't it?

Here's another: You'd be suggesting to your son that he lie. He's supposed to _say_ that he identifies as a girl--in other words, that he thinks of himself as a girl. But he doesn't. Teaching your kids to lie in order to get back at the bad guys is using your kids as pawns in a political game. It's not right.

Here's another: You want your children actually to be healthy. It's not healthy for a boy to be pretending to think that he's a girl all day. The "and not pretend to believe in it at all" isn't going to work. The Obama rules don't require the school to let a boy play on the girls' basketball team who says, rolling his eyes, in a voice dripping with sarcasm, "Oh, yeah, I identify as a girl" and then goes on being called "Johnny" and wanting to be referred to with male pronouns all day long. He can't just say it once and be done with it. He's supposed to go around at school pretending that he's a girl. Yet if you want your son to be healthy, you _don't_ want him to insist on being called "Jane" and referred to with female pronouns all day long. That kind of long-term play-acting is not the mark or maker of a healthy childhood, even if you're telling him, "Hey, kid, do this as a game to troll the system." Your kid has his life to live, a healthy identity to develop, and growing up to do. It would be insane to ask him to pretend to be a crazy, perverted, gender-confused kid day after day as part of some kind of Grand Plan.

I can't help wondering if anyone who seriously suggests this has enough imagination to think of really sitting down and suggesting this kind of day after day play-acting to one's son.

People should be treated as ends, not as means. Don't treat your son as a means to an end. He'll have a hard enough time growing up in this crazy world.

I agree that play acting is a problem. So, yes, as you describe it this is a terrible idea, and if this cannot be done without play acting then obviously this is a non option. I apologize for even have brought it up. What I hand in mind does not seem to me to be play acting, though. Under transgender ideology boy and girl refer to identical things. So a boy does not actually have to believe he is a girl or pretend to be a girl, he just has to understand that by their rules everyone is a girl and a boy because they are the same thing. The only difference is which one you want to call yourself, and that is no difference at all.

I think this blog does a very good job at explaining transgender (or GENDER has he refers to it) ideology: http://gentlemind.blogspot.com/

As I understand the Obama rules, the idea is that the person is supposed to "identify" with a particular gender.

Sure, gender theory is postmodern, and as such is incoherent. I get that. But when it comes to deciding what is going to "count," we have a pretty good idea of how this is going to work and not work. What wouldn't happen would be something like this: Johnny says to his school principal, "Look, I want everyone to keep calling me 'he', and I want to keep using the boys' bathroom and shower room and everything. However, for purposes of being on the girls' basketball team only, I and all my friends here, who feel the same way I do, want to 'identify' as girls because we understand that this is what we are allowed to do now, and we want to play on the girls' basketball squad against the girls from the other schools. Okay?" And the teacher has to say, "Okay."

(Then the hope is that this prompts some kind of backlash somewhere, somehow.)

Johnny himself doesn't believe that everyone is a girl and everyone is a boy because they are the same thing, and he isn't going to pretend that he does. And any such blatant admission of trolling the system is going to get nowhere from the outset.

Not to mention the fact that Johnny has much better things to do with his time. Like growing up, playing sports with other boys, and trying to have as normal a life as possible.

If they followed their own rules, they would have to let Johnny and his friends play on the "girls" basketball team. They don't get to ask questions or make judgement calls (as if there was anything to judge anyway). However, I suppose we cannot exactly expect them to follow their own rules.

This had not struck me before, but that this decree from Obama targets children specifically is one of the more sinister aspects to it. You mentioned kids having a normal as life as possible, but what would we think if math teachers were required to teach 2+2=5 in public schools? What sort of life could we really expect those children to have? It's not like this only means that there might be a few boys who get access in the girls locker room and get to play sports with the girls because they really believe they are girls. These kids are going to be taught that that boy really is a girl and that anyone who sees otherwise is a hateful, bigot. I think that is probably worse than teaching 2+2=5.

Anyway, I'm an ideas person, I have good ones and bad ones. It can be difficult to sort out which is which without going through them. Blowing up this incoherent system before it ever gets fully off the ground appeals to me, but I won't pursue this idea further.

Rod Dreher has ideas for making private school more accessible (as part of the in progress as an idea Benedict Option). Perhaps with the help of former public school teachers who cannot get behind transgender ideology. That's clearly a better idea than what I suggested. Except for one thing, why should we think these new or expanded private schools won't be crushed by the powers that be? I doubt the Klan could have started opening private schools just for white kids to indoctrinate them in the ways of white supremacy and gotten away with it. We already know they see us as no better than the Klan, and probably worse.


I apologize for even have brought it up.
Anyway, I'm an ideas person, I have good ones and bad ones. It can be difficult to sort out which is which without going through them. Blowing up this incoherent system before it ever gets fully off the ground appeals to me, but I won't pursue this idea further.

The second is right, no need to apologize. The idea doesn't work, but you can't know it doesn't work until you work through the details, and that means considering the idea. Nothing wrong with considering bad ideas, that's how you figure out which ones are bad. I thought about it too, and I discarded it as a bad idea, but it took me working through exactly the same points Lydia mentioned.

As I understand the Obama rules, the idea is that the person is supposed to "identify" with a particular gender.

Sure, gender theory is postmodern, and as such is incoherent. I get that. But when it comes to deciding what is going to "count," we have a pretty good idea of how this is going to work and not work. What wouldn't happen would be something like this: Johnny says to his school principal, "Look, I want everyone to keep calling me 'he', and I want to keep using the boys' bathroom and shower room and everything.

My feeling is that we should attack, directly, the notion that a person must "identify" with a gender AT ALL.

For example: why must a transgender-girl go to the principal to act like a girl? None of the other girls do? Treating "her" differently is WRONG, dang it! She shouldn't have to go to the authorities to act like a girl, she should just act like a girl, just like girls act all day long.

That doesn't help us here, though, because we don't want son Johnny to "act like a girl" at all.

But no, attack the very notion of "gender" assignment - whether "given" at birth or chosen later. Attack the post-modern nonsense more deeply: demand that they justify their actions NO MATTER WHAT action you take. Here's an example: in some schools (more in colleges than in high schools, but that's OK, it works better for a college student anyway), there are sports that field a women's team but not a men's team, just as colleges field a men's football team but not a women's team. So take a women's team for which there is no men's team (volleyball, field hockey, and softball are common), a sport which the boy actually enjoys playing (even a little, that's enough), and SIMPLY WALK ON THE FIELD. Don't say "I 'feel' like a girl." You shouldn't have to SAY what you feel like - none of the other participants do, why should you? When they point out that "this is a girl's team", you simply respond "Yes, I noticed that, thank you. I enjoy playing this sport." Don't let their pre-suppositions matter to your actions, because their own theory destroys the meaning of "girl's team" anyway. If they try to ask you "why are you trying to get on this team" you say "to play the sport, of course", NEVER TRY TO DEFEND YOUR GENDER. They don't have to defend theirs, simply deny to them the right to ASK about yours.

Just keep pressing home the fact that THEIR sense of what you may or may not be thinking about your gender is immaterial: you (a) don't have to tell them what you 'feel', (b) you don't have to accept what they mean by "girl" in order to want to play on the team, and (c) under post-post-post modern theory, you can wish or intend or feel or choose to act a "role" one minute without "being" that role permanently, because gender isn't permanent, and after all, "roles" are arbitrary boundaries that simply maintain patriarchal tyranny anyway. Since their choice to have a "girl's" volleyball team implies that they have set up an artificial boundary between "girl" and "boy" that makes no sense, you simply defy that their artificial boundary applies to you. But you don't defend your actions in words about your gender, you defy in actions. When it comes to words, you simply refuse to accept that their pre-suppositions about gender mean anything. You don't have to CLAIM a gender, because "gender" is now empty as a category. So, when they ask questions about your gender, always, always, always deflect answering by refusing to accept their pre-suppositions. Q: "Do you feel like a girl"? Answer: "What do you mean by 'feel like girl'? Is there a specific way girls feel?" Any possible answer they give to what it means to "feel like a girl" can be found to have obvious counter-examples, particularly in people who are "in process" of discerning their gender without being sure about it.

There is no objective basis to determine if someone is "transgender".

Technically someone is transgender the moment they experience gender dysphoria and claim they're something they're not. Everything between that and the full surgery is included in the standard definition now.

It is simply their rules and we are just going along with them. So, wreck their system by getting as many people to identify as "transgender" as possible.

Get a bunch of people to stand in opposite sex bathrooms in liberal areas and hand out pamphlets explaining why gender dysphoria is still considered a mental illness. It's a trolling that comes with a built-in cover: why do you hate me for raising awareness about my mental health?

Technically someone is transgender the moment they experience gender dysphoria and claim they're something they're not. Everything between that and the full surgery is included in the standard definition now.

Sure, but that was last week's definition. Since "gender" is fluid now, you can experience gender alteration WITHOUT "dysphoria", and simply assert variance from a previous stance about your gender. ("Oh, I am feeling more aggressive today: I am experiencing 'male' today.")

Remember: since it's about what you assert ("feelings" is too narrow), you can assert whatever gender YOU WANT to assert based on whatever connection with that gender YOU WANT to say is connected to that gender. If you associate 'female' with a heavier tendency to sarcasm, then when you feel like being sarcasm you can assert "this is me being female today". But remember, there are 56 - oops, it went up to 71 - flavors, so no need to limit it to just male or female. Do you know what "intersex", "polygender", or "genderfluid" is like? Well, neither does anyone else, so if you assert that today you are feeling polygender, how can anyone disagree?

Sure, but that was last week's definition. Since "gender" is fluid now, you can experience gender alteration WITHOUT "dysphoria", and simply assert variance from a previous stance about your gender. ("Oh, I am feeling more aggressive today: I am experiencing 'male' today.")

That only makes it easier for men fed up with this nonsense to troll the left. And make no mistake, Tony. They won't back off until they can't escape the consequences of their actions.

Concerning Christian schools and colleges, California is on it: http://www.californiafamily.org/2016/attack-on-california-religious-colleges-sb-1146/

What should conservatives make of the fact that science has shown that biological sex isn't binary?

See this 2015 article from Nature for a survey of the scientific findings: http://www.nature.com/news/sex-redefined-1.16943

What should conservatives make of the fact that science has shown that biological sex isn't binary?

See this 2015 article from Nature for a survey of the scientific findings: http://www.nature.com/news/sex-redefined-1.16943

Oh, gosh, my whole worldview is shattered. Now we just can't tell whether someone is a man or a woman! We must immediately abolish all references to and policy based on the assumption of binary biological sex because of these "findings"!

Okay, maybe not.

On what grounds do you reject these findings?

I reject the utterly, obviously, stupid, programmatic, politicized interpretation of the findings, all of which concern rare genetic anomalies causing *misdevelopment* of the normal sex differentiation in humans. Or, in mice, researchers deliberately screwing up the mice's normal sexual organs by injecting things into them. That a small proportion of unfortunate people exist who have genetic problems affecting their reproductive organ development and sex development does not support the transgender agenda except in Leftist Crazyland. Indeed, some of the parents of children with these genetic flaws have been appalled at the co-opting and hence disappearance of genuine support groups and help because of the transgender agenda.

I agree that we should reject the politicized interpretation of these findings. But do they at the very least show that humans aren't either male or female? Or is this conclusion unwarranted? Perhaps we could argue that intersex people are male (or female), but this would require defining 'male' and 'female', which is difficult to do - should we define it based on chromosomes? on genitalia? on gonads? on reproductive capacities? On what basis do we decide what the criteria is here?

I'm not saying there's no answer here, but I think conservatives need to develop a metaphysics and epistemology of sex in response to contemporary gender theory. We need good, robust philosophy to counter bad philosophy, to paraphrase C.S. Lewis.

But do they at the very least show that humans aren't either male or female?

No.

Or is this conclusion unwarranted?

Yes.

People with intersex conditions are people with a privation. They are biologically disabled. Do we say that, because some people are paralyzed, nobody objectively has the use of his legs? If someone is born without one arm, do we say that clearly there is a "spectrum" of armed-ness among human beings and that whether or not you have an arm is a matter of how you mentally "identify"?

This has *precisely nothing* to do with "gender identity." A person with an intersex condition has a problem *not* because he "identifies" psychologically with one gender but has the body of another but because his *body* has biologically ambiguous characteristics. If anything this *affirms* the normalcy of sexual binaries because a) such conditions are extremely rare and are clearly not _normative_ for human beings, b) such people are in a deprived or unfortunate condition.

In contrast, the transgender movement says that a person with a completely _normal_ male body who "identifies" as female because he doesn't "feel" like a man should be said really to *be* a woman. It is the ultimate postmodern theory. What you feel like creates metaphysical reality.

Those rare people with intersex conditions need to be helped from a perspective securely grounded in reality--for example, the reality that it is unlikely that they will ever be able legitimately to marry, because their bodies are badly harmed by abnormal chromosomes affecting their sexual organs. The reality that there is something tragically wrong with their bodies. Helping such a person may in rare circumstances legitimately include hormones or surgery, but if so it would be for exactly the *opposite* reason from that used in the transgender agenda--namely, the legitimate reason would be to bring the person's phenotypical characteristics into better conformity with his genotype. A simple example of this in a minor case would be an operation for undescended testes in a biological male. In other words, it would be biological treatment of a biological privation, not an attempt to accommodate *psychological* insanity. And it might be that such biological treatment would be inadvisable anyway, depending on how radical it was and what the prospects were for making the person *biologically* whole and integrated. Each case is different. There isn't always something we can do to make everything okay when someone has been born with a severely messed-up body. That's called tragedy.

That people with tragic, "intersex" conditions are used as pawns by the political left and that Christians or any other sane people are floored by this just shows the extent to which postmodernism has infected us.

It's like confusing a person who suffers from dwarfism with a person who thinks he's Napoleon Bonaparte and arguing that we have to accommodate the latter person, forcing everyone to call him "your majesty," just because really short people do exist and need help navigating the world!

On what grounds do you reject these findings?

It is not a rejection of the findings as stated in the article, but on what they mean. It is very obvious that the article is just a politicized take on various disorders of the reproductive system. Even down to the issue with the mice we find, shockingly, that if you alter the DNA of an animal the genes will express in very different ways like making the gonads produce the gamete of the opposite sex.

I read on a different blog that as far as census reporting can tell, the number of people who identify as transgender in the USA is on the order of 6 in 100,000, or about 20,000 total in the entire country's population.

If one wants to be purely utilitarian about such things, here is the question nobody, as far as I have read, has asked: Is the proportion of predators who will abuse such regulations to get closer to their prey greater or lesser than the proportion of people who genuinely need them for the protection of their own mental health?

While the predator issue is non-trivial, I always feel that I'm conceding something I shouldn't concede when I make a big deal about it. Nobody _needs_ for his mental health to be allowed to use the bathroom and shower room of the opposite sex. Nobody. And it's totally understandable for people to feel grossed out and uncomfortable about having so-called "real transgender people" sharing the bathrooms and other facilities with them. It's not as though _really_ having such a mental problem somehow makes it _okay_ for a person to use the bathrooms, etc., of the opposite sex and means that nobody should be creeped out by it. It would be _extremely_ creepy to tell, say, a six-year-old girl, "Don't worry, honey. That man, whom you can see is a man, who just walked into the bathroom with you isn't here for the purpose of harming you. He's _just_ a person with a freakish perversion that makes him feel like he's a woman, feel very uncomfortable with his male body, and so it will make him feel better to be going to the bathroom here in the stall right next to you, using the locker room with women, and so forth. That's all. No problem, right?"

Stephen,

Add this to the list of reasons why we shouldn't indulge them:

In fact, trans campaigners are insistent that it remain classified as a disorder, whatever the euphemistic language now used in diagnostic manuals, because without disorder status the disproportionately low-income trans sufferers wouldn’t have a case for state-funded surgery. They just love the government, these guys. They want to regulate how we talk to each other, how we have sex, you name it. No area of private conduct is too obscure for the social justice warrior to peek her nose into and attempt to control.

The entire transgender lobbying is an attempt by people with a mental disorder to reconfigure society to indulge them. If there weren't other reasons to oppose their bathroom initiative, the fact that the transgender movement is intrinsically militantly statist would apply.

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