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Farther Toward a Sex-free Society
A few months ago I wrote about local YMCAs changing their locker room policies to be more inclusive to transgendered individuals (to the exclusion of normal gendered individuals — double digression — shouldn’t the term “non-crazy” suffice here?), and the aftermath was great both locally and in the comments on Ricochet. One of the strongest arguments made in favor of the change (or at least in favor of not getting worked up over it) was that the Y is a private organization which individuals are free to patronize or simply ignore as their consciences dictate. It wasn’t as if this was being mandated by the government. That is, naturally, no longer the case in the People’s Republic State of Washington.
The day after Christmas, Washington state’s Human Rights Commission gave us all a gift of bathroom and locker room desegregation. It is now illegal for business owners like the YMCA or their competition at another gyms to “limit sex-specific facilities such as bathrooms, showers, and locker rooms to persons with the anatomical parts of one sex.” So, the argument that the Y (and everyone else) can do what they think right is no longer valid.
The new rules apply not only to businesses but also to schools. That’s right, if a boy thinks he is a girl (or at least says he thinks he is) he now has a right to change and even shower with anatomical girls whether the girls like it or not. In fact, according to the Family Policy Institute of Washington:
once a man begins to undress in the women’s locker room a person who “expresses concern or discomfort … should be directed to a separate or gender-neutral facility.”
But wait, there’s more! Not only do the new rules exclude women from the women’s locker room should they feel discomfort about disrobing around men, but the rules also criminalize speech.
It is illegal to ask “unwelcome personal questions about an individual’s sexual orientation, gender expression or gender identity, or transgender status.”
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It is also illegal for a business to deliberately “misuse” someone’s preferred pronoun. If a man believes he is a woman, but you refer to him as a “he” anyway, he can sue you.
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It is also now illegal to use “offensive names, slurs, jokes, or terminology regarding an individual’s sexual orientation or gender expression or gender identity.”
What does the Y think of this change, you may wonder? I’m sure they are ecstatic, especially since “[i]n mid-December, prior to the public becoming aware of the state’s new policies, the YMCA once again reversed its own rules to allow transgender individuals unlimited access to the facility of their gender identity.”
Whatever isn’t forbidden shall be required.
Published in General
Dang, why didn’t these laws come out when I was in high school and college?
“You want my opinion? The plumbing has to match the plumbing. If you’ve got a wahoo, you go in the lady’s room. If you have the garden hose, you go to the men’s room.” – a lady at work
I wonder if this will apply at the gyms on military bases within the state. I know the bases are pretty selective about which state laws they subject themselves to, so this might raise some problems. I know the locker rooms on my base have signs saying opposite gender children are only allowed in the locker rooms below a certain age, and it’s pretty low (5 or 6 maybe.)
There was a time when a statement like that would have seemed funny.
In all seriousness, this is why I became so angry the other evening on Facebook. Look, the liberal, mutlti-culti freakshow is in town, we all know it. And sometimes we go look because, you know, it’s like watching a train wreck. But this is horses**t, and I don’t even care if I get in trouble for writing that, because you call it what it is. It is no longer enough to just come and look at the bearded lady. Now the bearded lady comes to your house and demands to be let in.
And I mean no disrespect to bearded ladies. Nor to people, men or women, who enjoy things that are typically associated with the opposite gender. Heck, I’ve got a daughter who only does “boy stuff”. But if Bruce Jenner shows up, he’s going to the men’s room, or he can go somewhere else.
The real head scratcher for me remains that the subjective feeling of a single individual are held in high enough regard to justify increasing the real safety concerns of everyone else. Read the last point on the FPIW link, it lists several times when pervs used access to women’s facilities for their crimes. “Sexual predators look for opportunity. This provides it.”
Cool. It’s as if an entire state has officially banned my presence. I need a black hat now that I’m an outlaw.
Well, the “new rules” even apply to the Happy Warrior page on NR, where the most talented writer on the right refused to sit to pee over a couple of mild gay jokes.
Must be a sexual existence full of mental effort if one must recognize everyone’s preferred categorization of their genitals.
Again, Orwell forecast it: To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle.
First, they are trying to resolve a problem that almost never occurs and they are doing it by telling 99.7% of the population that the other 0.3% gets to change reality for everyone based on feelings.
Then, as you point out, they open the door for predators.
“Hey ladies, don’t let the beard and back hair throw you, I’m a chick deep down inside. So don’t stop changing on my account, I’m one of you.”
Ah, this will go over very well with the migrant New Year’s Eve revelers in Cologne, Helsinki, Sweden, etc., etc.
Progressivism = Authoritarianism.
Where children are concerned it’s about time parents took a very strong stand. I visited my great grandson’s school for a Christmas program, in his classroom. There is one bathroom, with one toilet, and the door locks from the inside. The child signs in and out when they use the room. No problems.
Isn’t it strange that I have lived so many years, and have never met one of the transgenders, but now our country has laws giving these nuts priority? Why does 5 transgenders’ desires over ride 200 normal kids?
I wonder if plain, old-fashioned, american common sense will prevail over this bizarre ideology. Conversations with non-politically engaged family members over Christmas gives me some hope.
Is this not a winning issue for us? If so, why don’t I hear more of it from the presidential candidates? Although it might be unseemly for a candidate for the presidency to comment on what can and cannot be whipped out in a locker room, I think just repeating the phrase “there are two genders,” over and over again and watching Hillary contort would be a great idea.
Anyone else listen to Dennis Prager yesterday? He interviewed the girl from Haverford who wrote a terrific article about what she learned about “privilege” by working at McDonald’s.
One of her dorm floor-mates called in — Kevin. Dennis asked him if he thinks the statement, “I don’t believe in race. I believe in the human race” is a microaggression, as is the policy at many universities.
“As a white-male” he didn’t feel comfortable saying it isn’t, since he hasn’t experienced what blacks have experienced.
My point? I have a few. First, as Dennis said, there’s no objective truth anymore. Everything has to be filtered through race, class, and gender. This will not end well.
Second, am I the only to notice the near physiological changes in young men? They’re so emasculated by this culture, it’s actually changed the register of their voices!! Kevin sounded like a sissy, but he’s not alone. When is the last time you heard a male voice in the under 30 set in the baritone, let alone bass range. It’s stunning.
Third, if I had boys, I’d be freaking out. Since I have girls, I’m freaking out that they may never find a man, even though they’ll meet plenty of males. Gaaaah!
Fourth, is there a post in this? One that hasn’t been done already?
Texas secession cannot come fast enough.
Political correctness will be its own undoing. Presumably there is still some sanity among parents who won’t condone multi-sex showers for their daughters; and who will challenge the idea that this idea cannot be challenged by people who have the right to free speech.
This cannot happen quickly enough.
I would also like someone to do this, Socrates-like:
Concerned citizen: So, do you think there is any difference between the genders?
Campus feminist: Of course not! They’re equal!
Concerned citizen: And by equal you mean they’re just the same?
Campus feminist: I mean no gender is better than the 76 others!
Concerned citizen: So a transgender person has no rational basis for choosing which gender to be?
Campus feminist: What do you mean! They’re women trapped in men’s bodies!
Concerned citizen: How do they know if the genders are the same?
Campus feminist: They just know!
Concerned citizen: So they take a Kierkegaardean leap of faith?
Campus feminist: NO! It’s a fact!
Concerned citizen: So it’s their immortal, gendered soul that recollects its true self?
Campus feminist: NO!
Concerned citizen: It’s not a non-material soul or a leap of faith?
Campus feminist: Idiot! We don’t believe in souls! We don’t believe in faith!
Concerned citizen: So it’s some mental process whereby they “know” they are a different gender than the one science would assign, irrespective of any objective evidence?
Campus feminist: Basically!
Concerned citizen: Isn’t that called mental illness?
How did we get here?
By trying to keep up with the Kardashians
Remind me: what does the “C” in YMCA stand for again?
That’s precisely the definition of the cis- prefix.
I don’t think this is a nit: once you use the word “gender” rather than “sex” you are behind by two touchdowns and playing prevent defense.
If a school administrator in my neck of the woods tried that, I guarantee there would be a large number of fathers who would hold him down and help him take the first big step towards transgender-hood…
I watch the whole progressive, media-bolstered society as if it’s the parade scene in The Emperor’s New Clothes.
That’s probably one of the most important fairy tales to read to your little kids nowadays. Good lesson.
I merely used them interchangeably. If you’re referring to the first paragraph, in that instance “normal-gendered” is just a shorter way of saying “persons who recognize reality concerning their sex.”
Sex is the biological term. Gender won’t be found in a basic biology text.
Gender is a grammatical term which has become the preferred term for those who insist our personal sexual preferences, fantasies and fixations trump biology. Actually trumping biology is not accurate; it is used to obviate biology. Tennis without nets, lines, rackets or any objective in or out calls.
You is also a grammatical term which can be plural or singular. I used it in the plural sense to capture the near universal misuse of the word gender.
Nothing personal intended, beyond suggesting that anyone using the word gender when advocating for a commonsense biological distinction is making a first move error.
It’s really the “undocumented Amerifriends” of biological discussion.
Jennifer Roback Morse at the World Congress of Families, October 2015.
Or the “M”
I don’t see how this could survive a a first amendment constitutional challenge. Someone should pursue it. It is still legal as free speech to call a black American a certain term – vile, but legal. I don’t see how a pronoun could be any different.
Is it simply the “business” aspect, rather than the individual?
This is why I shower at home and not at the gym.
On a related note, the state of Washington has gone completely insane. They need to split off the west side into a new state called Utopia and leave the remainder of the state to bear the name of our first president.
In fact, they may as well take Oregon and Washington and redo the border vertically and call the eastern state Washington and the western one Ore-long-gone since Portland has cracked up as well.