Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
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 So, the argument that the Y (and everyone else) can do what they think right is no longer valid.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.”
…
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.
…
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
Every explanation above about how we got here seems correct to me. I would add two items:
A. It became very difficult to promote reading, thinking, understanding; marriage, family, love; beauty, art, longing; law, justice, restraint; when we allowed our senses to be blunted, and our desires stunted and, at the same time, inflamed, by the poets of the sexual revolution (David Bowie, for instance); and
B. It became even more difficult to promote these things once a majority of families turned over the rearing of their children to third parties, from as early as infancy all the way to adulthood.