Boy gets girls punished for “harassing” him
Tune in for another episode of “Surely you are making this up”:
Randolph High Schools girl’s volleyball team has been banned from its own locker room while school officials investigate a conflict involving a transgender student on the team.
Girls, you see. Always making trouble, always picking on the boys, always starting fights.
Vermont education policy says students can play sports and use the locker room corresponding to their gender. But some members of the Randolph girl’s volleyball team objected to having a transgender teammate in the room while they were changing.
No, it’s not the “transgender” they object to, it’s the boy.
Isn’t it funny how this doesn’t come up with boys and their locker rooms? No, it isn’t, because it’s so obvious why. Boys are predators and girls are their prey. Of course boys aren’t going to object to a girl stupid enough to take her clothes off in their locker room.
[Blake] Allen [one of the girls] says that the dispute started when the trans student made an inappropriate comment while members of the volleyball team were getting changed. She says her issue is not with having the trans student on the team or at school, but specifically in the locker room. “There are biological boys that go into the girl’s bathroom but never a locker room,” Allen said.
The issue is also with having the boy on the girls’ team, but whatever.
In an email to families, school officials wrote that the school has “plenty of space where students who feel uncomfortable with the laws may change in privacy.”
You mean a spare locker room they can use? No.
“They want all the girls who feel uncomfortable — so pretty much 10 girls — to get changed in a single stall bathroom, which would take over 30 minutes. Where if one person got changed separately, it would take a minute, like no extra time,” Allen said.
Yawn; this is about the boy’s opportunity to get attention, not the girls’ ability to keep playing their sport.
In the email to parents, school officials say they are conducting an investigation into allegations the girls harassed the
transgenderboy student.
There it is. School officials are framing this as girls harassing this boy in their locker room.
Vermont Agency of Education officials were not available for comment Wednesday. AOE policy states, in part, that “The use of restrooms and locker rooms by transgender students requires schools to consider numerous factors…” But it goes on to state that “A transgender student should not be required to use a locker room or restroom that conflicts with the student’s gender identity.”
Always always always the neutral neuter anodyne “transgender” student when the issue is the boy student. We’re not even allowed to name the problem, and the media obligingly perpetuate the coverup.
“How does the way someone else identifies harm you in any way?” is the plaintive tweet I often see. And I have to admit that this does not harm me, specifically, but neither do laws against abortion, mandated hijab in faraway countries, males identifying as women to get into womens’ prisons. It’s all affecting someone else, so I should probably mind my own business.
But, silly me, I see an injustice, and for some reason it bothers me. I do see this as a way of discouraging girls from participating in sports, and that is an injustice. And I see a boy that is taking advantage of the law to get a free pass for ogling and remarking at girls who aren’t allowed to set boundaries.
Meanwhile, it seems that Title IX is going to be used to destroy girls’ sports. The Post reporter seems to think this is a good thing.
So far, so good–sometimes even Christian conservatives have a good point. The suit had originally been declared moot by a federal district court (the girls aren’t in school anymore, after all), but the plaintiffs appealed.
Skipping a whole bunch of other stuff, though, here’s the bottom line:
Ignoring the spin, she’s probably right. Title IX has become a weapon to use against girls and women.
This is the full text of Title IX:
“On the basis of sex”, not gender. This is why definitions matter.
How much you wanna bet the comment was sexual? But it’s all perfectly fine because trans. They are always and ever innocent of all wrong or blame. Say what you like, do what you want, you are absolved in advance. Besides, it’s only girls, right? The boring, born girls kind. The kid’s probably a lesbian, too. It’s par for the course, and perfectly acceptable. The problem is, the student’s putative “gender identity” is completely invisible. All the girls can see is his dick.
Well, yes and no. I mean, they might not say anything, and they might make a show of cheering it along. But I’d really not be at all sure that they’d be happy with it really. A lot of male bravado – school-age male bravado especially – is to do with a staggering lack of confidence around the body, and about being around other bodies. It mixes with bog-standard teenage horniness in weird ways, but it’s complicated.
Things’d pan out differently, for sure. Would there be the same concerns about safety? No. But would they be hunky-dory with the situation? Honestly, I doubt it. They might not show it, but I’d wager that they’d (overwhelmingly) be concerned about her, embarrassed for themselves, and generally mortified.
Interesting. Much food for thought.
If they sue, perhaps this extremist court could update Title IX to strike the gender identity clause. I know that’s wishful thinking, but perhaps one of the few silver linings to having a court loaded by Trump.
At the very least, someone needs to defend the position that including gender identity under Title IX should mean the right to play under a different sex than they actually are and following that how “playing sports” means access to the locker room.
This reminds me of the whole weapons rule interpreted as nail clippers leading to suspension. A rule that is being interpreted more strictly than it should be to anyone with a modicum of common sense, or even a dollop for that matter. A thimble sized dollop at that.