Tuesday, December 30, 2014

One Bathroom Fits All! (Gender Blender III)

                “New school bathrooms welcome all genders” read the headline in the December 26, 2014 Star & Tribune. (Emphasis mine). I would have thought “both” genders would be sufficient…and  shocking.  I was unaware, until recently, that there were more than two sexes. (Male and female. Yin and Yang. The potential for a biblical union of two becoming one whole). I was aware that we needed to update the trite old cliche’  “the birds and the bees” to “the birds and the bees, the bees and the bees, and the birds and the birds” due to the  omnipresence of homosexuality in the mainstream media. Now, however, total chaos has been loosed and all bets are off as to where this will take us.
                We now have birds and “bird-questioning”, bees and “bee-questioning”, birds who “self-identify” as bees, bees who “self-identify as birds”, birds who are becoming bees, bees who are becoming birds, bird-bees, bee-birds, bi-birds, bi-bees, polyamorous birds and bees (segregated and together), trans*birds, trans*bees, combined bird-bee spirits, cis-birds and cis-bees (boring sticks in the mud that they are), and we haven’t, apparently, even scratched the surface!
                The article states that, “these schools are placing Minnesota among a growing list of states taking steps to ensure that transgender and ‘gender non-conforming’ students feel safe and comfortable in school, whether that’s using the rest room or getting dressed in a locker room.” This makes the  heterosexual kids sound like an army of closed-minded bores just toting some sort of party line.
                And what about the thoughts and feelings of this vast majority of boys and girls? The 95% or more that aren’t GLBTG or ‘gender-questioning’? Are they going to feel, “safe and comfortable” in bathrooms and locker rooms open to everyone? Hell, most guys weren’t- and aren’t- very comfortable taking showers with other guys after gym class, seeing how they ‘measure up’, etc.
                Are most parents reallycomfortable’ with, say,  their 16 year-old daughter urinating in a stall next to an 18 year-old guy  dropping a deuce? Or having to insert a tampon? Or with not knowing what gender or genders are around her and what their level of confusion, curiosity, or experimentation desires are? Are most boys and girls? There is no possible way that the majority of students feel “safer and more comfortable” in that environment.
                Later on in the article, there is the recounting of the time a mother of a 9 year-old girl who "fell outside of the traditional gender binary” let her daughter use the men’s bathroom at a movie theater. “It was absolutely terrifying” she said. “As a parent, all you want is for your child to be safe. And I was worried she might not be safe.”
                Really?  You let your nine year-old girl use the men’s bathroom in a public movie theater and you claim all you want is for your child to be safe? Obviously, that’s not all you want. What trumped the fact that you were terrified  that your young daughter might not be safe in the men’s bathroom?
            
                All-gender bathrooms and locker rooms are a symbol of these schools being ‘welcoming’ places, according to their proponents.
                One of the leaders of a support group called “Transforming Families” stated that she felt that the movement to support transgender students was about 20 years behind that of gays and lesbians.    (Homosexuality was considered by the American Psychiatric Association to be a ‘mental illness’ until as recently as the 1960’s). 
               Yes, and the movements to support bestiality and incest are likely 20 years behind this one. In fact, according to some things I’ve read lately, in certain circles have they have already started. I am not equating homosexuality with these latter behaviors, nor even ‘trans-genderism’ to coin a phrase. But the demands that gay marriages  be seen as absolutely- and legally- “ equal” to heterosexual child producing unions and must be considered completely ‘normal’( with the partners eligible to receive any and all benefits that the heterosexual couples who brought them into this world may get) is absurd. We simply cannot consider agender, Trans*Female and Two-Spirit folks and behaviors as  completely  ‘normal’ without rendering the word meaningless and demeaning the inherent sacredness of the male-female relationship and anatomies.
                One of the students quoted in the article opined that “It’s a very basic right- to be able to use the bathroom and feel safe and comfortable.” That’s as may be, but transgender and gender-questioning kids already had their own bathroom at that students school. And all we’ve done is reverse the ratio of kids who feel safe and comfortable in the schools bathrooms and showers from 95% comfortable and 5% uncomfortable- or worse- to 5% comfortable and 95% stressed.
                Diversity.  Ain’t it grand?

                Except…wait a moment. One bathroom fits all? We can’t have a diversity of bathrooms, apparently.


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