He has never used the toilets
Updating to warn: I got the kid’s sex wrong throughout, as the BBC intended us all to do.
The BBC twists itself into pretzels again to placate the Gender Minotaur.
In the nine months that Felix has attended high school in Fife, he has never used the toilets.
Too much information. Why is a global news organization telling us about the toilet practices of a teenage boy in Scotland?
The 13-year-old is trans and his teachers say he is welcome to use male, female or disabled toilets and changing rooms.
Well that’s no fun. How about a paneled room with armchairs and a fridge full of snacks, just for him?
But like some other trans pupils, Felix would prefer to use unisex facilities.
But like some other trans pupils, Felix would prefer even more anxious attention and placating and special arrangements.
He says he feels uncomfortable having to select between options that were not designed with trans people in mind.
Well we can’t have Felix feeling uncomfortable, can we. We can’t have Felix thinking he doesn’t get special arrangements, because what would that say about Felix? That he’s not magic! Felix must be helped to think he’s magic! At all times! Hop to it, please!
“I’ve told my guidance teacher but she said that there’s not much we can really do about it because we can’t change the walls in the school or anything. I feel like I am just going to have to deal with it.”
They can’t change the walls just for Felix??? How outrageous is that?
The BBC then takes us back to the beginning to explain.
People who are transgender experience a mismatch between their gender and the sex on their birth certificate.
Or, that is, people who say they are transgender have been trained to say “I feel a mismatch between my gender and the sex on my birth certificate.” They’ve been taught the jargon. The fact that it doesn’t mean very much is beside the point. The fact that a lot of kids find puberty weird and alienating and then get used to it is beside the point. Everything must be dropped to rush to the assistance of any kid who claims to feel that precious mismatch.
The article goes on and on after that point but I’ve had enough nonsense for one day.
“The fact that a lot of kids find puberty weird and alienating and then get used to it is beside the point. ”
They get used to it or they simply grow to adulthood eventually as everybody else?
This may as well read “He says he feels uncomfortable having to select between options that were not designed with magical unicorns in mind.”
So the school says he can use the disabled toilets – which I’m guessing are unisex, but he doesn’t want to use those unisex toilets. I mean, using public toilets is slightly unpleasant and can even be stressful for most people, especially when you’re young, but jeez, get over yourself.
Precambrian Cat – yes. That’s pretty much what I meant. Getting used to it and growing to adulthood like everyone else are roughly the same thing. Growing up is weird, but you get used to it.
Rob, that was my thought, too. I’m guessing “he” doesn’t want to use those toilets because it would be like saying “his” condition is a disability, or a disease, when “he” knows it is just what “he” is.
Is Felix the trans name, and “trans boy” the gender? Iow, we’re talking about the toilet habits of a teenage girl in Scotland?
On the one hand, I think it’s nice to see a trans person asking for a third space instead of demanding access to the wrong space for their sex. On the other hand, what unique privilege to be given access to any and all of the spaces. And then to have the cheek to reject them, and ask for for a fourth space. Such oppression! Trans people just want to pee, dammit!
On the third hand (well, I’m on to feet now), I got halfway through typing that first sentence before I realised that someone who is trans and goes by the name of Felix must be female and knows damn well why she doesn’t want to get changed with the boys.
So what’s the layout when facilities are “designed with trans people in mind”? Blue-white-pink colour scheme? Extra wall space, so they can fit a whole line of those vending machines – period products, condoms, and hormones? Can one cubicle and one sink be accessible, so disabled trans people can use them without being relegated to using “just” the disabled toilet, but able-bodied trans people can pointedly avoid using it?
Fair crack of the whip, OB. If you didn’t wade through all this bullshit, someone else might feel they had to. Consider it a civic duty, and well done.
Now, off with those Wellington boots and have a well-earned rest.
I made it just about as far into this, before realizing I hadn’t clipped my fingernails for a while. I just find it odd that the BBC, which has produced some fine skeptical programmng in the past, doesn’t have someone investigate this social phenomenon to explore what it means to experience a mismatch between their gender and their sex at birth. This is an extraordinary claim that is to be taken at face value, and they’ve no mind to say “wait, what does this really mean and how can we know that this is what is really happening?” We can’t even get a grip on how someone can experience a gender identity let alone one that is counter to a person’s sex.
Okay, we know it’s socially influenced to believe that if a boy is “sugar and spice and everything nice” then he must be a girl, or a girl who is “snakes and snails and puppy dog tails” must be a boy. But, why does the BBC just let this all pass as a valid natural phenomenon that must be acknowledged, recognized, and catered to?
It’s either, or, and, something, as Laurie Penny let slip (again.) It’s fixed enough to castrate and plastically alter a body, to snatch the available supplies of HRT from the chemist’s shelves so that post-menopausal women don’t have access, it’s fixed enough that a woman must accept that her partner is now a woman and accommodate all his demands or be shunned, but then again it’s a floating thing for the genderqueer and they can’t explain how the’re in boy mode today but girl mode tomorrow but you better accommodate it!
This kid is being offered the sun and the moon, but it’s not good enough. Only the 2nd LaGrange point will work, or she’ll wait until she gets home!
I think Lagrange two is perfectly appropriate, but may be rejected if she reads the fine print:
The need for attitude corrections certainly sounds about right, though.
[…] a comment by Mike Haubrich on He has never used the […]
This girl (yes, it’s clear from the rest of the article that this is a girl who is trying to be a boy) doesn’t want to use the girls’ toilet because what, she claims to be a boy? And she doesn’t want to use the boys’ toilet because what, it’s missing some things she needs? She can go without those things all day, apparently, but she won’t even use that toilet for the simple act of elimination? Why? She won’t use these toilets or the disabled toilet because they carry some unspecified symbolic meaning for her to walk into a toilet? She’s given access to all the toilets in the frickin’ building, and she can’t use any of them because of symbolism? Are you kidding me?
A moment of clarity, maybe. Yes, it would almost certainly be easier to give up all this petty symbolism and narcissistic pretending and acknowledge that she is, in fact, still a girl. She can change her name however she wants.
I wish to point out a(nother) bit of journalistic irresponsibility. The girl states “the thought of just going back to being a girl and using my old name just makes me feel really sick”, and the pull subhead in the article leaves out the bolded words. This drastically changes the meaning of the quote, especially omitting the words at the beginning. She’s talking about being a girl, not being called by the “wrong” name.
Sorry for not picking up on the fact that “Felix” is a girl – but that’s why this stuff is so annoying: it tricks you. The BBC tricked me via ordinary language.
A 13 year old girl doesn’t want to use the boys room, despite identifying as a boy, because the material reality is boys have penises and use urinals and there aren’t many 13 year old girls who want to see penises. But she doesn’t want to use the girls room because that doesn’t validate her identity. So she is afraid/uncomfortable of being in the single sex space of the sex she claims to be, so she needs a special bathroom that will affirm her identity without exposing her to the reality of being a boy. This is all perfectly normal and the school should have to make a separate “Felix” bathroom.
Given t hat, as we are told, there are perhaps dozens of genders we cannot even recogniz yet…I think they need to repurpose an entire wing of classrooms to specialized bathrooms?
Eava @ 15
She has requested a unisex bathroom bathroom. Boys in a unisex bathroom also have penises. She has been given access to the disabled bathroom, which I presume is single stall, and thus should be free of penises while she is using it.
She doesn’t need a bathroom for the purpose of validating her identity. The school should not shell out construction funds in order to validate her identity. She needs a toilet for the same reasons any other 13-year-old girl might need a toilet, and she needs appropriate privacy and safety. She has (again) been offered the use of the (I presume single-stall) disabled bathroom, which should provide both of those things.
Some places have signs saying “unisex/disabled” on the single-stall accessible bathrooms. Perhaps a sign change might be a low-cost way to resolve the situation. I think the school has done everything it could be reasonably expected to do already, though.
At 13, she has probably just recently entered the reality of puberty (unless she’s on puberty blockers). I can’t begin to imagine using the boys room during my period when I was in high school; hell, I don’t think I could do it now. Boys are mean about periods anyway; if they find out you are having one, they can be brutal. And if you believe you are a boy, and are having periods, that is almost certainly anti-validation.
And her statement about being a girl and using her old name makes her sick sounds like she might have some internalized misogyny.