Administrators then supervised the locker room
National Review reports [because The Nation won’t]:
Illinois public school administrators tried to force a 13-year-old girl to change clothes in front of a biological male, in accordance with the district’s “inclusive” bathroom policy that allows transgender students to use whichever locker room corresponds with their chosen gender, the mother of the girl said at a Deerfield School District 109 School Board meeting on Thursday evening.
When Nicole Georgas’s 13-year-old daughter came home from Shepard Middle School on February 5, she was frightened and upset: A boy had been in the girl’s bathroom.
Georgas’s daughter was told by Deerfield administrators that because the male student identified as a female, he could use the girl’s locker room and bathroom, Georgas said.
Yes and this tiger here identifies as a cocker spaniel so the tiger gets to use your living room.
“A few days later, the male student was present in the girls locker room. Feeling violated, the girls made the choice to not change into their PE clothes with the biological male student present,” Georgas said at the meeting.
Administrators then supervised the locker room to ensure that all girls were changing into their physical education clothes without protest, Georgas claimed. District 109 Assistant Superintendent for Student Services Joanna Ford, Assistant Principal Cathy Van Treese, and Director for Student Services Ginger Logemann tried to force the girls to change in front of the male student, Georgas said.
Seriously? They all went in there and tried to force the girls to take their clothes off in front of the boy? If that’s true it’s a whole new level.
Charlie Friedman, a transgender person and parent of a transgender middle schooler, lauded the Illinois gender-inclusive bathroom policy that “protects trans, non-binary, and gender non-conforming students from the type of bullying that this parent represents,” Charlie said, pointing to Georgas.
And fails to protect all the other students from the kind of bullying that Charlie Friedman represents. “You MUST take your clothes off in front of a member of the opposite sex no matter how much you don’t want to” versus “I refuse to take my clothes off in front of a member of the opposite sex” – which is the real bullying?
“The discomfort or privacy concerns of other students, teachers, or parents are not valid reasons to deny or limit the full and equal use of those facilities based on a student’s gender related identity,” Charlie added.
Yes they are. Yes they are you Stalinist shithead.
Charlie, the director of operations for Trans Up Front, a non-profit advocacy organization, promised to “dig in to contact our coalition” to pressure the school board to enforce the bathroom policy.
Charlie promised to step up the bullying of the girls who don’t want to take their clothes off in front of a boy.
In some universe, somewhere, forcing children to undress would be sexual assault.
My thoughts exactly, Gary.
It is coercion into an unwanted sexual act by persons in a position of authority.
But wait! Why should students be allowed to use facilities based on their “gender-related identities”? Could it be because using facilities that don’t match their gender identities would cause them to feel… discomfort? Or perhaps to have privacy concerns?
The only explanation I can find to this seeming contradiction is that Charlie Friedman thinks that gender identity-induced discomfort is more important. It must be so important that it’s plainly obvious it should always be prevented, whereas the discomfort of “other students” is trifling and should unquestioningly be disregarded. Nevermind, of course, that gender identity-induced discomfort is rather vague and unspecific, unlike discomfort at having to undress in front of a member of the other sex, which is rooted in very precise, concrete issues.
So, I went to a few sources trying to find out more. Unfortunately, as usual, most of the sites were right-wing hate sites, and I had to bail pretty quickly. However, I did also get sent to Trans Up Front’s website. From their page:
This is so damned two-faced. The girl was not uncomfortable changing around ‘anyone else’–her only discomfort was around a male student.
What’s needed here is a mass protest. The mother of the first girl should contact parents of any other girls who object to this treatment, and collectively, each of them should demand a ‘more private space’. This will force the school to either provide each girl a room of her own to change in, or to essentially find a room with the capacity and the privacy of a real locker room.
@4 I hope they go in that direction. (I have a vague memory of another school in this situation where the girls all lined up to change in the single private bathroom space one by one.)
Re ‘full and equal use of the facilities’…I remember years ago listening to a podcast about the issue of lesbians specifying ‘women only’ in their dating site profiles on some large platform, and a spokeswoman saying something like ‘we believe that everyone should be able to use the service’ and trying to figure out how women specifying their dating preferences in their profiles was keeping anyone from using the service…then realised – as far as they were concerned access to unwilling women was, in fact, ‘the service’. No one is stopping this young man from having ‘full and equal use of the facilities’ – he can surely change his clothes just like anyone else – but to him and his enablers ‘use of the facilities’ includes exposure to unwilling naked women.
This is the same mealy-mouthed lie the newspapers repeat every day.
None of these girls are uncomfortable because of this lad’s gender-related identity. They’re uncomfortable because he’s male. If he were female, but with a special gender-related identity, the girls wouldn’t care. Probably at least one of those girls says she’s “non-binary,” and none of the other girls cares.
See if this helps:
https://lakecountygazette.com/stories/670490969-deerfield-middle-school-administrators-force-teen-girls-to-change-in-front-of-boy-in-school-locker-room
The quoted text uses male and female – i.e. the sexes – yet they appear to be used with different senses mixed. Male appears to refer to sex as normal, while female is seemingly being used to mean either sex or gender or perhaps even both at once. If female is a sex, it is not a matter of identity; if it refers to identity, what does it matter that the person is male?
Gone are the days when even captured organisations and TRAs differentiated between words indicative of sex or of gender, now all are claimed by gender and the result is incoherence.
Good find, cluecat. That article is insane.
That can’t really be what she said, can it? Research what now?
It is so clear that they think about these things to a point, then abruptly stop. If minimising discomfort of people by relocating the isolated individuals is the approach they endorse, shouldn’t it be the rare trans to be sent to the other private space? But no, it is always the girls and women who must give way. Rights are a one-way street, when trans people are involved.
Above comment was in reply to #4 Freemage.
#9 Papito,
I believe the author of that article is replacing ‘trans girls’ with ‘boys’ and similar throughout the article; Holzman’s actual words were likely something like ““research” shows middle school girls “do better, academically, socially, and emotionally” when [trans girls] are allowed [in the same] school locker rooms.”
I wish the original words had been preserved, I searched briefly but could not find them.