http://www.bizpacreview.com/2013/11/05/pro-transgender-bathroom-policy-is-no-joke-to-distraught-parents-86595
So I found this article while I was actually reading another one. The website is what I would definitely call conservative so keep that in mind, but I found this article a bit disturbing. It's about a teenage boy, who claimed to be transgendered and uses the women's restroom because he identifies as a woman, who has been sexually harassing other female students. The article describes this as:
"a male who identifies himself as a female, who had allegedly been
sexually harassing female students in the girl’s bathroom and locker
room" and that
"Institute attorneys were contacted by concerned parents seeking recourse
against school officials who not only suggested the girls avoid using
the girls’ locker room and use another bathroom, but also allegedly
threatened the girls with dismissal from athletic teams and hate crimes
charges if the complaints didn’t stop."
and the article goes on to say
“Since we first broke this story, it has been shocking to see the
lengths to which school officials and LGBT activists have gone to
suppress the truth,” stated Brad Dacus, president of Pacific Justice
Institute. “We have now received a large and growing stack of hate mail
from supposedly tolerant LGBT supporters, most of which is based on
unquestioning faith in school officials who have proved to be
untrustworthy. It is increasingly apparent that school officials and
LGBT activists are on an all-out mission to discredit our clients rather
than deal with the serious problems they have identified with a
biologically teenage boy sharing bathrooms with their teenage
daughters. These new developments only stiffen our resolve and renew
our focus to seek a balanced solution that honors the rights and needs
of all students.”
So I'm a bit skeptical of the bias of the article, but it does prove something I think we can all learn from. That even though feminists have been fighting for the rights and equal treatment of marginalized groups, that just because people claim to belong (or even legitimately do) to these minority groups when someone acts in an unacceptable or criminal manner their actions have to be denounced by the community too because the message needs to be the behavior is not accepted by anyone in any situation. They need to be criticized like any other individual who acts like this and not defended simply because they're part of the minority group. If this story is true, then it is definitely disheartening to know that people are willing to use a system, created to be inclusive and allow for the integration of different individuals, in order to sexually harass women. (or anyone for that matter)
It is sad when a whole group of people is put down because of something a member of their group did. Just because that person is a member of a certain group doesn't mean that everyone in that group is like the person. This reminds me of a phenomenon I have encountered in my own life. After 911, it seems like many people associate people of middle-eastern descent as being "terrorists." This isn't right, because to the best of my knowledge, the 911 attacks were caused by a small radical group of people of middle-eastern descent. Why should the entire middle-eastern population be put down because of something a small group did? They shouldn't be.
ReplyDeleteI see both parts of the story. Maybe the boy was really transgendered and did really identify himself as being a female. Thus he probably did use the female bathroom. However, when the females found that out. They maybe set up a scheme because they did not feel comfortable with him in the same bathroom as them. However, he could have did exactly what the article stated, used the girls bathroom in order to sexually harass the females.
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