This past week, the Obama administration issued an edict declaring that all public schools must allow students to use whichever bathroom they feel like using or face a stop in all federal funding.
Though schools aren’t being lawfully forced to comply — since Obama could not get any similar law passed through Congress if he tried — the letter issued by the administration basically states, “do what we want, or else.”
This comes on the heels of fiery national debate on whether those who are transgender can use the bathrooms of the gender with which they identify.
And before I start this, I feel like it must be said, in the words of Ben Shapiro, that “facts don’t care about your feelings.” We have arrived to where this becomes a real problem: our youth are not able to comprehend something adults themselves can barely understand.
No, this has nothing to do with pedophiles or anything of that nature — that kind of talk is hyperbole used to break a policy on semantics and not on substance. This has to do with indoctrinating children with the idea of gender fluidity at a young age and subsequently messing with their understanding of reality.
The problem lies when we, as a society, start inserting such complicated ideas into the classroom.
Teaching such a concept to children as young as five can be quite devastating on their understanding of the world — everything is relative, even notions set in stone like gender.
Let’s take a moment to be honest with ourselves about gender.
Scientifically speaking, everyone is born with a set pair of sex chromosomes. A person’s gender is decided in the creation process. It shouldn’t be decided after someone is born.
But the Obama administration continues to push a narrative of post-birth gender identity onto the children of America without an awareness of what’s truly going on with being transgender.
If the president’s biggest worry is the bullying of transgender people, then how about employing teachers who actually stop bullying? Countless times, students, transgender or not, are bullied all over the country. The incident is recorded on a note, then soon forgotten.
By implementing these guidelines in schools, the administration is blatantly opening kids up to a life of confusion as they struggle with ideas they were taught as a child.
Adults still don’t fully understand what it is to be transgender, and most are split on whether the concept is innate or is caused by the surroundings. Why would implanting such a complicated idea into a young child’s mind be OK to anyone?
The administration is playing a dangerous game with the well-being of children on the line. This needs to stop before a generation of children is severely impacted.
Opinion columnist Jorden Smith is a political science junior and president of the College Republicans. He can be reached at [email protected]
Few things:
1. It’s not whichever bathroom they feel like, it’s whichever bathroom belongs to their gender identity.
2. You assume that kids are stupid and don’t realize these things within themselves. I just got done doing teaching observations, and I can tell you that kids are hyper aware of what is happening in the world around them. Whether you want to admit it or not, kids know what being transgender is and for a lot of them they don’t care or it helps them realize that they aren’t weird or alone in their feelings. It’s when ignorant people say that they don’t know what they feel, and that these ideas are being pushed on them that it becomes an issue.
3. You make it sound like it is President Obama’s duty to hire teachers that stand up against student bullying. Really? This is more a state issue where the individual states need to give pre-service teachers classes in how to handle bullying because teachers have biases just like anyone else, and they may not know how to handle a situation like this.
4. You talk about the children’s well being, but how is this something that hurts children who aren’t transgender? How? What about the trans kids who are bullied by their peers and teachers who don’t step in? How school is supposed to be a safe haven for all students, but because of something they don’t choose they are being tormented and harassed?
5. Instead of saying that kids don’t know how they feel and who they are, why not focus on more serious and important issues at hand like standardized testing and how it doesn’t help students at all, or how teachers punish minority students more than white students? They are more important issues that will directly affect the well being of children and help impact their future.
Trey … I hope you saw that Old Navy has a sale on … DRESSES. Oh Happy Day.
***TROLL***
A couple quick points and a question.
1. Transgender people have existed as long as the human race. Where do you think they have peed for all this time? Hint: in the gender identity appropriate toilet.
2. There are nondiscrimination laws specifically including gender ID and presentation in a score of states. More than two hundred cities, towns, counties and school systems all across the country also have this sort of regulation. NONE report any recent increase in bathroom related crimes. In spite of the lies coming from so-called conservatives and the religious right none of these places allow men to use any restroom they choose.
Additionally all existing laws regarding bathroom behaviour remain in full effect. It was illegal to take photos last month and it is exactly as illegal today. Laws about assault, rape, voyeurism, and the rest have not changed.
FYI There is a difference between trans women and men. Transgender women are NOT men.
So here is my question. All of a sudden there is this hullabaloo about men in women’s restrooms. Nothing has changed in the real world so why has this become front page news? Why are the talk shows presenting the need for bathroom bills as being more important than any of the many issues affecting the governments? (fed & state both).
Who benefits from all the airtime and ink? I say that it is to create fear. Fear keeps the political contributions coming in. Fear keeps people voting the way the “powers that be” want – instead of their own best interests.
During the Watergate scandal “Deep Throat” told Woodword and Bernstein to “follow the money”.