Last spring, when I heard Donald Trump say that Caitlyn Jenner could use whatever bathroom she wanted at Trump Tower, I breathed a sigh of relief. There weren’t many things Trump and I agreed on, but this was one. Surely, I hoped, if he became president, he would extend the same courtesy to my 7-year-old daughter, Henry.
…The first time we knew that Henry was different, she was 2. When she found her cousin’s Barbie doll, she lit up like a Christmas tree. “The hair, Mama,” she cooed. “Look at her looong hair!” Henry continued to show us, in every way she could, that she wanted to live as a girl. This was new territory. What do you say when your 3-year-old boy asks to be Rapunzel for Halloween? In our house, you say yes.
If you go to a family beach, you will see girls aged 8-10 practicing cartwheels, handstands, backbends, and the like. Well, I loved to do that when I was 9. If trans-gender had been such a hip thing among my parents back then, that would have been my label. I don’t think it turned out to be the correct one.
The op-ed says,
Bathrooms are a big deal for Henry, a point of clear anxiety and worry.
Bathrooms were a huge worry for me at age 7, also. I was traumatized by having to sit on a toilet in a school bathroom in a stall that had no front door. But I’m over it. My guess is that many non-trans children at that age have trouble handling nudity and proximity to others when performing bodily functions.
The author describes the support she receives from local authorities. President Trump did not take away any of that support. He just decided that the Federal government does not belong in the bathroom.
Using your 7-year-old child as a political mascot does not win my admiration.
A lot of our politics these days seems to be “Policy by Sob Story”.
It’s also referred to as weaponized empathy. Russ Roberts has a podcast over at Econtalk against empathty (book author).
This is an example of how easily one’s own social ideology can hide as if it were a neutral outlook. Kids simply cannot connect with gender like adults do; in a world where many people are trying to make Barbie dolls and long hair gender-neutral, it seems perplexing that the left uses traditional social markers to determine gender status.
In general, I see this (the culture war, and to a larger extent, the over-accepting social institutions of the left) as a big problem for government: there is no effective way that policy can change culture, at least, to my knowledge.
Neither does bashing one. I get it. Everything individuals may decide wrongly we should leave to states and localities, and everything states and localities may decide wrongly we should leave to the feds. Under no circumstances should we leave it to individuals. There are just different ideas about which are which.
Arnold is not ‘bashing’ a 7 year old. I think he is criticising the 7 year old’s parents for having too conventional a view of gender, and indeed letting gender take too important a place in their view of their child.
It is funny how gender isn’t supposed to matter….until some toddler tells me how I have to gender identify them.
> I was traumatized by having to sit on a toilet in a school bathroom in a stall that had no front door.
This is plain abusive. Sounds more like a prison.
Schools are very similar to prisons.
That is very far from the most charitable view. Far worse than simple lack of consideration for your opponents’ views is such lack of consideration coupled with the claim that no such lack exists. Just change your tagline already.
Details please. All this is is a bunch of assertions.
You mean like not acknowledging that bathrooms are a source of anxiety for cis-gendered 7 year olds.
You have to bring your A game here chief.
I had the same reaction as Matthew, and here’s why.
First, this post does not read as if Arnold had ever talked to any transgender people about their childhood experiences, or read any of the many relevant memoirs (notably, not all of these are by people on the left, see e.g. Deirdre McCloskey’s _The Crossing_).
Second, it is certainly true that plenty of kids who are not trans have interests that go against gender stereotypes and/or have anxieties about school bathrooms. It doesn’t follow that the number or intensity of these are similar to those which trans kids experience.
Third, on the feds vs states/localities issue, while “leave it to states/localities” is a good first-order rule for furthering liberty, there are exceptions, and one of the clearest exceptions has historically been cases where states/localities have barred some groups of people from access to tax-funded resources due to irrational animus against those groups, and the feds have stepped in to stop them and ensure the equal rights and liberties of members of those groups. If you look at cases like the Gavin Grimm case, it’s pretty clear that there are school districts out there which restrict bathroom usage by trans kids in a way which (a) causes those kids real and significant hardship and (b) is based on pure animus, with no rational or evidence-supported basis for the policy. “[Trump] just decided that the federal government does not belong in the bathroom” is a pretty weak argument for letting those districts have such policies.
I can understand being put off by the preciousness of the op-ed; and no doubt one can find cases where zealously progressive parents mistakenly believe their kids are trans. But assuming that those are good reasons to believe the central argument about school facility access is unsound constitutes a pretty clear failure to take the most charitable view of those who disagree.
So, I read the first story on Gavin Grimm and the reporter chose to focus on religion, implying that is the major motivation, presumably to appeal to liberal sensibilities that assume religion must be wrong. But think it is simply that girls and boys want girls and boys in their respective bathrooms. Bathrooms aren’t all different for gender, they are different for the plumbing.
So, why doesn’t it cause the others using the bathroom “significant hardship?” They say it does.
I didn’t have to talk to any transgender people to ask this question. I have a brain. It works. I can easily imagine what hardships on both sides are like.
What is especially unique about schools, is everyone knows your sex. And other young people may have bathroom anxiety too.
Why does the one outweigh the many?
President Trump did, however, remove from local authorities their easiest path to doing what these parents feel affords their child the most protection and dignity. On the whole I think Trump gets it right, but it is denying human nature to think such parents won’t feel terribly dismayed by this reversal at the federal level.
The thought of anyone saying that anyone has any idea of a “gender identity” before puberty is one of the most bizarre things I have ever heard.
It is funny that the hangup is always bathrooms. It is because that is the last sanctuary. Nobody cares if a girl wants to act like a boy or vice versa (and yes, “nobody” is a slight exaggeration everybody uses as a figure of speech. But if girls want at least their bathrooms to themselves I don’t believe that wish can be trumped.
A large fraction of highly effeminate boys grow up to be gay men.
What’s so bad about that?
Is being a gay man so awful that effeminate little boys should be drugged and mutilated to turn them into pseudo-women?
That’s a popular view in Iran, so maybe we’re moving in Iran’s direction.
Steve, with all due respect, this is just about bathrooms. And because it is just about bathrooms that tells us what it is really about.
Nobody cares about anything to do with trans people…until the leftists come for our childrens’ bathrooms- the very last bastion in the highly tolerant USA.
Maybe for you it’s just about bathrooms. Some of us are sickened by the politically and socially promoted brainwashing and mutilation of children by parents who seem to suffer from Munchausen-by-proxy syndrome.
There was no hint of the current frenzy over “trans rights” back when Obama was first elected president. To some of us, it looks very much as if the Left required some elite-generated “social issue” to keep its voters stirred up after they won the fight over same sex marriage.
Is that not charitable? Too bad.
I absolutely opposed the Obama era directive, and was relieved that Trump rescinded it. Unlike most people here, I actually have experience with kids who declare they are transgender. I tried to give a sense of what it’s like here: https://educationrealist.wordpress.com/2017/02/19/what-it-looks-like-in-practice/
It’s not awful. It’s quite possible to support these kids through what is in all likelihood a phase. But there’s no need to bring bathrooms into it.