Students protest transgender invasion of privacy

A group of six high school girls in Cook County, Illinois, decided to speak out.

On Dec. 7, before a crowded school board meeting packed with news media, they would tell the world why they don’t want a high school student who was born male, but identifies as a female, to use the girls’ locker room.

They would tell the world why allowing a transgender student to see them in a state of undress would be an invasion of their personal privacy.

They would explain why, at 15 and 16 years old, changing alongside biological women is already hard enough.

“It is unfair to infringe upon the rights of others to accommodate one person,” the six girls, in a joint statement, told an audience of at least 500.

“Although we will never fully understand your personal struggle,” they said, addressing the transgender student, “please understand that we, too, all are experiencing personal struggles that need to be respected.”

Students protest transgender invasion of privacy


Teen aged girls are DEFINITELY self conscious over their bodies. I truly feel that this was an excellent and succinct point made by these students. Hell, even as a male, I was horrified at the idea of changing in the locker room with other boys.

We are living in a time of victims. A time where the majority are bending over backwards to accommodate the few.

I am very much a live and let live sort of person. I feel that every person has the innate right to happiness. However, this does not come at the cost of the happiness at others. Nor at the comfort of others.

I believe that the brain is nothing more than a big bowl of chemical stew. I believe that it is entirely probable that there are those who are born with a mismatch between their software and hardware. I am sympathetic of and support the rights of everyone, regardless of such trivial things as gender identity.


But I feel that these girls raised a VERY valid point. One that needs to be addressed.

a reply to: nullafides

“Although we will never fully understand your personal struggle,” they said, addressing the transgender student, “please understand that we, too, all are experiencing personal struggles that need to be respected.”

Out of the mouths of babes, most kids endure gender and identity crisis when growing up. Big hurdle for them is the bathroom and locker room.

What the hell, lets just make one locker room where boys and girls can mix while changing and bathing. Saves on money having one bathroom instead of two.

Put a rubber machine at the door, charge ten cents.

Snark/off

a reply to: nullafides

Right, then how's this? Every student gets their own assigned cubicle, that only they can access. It will contain their locker, which will be steam proof, as well as a shower for their personal use. The whole time they are in ANY state of undress, they are to remain inside the cubicle.

Only 6 spoke up, but how many more stayed silent for fear of being ridiculed? Peer pressure is strong in teenagers, so there could be many more who are not comfortable with a male in the locker room. I don't have a problem with trans gender, but if the other girls do, I see no reason to allow him in their space. If he is not comfortable changing with other boys, let him change in an empty bath room.

a reply to: nullafides

What's the point of gym class anyway?

So the jocks can finally get an A?

We learned how to square dance in my gym class. Something I find very useful to this day. /sarcasm.

Get rid of gym class and problem solved........

a reply to: nullafides

Personally, I think that all children should have the right to change in total privacy. To do this just involves cubicles and not those horrid prison like showers and changing areas.

I would not shower at school after games because of this. I always refused and managed to get away with it.

It is utterly out of order to not give kids privacy, period, whatever gender they are.

You are subtly trying to infer transgender people as some kind of perverts, too. It is not the case. Your thinking is barbaric if you are of that mind. Whoever is coordinating and rabble rousing here about this issue has a big problem with transgender young people to think of them like that. If it was to highlight the lack of privacy for all children then I would consider it a noble purpose, but quite clearly transgender people are being discriminated against, labelled as sexually delinquent and a threat.

Easy way around this is to GIVE CHILDREN PRIVACY and dignity to not have to expose themselves before teachers and their peers. It is totally open to abuse and psychologically VERY unhealthy.

I hated games generally. It was not because of laziness either. I was always and still am a keen cyclist and hiker. Even when a kid I would walk for many miles and cycle, too. The games teacher was a brute of a man, very intimidating and quite a bully. He once cornered me in the changing room on my own telling me the note I had to be excused was not real and that I had written it. My poor Gran, who was my guardian, was ill at the time, had really bad arthritis and died shortly afterwards.

It was a bastard of a school full of bastard teachers and bastard bullies. A big stain on my childhood. Crap Comprehensive BS miseducation.

Anything that can be done to make children's lives more comfortable and free of all the trauma will gain my support. Right to privacy over their own physical selves is very much an important issue. Even in adulthood the thought of public changing rooms and showers repulses me. I never go anywhere where that happens. It is plain wrong to not give choice.

It is not that hard or costly to build cubicles with individual showers. Lots of swimming facilities have those, even when I was a child they did.

a reply to: IslandOfMisfitToys

In the time of IPhones, video games and online everything, it's the only exercise some of these kids get. I've seen kids that live a block away from school, bitch because they had to walk. Maybe getting off their ass one time a day would be good for them.

originally posted by: TrueBrit
a reply to: nullafides

Right, then how's this? Every student gets their own assigned cubicle, that only they can access. It will contain their locker, which will be steam proof, as well as a shower for their personal use. The whole time they are in ANY state of undress, they are to remain inside the cubicle.

Honestly, that is a fairly decent idea. It's about the closest thing to a happy medium I can think of.

Merry Christmas, mate....cheers!

a reply to: IslandOfMisfitToys

No....

It genuinely has a purpose...kids NEED exercise...

originally posted by: TrueBrit
a reply to: nullafides

Right, then how's this? Every student gets their own assigned cubicle, that only they can access. It will contain their locker, which will be steam proof, as well as a shower for their personal use. The whole time they are in ANY state of undress, they are to remain inside the cubicle.

They don't need to, boys and girls the way its been done for years. If they're making a 3rd category, maybe they need a small 3rd area for inbetweens, but they're rare breed as it is.

a reply to: IslandOfMisfitToys

And then we turn around and wonder why on earth so many people are obese ...

a reply to: Unity_99

But, it's been established that both boys and girls are uncomfortable at that age undressing in front of each other.

The idea of offering personal changing rooms, IMHO, wouldn't take much more as for construction and cost, and would be a positive thing for all.

a reply to: nullafides

What happens when the opposing team comes to visit? Do you open up personal rooms for their use or do you just build a whole bank of private cubicles that only get used by visiting teams?

a reply to: TrueBrit

i don't know how it is in the UK, but some schools in the U.S. have hundreds and thousands of students.
to build enough cubicles even if it was just one shower that was used for every class during the day would require a locker room size of a gym to hold that many cubicles or lockers in a one cubicle that has one shower.

say thirty students per class, times at least 6 classes per day, that would be 180 per cubicle, they would have to build a gym the size of a professional football stadium or even bigger for some schools.

plus you would have to think about the more delinquent children, that would love to have their own private space to vandalize, break into others kids lockers.

then could you imagine the cost of such a building, i can hear the school board meetings now.
wouldn't work.

Our company recently put in a restroom for those afraid to identify. We all use because it has a couch and everything including a locking door. Nice place to sit and get work done. Kind of a personal cubicle for whoever gets there first.

a reply to: Unity_99

They don't need to, boys and girls the way its been done for years. If they're making a 3rd category, maybe they need a small 3rd area for inbetweens, but they're rare breed as it is.

yep i can see the four signs on the walls now.

girls locker room, boys locker room, girls that want to be boys locker room, and boys that want to be girls locker room.

originally posted by: nullafides
a reply to: Unity_99

But, it's been established that both boys and girls are uncomfortable at that age undressing in front of each other.

The idea of offering personal changing rooms, IMHO, wouldn't take much more as for construction and cost, and would be a positive thing for all.

Yes, honestly I think this is a good idea. It is the way we are going. Your OP raises an issue. I was a bit hard, but I did take offense the way that transgender kids were being identified as the cause of some great big problem. The problem is much more deep and fundamental. When I was forced to do it when first at school I found it so traumatic being with all those other naked boys. Even in child remand centres and prisons physical privacy should be respected.

Remember torturers use nakedness as a vulnerability weapon. I was once abused by a gang in Paris. I was sleeping on a boat and the owner tried to humiliate me by throwing me off the boat undressed. It is a long story, but I was poorly and I was just airing my clothes and having a sleep on an empty boat. The way they treated me was horrendous; beat me up and threw me off the boat with no clothes. See, they used it as a punishment of shame and vulnerability. What does that say about how we as humans feel about physical exposure? Some are ok about it, but I tell you many are not.

Just yesterday there was someone here on ATS writing a thread about Noah's shame at being found naked before his sons while drunk. Yes, there is a very ancient kind of shame attached. It is a taboo ingrained in MOST modern religions, cultures and social behaviours.

YET the poor kids have to do this??? What is going on here? I feel quite strongly about this as I remember the trauma so very well as you can imagine. I am sure CIA victims remember the trauma, too. So, if it is that problematic to so many kids why on earth is nothing being done to give choice?

One could almost say that the state education system is using this psychologically to collectivise students and exercise so great a power to even have them disrobing publically and exposing themselves willingly just because the state says it is normal behaviour. It is not normal behaviour. Obviously they do it in prisons to deprive the inmates of a right to privacy as part of punishment and other nefarious psychological tactics.

a reply to: nullafides

Is about time this is addressed, while I am an adult female that have to problem sharing a restroom with transgender males or females, I always wonder why this is an issue in grade schools, it should be a private area for the young students that find themselves in their transition or at least thinking about it.

But trying to shove the transgender rights to the rest of the student body that makes the majority is out right wrong specially for the privacy of young girls and boys and let no forget the privacy of the transgender young people themselves that also are going to feel out of place.

We most remember that while is some of us that have not problem with transgender in our mix is people that have the right to accept the concept or no.

We all have to live together in this world and be tolerant but we also have the rights to have our personal spaces been protected.

I hope is a solution to the this issue in our grade schools soon so everybody be happy.

a reply to: marg6043

War on Women... LOL

TERF stands for “trans-exclusionary radical feminist.”

www.newyorker.com...

I will not call a male “she”; thirty-two years of suffering in this androcentric society, and of surviving, have earned me the title “woman”; one walk down the street by a male transvestite, five minutes of his being hassled (which he may enjoy), and then he dares, he dares to think he understands our pain? No, in our mothers’ names and in our own, we must not call him sister.

Anyone born a man retains male privilege in society; even if he chooses to live as a woman—and accept a correspondingly subordinate social position—the fact that he has a choice means that he can never understand what being a woman is really like. By extension, when trans women demand to be accepted as women they are simply exercising another form of male entitlement.

As members see it, a person born with male privilege can no more shed it through surgery than a white person can claim an African-American identity simply by darkening his or her skin.

Before D.G.R. held its first conference, in 2011, in Wisconsin, the group informed a person in the process of a male-to-female transition that she couldn’t stay in the women’s quarters. “We said, That’s fine if you want to come, but, no, you’re not going to have access to the women’s sleeping spaces and the women’s bathrooms,”

a reply to: Revolution9

One could almost say that the state education system is using this psychologically to collectivise students and exercise so great a power to even have them disrobing publically and exposing themselves willingly just because the state says it is normal behaviour. It is not normal behaviour.

Taking a break in between tasks. I swore I was just going to be a lurker today, so much for that promise. Merry Christmas or Happy Holidays, by the way.

First I have to disagree that it is not natural behavior to go naked in public. Ask any child, "before", they were forcefully prevented from running around in the raw, what feels natural; clothes or no clothes?

I am not an official nudist, but I live in the woods, and I can tell you, nothing feels as good or as natural as taking a God shower and air drying, as you walk around nude outside. That is why many people enjoy the guilty pleasure of skinny dipping, and many walk around their homes with as few clothes as they can get away with.

Wearing clothes is a societal expectation in our countries. There are tribes were clothing is an option. I am almost as old as dirt. We had gym classes and the girls undressed, showered, and re-dressed among each other and it was not because the State made it mandatory, and there were no spectators filing in to watch a bunch of skinny, naked girls, or boys in the locker rooms.

I am sorry you had an unfortunate experience, but some of the responsibility of that event has to fall on your shoulders as well. I am sure it was more than a shock for the owner to find a naked intruder on his vessel when he returned. What if the person coming back to the boat was his young daughter?

I am sure if you can step back from the situation a bit and look at it from the side of the owner of the vessel, you can see why he was so angry. You know that you meant no harm, and was just taking advantage of what you thought was an opportunity. I am sure being an intruder on his boat was a problem in itself, being naked just compounded the problem. The owner didn't know you or your intentions, so some may say the owner showed much restraint.

Children and nudity is quite natural. I think it says a lot about us as a society when children are being taught that nudity is perverse, and that they have to fear being seen in the body they were born in. It says a lot and it is a little more than disturbing.

Again, may your holidays bring you joy.