I cannot, for the life of me, figure out why the burning social question of the moment has to do with transgender persons and bathrooms, locker rooms and changing facilities, both those for the convenience of the public and those dedicated for the use of school children. First and foremost, I will not believe that there can be all that many genuine transgender persons of any age wandering around, outside of a few very limited locations; very few and those who have not taken the plunge entirely would, I believe, not be all that damned flamboyant about it. It is remotely possible that I might have been in a public facility at the same time as an undecided or a totally committed transgender and been unaware of it, but frankly, I believe that my personal chances of having done so and knowing about it are about on par with my chances of being abducted by aliens.
After all the recent sturm und drang with regard to the actual proportion of gays across the general population give or take 2% of the whole, and I don’t CARE how high the representation is in certain neighborhoods or occupations, or how many gay characters there are in any given movie or TV show gays are only about two in a hundred, and genuine transgender persons are considerably less than that. So the tender concern regarding them using the bathroom of choice is a tempest the size of Hurricane Katrina in a demitasse cup and again; why? With all this talk about safe spaces, and a so-called “war on women” isn’t facilitating the presence of male sexual predators in a female bathroom, locker or changing room by conditioning people not to object to their presence on the grounds of being Zimmermanned at least a little I don’t know counter-productive? Is there a method in this apparent madness?
Is it, as some have suggested a sort of Gessler’s Hat; an exercise in petty authority on the part of a petty and vindictive man, designed to remind ordinary citizens that they must and will obey the dictates of the ruler? There is an argument to be made in that. Our current president gives every appearance of one accustomed to snapping his fingers and seeing the underlings fall all over themselves to obey.
Or is it another salvo in a continuing effort to jam the controlling tentacles of a federal government vampire squid more thoroughly into the public school system a system more generally controlled at a local, city and state level under the extremely thin guise of being a matter of civil rights for an all but invisible minority? Could be; and I personally think this would be the likeliest motivation.
Is it a deliberate ploy to distract chaff thrown out direct public and news media attention away from something else, something much more serious, and if so, what? Candidate Hillary’s problems with security, and bungling Benghazi? What other catastrophic failures is this a distraction from?
Or could it be a calculated effort to goad us farther into open defiance?
Discuss.
Notice that Syria has almost disappeared from the news. Now, if only that SEAL had kept his head down.
“Is it a deliberate ploy to distract – chaff thrown out [to] direct public and news media attention away from something else, something much more serious, and if so, what?”
I think this is the best guess. I offer in evidence the additional “Hillary” issue, of her promise to re-investigate UFOs. Pandering to an even smaller percentage of the voting public, but certain to garner some headlines and discussion. Next up, are UFOs getting a good demographic sample of Earthlings given that so few LGBTs have reported being abducted and probed?
As for what we are to be distracted from, well, there’s war, plague, famine and tyranny for starters. Those who have for two point five decades now asserted the “end of history” will be loath to admit that such archaic concepts still matter in deciding among potential leaders.
Questions I’d like to have asked next presser for Hillary, or Donald, either one.
Do you believe the government consensus and official story on Vietnam era POWs, or is the evidence suggestive of the need for another, deeper, look? Are you willing to say you believe the evidence supports the theory of UFOs better than a theory North Vietnam might have lied about POWs in the 1970s and embarrassed to admit it now?
Do you believe in SSI, the “Star Wars” missile defense technology? What with Iran and North Korea and other belligerents gaining longer range missile capacity wouldn’t it be nice to detect and shoot down incoming? Are you willing to say in 2016, as was said in the 1980’s, that SSI is entirely impossible’ “like hitting a bullet with a bullet” and simply can’t be done? Or do you argue it’s not worth doing? Or would you build it?
Do you believe in GMOs — perhaps, as suggested in Time Magazine, modified mosquitoes to control malaria and Zika?
Do you believe Planned Parenthood deserves to be compensated for the hard work and extra effort they put into harvesting research tissues from fetal remains?
Do you believe Kermit Gosnell was the only provider of such services ever to be so incompetent? If not, what steps should be taken to find and remove from the provider pool such dangerous doctors?
Do you believe Venezuela is an exceptional failure of socialism, or rather the expected consequence? How about Cuba? Zimbabwe? On which continent does socialism actually appear to work, and for how long?
It is one of several arrows in the quiver of the deconstructionist Left, along with militant feminism, gun control, global warming, etc. Anything they can use to hammer away at the civic, social, and economic institutions that gird our nation together. And to hear most Millennials talk, they’ve already won.
Go read Alinksy’s Rules for Radicals, Mom. That tells you all ye need know.
The endgame is the government will require schools assign a gender to all students before high school enrollment.
Phil, I’ve read Alinsky’s Rules – a good few years ago. We took them to heart, when planning Tea Party actions. I’m still pretty certain that it is Option Two – increased Fed-Gov authority over schools, but I’m beginning to think it is not going over all that well. My daughter is more into social media than I am, and she says that she is seeing nothing but silence from people who would usually be clapping like a claque of performing seals over Obama diktats.
Do you believe the government consensus and official story on Vietnam era POWs
You know, I wondered if Trump was going into that when he dissed McCain. There are quite a few stories about POWs who never were traced. I also wonder if there were atrocities even worse that were covered up by Kerry and McCain in their “reconciliation tour” of NV.
I’m not into conspiracy theories but that is one I’m sort of neutral on.
If you’re reading a book and someone wants you not to, they can pull you away and distract you, but if you have a bookmark, the loss is very small. If you’re watching video content in the days of over the air broadcasts, distractions are effective. It’s not so effective if you’re watching something on Netflix or Youtube. Distraction tactics in politics will continue until we find the equivalent of the bookmark that makes the distraction more costly than the payoff. We all own computers that can do this task for us. We just haven’t had anybody write the code to do the job.
Mike K – I have always thought that a number of North Viet-held American POWs died under horrific torture, or of medical neglect, and after peace broke out the North Viets were too embarrassed to confess -‘Oh, hey – this Captain or Major so and so? We beat him to death in 1969, so sorry!’ and the various US administrations having an interest just wanted the whole matter to go away entirely, once they had nailed their colors to the mast in insisting that all POWs had been accounted for or returned.
No secret camps – just a case of severe political embarrassment on both sides.
It is one of several arrows in the quiver of the deconstructionist Left
Bingo. This gets the prize. Sharks need to keep swimming, same with the Left. Does anyone imagine that they’re ever going to say “Good job comrades, we’ve destroyed society and now there is no more revolution to launch?” There is a secondary aspect, the ego of the Leftists also needs constant stroking, so they need to find new ways of feeling superior to the mouth-breathers who don’t embrace the transgender reality.
The endgame is the government will require schools assign a gender to all students before high school enrollment.
There’s plenty more endgame after that. We’re closer to endgame when the government randomly assigns new born babies to parents at the maternity ward in order to further reduce structural inequality which arises from hereditary factors.
The target is the family, not the schools.
[Reposting a comment on this topic that I left a few days ago at The Right Coast:]
It’s come to this because it’s time to epater les bourgeois, meaning most of the entire country including all white males and most families, and excluding parts of the North Side of Chicago, Austin and a few big coastal cities. The Left wants to do it precisely because it makes no sense. It’s a raw assertion of power and demand for submission and anyone who asks why self-identifies as the enemy. Bruce Jenner was the test run. The difference is that you could ignore Bruce Jenner but you can’t ignore transgender toilets, particularly if you have kids.
Those who reject the existence of absolutes have absolutely nothing to quibble about. Nor, for that matter, do they have any tools to quibble with.
The end game remains the same as the game: chaos so that some few can control the many.
It’s red meat for leftists. It changes the subject from Syria, Libya, huge debt and no jobs, to social issues that leftist can rally around. It confrontational and gets out the base to support their issues. If successful, it increases federal control. It’s something naive youngsters will see as a civil rights issue as opposed to an issue about civilizational rules – something they’re too immature to understand. From the viewpoint of left, it’s a win-win. We’ll see if that’s correct.
The Left wants to be “transgressive” to épater les bourgeois, and to impress each other and themselves. Thus the huge enthusiasm for homosexuality. Florence King noted that lesbianism used to be an upper-class thing, that famous lesbian author Radclyffe Hall was a Tory reactionary (King herself was a Republican, as she once responded to a gang of Wiccan/vegetarian/New Age lesbians who invited her to a “womyn’s festival”). There were many homosexuals who wanted to live ordinary middle-class lives, just not having to hide their sexuality.
Now it’s a fad of the cultural deconstructionists. Cultural traditionalists were hostile to homosexuals, so the radicals moved in to champion homosexuality as a force against all tradition.
Transgenderism has likewise been co-opted by radicals. The handful of cases of genuine gender dysphoria have been conflated with the much larger number of transvestite fetishists, and with anti-cultural radicalism.
All this is theoretically justified by traditionalist mistreatment of gender dysphoria. Many old-fashioned fathers, faced with a transsexual son, would try to beat it out of him (physically or verbally).
The Left wants to prove they aren’t like that – therefore all purported cases of transsexuality must be embraced, encouraged, and accommodated (even though this will result in many tragedies due to false positives). Any counter-reaction is bigotry and must be suppressed.
The Left likes this issue, because they can claim moral high ground and point the finger at actual wrongs committed by the other side. It’s much the same reason they are obsessed with racism; the civil rights campaign was their last great moral triumph.
she is seeing nothing but silence from people who would usually be clapping like a claque of performing seals over Obama diktats
Agreed. Look at how Target stock has been tanking since they went in whole hog for the bathroom diktats.
Having grown up around hard left types, I surmise that it’s purpose is the destruction of children, of innocence. Whether they break you down through physical violence and intimidation, or via the introduction of drugs, pornography and sexual experimentation, it seems to be the goal. A little girl may not have to actually see a man in the bathroom, but just her knowing that it’s a very real possibility, is enough to set her on edge for her entire life. If you’ve spent time around sexual abuse victims, particularly those exposed in childhood, you may detect the “brokenness”. I believe leftists like this and want it across the board.
Will, it’s not the children specifically, but the family they wish to destroy.
I doubt that rules governing bathroom usage have ever once — in the history of the nation — ever crossed the mind of a President. I mean, why would they?
But the current gang in Washington is determined that everything be dictated by the Federal government. I suppose this one hit a nerve because, as well as usurping social convention and local mores, it blatantly denies the reality that transsexuals have not, in fact, changed their sex.
Merely disfigured it.
I think it’s an excellent hill to figuratively die on.
Destroying the power of the family, yes; signalling a peculiar kind of virtue, yes. Ignoring the real problem – not the hurt feelings of transgenders (and I have been around some and the “women” might happily use the stall next to me and no one would know, let alone care).
But isn’t this also a desire to argue that what is, is not. What is more basic than our biological selves? (A minute – a fraction of a fraction of a fraction – otherwise.) The great lesson of science that both Puritans and Enlightenment figures like Franklin took was that what is, is. The more we know what is, the more we need to acknowledge its existence. That’s the great gift of science – defining what is. Those who prefer fantasies, feelings, and ideas ungrounded in fact, can’t accept that “is” for it destroys their world. And Will has a point – there seems an anger sometimes that some aren’t broken, a desire that being broken is important.
The fantasy is that one out of 5 (or whatever) women on campus are raped; the truth is that some(more than are transgendered) desire children sexually or are prone to rape women when vulnerable. While this new law will not make this easy, it will remove one convention that has been a helpful protection.
Sometimes that seems the purpose. After years of hearing about the flaws of priests and ignoring probability statistics, the Boy Scouts was hammered into changing some its policies; when repercussions appear, I am sure that they – and not the reporters – will be charged with hypocrisy. Certainly the theory in the seventies that a family was whoever the mother decided to share her bed with for a month or two led to increased charges of incest, all coming from not only ignoring one of many reasons (a protective father) the reasons for a tightknit bfamily but also those of another reality, the nature of feelings that reinforced taboos that were universal and meaningful. (Again, I wish Will wasn’t right, but fear he may be.)
All of this is not going to end well – though it might be good if it just ended.
The Boy Scout matter is another good example. The premise is that the changes would allow boys that are different, access, free from ridicule and harassment. But really, it’s about allowing men who feel that boys need exposure to alternatives access. Boys that could care less about archery, camping and traipsing through the woods never bother their parents about joining up. They just don’t.
This is a very old thing, and one is reminded as to the reasons why the systems of civilization were developed. They know exactly what they are after with the bathroom business.
Will might have a good point – that at least part of this is aimed at sexualizing children and young teens, or at the very least to shove them out into that minefield well before they are even thinking about sex differences and roles. It is not a good or a healthy thing to do this to children, and yes, one might be justified in suspecting that adults pushing for this have an agenda of their own.
Another thought – this is tearing down a kind of social set of understandings and voluntary accommodation, and replacing it with a rule-book, of hard and fast rules that must be obeyed, or else. It’s rather like a neighborhood, where most residents are house- and-garden proud, and keep up a certain standard voluntarily, because that is the understanding. There might be the odd house that doesn’t have a perfect lawn, or might need a fresher coat of paint – but generally, the standard is understood, and most everyone gets along without much fuss. And then there is the overbearing home-owners’ association, with page after page of rules, rigidly enforced – which is a much more unpleasant situation than the casual and mutual understanding.
These new rules now supersede the previous quiet, mutual understanding about bathrooms, transgenders, for the use of – which seemed to have worked well enough, on those occasions where they were required.
Using the terms rather loosely, the ‘progressives’ aim to turn every Gemeinschaft into a Gesellschaft, and to require people to view the administrative Gesellschaft as their Gemeinschaft.
“Many old-fashioned fathers, faced with a transsexual son, would try to beat it out of him (physically or verbally).”
Does anyone else remember the scene in “Down and Out in Beverly Hills.?” The son was a transvestite.
“this is tearing down a kind of social set of understandings and voluntary accommodation”
Tolerance is no longer acceptable. Only celebration will be approved.
Colleges are starting to learn that this anarchy by students and protestors, is unacceptable, too.
If you are students, and I think the vast majority of you are, I want you to understand that you are violating the student code of conduct. As dictated to me by [university president] Dr. Drake 15 minutes ago to me on the phone, we have chosen to try to work with you this evening because we respect you. This is your university.
And we want to have dialogue. We want the dialogue to extend beyond tonight. But if you refuse to leave, then you will be charged with a student code of conduct violation.And I’m telling you this now because I want you to have good thought and careful consideration. If you’re here at 5 a.m. we will clear the building and you will be arrested. And we will give you the opportunity to go to jail for your beliefs. Our police officers will physically pick you up, take you to a paddywagon, and take you to be jail.
U of Missouri has taught them something. College administrators know only one thing. MONEY.
Texas could do something important if they defy Obama and also defy DoE on some of their regulations. What would they do ?
I’d imagine the unseen hand desires a Kent State, or similar action to help cement the era in history, and will continue to work to those ends. As long as Governors and other elected officials fear the radicals running the country (and who wouldn’t fear the cadre working day and night to destroy you?)the campus will remain a staging ground. Greg Abbott seems like a no-nonsense guy, but these bastards know their mark, they work the system.
” Greg Abbott seems like a no-nonsense guy”
I thought for a moment you were going to say “stand up guy” but you didn’t. :)
If I’m not mistaken someone else went for the “cripple humor” angle in the recent past. It’s contingent on the political affiliations of course. For a short time, New York had a wacky Democrat Governor named Dave Paterson. He is legally blind, (and black). SNL decided he might be fair game, and gave it a go. Bad idea.
But, Greg Abbott or Sarah Palin’s son? Open season. That said, I haven’t heard much more about Will Ferrell’s proposed Reagan Alzheimer comedy.
I haven’t heard much more about Will Ferrell’s proposed Reagan Alzheimer comedy.
Give it time. I’m sure Hollywood won’t disappoint.