The transgender locker room debate comes close to home

Last updated on: October 13, 2015 at 7:47 am by Jane the Actuary

The transgender locker room debate comes close to home 2015-10-13T07:47:28-06:00 Jane the Actuary

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This issue made the news back in September, when students in Missouri protested the use of the girls’ locker room by a “transgirl”; that case was resolved by the student involved dropping gym class.

Now it’s reappeared, more locally.

This is not my school district, but the adjacent one, and my high schooler is a boy, not a girl, but I can only imagine how parents, and their girls, must feel: now, once again, they’re being told that they must accept changing next to a trans student who, let’s face it, when undressed, is physically a boy. The twist in this case is that the school district is requiring that the student use a private changing room, the student, via the ACLU, filed a complaint with the Department of Education, and

Federal officials responded to the complaint, which was filed about a year and a half ago with the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, by saying the school is in violation of the Title IX gender equality law, according to the ACLU and district officials.

according to the Chicago Tribune.

What happens next?

If the district cannot reach a compromise with federal officials, it risks losing some of the $6 million it receives in federal funding. [Superintendent Daniel] Cates also acknowledged that litigation is a likely outcome.

The article by the suburban-Chicago Daily Herald provides more detail on the school district’s decision; this is not just a single school official but a consensus among all school board members.

What’s more, with the case back a month ago, the recurring theme of articles and comments to those articles was this: “no one’s violating anyone’s privacy because every one of those girls is changing in as quick and private a manner as possible” — which I was skeptical of anyway because, in a case where an entire class was changing all at once, there simply is neither space nor time to change “privately” and it’s simply not possible for a locker room to be remodeled to provide the requisite number of private changing stalls. In this case, though, the reason why the student and the ACLU are rejecting the private locker room accomodation is this (per the Herald):

“They are telling a student that she can’t be with her friends at school but has to be relegated to a separate place to dress. That’s just a horrible thing to do.”

In other words, the claim is very much the student wants to socialize while changing and is prevented from doing so.

Now, maybe it’s in the nature of changing now that post-gym showers have been abandoned so that all that’s going on is removing of an outer layer of clothes, not underwear, so nothing’s exposed except for some bumps that ordinarily wouldn’t be there. But nonetheless, doesn’t every last girl at that school have a right to change for gym in a place reserved for those who share her anatomy?

I suppose, though, the next step in such a case is for the Islamic classmate of such a student to come forward and say that her rights have been violated for being required to undress in such circumstances. Won’t the Department of Ed be in a pickle then!

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