Pointers; setters: picture the two relevant dog breeds . . . their images adorning the usual set of restroom doors. Men and boys are pointers; women and girls are setters. Get it?
Such humorous, quasi-vulgar noms les toilettes for sex-segregated restrooms were brought to mind this week, after the squabbles regarding urinals in New Hampshire’s Milford Middle School and Milford High School.
The regulations that the New Milford School District placed upon restroom and locker rooms in the New Hampshire public school were indeed bizarre, goofily bizarre, but entirely in accord with woke transgenderism. That they had to be rescinded, because of protest, is a good sign. But the premises of wokist demands are still held by most “earnest” people, and the consequences of those premises will keep resurfacing so long as they are held by people with some sort of power, legal, political, or “merely” cultural.
So this is what had been done:
- urinals in boys’ bathrooms and locker rooms were covered over with black plastic garbage bags;
- the number of students allowed in a restroom was limited to the number of stalls; and
- physical ed. students were required to change in toilet stalls, not publicly by their lockers.
All this was protested. And the school board caved to the protests. But the threat of some new goofy policy was not removed.
What our pathetic post-moderns cannot accept is that sex is more important than “gender,” and hetero-normativity better served than the demands of the neurotic. They also do not see that sex is a Schelling Point issue on matters like who gets to use what public restroom, while “gender” is far too flapdoodlish to serve, and trying to make it do so causes huge problems, like the threat of rape and gross inefficiency of restroom use — and general “grossness.”
What is especially interesting are issues like modesty and shame, both huge drivers in all this. The trans “boys” apparently experienced shame, or at the very least modest repulsion, over actual boys using urinals. Hence the original complaint. This element is bad enough for boys and girls with members of their own sex (we’ve all seen Woody Allen discuss urinal etiquette), but add in members of the opposite sex pretending to be members of their sex, and the micro-social negotiations become quite difficult. Surely we can all sympathize.
Or pity. At least.
One thing the transgender crowd hasn’t accepted yet is that some men will game their new system.
Earnest transgenderists set up gender-segregated rather than sex-segregated bathrooms. They say it’s to honor and respect and acknowledge the dignity of trans boys and trans girls, trans men and trans women. But that’s not to say that all men who pretend to be women or all boys who pretend to be girls will be in earnest.
Cross-dressing transvestite men have long been a separate, quite distinct class from “transsexuals” (as we used to call them). For them, it’s about “the kinks” . . . it’s very sexual, and it’s not at all respectful. I say their behavior and comportment is parodic of women and disrespectful of members of the sex; it is indeed astoundingly sexist; and it is brinksmanship in this context.
Until the transgenderists can distinguish earnest from the malign gender-benders, the whole issue is, well, problematic.
Meanwhile, real pointers and setters — the canines — do their “business” outside. Is that where we’re headed?
twv
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