As others have said, there's just no good reason for her to not be able to use the girl's bathroom. Citing "future issues" with regard to her male genitals (as if she doesn't have them now) is meaningless. People need to understand these issues better. Treating her as a special case will not accomplish that but letting a female use the female restroom will.
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1st Grade Transgendered Student being barred from using Female Bathroom
- Thread starter Trojita
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As others have said, there's just no good reason for her to not be able to use the girl's bathroom. Citing "future issues" with regard to her male genitals (as if she doesn't have them now) is meaningless. People need to understand these issues better. Treating her as a special case will not accomplish that but letting a female use the female restroom will.
What future issues?
Does the school think that she's going to grow a few years then feel a sudden compulsion to start waving her privates at every girl that decides to walk into the bathroom? Do they think she's going to try and rape someone there?
Maybe they just want to start making her life difficult now so she can get used to the years of being ostracized, feeling that she's some kind of aberrant freak and possibly go through a period of deep depression.
I think there's a little more concern here than making a few parents feel "uncomfortable" for a minority that often faces extreme pressures that can lead to severe mental anguish.
Devolution
Member
"Future issues" is one of those terms they use when some parent with some leeway and ability to apply pressure doesn't like what's going on.
Anyway I'm out some people are being willfully ignorant about social isolation.
SillyEskimo
Member
Jesus christ, you calling people trolls is so overdone.
My elementary school had a boys and girls restroom as well as 2 neutral bathrooms that everyone would rush to use. I guess that may be why I don't see the big deal. Everyone uses the neutral bathroom. Sounds pretty non discriminatory to me!
You sure do project a lot onto this kid. In your head this child is just miserable 24/7 with isolation, being teased and mocked, no friends, and living as an outcast amoungst 7yr olds. Sheesh! I've read nothing that gives you grounds to put all that on this child.
This is all adult stuff as far as I can tell. 7yr olds just want to be kids.
SillyEskimo
Member
The future issues are all outlined in the OP. Read the OP people!
IMACOMPUTA
Member
When I was six I thought I had three testicles. For real.
But that's not the case here at all. She can use the gender neutral faculty bathroom or the nurse's bathroom. Pretty much by definition these are not bathrooms that everyone's rushing to use, and they're not bathrooms that everyone can or would use.
The future issues aren't outlined at all in the OP unless they are:
In which case, who the hell cares? As mentioned already in the thread, I'm sure some parents were "uncomfortable" when segregation ended and black and whites had to share a bathroom. They'll get over it.
I can't speak for others but the OP was specifically what I was addressing.
Charoncaori
Member
Here's some more information on how human brains develop. The issue with hormones seems to be timing in some cases, or not enough/too much in others:
http://www.majickalproductions.biz/bekasite/resouces/In-Womb Development.htm
http://www.majickalproductions.biz/bekasite/resouces/In-Womb Development.htm
SillyEskimo
Member
At age 6 I had a girl be extra nice to me at lunch just so she could get my special, extra large Garfield valentine that only came one in every box. I think it was suppossed to be for the teacher? I don't know, but I gave it to that girl. Lo and behold, she ended up with 3 of them. Apparently she was working over every boy in class to get that goddamn extra large Garfield valentine.
Her name was Erika.
SillyEskimo
Member
Basically it was fine as long as the child looks like a little girl but what happens later when that may not be so. No one wants a teenager with goatee going into a bathroom with their daughter. I believe that is their line of thought. Also, eventually gym showers too? Man, this kid is in for a rough life. The parents better keep that lawyer on retainer!
Is it customary for transgendered kids to grow a goatee at puberty? Is this their rite of passage?
The life of most transgendered people is often very difficult but I don't see how treating her as an anomaly will make it better for her. The misjudged discomfort of others is really of no consequence. It should and will be corrected over time.
Obviously the right course of action is whatever she wants, but I can only presume that she wants to be treated like a female and therefore should be.
perfectchaos007
Member
I only agree with half of this. Gender is selected by the individual for self identification. Sex, however, you can not change since it's chromosomal. If you are born with XX chromosomes you're female, XY is male. That is your SEX, but gender is what you identify yourself as. There aren't any hormonal treatments I'm aware of that can change all of your XX chromosomes to XY and vice versa. I know trisomy symptoms like kleinfelters throw a wrench into the argument so perhaps the sex of one of these individuals are up for debate.
Also, for those in favor of unisex bathrooms being the standard with gender specific bathrooms being eliminated altogether, wouldn't that create more problems than it solves? Kids would be exposed to opposite genitalia at a younger age than some parents prefer. Then in highschool locker rooms I don't see boys and girls taking showers side by side working out too well. Some problems in life don't have a perfect solution, and this seems to be one of those situations.
I can't help but feel like the big reason for disallowing her access to the girls bathrooms is that some people feel she's just "pretending" to be a girl to get some super pervy access to the girls bathroom at some undetermined time when she's older.
On one hand, I can sort of understand that feeling since for most of us this situation is so wholly different from anything that we've ever experienced that it is really hard to empathize with.
But on the other hand, it's incredibly illogical and kind of insulting. This is a child that so vehemently feels like she is of the other gender that she constantly associates, dresses and acts like that gender. I don't think it's really necessary to point out how different this is from none transgendered kids for it to be obvious that something is more at work here than some "scary future molester in the making."
How are you being exposed to genitalia in a bathroom with stalls? I still think my idea would be best. Urinal and non-urinal bathrooms. If you can pee standing up then you're pretty much just getting exposed to your own genitalia (though likely not if they have decent dividers). If you can't or don't want to, then you get a stall in a normal neutral bathroom. No one sees anything in there.
As for showers, that's something I really don't know how to solve, except perhaps we should give people some damned privacy. I never once showered in school because showering in an open area is just fucking weird to me.
SillyEskimo
Member
Maybe the kid pees standing up and it's confusing the hell out of the girls? Just a thought!
There isn't a 1st grade girl in the world that wouldn't have their mind blown if they saw that!
There isn't a 1st grade girl in the world that wouldn't have their mind blown if they saw that!
The chart is about sexuality, not sex.
I agree. I definitely understand why people hold such a ridiculous belief but I look forward to the day when I won't be able to. The fact that she's been "licensed" as female makes it even more ridiculous.
perfectchaos007
Member
Young kids don't exactly have the best bathroom etiquette. Not a big deal with gender specific restrooms, but if they were all unisex or stall/no stall, then that education should be mandatory otherwise...
I think we've all seen little kids peeing with their pants all the way down. Sometimes its a hard concept for kids to grasp that you don't need to pull them down all the way. And we would need to make sure all bathroom stalls actually close. Seems like half the public restrooms I've been in don't have working locks on the stalls.
Why are all the girls standing around in the same stall?
"Maybe they can hear her peeing in the one next to them."
Is that really that traumatizing? Are all the girls going to be quickly scanning under the stall walls to make sure their neighbours are sitting down? And what if she urinates while sitting? Maybe we could just put a sign on the girls bathroom door saying "no standing when using the toilets."
This is getting into ludicrous territory.
Link
The Autumn Wind
And that's why the school is in a no-win situation here. They made this decision, Coy's parents are now suing. They let her keep using the girls' bathroom, you can be sure at least one other kid's parents would be suing.
Personally, I think she should be allowed to keep using the girls' bathroom, but I'm glad I'm not the one that has to make these decisions.
SillyEskimo
Member
I was being a bit tongue in cheek but I can't help but make the observation that you don't have any kids, do ya?
Not a one, but if I did and she was transgendered I'd be pissed as hell if she was barred from using the bathrooms.
It's hard to tell when you're being tongue in cheek when your previous objection was a goatee unless that wasn't serious at all either. In which case, I don't understand what sort of issues we're still trying to discuss to bar this girl from the bathroom.
Asex would mean "asexual", and as BeesEight pointed out there are a variety of ways of defining physical sex. And while they are certainly uncommon (and in terms of their gender presentation, most of them simply present as whatever gender they identify as), but people whose bodies present an unclear picture of their sexuality isn't unheard of. You're right that the various developmental abnormalities and intersex conditions are defined and understood, but they still represent states of biological sex that are not wholly male or wholly female, but are various degrees of one or the other.
Well, it is true that there are differences that are caused by prenatal sex hormones, but researchers have found (by measuring the testosterone in second trimester amniotic fluid that was obtained during amniocentesis during pregnancy and frozen) that children's whose prenatal hormonal environment had had higher levels of testosterone displayed greater hemisphere specialization and were more strongly right-handed. And boys who had been exposed to higher testosterone levels of the womb had stronger right-hemisphere associations for emotion, which is more often found in women (it is one of those odds quirks that an increased amount of a hormone so strongly associated with men results in a brain pattern that more closely resembles women).
And interestingly regarding the bolded part, I'm aware of one study of gender differences in early literacy (kindergarten through fifth grade) on four measures that found that there were no significant differences on three of them, and on oral reading the only year with a statistically significant female advantage, fourth grade, which had disappeared by fifth grade, and they were left with a mean difference of less than one word per minute.
So I wouldn't get too invested in the importance of those average structural differences:
Regarding differences in ability:
It is true that males widely outnumber females at the genius end of the mathematical spectrum. But does that mean that males are, on average, more mathematically capable and females more verbally capable? Janet Hyde, a psychologist at the University of Wisconsin, has conducted a massive amount of research about over 1.4 million people and included writing, vocabulary, reading comprehension. She found no gender differences in verbal ability. But when she analyzed one-hundred studies of mathematical ability, representing the testing of nearly four million students, she did find some modest gender differences. In the general studies, females outperformed males in mathematics, except in those studies designed only for the most precocious individuals. What Hyde and her colleagues - and virtually every single study ever undertaken - found is that there is a far greater range of differences among males and among females than there is between males and females. That is to say that the variance within the group far outweighs the variance between groups, despite the possible differences between the mean scores of the two groups.
And regarding differences in the brain itself:
But that doesn't stop some popular writers from dramatic and facile extrapolation. Here's Robert Poole, from his popular work Eve's Rib: "Women have better verbal skills than men on average,; the splenium seems to be different in women and men, in shape if not in size; and the size of the splenium is related to verbal ability, at least in women." In fact, there seems to be little consistent evidence for significant brain differences between women and men. Jonathan Beckwith, professor of microbiology and molecular genetics at Harvard Medical School argues that "[e]ven if they found differences, there is absolutely no way at this point that they can make a connection between any differences in brain structure and any particular behavior pattern or any particular aptitude.
If there is no evidence of these arguments, why do they persist? One brain researcher, Marcel Kinsbourne suggests that it is "because the study of sex differences is not like the rest of psychology. Under pressure from the gathering momentum of feminism, and perhaps in backlash to it, many investigators seem determined to discover that men and women 'really' are different. It seems that if sex differences do not exist, then they have to be invented."
If there is no evidence of these arguments, why do they persist? One brain researcher, Marcel Kinsbourne suggests that it is "because the study of sex differences is not like the rest of psychology. Under pressure from the gathering momentum of feminism, and perhaps in backlash to it, many investigators seem determined to discover that men and women 'really' are different. It seems that if sex differences do not exist, then they have to be invented."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex
The causes may be understood, and they may have names, but that does not mean all structures are identifiable as clearly a penis or a vagina.
On what grounds would the parents of any cisgendered girls at the school have to sue, though?
It's actually a lot more complicated than chromosomes. This woman was born with XY chromosomes and you would never know it unless she told you.
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=6f5_1298173495
It has more to do with whether certain genes (most importantly the SRY gene) act in a certain way. If any of them act differently than average, it immediately becomes a gray area.
It seems to me that people who are alway bringing up that stupid "chromosomes are set in stone" argument don't really have an idea what they're actually talking about and how chromosomes work.
perfectchaos007
Member
Can you elaborate on that instead of just calling my argument stupid?
I read this bit Charoncaori posted earlier...
Unless I'm misinterpreting a what a "hormonal wash" is, I interpreted this simplified as XX females accept male hormones while XY males reject male hormones. So their sex chromosomes would still match their genitalia while their gender would not. And after watching the AIS video, I got the impression that she doesn't want to identify herself as male or female when she said "I only check the female box because male and female are the only options". She has a good point. She really doesn't have a sex but she definitely has a gender, which is female.
I called the argument generaply stupid.
On the other hand there many people are forced to live in a certain gender role. Transgender and intersex people are often under pressure to live in one of the two gender roles even if it doesn't fit them. Others are can't chose their gender role because their character fits so well int a certain sexual gender even if its not their birth sex. So there's no real descision in that case.
Chromosomes in the other hand are too fragile and complex to work 100% the way one would expect. They can contain mutated genes, be deformed or split and the way they interact in our organism is so complicated that you can't reduce their function to their cause but to their effect wich can differ from the forner in much more ways than you could imagine. Organisms don' work like math.
Trojita
Rapid Response Threadmaker
That doesn't happen if a transgendered person takes a hormone blocker first and then their true gender's hormones.
See this girl in the white dress?
She was born a boy.
It's actually more important to catch it early. Coy is extremely lucky her parents are understanding of her problems.
Only the evil ones
X only people, LOTS of trisomy, XY female people (people who are imune to the Y chromossome effects), the rare XX male people ... and that is just humans... if you go to animals you have animals that change sex to a reproductive state while keeping the same chromosomes, animals wich the same cromossome is the default for males and ALL the weird beautiful things that bilological diversity gives us =3
Oh .. and talking about humans, don't forget the the OTHERS sex genes ... like the sex change genehttp://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2011/07/20/one-gene-keeps-mickey-from-turning-into-minnie/ !
SquiddyCracker
Banned
Then it will be fine later as well as they have put her on puberty blockers, and give her the female equivalent of puberty hormones as she reaches the age of puberty. Gym showers are a potential problem if she hasn't had sexual reassignment surgery by then, but that has nothing to do with letting her go to the female bathroom.
SillyEskimo
Member
What would the problem be?
Still not really a problem, but girls may be exposed to a penis for a few brief moments if she still has one. The horror.
shanshan310
Member
Bodies are bodies. I'm sure most kids with siblings saw them naked at a young age.
Locker rooms and showers should be separated for privacy reasons, but I don't see why having shared stalls would be a problem. At the very least they should be shared for adults.
Really? Even if you don't agree it is pretty stupid not to use the legal status of a person.
CrudeDiatribe
Member
Yes to the bolded (though I believe there are a variety of other chromosomal/genital conditions that pop up once in a while - see Platy's post above), though I wouldn't have described it as you did.
Dude Abides
Banned
Edit. Misunderstood.
This is really fascinating stuff that puts things into a good (and scientific!) perspective. So would this mean it's possible to know (or at least have a good indication) that your child will be transsexual before they're even born?
Trojita
Rapid Response Threadmaker
He's saying it was stupid of the DA to say that.
SquiddyCracker
Banned
Getting naked when you have a rather atypical body for a woman?
Most likely, she'd get beat up.
I'd support barring her from using female changing rooms, sure, but that's for her own sake. The same argument can't be made for female bathrooms, where you're never exposed naked to your class mates.
Omegasquash
Member
Let her use the girls restroom. They're stalls. IIRC, there are cases in MA where they're recognized as a girl and are treated as such.
The fuck is wrong with people...it's 2013 and if all your doing is blocking someone from being what they ought to be just to save a few kids from *gasp* recognizing that there are things different from what they are we might be a helluvalot more accepting as a society.
The fuck is wrong with people...it's 2013 and if all your doing is blocking someone from being what they ought to be just to save a few kids from *gasp* recognizing that there are things different from what they are we might be a helluvalot more accepting as a society.
paranoidfortean
Member
Let's all talk about how beautiful transgender people are. Praise only!
CHEEZMO
Obsidian fan
Is there something you wish to get off your chest?
SquiddyCracker
Banned
They are no more beautiful than any other person, whether it's on the inside or outside.
There are plenty of ugly or evil transgender individuals, just as there are plenty of ugly or evil non-transgendered individuals.
All I know is that girl at the top of the page posted by Trojita is hot as fuck.
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