SACRAMENTO – Following conservative groups obtaining the necessary number of signatures to place a referendum on the 2014 ballot for Assembly Bill 1266, which will allow transgender students in public schools to have access to sports teams and school facilities such as restrooms with respect to their gender identity, California State Assembly Speaker John A. Pérez (D-Los Angeles) released the following statement :
“This law is about making sure there is a safe place for transgender students to fully participate in their schools. For too long, transgender members of our society have suffered through the indignity of exclusion, and this bill rights those wrongs by giving protections that would keep transgender students safe and give them recognition for who they truly are. I will continue my work in protecting the rights of all Californians – gay, lesbian, straight or transgender – to ensure that no one is left without a voice.”
With only 620,000 signatures having been submitted, i doubt 505,000 will be deemed valid. I doubt 81 percent of the signatures will be determined to be proper.
It is tragic that people have been hoodwinked to the point of believing that trans children and persons are predators in search of prey. AB 1266 was long overdue and would allow for transgender children to enter adulthood completely practiced in the details of living in their gender which would facilitate passing.
Dee: I doubt anyone thinks that. However, even the San Francisco school board wouldn’t support the bill as written because the is no standard of who qualifies or how that’s determined – literally every student is able to declare on their own if they “feel male or female” that day and thus cannot be denied access to the opposite gender’s bathrooms or locker room (i.e. Where kids shower and change clothes). You can’t imagine kids in junior high or high school, all “hormones and honorable intentions” (or HaHIs), abusing that?
Or put another way: my second-grade daughter was actually harassed by a boy at school who tried to forcibly show her his privates and demand she show him hers (as well as other “infractions” like trying to pin her down on the field and kiss her, etc.). The boy got a three-day suspension and the school thought it best “not to disrupt” the boy, so told me to avoid further problems my daughter would be transferred to a different class (which I fought vehemently and the boy ended up being removed). Why do I mention this? Because, even according to school and district administrators, this is a relatively common occurrence — and some want to make it easier for kids to have access to the opposite gender’s private facilities? And since the law states that the kids self-determine with no standard to meet, there’s NOTHING teachers/admins can do to deny kids access.
Also not thought through (though it is the current hot topic around school board meetings regarding creating SOPs for this thing’s implementation) is the problem created when “HaHIs” abuse the law for their own “amusement”: who goes in to remove the perpetrator? Male teacher or female? Who is equipped to handle, say, a teenage boy “biologically reacting” to abusing the law’s “privilege” by seeking to shower in the girls’ locker room? Think about it! If you instinctively say “female, of course” (due to that being the PC, liability-mitigating thing to say), now you’re introducing an adult female into a situation with an aroused, possibly less-than-dressed teenage male – nothing could possibly go wrong with that, right? – but if you say male, people start thinking “Joe Paterno”-esque things and realize that’s no good either. What’s the solution? Our school board meetings are becoming very heated recently because there are no good answers; all the solutions are things that are currently “red flagged, immediately terminable offenses”.
Truth is, while the “sweet little innocent confused boy” you might picture in your mind’s eye is likely not going to really “do much damage”, he’s not the only one affected here: girls who perhaps would normally be thought of as tomboys now encouraged by well-meaning but short-sighted adults to “go see if you feel more normal in there” with boys who (be honest) are some of the most cruel and destructive creatures on the planet; boys who check out the girls room, realize it doesn’t feel right and returns to the boys room (with all the new level of trading and such that will result); teen and pre-teen girls dealing with puberty-related social, emotional and physical changes (and all the self-consciousness that stems from them even just being around other girls) now also having to worry about someone of the opposite gender also being in there with them…. these are all potentially catastrophic situations even when those involved have good (or even neutral!) intentions, to say nothing of the sexual harassment and sexual assault cases (and subsequent embarrassment, etc.) that will arise resulting from “HaHIs” with less-than-honorable ones.
As the father of three beautiful young daughters, I’ll stand a post outside their restrooms and changing facilities myself if need be to ensure their safety in what should be the safest, most private places on a school campus. I have no intention of letting my daughters become targets for now-enabled perpetrators, nor will I allow my one daughter to become a “repeatedly-harassed” young lady. This law, however well-intentioned, is catastrophic in its implementation, and if it remains on the books, I hope the parents of the first child assaulted as a result nail a billion-dollar lawsuit straight on Jerry Brown’s door, where it belongs.
What about the privacy of the rest of the students? Does that not matter? How will all of those other girls feel in the locker room changing for PE when a boy walks in..even if he legitimately identifies as a girl? What about at the high school age where there are showers? Locker rooms and showers should be based on the body parts you have, not how you feel. My 6th grade son has said he will refuse to use the bathroom at school if this goes into effect. How many girls and other boys will do that as well? What about the psychological effects of kids fearing to use the bathrooms not knowing if the opposite sex will walk in? What about the physical effects of these kids holding their bladder until they’re home from school? Does the majority not matter anymore? Of course not, because the majority would have voted against it if it had gone to the people in the first place. Why do you think it never went to the people?
Maybe the law should have required a single use bathroom in schools. These kids will feel safer when they walk into the bathroom/locker room of the opposite sex and are singled out? Are odd looks and fear from the kids in those facilities going to be punished as bullying?
Let’s take it a step further…if this goes into effect, how long until it’s made public law and our local Barnes & Noble or other stores having multiple stall restrooms allow transgenders the same permissions and where is the verification? NO WAY would I let my children go into any bathroom alone, and certainly not without pepper spray as well!!
hopefully there will be enough to insure there will be a vote.
regardless, these trans kids need to be finding ways to overcome there disability. Psycological help is certainly in order.