Less than a couple of decades ago, the thought of a male student occupying girls' locker rooms and restrooms at government-run schools would have been unthinkable. Indeed, it might have sounded like a joke in a movie or television show and mocked.
Now, the progressive left is trying to turn it around, making it verboten to suggest that males should be with males and females with females. They have created an environment in many areas in which questioning the notion that people can swap genders like they change underwear is met with fierce backlash.
This trend progressives are ushering in is increasingly affecting girls in K-12 schools, where they are not only force-fed a noxious diet of gender ideology but are made to live by the dictates of those pushing this toxic belief system.
A 16-year-old girl in Minnesota recently discussed how this trend is affecting her and her female classmates during an interview with the Daily Signal. She said the situation was “really uncomfortable, because I was in gym class, and I was just about to change, but then I heard this voice, and I was, like, ‘That does not sound right.'”
“So, I look, and it’s a male,” she said.
The girl remained anonymous, possibly due to the environment in blue states that buy into progressive ideology. The state has instituted policies aimed at catering to trans-identified students at the expense of those who do not experience gender dysphoria.
In 2017, the Minnesota Department of Education issued a toolkit telling school districts to provide transgender students facilities, including bathrooms, locker rooms, and hotel rooms on overnight trips, that are “consistent with their gender identity.”
Many schools in the state have since issued their own policies, including the Minneapolis and Rochester districts, but others, such as the Stewartville Public School system in southern Minnesota, use the state Education Department’s guidelines to justify allowing boys who identify as transgender in girls’ restrooms.
When the girl brought her concerns to the principal, she was told that students could “be whoever they want to be.”
She said, “They’re more making sure [transgender-identifying students] are comfortable, and not seeing what they are doing to us, and how we feel.”
This is the crux of the matter. School districts all across the country are forcing the majority to bend to the will of the minority by prioritizing the concerns of trans-identified students over everyone else. The state’s Education Department handbook notes that “Privacy objections raised by a student in interacting with a transgender or gender-nonconforming student may be addressed by segregating the student raising the objection” as long as it does not stigmatize the trans-identified student.
The girl expressed fears about boys pretending to be transgender to gain access to private girls' spaces and taking photos of female students in locker rooms. There are valid reasons for her fears. In April, a trans-identifying male who went viral on social media for physically roughing up and injuring female basketball players on the court was suspended from the women’s rowing team for making sexually inappropriate remarks to his teammates.
While female athletes at the school tried to avoid this individual, he was still allowed to use the girls' locker room. He was caught brazenly staring at one of the girls while she was changing clothes and said, “oooh t*tties!”
Not too long ago, a boy would have to hide out at home if it came out that he went into a girls' locker room and engaged in this type of behavior. But now, the authoritarian left is using government to force everyone else to simply put up with it.
Even further, there have been several reports of biological males injuring female athletes. It happened in April 2023 during a volleyball match. It also happened to another female volleyball player in California.
Yet, no amount of discomfort, harassment, or injuries appears to be enough to push those on the left to reject this silly ideology and start protecting girls. For them, ideology is everything, and if it means girls have to put up with males in their spaces, so be it. There is no reasoning with people taken in by this type of religious fervor. It can only be stopped by getting the right people into places of power and/or removing children from the government-run school system.
