The comment section that includes number of recommends by readers allows quantification of a given point of view expressed in the individual comment, which can be aggregated among similar ones. In this essay, the article of November 30, 2015 is entitled, Illinois District Violated Transgender Student’s Rights, U.S. Says. While this was a news article rather than an editorial, the phrasing of quotations left no doubt that the newspaper stood behind the decision by the federal department of education to mandate that a biological male be allowed to shower in the girls locker room.
I'll include my comment as after looking at a hundred or so it is somewhat balanced, and previews the thrust of the article:
Let's slow down just a bit. True, the school district is "discriminating" between those born with a penis and those with a vagina. It is a limitation that is minimal, only requiring that these organs of procreation remain unexposed to the opposite sex. This is not exactly draconian.
We are going through a cultural revolution, where one's sexual identity, previously seen as invariant throughout life, is no longer so. Even terminology is evolving, as this Wikipedia article shows:
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Distinctions between the terms transgender and transsexual are commonly based on distinctions between gender (psychological, social) and sex (physical).[28][29] Hence, transsexuality may be said to deal more with material aspects of one's sex, while transgender considerations deal more with one's internal gender disposition or predisposition, as well as the related social expectations that may accompany a given gender role.[30] Many transgender people prefer the designation transgender and reject transsexual
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Let's remember almost all states of the United States prohibits exposure of the genitals as a serious crime with possible prison time and life destroying registered sex offender status. Perhaps some day such laws will be obsolete and all God's children will shower together without shame. But, change in cultural norms takes time.
Our cultural divide is deep enough with real issues such as abortion rights. This need not be added fuel to the fire.
Comments have three sorts, the default is the most recent, then there are those chosen by editors and finally those listed by number of recommends, which provides a virtual poll of the readership on the subject of the article, which reflects the perspective of the newspaper-- which I will focus on. On this list the first comments are clearly against the position of the newspaper often in scathing terms, such as these excerpts:
Every time I read a story like this I think about how dysfunctional the federal government has become. So many important regulations are never enforced, but they will beat up a local school district that made a reasonable effort to deal with a difficult situation.
352Recommend
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I wouldn't want my teenage daughter sharing a dressing room with a biologic male. Does she have any rights or are rights only conferred to those who do not conform to general societal norms? The school district seemed to make a reasonable accommodation but apparently that is not good enough for the civil rights police.
386Recommend
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Have we really come to this? We have to debate whether a human being with a penis should be permitted to be naked in a girls locker room? Every human deserves protection under the law, and transgender persons require and deserve every protection and decency afforded others, but this ruling is a weak capitulation to political correctness.
360Recommend
Finally as i go down the list of numbers of recommends we get to this comment that reflects the tone of the article and editorial positions on similar issues that I reproduce in its entirety:
Abigail - Michigan
As a current high school student (who does sports, and yes, changes in the girls locker room), I cannot see what all the fuss is about. People very, very rarely actually are naked in a locker room. Showers have curtains, girls have towels, and most girls are modest enough to use those things, transgender or not. Are there girls in their underwear in locker rooms? Yes, but a trans girl in her underwear is, in my opinion, not much different. Do girls occasionally take off their bras? Yes. But a trans girl (depending on her transition) probably won't have much to expose, and is A GIRL. That means (unless she isn't heterosexual), she sees breasts like OTHER GIRLS DO. Which means they won't really faze her, and if any cis girl is willing to display her naked breasts before other cis girls, she should either have no issue doing so with a trans girl around, or we should examine transphobia in our children and schools.
The trans girl is more likely to have a rough time in school already. Transphobia is rampant in our schools, because of adults like these who fail to communicate to children and teens that someone who identifies as a girl IS A GIRL. Our children are being impressed upon by adults like many I see commenting here, declaring their daughter "would never be allowed in that locker room", or stating why transgender people "aren't normal" or "she's still a male, regardless of her gender identity". I refuse to condone such discrimination and transphobia.
15 Recommends
This condemnation of "discrimination and transphobia" concisely expresses the essence of the culture clash that is growing in intensity and bitterness. It is also a clash of generations, as the Times readers are predominantly (79%) over 35 years old. While the individual above makes her point, the capstone are the words of condemnation "discrimination and phobia, just like homophobia or Islamophobia -- the word itself conveys the argument, that one with this view has a mental illness - the only one not to be pitied but condemned.
This is very much the mode of discourse among not only those who are younger, but a large number of those in upper positions of the secular academia. I personally believe this explains the popularity of both of the leading candidates of the Republican party. More than than Mr. Trump, Dr. Carson has stated with deep conviction his seeing "political correctness as not a joke, but the bane of our society. This happens to be the single point of any of these candidates that I fully agree with. The ease with which Abigail expressed her contempt for those who opposed her view had no effect in this comment thread, but this same tone expressed by a professor becomes a definition of intellectual discourse for impressionable students. Certainty of viewpoint and hatred of those opposed is thus sanctioned, approved by those with intellectual and institutional credentials.
This is why Ben Carson is right in his understanding of political correctness not being any kind of a joke, rather it becomes a replacement for reasoned incisive evaluation of complex issues. It's rather sad that this current avatar of this warning happens to reject evolution as central to all biological sciences, but that's another story. And the other one, Donald Trump is.......well, Donald Trump. Yet, to understand why both of them have traction, even among those who reject much of their central political positions, we must look at political correctness not as a quirk of our culture, but slow poison for enlightenment based on acceptance of complexity.
There are websites, one that I write many articles on, that this one could very well get me banned after ten years of participation. That is the degree of not just anger, but the acceptance of generalization of any position that is not approved by the group. The writer become condemned just as all cops are brutes who murder and then lie about it -- with the hatred towards this profession matching the imagined hatred of everyone who wears a police badge towards black youths.
Language itself is being debased, one reflection being the decline of level of vocabulary, something that can be measured in political debates over long periods. The difference between a six grade level that we now use and high school graduate level is that of nuance. It is those subtle shadings that are able to get to the crux of complex arguments in a way that goes beyond tribal identification, which are what buzzwords are. This is an insidious problem, that is abetted by the very institutions of academia that are dedicated to combating it.
Democracy was never meant to be a race to the bottom, yet this is how it seems to be evolving at this point in time. Attention spans are shorter, so the most cogent arguments, that must be build on suppositions, evidence, generalities as well as specifics become seen as intentionally obfuscating, and dismissed out of hand. We demand resolutions, a clear point to be cheered or vilified within ever shorter time limits.
Perhaps we are living in an era of such amazing technical revolution that our brain, evolved only to understand and follow our primate leader, doesn't have a chance in the age of twitter and videos becoming viral in the blink of an eye. We grab at those buzzwords, "weak liberal" or "war on something" that give us that sense of cohesive primal feeling, be it comfort with our own tribe or homicidal hatred of others. This may be the explanation for the allure of the Islamic Caliphate as well as "America must be feared again" mentality.
It's an amazing time to be alive.
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