NICE TIME! Judge Rules Kid Who Just Wanted To Pee Can Pee
Holy shit, it's Nice Times AGAIN! There is a lot of bad stuff happening, for sure. But Gavin Grimm and the rest of the kids in the Fourth Circuit can pee where they like in school now because yet another federal court just ruled that discrimination against trans people is sex discrimination. We're so excited we're leaking all over the Wonkette Seekrit Chatcave like a bunch of Russian pee hookers!
So, while we're mopping up, let's just take a little victory lap and think about how far we've come since Grimm got quarantined to a separate-but-unequal bathroom in 2014. Remember in 2016 when North Carolina passed its Check Your Neighbor's Bits bill? And then the state lost a gazillion tourism dollars, and the NBA noped out, and the NCAA pulled their tournaments in protest, and the legislature had to repeal it mostly? After that, state legislators kinda lost their zeal for bathroom bills. They all seemed to get flushed in committee. (Yeah, we said it!)
Huckabee and the rest of the dead-enders are still tweeting stupid shit about it, of course. But the world is moving on. The First, Second, Third, Seventh and Ninth Circuits have all recognized some right to sue for sex discrimination based on gender identity. If you can't fire someone for being a woman, you can't fire someone for being the wrong kind of woman, i.e. one who sleeps with other women, or was born with male sexual characteristics. This year, a federal court in Maryland refused to dismiss a trans boy's Title IX and Equal Protection claim against his school for barring him from the appropriate bathroom -- and Maryland is in the Fourth Circuit, same as Virginia where Gavin Grimm is suing his school. Just today, a federal court ordered the Missouri Department of Corrections to provide a prisoner with treatment for her gender dysphoria disorder.
Culturally, we've now had four seasons of Transparent on Amazon, five seasons of Orange Is the New Black, our kids go to school with trans kids, we've been peeing at Target next to each other for five years, and it's just not A THING the way it was then.
In fact, it wasn't really ever A THING for the kids in the first place. Gavin Grimm was just taking a leak like a normal boy until parents in the district lost their minds and decided they needed to persecute the poor kid to perteck the wimminz. From the Virginia order,
After a few weeks, Mr. Grimm sought permission to use the boys' restrooms. With the Principal's support, he began using the boys' restrooms on October 20, 2014, and did so without incident for approximately seven weeks.
The Principal and Superintendent informed the Board that they had authorized Mr. Grimm to use the boys' restrooms, but otherwise kept the matter confidential. However, several adults in the community learned of a transgender student's use of the boys' restrooms. They contacted the Board, demanding that the transgender student be barred from the boys' restrooms.
If I might be permitted a personal anecdote ... When my own son was 10, he had a female basketball coach.
"Wow, cool!" I said. And he said, "Mom, what are you talking about?"
Because our shit, is not their shit. They're growing up with brown coaches, and gay teachers, and trans librarians. And it's NOT A THING.
Sephora is bringing makeup classes for trans people to the same store in the mall where your teenager buys her lipgloss.
Bold Beauty for the Transgender Community - 2 MIN PROMO from Sephora Stands on Vimeo
We're not crying! You're the one who's crying!
This has been a hard year. Sometimes it seems like everything will always be awful. It's easy to look at the Nazis and the incels and the lunatic Trumpers and fall into despair.
DON'T. We will get through this. The kids are good. It will be okay.
XOX, Yr FDF!
You're right, I didn't know much about this case and was making a general observation.
I think there are assholes in every group. I see non-handicapped people park across two spaces quite often, usually young white men with expensive sports cars, but sometimes young white men with expensive pickup trucks as well. A while ago I lived in a large block of studio apartments where every tenant had ONE assigned parking space, and my neighbor's boyfriend parked his brand-new, heavily-accessorized pickup truck across THREE parking spaces because he didn't want anyone to ding it. When I complained to management, he acted totally shocked at the idea that he had maybe inconvenienced people. His sense of entitlement was gargantuan. This same guy would show up at his girlfriend's apartment at 2 am and lock his pickup truck with the remote, which honked the horn loudly about 1 foot from the open windows of half a dozen sleeping tenants, and he was similarly shocked at the idea that anyone would find this intrusive. I think maybe he was clinically brain dead.