The school board of District 211 in Illinois voted last week, in a 5 – 2 decision, to allow biological males into the female locker room at Palatine High School. The board said that all students should be “treated and supported in a manner consistent with their gender identity.” This “support” apparently necessitates obliterating the privacy and safety of every girl at the school.
A student named Nova Maday, a biological male who identifies as transgender, filed a lawsuit in 2017. The lawsuit came after a Department of Education mandate in 2015 forced Palatine High to allow boys like himself into bathrooms and locker rooms with girls. The school tried to strike a compromise, inviting the gender-confused males into girl-designated areas but setting aside a separate, private area for them to use. Maday was not happy with this compromise. He demanded access not just to the girls locker room, but to the exact same area where the girls change. His basic human rights are apparently violated in horrific fashion if he is not able to actually see girls get naked and himself get naked in front of them.
The school board found his deranged arguments convincing, and now every girl in the school must shut up and cooperate as biological males invade their private spaces. If you need any help in understanding why this situation is egregiously immoral and insane, a video from the Daily Herald may help. A Herald reporter interviewed Maday before and after the school board vote. They also interviewed a female student, Julia Burca. The contrast between their two reactions is stark. In fact, even if you don’t need help understanding why this is crazy, I’d still recommend watching the rather striking footage.
Maday, sporting a “Queen” shirt and long pink hair, celebrates the decision. He says he is “ecstatic,” calling the new policy a “great step forward.” Naturally, however, he still complains that it doesn’t go quite far enough. “It’s not everything we wanted,” he says, but it’s a “first step” towards “many more steps.”
The tenor changes dramatically with Julia’s reaction. Her voice shaking and tears in her eyes, she says that she is “uncomfortable that my privacy is being invaded.” She explains that she is a swimmer and therefore has to get changed “multiple times, naked, in front of the other students in the locker room.” Yet even in the face of this outrageous trampling of her basic privacy rights, she still attempts to be as generous as possible to the other side, acknowledging the school’s “obligation to all students” but arguing that she should also be accommodated.
Now, I don’t think the school board or Maday or the trans activists pushing this deserve even the slight concession she offers them. But I want to highlight the contrast between the two sides. Maday has no evident concern whatsoever for the feelings and rights of the girls at his school. He makes no mention of them and expresses absolutely no sympathy for them. Julia, on the other hand, even though she is completely and totally in the right and would be justified in screaming profanities into the camera, still exhibits more dignity and class than the other side.
This is not a complicated issue. This is a black-and-white, right versus wrong, good versus bad, issue. We have two competing claims to weigh. On one side, the claims and concerns of a small handful of gender-confused males who would prefer to change with girls because it would make them feel more like girls, even though they are not girls. On the other side, the claims and concerns of the girls in the school, who just want a private place to get changed and use the toilet.
One side is demanding that the whole system be reworked for their sake, and that the privacy of every girl in the school be abolished in the process. The other side is not trying to impose anything on anyone, is not asking for any special accommodation of any kind, is not asking for anything unreasonable, is not even demanding that gender-confused boys get changed with other boys. They could use private stalls. They could work out any other arrangement they want. All this side asks is that their private areas — the areas where they are in the most vulnerable and exposed state — remain private. There is no contest here. The scales are tipped 100% in favor of the girls.
At the very least, if you support forcing scared and humiliated young girls to change in front of boys, please do not pretend to care about women’s rights, especially women’s privacy rights. And please do not ever sermonize about the dangers of “rape culture” or “patriarchy.” You are willing to put a girl’s safety at risk and expose her to the shame and embarrassment of changing in front of boys all for the sake of the LGBT agenda. You are an enemy of women, not a supporter. At least be honest about it.
