The administrative class delights in imposing its views on the rest of us, especially when it involves our private lives. Small businesses are made to prepare wedding cakes for gays; young children are forced to study sexual practices from which they ought to be shielded; workers are made to attend classes on DIE in which, if they are white, they are accused of racism and exploitation, even as they are the ones being exploited by racism. We live in a world turned upside-down, and it can only end in chaos.
For the woke class that now governs our country, it’s not enough that gays and transgenders, now treated as minorities and thus victims, are granted complete equality and full human rights. What they seem to want, and what the administrative class imposes on the rest of us, is superiority and oppression of others who are straight. Everything gays and transgenders demand is granted by administrators, judges, corporate leaders, and politicians who are afraid to refuse them because of the stigma of seeming to be “anti”-minority. Even when it imposes harm on the rest of society, the wishes of gays and transgenders come first.
The “right” of transgenders to use bathrooms and locker rooms of the opposite sex is a case in point. Time and again, administrators impose this woke idea. In doing so they cause irreparable harm to young women and men when they are still innocent and vulnerable.
An important part of that innocence is the need to perceive the opposite sex in idealized terms: for young men, young women are still the “earth angels” that the Penguins sang about in 1954, and for young women, young men are viewed as confident, strong, and selfless, something like Leonardo DiCaprio in the 1997 film Titanic. These romantic feelings are the basis of a huge array of practices within our civilization, everything from small expressions of warmth and support to grand gestures of protection and self-sacrifice. Without this innocent faith in the goodness and beauty of the opposite sex, life would be bitter and pointless.
It is difficult to maintain the illusion of chivalry and romance when one has been exposed to the coarser elements of anatomy and biological functioning that are an inevitable part of a school locker room. It’s bad enough in the presence of one’s own sex — believe me, I survived it in middle school — but to strip naked, shower, and use the toilet in the presence of the opposite sex is intolerable. That is what school administrators and politicians are forcing on young people in the belief that transgenders must be granted “equality.” This is a bizarrely mistaken idea.
The central fact is that privacy is a fundamental human need. Privacy and the sense of dignity that goes with it are natural, innate goods that should not be violated. The left and its legion of supporters and enforcers cannot understand this or any other human need because they follow an ideology derived from Marxism that is abstract and inhuman. The left attacks whatever is genuinely human in its effort to remove all obstacles to power. Over the decades, this has included the Christian church, capitalism, the family, and patriotism, but now it includes modesty in young people. The Marxist State wants to turn them and everyone else into inhuman bits in the vast state-run machinery it envisions.
At least 18 states and D.C. have passed laws ensuring transgender bathroom access. These laws “allow people to choose locker rooms based on an internal sense of whether they are male or female instead of sticking with the longstanding, sensible practice of designating locker rooms for use by men or women based on clear biological realities.”
As Samuel Green of the Alliance Defending Freedom points out, “our society has long recognized that biological realities demand that males and females not be forced together when bathing, changing clothes, using the restroom, or engaging in other activities where privacy is compromised. This commonsense belief in modesty and privacy — not animosity toward any demographic — impels our society’s insistence on separate locker rooms and restrooms for the two sexes.” Failure to protect privacy results in serious embarrassment and even trauma, and certainly in damage to the emotional development of young people.
Privacy at all ages, but especially during childhood and adolescence, is one of mankind’s most important values because it is key to preserving idealism and faith, innocent values that are the basis of human survival. It’s not hard to imagine the opposite: a world in which the charm and joy of innocent love is replaced by raw sexuality and materialism — not hard, because that sort of sexuality is the basis of thousands of genres of coarse and degrading music that depicts young men as “players” and young women as little more than prostitutes. Young people are indoctrinated into this coarse sexual materialism not only in rap music, but also through much of television, advertising, and other media.
Romantic love cannot exist when human beauty is compromised, as when one has to observe the opposite sex urinating or defecating, or simply undressed. This damage goes far beyond embarrassment. And then there is the real risk of sexual assault, as has happened when girls’ bathrooms and locker rooms are open to men.
Unisex and transgender facilities are not just something that one has to “get used to,” as administrators in Virginia claimed. They are an attack on the life-sustaining contract of courtliness that provides meaning and purpose to human existence. This may sound like mere prudishness, but it is not; it is the basis of Western civilization, and those who wish to damage the contract are either ignorant or evil.
Jeffrey Folks is the author of many books and articles on American culture including Heartland of the Imagination (2011).
Image via Pxfuel.
Privacy Is a Fundamental Value
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15.02.2024
The administrative class delights in imposing its views on the rest of us, especially when it involves our private lives. Small businesses are made to prepare wedding cakes for gays; young children are forced to study sexual practices from which they ought to be shielded; workers are made to attend classes on DIE in which, if they are white, they are accused of racism and exploitation, even as they are the ones being exploited by racism. We live in a world turned upside-down, and it can only end in chaos.
For the woke class that now governs our country, it’s not enough that gays and transgenders, now treated as minorities and thus victims, are granted complete equality and full human rights. What they seem to want, and what the administrative class imposes on the rest of us, is superiority and oppression of others who are straight. Everything gays and transgenders demand is granted by administrators, judges, corporate leaders, and politicians who are afraid to refuse them because of the stigma of seeming to be “anti”-minority. Even when it imposes harm on the rest of society, the wishes of gays and transgenders come first.
The “right” of transgenders to use bathrooms and locker rooms of the opposite sex is a case in point. Time and again, administrators impose this woke idea. In doing so they cause irreparable harm to young women and men when they are still innocent and vulnerable.
An important part of that innocence is the need to........
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