Youth & Education

Trans Teens and Controversy

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From The Atlantic cover story:

[O]ther resources, including those produced by major LGBTQ organizations, place the emphasis on acceptance rather than inquiry. The Human Rights Campaign’s “Transgender Children & Youth: Understanding the Basics” web page, for example, encourages parents to seek the guidance of a gender specialist. It also asserts that “being transgender is not a phase, and trying to dismiss it as such can be harmful during a time when your child most needs support and validation.” Similarly, parents who consult the pages tagged “transgender youth” on glaad’s site will find many articles about supporting young people who come out as trans but little about the complicated diagnostic and developmental questions faced by the parents of a gender-exploring child. …

Some LGBTQ advocates have called for gender dysphoria to be removed from the DSM-5, arguing that its inclusion pathologizes being trans. But gender dysphoria, as science currently understands it, is a painful condition that requires treatment to be alleviated. Given the diversity of outcomes among kids who experience dysphoria at one time or another, it’s hard to imagine a system without a standardized, comprehensive diagnostic protocol, one designed to maximize good outcomes.


More.

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That’s Not Funny!

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LGBTQ hypersensitivities have played a major role, after race and gender, in the intersectional hysteria that has gripped college campuses and, indeed, much of the left. Does growing mockery signal that sanity may be returning? If so, is there a path toward equality and supportive community that doesn’t invoke authoritarian-like thought control and the demonizing of white, heterosexual, cisgender males?

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Really not so funny:

More. Via Heterodox Academy: “In the wake of the violence at Middlebury and Berkeley…many commentators have begun analyzing the new campus culture of intersectionality as a form of fundamentalist religion including public rituals with more than a passing resemblance to witch-hunts.”

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Campus Social Justice Warriors Strike Again

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The Washington Post reports that a coalition of 25 student organizations at the University of Maryland, a public university, has presented a list of 64 demands to the administration.

According to the report:

The petitioners listed the communities of students that participated in the initiative this way: “Marginalized, American Indian, Black, Latinx, LGBTQIA+, Muslim, Pro-Palestine, Undocumented.” No Jewish group at the university signed the list of demands, which include a call for “the active encouragement of faculty and students to engage in discourse and learning about the Palestinians’ struggles and the Boycott Divest and Sanction movement without fear of consequences by the university administration.”

The student’s demands, endorsed by The Pride Alliance at U-Md., include the following:

For the LGBTQIA+ Student Community:
*Converting the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) Studies program into a department in order to provide curricular autonomy.
*Gender neutral bathrooms in all buildings on campus.
*Multi-stall gender-inclusive bathrooms in every building with multi-stall bathrooms.
*Students be allowed the choice of different gender roommates in the residence halls through random matching.
*Including pronouns in addition to names on student rosters seen by faculty and advisors.
*Implementing a campus wide policy to replace male-female checkboxes with write-in boxes on all forms, surveys, and applications.
*The administration advocate for and defend the Arts and Humanities, as they are one of the departments most sensitive to LGBTQ issues and also one of the most at risk under new state and federal leadership.

For the Muslim Student Community:
*One room in each major building (e.g. SPH, Chemistry, McKeldin etc.) designated for prayer.
*Shuttle services to the Diyanet Center of America for Muslim students to have access to a place of worship and participate in the many activities that the center hosts.
*More classes offered pertaining to Islam and the Muslim world taught by Muslim professors, who will counteract the negativity surrounding the name of Islam that is perpetuated by our culture and media.
*[Responding to the showing of “American Sniper” on campus] Organizations on campus should have better judgement when choosing to show movies that perpetuate false narratives and stereotypes of Muslim and should be held accountable if they do not take this into consideration.

For the Pro-Palestine Student Communities:
*The active encouragement of faculty and students to engage in discourse and learning about the Palestinians’ struggles and the Boycott Divest and Sanction movement without fear of consequences by the university administration.
*The encouragement of equal and positive representation of Pro-Palestinian human rights activists on campus. Specifically, condemning the conflation of Pro-Palestinian activism with racism and Anti-Semitism.

For the Undocumented Student Community:
*A full-time undocumented-student coordinator to advocate for, advise, represent and protect undocumented and “DACAmented students.” (DACA is the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which shields some undocumented immigrants from deportation.)
*A full-time immigration attorney for the Offices of Undergraduate and Graduate Student Legal Aid.
*A declaration of the University of Maryland, College Park as a sanctuary campus for undocumented and DACAmented students and their families.
*A significant expansion of mental health services for all students of color, especially undocumented and DACAmented students.

And on and on. The university issued a statement saying “We commend the students for their passionate advocacy and for coming together in solidarity on these issues.”

The LGBT rights movement has for some time been subsumed as part of the grand coalition of the political left, but what today’s campus activism makes clear is how the simple, clearly focused fight for gay legal equality has been left far behind in this brave new world of identity politics and political correctness on steroids.

More. I should clarify that the Pride Alliance endorsed the entire list, so even though the LGBT demands are far from the most egregious, it’s a package deal. The campus Jewish groups, given the thinly veiled let no one call it anti-Semiticism of the pro-Palestinian groups, refused to participate.

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Restoring Campus Sanity

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Via Reason.com: Judge Sides with Gay Brandeis Student Guilty of ‘Serious Sexual Transgression’ for Kissing Sleeping Boyfriend:

The accused, “John Doe,” [had been found responsible by a Brandeis University investigation that denied him due process] for stolen kisses, suggestive touches, and a wandering eye—all within the context of an established sexual relationship. His former partner and accuser, J.C., did not file a complaint with the university until well after the incidents took place. In fact, J.C.’s participation in Brandeis’ “sexual assault training” program caused him to re-evaluate the relationship.

The two began dating in the fall of 2011. They broke up in the summer of 2013.

Comments Robby Soave: “In a world where affirmative consent is a prerequisite for each and every conceivable sexual act, people who awaken their partners by kissing them are committing assault.”

As I wrote about this case back in August 2014, On Campus, Absence of Due Process Extended to Gays, “Maybe these incidents should be left to the judicial system when there is evidence of an actual crime.”

More. From the Washington Examiner:

From the very beginning, the deck was stacked against Doe, as his accuser — a former boyfriend with whom he had a 21-month committed relationship prior to the accusation — submitted two sentences as to the accusation and was not required to provide a full account of the alleged sexual assault. As [Judge F. Dennis Saylor IV, a George W. Bush appointee] wrote in his decision, even if the accuser had provided such a statement, the accused was not entitled to see it.

“Indeed, the accused was required to provide his or her own detailed response without an opportunity to see or know the details of the accusation,” Saylor wrote. “There was likewise no requirement that copies of any ‘substantiating materials’ submitted by the accuser, or the names of any witnesses, be provided to the accused at any time.”

Saylor noted that school disciplinary hearings like the one Doe faced are not criminal proceedings, yet administrators essentially conducted the hearing like a criminal trial.

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