[Miseka] Diggs described her anxiety at having to share a shower with one of the male transfers, whom she identified as Nikita Selket. Selket, formerly Neil LaBranche, is a 6′ 7″ man serving a thirty-year sentence for the murder of his roommate in 1995. The New Jersey Department of Corrections has recorded LaBranche as “female.” He is one of 27 men who have been transferred into the women’s facility since last year. The decision was the result of a legal settlement between state officials and ACLU New Jersey.
Nikita Selket, Photo Credit/NJDOC
“When [LaBranche] came in and got into the shower next to me I felt violated in every form possible! I couldn’t believe that I was showering with a person with genetic male parts,” Diggs said. LaBranche is allegedly also watching women as they shower, with a “smile, as if [he] liked what was happening.”
For most people, the term “Title IX investigation” calls to mind allegations of rape, groping, unwanted sexual advances or a pervasive pattern of verbal abuse.
Think again.
A Wisconsin school district opened a Title IX sexual-harassment investigation against 8th graders for calling a student ‘her’ instead of ‘them.’
- Source: Wall Street Journal
The lawyers for those 8th graders continue their opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal with this:
The district appears to believe that once a student announces different pronouns to others, any subsequent use of the biologically and grammatically correct pronouns—even when not directed to the student—may be punishable as sexual harassment under Title IX. We hope Kiel (Wisconsin) is an outlier, but it may not be.
A school board in Virginia is reportedly considering adding a policy to prohibit “malicious misgendering.”
The Biden administration is about to unveil its long-awaited update to Title IX regulations and, given the president’s pronouncement that transgender discrimination is the civil-rights issue of our time, it wouldn’t be surprising if the new rules call for the policing of pronouns. All of this may soon be coming to a school near you.
- Source: Wall Street Journal
UPDATE: The Fairfax County School Board was initially scheduled to consider this change to the Student Rights and Responsibilities guide at their May meeting, but they rescheduled discussion of the topic to June 16.
The past was far from perfect, but we did know the difference between boys and girls.
Rural School Room, 1900, by Perkins Harnly Courtesy of the National Gallery of Art, Washington
From the site SexMatters this letter writing campaign to UK members of government.
U.S. citizens should express concerns to their representatives too.
These so-called “anti-conversion therapy” laws massively overreach and disregard both free speech and religious liberties.
Here’s the letter they recommend UK citizen’s send to their representatives.
I was disappointed to see the photograph of you holding a placard that says “I support a trans-inclusive ban”.
This sounds like a clear slogan to get behind – but this is not a straightforward issue. I urge you to think again.
Affirming that a child is “trans” is not similar to sexual orientation. Childhood gender distress often resolves, and extreme treatments that involve social transition, cross-sex hormones and a pathway to surgery and sterilisation should never be routine.
I am sending you two reports that I hope you will read. One is by Dr Hilary Cass, former President of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, on NHS gender identity services for children. The other is by Sex Matters, based on its research on the campaign to ban conversion therapy.
Dr Cass’s interim report sets out serious concerns about how children are being treated – not using normal clinical standards for exploring the causes of gender distress, but being declared as “trans” by their school and doctors after self-diagnosing. Her report highlights that a high proportion of those presenting at gender clinics are children and young people in care, with autism or experience of abuse, and those who would likely grow up to be lesbian or gay.
Threatening teachers, parents, foster carers, clinicians and youth workers with prison, fines and a criminal record if they disagree with a child’s self-diagnosis is not the way to get these children the support they need.
The call to “include trans in the ban” is presented as a simple moral test, but it obscures the complexity and uncertainty about the cause of so many children declaring themselves trans. Inclusion in a new criminal law will make it harder for children experiencing gender distress to get careful therapy, or to get support in school and in the community that does not simply “affirm” them as being “born in the wrong body” and needing a lifetime of hormone treatment and surgery.
I would like to meet to discuss this.
The Cass Review – an interim report to the National Health Service England.
Although not mentioned, Christian Pastoral Counseling will be effected by these proposed UK laws as well.
