Transgendered: When Rights Become Solipsistic

Transgendered: When Rights Become Solipsistic

Something utterly bizarre occurred in the United States in the last few decades, contrary to what our Founding Fathers ever envisioned in drafting the Constitution:

Rights are now determined by each individual without regard to any larger framework other than what an individual considers a personal right determined by his or her sexual self-identification. This kind of legalistic solipsism is evident in the transgender movement—and yes, it is a movement— which allows an individual to declare a sexual identity based on personal feelings and then accuse others of violating these self-determined rights.

The result is the first step toward social and moral anarchy. Not only are rights individually arrived at by each person; alleged violations of these rights are based on an individual’s subjective determination. Thus, a self-identified transgendered person can determine that “hate speech” has been used by another person who failed to use the proper pronoun in addressing a third party. Of course, the violator who mistakenly misused the pronoun is burdened with upholding his or her own right to free speech.

At the national level, in 2017 the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission advised that it is illegal under federal employment law to persistently call employees by pronouns that correspond to their anatomical sex but not to their gender identity.

A Western Contagion

The movement for transgender rights finds activist expression in the United States, Canada, England and Western Europe. Demands for transgender rights are occurring in parliaments, governmental agencies, prisons, the military and the classroom. The transgender campaign is conducted under the guise of human rights, imposing standards of tolerance—even to the point of restricting free speech—and teaching “tolerance” and gender malleability in classrooms from kindergarten to college.

For example, since early 2016 the New York City Commission on Human Rights interprets a city nondiscrimination law as requiring employers, landlords and all businesses and professionals to use an employee’s, tenant’s, customer’s or client’s preferred name, pronoun and title, regardless of the individual’s sex assigned at birth. Violators may be fined up to $125,000, or up to $250,000 for willful conduct.

At the national level, in 2017 the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission advised that it is illegal under federal employment law to persistently call employees by pronouns that correspond to their anatomical sex but not to their gender identity.

Is Canada the Future?

The Canadian Parliament set what is described by the media as an “international precedent” when it passed in June 2017 a bill adding prohibitions against discrimination on the basis of gender identity and gender expression to the Canadian Human Rights Act. The bill also amends Canada’s criminal code, criminalizing the promotion of hatred of transgendered people and allowing judges to take into consideration when sentencing whether a crime was motivated by hatred of a victim’s gender identity or expression.

The bill was greeted with applause by most LGBT activists. Randy Boissonnault, a member of parliament and special adviser to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, declared that the bill will “save lives.” He told the press, “It’s a great day for transgender Canadians and for the LGBTQ2 community in Canada.”

The persistence of the gay community in getting this legislation enacted reveals just how unrelenting activists are in pushing their agenda—an approach mirrored in the drive for transgender rights in the U.S. and other countries. This legislation was first introduced more than a decade ago. It appeared to be going nowhere when it died in 2015 after a parliamentary vote. The legislation was again reintroduced the following year under Trudeau’s Liberal Party administration. When it stalled in the Canadian Senate, conservatives came under attack for holding up passage of Bill C-16. Activists called for passage of the bill, which proclaimed, “[Bill] C-16 recognizes that transgender people experience extraordinarily high levels of discrimination, violence and harassment, and for too long the Canadian government has been complacent.”

During the Senate hearings, opponents of the bill stated what should have been obvious: the bill undermines free speech, criminalizes pronoun use, and hurts women by conflating transgendered persons with naturally born females. Supporters of the bill rallied their legal experts and women’s groups to deny that the bill restricted rightful free speech or harmed women, asserting that “trans women are women.” (Even the issue of what is a woman became confused because trans women claim that they were actually born women but lacked the physical characteristics of most women.) Supporters asserted that the opponents of the bill were using thinly veiled “transphobia” in order to defeat the bill.

Activist Marni Panas told Canadian Broadcasting that opponents of the bill are “a loud minority, but a very small minority” and that the overwhelming opinion of Canadians was in support of the bill. Her attack was typical. Any criticism of the transgender/gay agenda is met with charges of bigotry, gender phobia of some sort, and minority opinion, usually of a minority clinging to out-of-date religious beliefs.

The full impact of the bill remains to be seen. What is clear is that transgender people will be empowered to lever the justice system whenever they feel discriminated against. Institutions such as prisons will change policies that affect transgender inmates. Transgender prisoners will have a legal claim that they have been placed in a discriminatory male or female prison and will have legal recourse to be placed in a prison reflective of their self-identity. Already pro-transgender activist lawyers are reviewing prison policies to prevent “human rights” violations. Kyle Kirkup, a law professor at the University of Ottawa, told Canadian Broadcasting that officials at the Correctional Service of Canada are revising their policies to fend off a “human rights challenge.”

The LGBTX activist community is mobilizing to enforce this legislation. Panas stated after the passage of the legislation that she is taking a moment to celebrate today, but “tomorrow we get back to work.”The struggle for transgender rights is never-ending. Discrimination cases will be brought to the courts, and activists are demanding that the public be educated about transgender rights.

Still Not Enough

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, ever ready to grandstand, is already taking the lead in this campaign. In 2012, then just a member of parliament, he denounced that “neo-con” agenda of requiring passengers boarding planes to dress according to their gender indicated on their identification presented at the airport. Trudeau took full credit for the passage of Bill C-16. Still, like many progressive politicians in Western Europe and North America, he found himself under criticism for not doing enough. He offered a public apology, but even that did not placate activists.

In an op-ed, Dalia Tourki and Eve Parker Finley took him to the woodshed, declaring, “We must not be so complacent as to position this apology as the crowning achievement or final destination for the entire LGBTQ2S community: it is just another chapter.” They believe that even with this new legislation—and Trudeau’s apology for not doing enough— transgender people are still suffering from human rights violations. For example, they noted that “trans migrants” without Canadian citizenship are not entitled to legal recognition through legal name and gender marker change in Canada. “This means that they [the transgender] navigate society with IDs that have names and genders that do not match their identities and appearances.” Yet at the same time, “many are refused services, housing, and employment for having IDs that out them as transgender.”

The authors found other abuses as well, including “trans migrant women who engage in sex work have a history of criminalization. Targeted as sex workers, trans and racialized migrants” have been “violently arrested and abused by the police . . .  An apology is not enough for this community who [sic] has been among the first targets of state surveillance, police violence, legal criminalization and immigration adversities.”

The Outrage!

The two trans activists denounced Correctional Services Canada for “routinely” placing “trans women in men’s prisons against their will if they do not adhere to outdated modes of medical transition and transgender identity, deny or restrict access to appropriate medical care, forbid the wearing of gender-affirming items, and subjugate trans people, like many other people behind bars, to a host of detrimental conditions.”

They complained that these travesties had been brought to the attention of Prime Minister Trudeau in January 2017 but that he had failed to act. Indeed, they accused Trudeau of willfully ignoring a petition with nearly 5,000 signatures and multiple endorsements from community groups across the country proposing nine demands for “systemic change.” Included among the demands were allowing transgender inmates to be transferred to an institution based on “gender identity rather than physical anatomy.”

Transferred prisoners, they maintained, need to be protected once they are transferred, in contrast to the treatment of convicted murder Fallon Aubee, the first transgender inmate who transferred to a women’s prison based on her self-identity, but subsequently faced “countless threats and deplorable conditions” once she arrived. One of the abuses she encountered was having “her women’s clothing, makeup, and other essential gender-affirming items destroyed by correctional officers . . .  This [Trudeau’s] apology is not for them [transgender inmates] and it will do nothing to ameliorate their situation.”

Transgenderism in Classrooms

While Canadian transgender activists fight for rights for trans migrants and trans prisoners, a larger, unrelenting campaign is rolling into classrooms in Western Europe and the United States. In November 2017, a math teacher, Joshua Sutcliffe, at a state secondary school in Oxfordshire, England was suspended for mistakenly referring to a transgender boy as a “girl.” He apologized immediately when corrected by the pupil, but six weeks later he was suspended from teaching after a complaint was filed against him. Following an investigation, he was summoned to a formal disciplinary hearing and accused of violating equality policies by referring to the pupil by name rather than “him” or “he.”

A closer reading of the report suggests that the real complaint was about more than just a misused pronoun. Sutcliffe is a practicing evangelical Christian. For several years at the school, Sutcliffe, who is a pastor at an evangelical church in Oxford, had taught a voluntary Bible study group during the school’s lunch hour. The study group was shut down in late 2017 after he answered a student’s question on marriage by saying that the Bible describes it as being between a man and a woman.

He told investigators that he privately believed that it was wrong to call a person born a female a boy, but he would never say so publicly because he was a professional. He added, however, that he should not have to use mandated pronouns in the classroom. After his suspension, he announced that he was shocked and saddened by the actions of the school, which in his opinion reflect an increasing trend of Christians being marginalized in the public square and unpopular beliefs silenced. “While the suggestion that gender is fluid conflicts sharply with my Christian beliefs,” he declared, “I recognize my responsibility as a teacher and Christian to treat each of my pupils with respect.”

Sutcliffe’s experience in being punished for what appears to be a slight infraction in the classroom is being replicated in American classrooms from kindergartens through universities. In March 2018, Lake Ingle, a religious studies major, was kicked out of a Christianity class at Indiana University of Pennsylvania for saying during class that there were only two genders.Ingle, a senior, said he was thrown out of class for challenging Professor Alison Downie about her views on gender. The course was Christianity 481, “Self, Sin and Salvation.”

After viewing a video of transgender ex-pastor Paula Stone Williams discussing the “reality” of “mansplaining” sexism from men and male privilege, female students in the class were asked if they had any thoughts on the subject. When female students did not respond, Ingle told the class that the official view of biologists is that there are only two genders. The professor responded by booting him from the class and asked him not to come back. She referred him to the Academic Integrity Board. Although he needed the course to graduate, the university provost told Ingle in a letter in March that in order to re-enter the class he must formally apologize to the professor in front of the entire class.

Ingle appealed the decision, charging that his constitutional rights were violated by the professor’s insistence that only female students should address issues raised by the film and then later when he challenged the professor on the biology of gender. He said the class was about indoctrination of students by a feminist professor. The university president, apparently embarrassed by the publicity, subsequently announced that Ingle had been allowed back into the class.

Indoctrinating Kindergarten Kids

The problem transgender and feminist activists face is that some university students might challenge them in the classroom. From their point of view, it’s better to begin the indoctrination process early. This was the case in a publicly funded charter school in California when a teacher read to her kindergarten class picture books about transgenderism, in order to affirm a gender-dysphoric classmate. During the class the gender-confused boy switched clothes to look more like a girl, in a so-called “gender reveal.”Parents did not find out about the class until their perplexed kids arrived home that day, unsure about whether they could pick their own gender, or whether they were really a boy or a girl. Parents had not been informed beforehand of the discussion or the classmate’s psychological condition.

When parents at the Sacramento-area charter school, Rocklin Academy, found out about this class, some were angry. At the school board meeting in August 2017 they protested that they were not forewarned about the exercise. At the meeting the kindergarten teacher defended her actions but refused to disclose what happened during the lesson. It was revealed that the teacher read two books, “I am Jazz” and “The Red Crayon,” which target four- to eight-year-olds about gender identity. One of the parents who complained about the class began receiving hate mail from other parents.

Meanwhile, the California legislature pushed forward with SB 179 and SB 219, which legislated a “third” gender for birth certificates and provided for up to one-year jail sentences for not using pronouns of choice for patients in long-term care facilities.You read that right. These bills were signed in October 2017 by Governor Jerry Brown.Apparently, the California government wants the power to throw people in jail for using the wrong pronoun for residents in nursing homes.

California state schools are not the only ones pushing transgender education. In Washington state, the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction issued guidelines instructing schools to teach students about gender identity. The guidelines call for kindergarten and first-grade pupils to learn that “there are many ways to express gender.” Second-graders are to learn that there is a “wide range of gender roles and expressions,” while third-graders learn that “gender roles can vary considerably.”

Countering the Campaign

The multiplicity of examples of what is going on in classrooms today is overwhelming. Some parents are fighting back, but most people do not realize the extent of the campaign for imposing transgender rights and ideology. Americans need to be able to answer intellectually and publicly the full implications of the transgender agenda. The Mindszenty Report promises to report further on this socially anarchical movement.

Print Friendly, PDF & Email
Written by
Mindszenty Report
1 comment
  • “Self-determined rights” are NOT “God given rights,” and SMACKS of a forerunner (ironically) of Sharia (as Islam is the ideology of all that is “NOT” right in the world.)

    The fundamental problem with “gay rights” is they create “rights” for a SUBSET of the population, which is not equivalent to EQUAL rights for ALL.