When Title IX Met Date Night

The discussion was framed to grab the low-hanging fruit. What’s the big deal about a sincere transgender high school student wanting to use the bathroom that matched his identity? Who really cares about where he pees? And, indeed, the answer was that most of us didn’t, and couldn’t get too up in arms about it.

We have no ill-feelings toward transgender kids. We don’t want to make them sad and alienated anymore than any other kid. Gavin Grimm was a brilliant posterboy for a cause, and while his issue may have pushed the envelope a little, it wasn’t so far that people would be outraged. But then, that was, in part, due to smart positioning that framed the discussion. Since few people think beyond the simplistic characterization, the “transgender bathroom” guidance just didn’t seem like that big a deal.

But it was never just a bathroom rule. Even at the outset, it was bathrooms, locker rooms and dorms. Few talked much about the dorms. Few, but some.

And yet, it didn’t end there, which was obvious if one appreciates how an interest morphs into a perceived right, then a protected right. If there is a right protected by law, it doesn’t cease to be a right outside the bathroom, locker room or dorm room. The emanations were raised, though largely unappreciated.

So, if we accept that gender identity discrimination is sex discrimination, and that it applies to all entities subject to Titles VII and IX, consider this hypothetical:

Joe meets Lola, and they take a shine to each other.  Joe asks Lola on a date, and Lola affirmatively consents.  Joe goes back to his dorm, and is subtly informed by his roommate, Enrique, that Lola is quite the excellent sweeper on the college’s men’s curling team.

Joe is confused. He’s a bit slow. So Joe texts Lola and asks, “Lola, are you on the men’s curling team?”  Lola responds, “you bet I am. Can’t wait to see you tonight, dreamboat.”  Joe, never one to miss a trick, replies, “I didn’t know you were a dude. Sorry, but I’m not into that sort of thing.”

Lola is crushed. Joe was so adorable. Lola is now hurt, angry and offended that Joe refused to go on the date solely because Lola was a biological male who identified as a woman. There was no other reason for Joe’s cancelling the date. That’s sex discrimination.

A ridiculous scenario? Legally, it is a mere baby step away from where a transgender pees. But socially, does any person doubt that it’s absurd to try to micromanage human attraction via re-definition of discrimination? Everyday Feminism gives you the answer.

Would you date someone who’s trans, black, fat, or disabled? If your answer is no, then that’s pretty discriminatory.

But your attractions are just a matter of “preference,” right? Actually, you might be more biased than you think.

Putting aside the inane use of language that ignores that preference is bias, and that there is nothing wrong with being biased when it comes to the people who are attractive or desirable, they play the hater card. You see, there are few things more destructive to the fragile minds of the socially just than being called prejudiced.

The video is well-crafted propaganda. Not too pushy or accusatory, but the message is clear and the reasoning appears, if one isn’t inclined to think beyond the surface, to make some sense. After all, is a person just their genitalia? Or their skin color? Or their obese size? These rhetorical questions must all be answered “no.”

Upon further deliberation, of course, it becomes obvious that these aren’t the right questions, and rely on the logical fallacy of begging the question. The question isn’t whether people are reduced to their genitalia, but whether their genitalia is one of many critical parts of the equation. We aren’t attracted to people just because they have the “right” genitalia, and we aren’t attracted to people who don’t have it.

More importantly, this pushes young people to feel the shame of being a hater for not acquiescing to something they don’t want. You may not feel an attraction to someone, but you feel wrong about it, dirty even, because you are now engaging in the dreaded discrimination.

It’s one thing to try to change social norms toward pushing people to feel the guilt of prejudice for wanting to date someone with the opposite genitalia, but this isn’t happening in a vacuum. At the same time, social justice warriors are fighting to morph sex discrimination into gender identity discrimination, and with that to create a campus cause of action against anyone who discriminates on the basis of gender identity.

Notably, no one who is open to the notion that they should give a fat person a whirl is forbidden from doing so. We’re past Loving, and white guys and black gals can be seen on almost every television commercial. This is great, as criminalizing crossed barriers was a blight on society, as per the bastardized Herzberg theory. Do what you want, and it’s nobody’s business but yours.

But this is the opposite of “do what you want.” This is the manufacture of an entirely new protected right, and with it comes a legal remedy. Turn down a date? Refuse to have sex afterward just because that cute guy has a vagina? That would be a violation of Title IX if it morphed into the “transgender bathroom” rule that seemed so benign when it was first raised.

There is nothing wrong with your white cisheteronormative child finding a black intersectional lesbian transgender person to be their cup of tea. And there’s nothing wrong if he doesn’t. But if the sequelae of this shift in discrimination law aren’t adequately understood, it will nonetheless be the argument made, and lost, when they face the campus disciplinary board deciding whether to suspend or expel him.

Will this be a white thing, a male thing, a straight thing? Perhaps, given how campus rape, despite being couched in neutral terms, holds a guy responsible for rape even when both are equally intoxicated. Or even when the guy is blacked out drunk and the gal isn’t. But then, it may well become the wedge to compel anyone except the last marginalized to bow to the shift in norms if they want to get their college degree.

6 thoughts on “When Title IX Met Date Night

  1. B. McLeod

    At the root of this is an attempt to have government decide that subjective perception controls over biological gender, and to then have government force everybody to behave and speak as though they believe that.

  2. DaveL

    Well, here we have a problem. You see, it’s been clearly established elsewhere that “verbal coercion” voids consent to sexual activity. It is also a longstanding principle that if there is no consent to sexual activity, that activity must be some form of sexual assault, regardless of the reason for that lack of consent. It doesn’t matter if the party who drugged, threatened, or coerced the victim was the same party who engaged in sexual activity with them, there is still no consent and therefore it remains an assault.

    Isn’t it a form of verbal coercion to emotionally blackmail a person, by implying they’re bigoted or immoral for not consenting to sexual contact with certain people?

    1. SHG Post author

      Are you suggesting that the various pieces of the social justice agenda are incompatible and lead to irrational and unavoidable conflicts? You hater!

  3. Marc R

    Intoxicated college girls are like cows in India; one must give them wide berth and hold them in unquestioning reverence.

    As for the genitals thing, if one can select based on hair color and hometown then, well, sorry no propaganda will make people become gay. Acceptance is moral, but demanding a personal change in partners is next level flame.

  4. Marc R

    Bill W or Jim Beam? I’m not one for meetings so I assume the latter when Chivas isn’t even available.

Comments are closed.