So California passed a lovely little law this week that lets transgender students in public schools choose which bathroom and locker rooms they use, as well as whether they’d rather play girls’ or boys’ sports. Tremendous! Anything to make gym class pleasanter, anything to make transgender kids’ days at school a tiny bit less of a total fucking bummer. But should you be more worried?
“The answer is not to force something this radical on every single grade in California,” said Karen England, executive director of Capitol Resource Institute. “What about the right to privacy of a junior high school girl wanting to go to the bathroom and having some privacy or after PE showering and having to worry about being in the locker room with a boy?”
Your problem is stupid, and also it does not exist. Here is a partial but by no means exhaustive list of things the average junior high girl worries about more than the hypothetical presence of a trans* classmate in the locker room:
- Why returning a serve volleyball hurts her forearms so much
- Cyber-bullying, probably
- How many scented candles she is allowed to keep in her room before her mom starts asking pointed questions about Wicca
- That weird smell
- Whether the fact that no one talked to her in English today was a coincidence (were they just tired?) or if she did something wrong and there’s going to be a whole thing now
- If she is that weird smell
- Whether or not her friend Beck can do something like change in the locker room without getting hassled by a dozen fucking assholes, and whether Beck wants to rollerblade over to the White Rooster after class for peach rings
- If she could get away with spelling her name a little bit differently or if everybody would notice and think it was stupid
- If anyone noticed that instead of filming the volleyball game on Thursday so the team could rewatch and analyze their moves she mostly just zoomed in on Kevin Mock and his friends in the bleachers and if that makes her a bad volleyball manager
- If Shannon will still be her second-best friend even if she moves to Las Vegas with her mom this summer
- If Ms. Paulus will notice if she takes a break during wall sits and, if Ms. Paulus does notice, whether or not she’ll have to do extra wall sits
- Why everything is such total bullshit
[Image via Wikimedia Commons]
Tags: california, friendship, gym class, locker rooms, shannon, trans* issues, why is everything such bullshit
“What about the right to privacy of a junior high school girl wanting to go to the bathroom and having some privacy or after PE showering and having to worry about being in the locker room with a boy?”
Well nobody is suggesting boys use the girls’ bathroom so this shouldn’t be a problem. Next question.
ding ding ding ding!
Yay California! I defriended someone on Facebook today for saying stupid transphobic shit about this, and it was so satisfying. He was someone I fucked once in college, so I considered yelling “I ABSOLUTELY REGRET LETTING YOUR PENIS NEAR ME, YOU DISGUSTING NEANDERTHAL” beforehand, but restrained myself.
Aw… poor Neaderthals! They were pretty sophisticated folks, for their day.
But hell yes to this legislation!
Love that the fear here (“fear”) is that straight dudes will pretend to be transwomen to, uh, get cyberbullied and harrassed and maybe then have the chance to look at girls in the locker room. I’ve seen Porky’s. There’s easier ways.
This list is true and beautiful, but I’m 26 and I’m still worrying more about this one –“If she is that weird smell” –than is strictly normal.
I have, in fact, been wondering that ALL DAY today, and relatedly wondering if there is any way to decide whether this is a rational or irrational fear without asking a coworker to sniff my vicinity.
That’s, like, the entire month of August for me. I hate summer.
I happen to know for a fact that the smell is me today. Luckily, I work from home and my husband already married me and my pets don’t seem to mind. Score one for Nutella.
Hey girl, I will rollerblade to the White Rooster with you and Beck for peach rings.
Oh god, as though it’s going to be the transgender kid who’s going to be teasing you in the locker room about your bra size, your body hair, your choice of grooming products, your general skanky uncoolness.
Given the option, I would have chosen to change with the trans girl, who would certainly have been standing as nearly in her locker as she could manage, never lifting her eyes from her Nikes, as I was.
If the average junior high boy had to return volleyball serves, he’d wonder why it hurt so much too. I remember thinking “there has to be another way. this can’t be what everyone playing this sport feels every time the ball is served.” But then you get used to it. Also when you yourself dial in that fast top-spin serve that just whizzes over the net, it feels pretty cool. We had boys volleyball practice one summer. My school was too small to have an actual boys volleyball team, so we just learned and never played one game.
I never got used to it because I was never not terrible at any sport, ever.
THANK YOU FOR POSTING ALL THESE THINGS. <3 u, toasties.
Curious minds want to know: what deep witchcrafts has Mallory discovered, what spells has she cast and ancient circles of protection woven, to keep this little website free of troll-beasts and energy-leech demoncomments?
(I mean obvs Mallory is the editor doing the sorcery here.)
I am the comment moderator! I moderate the comments. But honestly, there’s been remarkably little spam or obvious monsters trying to wend their way in thus far.
aka mighty troll-hunter whose ban-hammer and powers of deletion keep us all safe.
I hope you let one through the gates occasionally just to test our mettle.
Pretty positive Nick is weaving ancient troll-spells to keep his domain safe.
One thing is certain, she is under the influence of a persistent and powerful writing spell that has no sign of expiring. There’s no other explanation for the abundance of quality content.
Proposed additions to the list, for a certain sort of Average Junior High Girl –
– If I want to kiss Beck, does that make me a lesbian?
– Why do I care if I’m a lesbian?
– Oh god I want to kiss Beck.
Repeat repeat repeat
oh yeah she and Beck are totally going to start dating freshman year
Hell yeah they are.
And if Ms. Paulus does notice she’s not doing her wall sits, because goddamn that fucking hurts after a while and jesus Ms. Paulus isn’t even paying attention to how long we’ve been doing this, will points be deducted from her grade, and why does gym even have actual grades, just to encourage those people who aren’t that great at other classes and to punish those people who care about their GPA and maybe are a little afraid of the ball.
In my school, all you had to do was get dressed every day and look like you were making an effort. Otherwise I would never have managed to get A-B grades in gym.
We actually had written tests at the end of every unit, like on a scantron, probably for kids like me. They would ask questions about the rules of a sport. I actually studied. Everyone cheated blatantly.
Ugh, that sounds awful.
Also, what the hell magical schools do these people go to where you have TIME to shower after gym class? We were lucky if we had time to make sure our shirts weren’t on backwards before running to the other end of the school and up three flights for social studies. Or maybe that was just me.
For real. There were showers in the locker room, but I never in my life used one of them, not even after volleyball or danceline practice. That’s what home was for.
The only times I ever showered were during the swimming units in middle school, when we were let out early to rinse off the chlorine. And then had to sit through the day with wet hair.
There were always a few girls who used the locker room, but they were hardcore athletes so they were used to it, I guess.
Yeah, I never even stepped into the showers in our locker room. If class ended at 10:30, by god our gym teachers were going to keep us doing gym things until 10:30, 5-minute passing period be damned.
Right? And your choices were “underparticipate and have the gym teacher yell at you” or “actively participate and be sweaty and smelly under a thick layer of deodorant all day”.
Yeah, no one ever set foot in the showers in the locker rooms in junior high and high school. None of the girls, anyway, I don’t know about the dudes. There was definitely no time and probably no inclination at all. They seemed like a relic of another time, but I guess the sports teams might have used them.
I used to wonder if other school districts ever used them. This seems to answer that question.
If it’s anything like the locker room at my high school the only questions will be
why does everyone use so much fucking body spray?
and
how can I get changed while showing the least amount of my body to everyone else in the room?
I mean, I went to an all-girls high school so this is kind of out of my area, but STILL. No one is looking at anyone else, and there’s no bloody time for harassment, you just get your kit off and on and try not to show anyone anything.
AND anyone who’s brave enough to transition in fucking high school deserves to get changed wherever they fucking well want. The principal’s office, if they like.
The body spray!!!
The girls in my gym class performed the complete “Hit Me Baby One More Time” dance while standing on the locker room benches one day–I swear I am not making this up–which was the perfect opportunity to run to the other side and change in secret.
THIS. Perfect response.
This is what was running through my head in the high school locker room: “Oh God please just let me get changed and get out of here so I can go home.” I was NOT concerned about anyone else’s body but my own.
The only thing that was running through my head, besides trying to get changed as quickly as possible, was WHY DON’T I HAVE BOOBS LIKE THAT? (Be careful what you wish for!)
A literal conversation I had in my high school locker room:
Genuinely Nice Runner Girl: “What was your mile time?”
Me: “It was really bad.”
GNRG: “Oh, come on, it can’t be that bad.”
Me: “…twelve-thirty.”
GNRG: “That’s really great! Seriously!”
Me: “What was your time?”
GNRG: “Six-oh-five.”
So, yeah, pretty sure that any number of the worries listed above would bother me dramatically more than hanging out with a girl a few lockers down who happened to be trans.
Dude I remember one day I broke twelve minutes and it was like the most powerful I’d ever felt in my life
That particular powerful feeling was later eclipsed by wearing lots of black and eventually having sex, but it was good while it lasted.
Mine was more like fifteen. I walked most of it and jogged past the teachers. I always came in last with the smokers and the fat kids and those recovering from injuries, just as the bell rang. I always had some kind of unidentified breathing problem, but the teachers just thought I was lazy.
As if everyone in both locker rooms doesn’t already know how to change clothes without showing off their underwear already! It was a fairly standard tactic in my high school, at least — the only people whose bras you could see (or who showered in the locker room) were (a) the ones with ‘awesome’ bodies: thin, appropriate boobage, etc; or (b) the confident athletes who gave no fucks because it’s just a body yo, who cares.
Everyone else was changing under shirts and could be a secret lizard for all I know, much less trans.
This was might not have been the case in the 1940s when a lot of Californian lawmakers were last in a school locker room, but it totes is now!
“Everyone else was changing under shirts and could be a secret lizard for all I know, much less trans.”
Exactly!
Gahhhhd the lengths I would go to change my clothes without ever ACTUALLY removing all of my clothes…WHY. And I was on the swim team, so changing in and out of wet sticky bathing suits was even more difficult. Used to hold a towel up with my chin, butt to the wall, and change behind it. So much silly worry for such silly reasons.
I would do exactly the same thing. And I always tried to choose the locker in the very far corner. Dumb.
i would never make anyone do extra wall sits, fwiw.
Heh. In my school, if you took choir or band you didn’t have to take PE. So I was in the (horrible) choir and never did anything remotely athletic (except hiking and/or climbing trees) until I took up taekwondo at age 40.
But choir (tour) was also good for changing clothes inside your shirt. I can still change clothes faster than most anyone I know.
WHAT why didn’t I go to your school?! I took choir AND gym.
The only remotely athletic thing I ever did was color guard, which I was actually pretty decent at. Color guard and sex are the only times I’ve been good at using my body.
Twenty-seven years later, with the benefit of hindsight and lots of hard-earned wisdom, I can now say, Fuck you, Volleyball.
Of course, I said that at the time, too.
Volleyball is THE WORST. Back then, we thought it to be true, but now as adults we know we were right.
even before i actively allowed myself to acknowledge i was gay, i know that i sure as hell kept my eyes on the floor as i changed in gym class and i instead actively dreaded other girls seeing i wore generic bargain underwear, so i’m pretty sure this list is spot on. pubescent ladies got other internal problems that are endlessly more pressing to them, like, am I ever going to get assigned gym any period other than first period so i look like a soaking baby goat all day?
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