Blogs
Featured Image
Unisex bathroom signrichardjohnson/Shutterstock

(LifeSiteNews) — In our era of overnight cultural change, it has become possible to watch activists change the narrative and rewrite history in real time. 

For example, as the transgender movement insists that biological males be permitted access to female-only spaces (the reverse is true, too, but less controversial for once-obvious reasons), we are witnessing a flurry of questions asking why, exactly, girls and boys need their own bathrooms and changerooms to begin with. A sampling of headlines: 

  • “Why do we have men’s and women’s bathrooms anyway?” – TIME magazine 
  • “The Weird History of Gender-Segregated Bathrooms” – Live Science 
  • “How did bathrooms get to be separated by gender in the first place?”—the Guardian
    (That one came with a great lede: “The ‘natural’ separation of men and women in these spaces arose less than 200 years ago, as part of a pervasive ideology of separation and dominance.”) 
  • “Why are bathrooms segregated by sex in the first place?” – The Huffington Post 
  • “Who’s afraid of gender-neutral bathrooms?” – the New Yorker 

READ: Fox News’ policies allow gender ‘transitioning,’ use of opposite-sex bathrooms: report

This revisionist reporting and retroactive history serves one purpose: to portray those who object to boys being allowed in girls’ bathrooms or men being allowed in female-only facilities as hysterical idiots who, dontcha know, are too dumb to realize that sex-segregated bathrooms are a recent thing rooted in Very Bad Precedents. 

Thus, just as fictitious history was produced out of thin air claiming that transgender people have always been everywhere (with every mannish woman and effeminate man being reclassified as trans to make the case) to justify sex changes for children, “think pieces” such as these are published in order to make those with common sense look unhinged. 

And those essays lead to news stories such as this one, from Burnaby Now (Burnaby is in British Columbia): 

Not everyone is happy with all-gender washrooms installed at a Burnaby elementary school last year, but the school district says the concept is the bathroom of the future for local schools.

A $13-million seismic upgrade completed at Parkcrest Elementary School last school year did more than make the building safe against earthquakes. During the renovations, the district did away with boys and girls bathrooms and replaced them with shared, universal facilities… Instead of a door marked ‘boys’ or ‘girls’ there is now an open entrance way that leads to a space with banks of individual, locking cubicles on each side for everyone to use.

Unlike traditional stalls, the door and sides are longer, extending nearly up to the ceiling and down to the floor. ‘These inclusive washrooms are very private,’ school district secretary-treasurer Russell Horswill told the  NOW  in an emailed statement. Each cubicle contains a toilet, a wastebasket and not much else. Sinks and mirrors, instead of being inside the washroom, are now located in the hallway.

READ: Oklahoma mom sues school district after daughter ‘severely’ beaten by ‘transgender’ male in bathroom

Plenty of ordinary people are upset about this, of course. Former teacher and grandmother Bonnie Whitten told Now that: “Schools are supposed to be safe and healthy, and I find it hard to believe that it will be safe and healthy for a six-year-old girl going into a washroom with a 12-year-old boy,” she said in an interview. “Not that I’m saying they’re bad, but it’s a toxic situation, and should not be happening.” 

Other female commenters noted that girls going through their periods would be mortified by this arrangement, while others wanted to know why parents weren’t included in the decision (they never are school staff know what they would say). Unless that parental pushback dramatically escalates, however, these policies are going to spread:  

According to the district, the design at Parkcrest will be replicated at all new schools and large renovations. The new Burnaby North Secondary School will have universal washrooms, for example, but there will also be some more traditional, gendered washrooms, according to the district. Universal washrooms were also installed at Burnaby South Secondary this year, but that school still has male and female facilities available as well.

READ: Ohio AG says no legal right for gender-confused students to use opposite sex bathrooms

Our public schools are now being run by ideologues so separated from reality that they cannot even put themselves in the shoes of young boys and girls and ask themselves how they might feel going to the bathroom next to someone of the opposite sex even if the stall is largely private. (I wonder if all of the staff are also in collective unisex bathrooms?) 

These are people so determined to implement the agenda of the transgender movement that they are willing to force students to join them in a sweeping social experiment. And again unless parents decide to collectively push back, this is, as Now indicates, going to be the way of the future.

Featured Image

Jonathon’s writings have been translated into more than six languages and in addition to LifeSiteNews, has been published in the National Post, National Review, First Things, The Federalist, The American Conservative, The Stream, the Jewish Independent, the Hamilton Spectator, Reformed Perspective Magazine, and LifeNews, among others. He is a contributing editor to The European Conservative.

His insights have been featured on CTV, Global News, and the CBC, as well as over twenty radio stations. He regularly speaks on a variety of social issues at universities, high schools, churches, and other functions in Canada, the United States, and Europe.

He is the author of The Culture War, Seeing is Believing: Why Our Culture Must Face the Victims of Abortion, Patriots: The Untold Story of Ireland’s Pro-Life Movement, Prairie Lion: The Life and Times of Ted Byfield, and co-author of A Guide to Discussing Assisted Suicide with Blaise Alleyne.

Jonathon serves as the communications director for the Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform.

5 Comments

    Loading...