#i had to do a sex and gender in health research module for this class and now i'm PISSED

[metamercury]

I have a problem, and the problem is the false binary

[phroyd]

A federal judge in Virginia has found in favor of a transgender student whose efforts to use the boys’ bathrooms at his high school reached the Supreme Court and thrust him into the middle of a national debate about the rights of transgender students.

In an order handed down on Tuesday, Judge Arenda L. Wright Allen of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia denied a motion by the Gloucester County school board to dismiss the lawsuit brought by the student, Gavin Grimm.

The school board had maintained that Mr. Grimm’s “biological gender” was female and had prohibited administrators from allowing him to use the boys’ restrooms. He sued the school board in July 2015, alleging that its policy violated Title IX as well as the equal protection clause of the Constitution.

The board had argued in essence that its policy was valid because Title IX allows for claims only on the basis of sex, rather than gender identity, and that its policy did not violate the equal protection clause.

But Judge Wright Allen disagreed, writing that Mr. Grimm’s transgender status constituted a claim of sex discrimination and that the bathroom policy had “subjected him to sex stereotyping,” violations of the law.

“There were many other ways to protect privacy interests in a nondiscriminatory and more effective manner than barring Mr. Grimm from using the boys’ restrooms,” she continued. “The Board’s argument that the policy did not discriminate against any one class of students is resoundingly unpersuasive.”

In Tuesday’s order, the judge directed lawyers for both parties to schedule a settlement conference within 30 days.

“I feel an incredible sense of relief,” Mr. Grimm, now 19 and headed to college in the fall, said in a statement after the ruling. “After fighting this policy since I was 15 years old, I finally have a court decision saying that what the Gloucester County School Board did to me was wrong and it was against the law. I was determined not to give up because I didn’t want any other student to have to suffer the same experience that I had to go through.”

In a statement issued late Tuesday, the Gloucester County school board said it was “aware of the District Court’s decision.” It was not clear whether the board planned to appeal.

A spokeswoman for the Justice Department declined to comment on Judge Wright Allen’s ruling on Tuesday.

One of Mr. Grimm’s lawyers said Tuesday that he had moved to Berkeley, Calif., and would attend college in the Bay Area. The lawyer, Josh Block, said they were seeking nominal damages and a declaratory judgment that the bathroom policy violated Mr. Grimm’s rights under Title IX.

“Title IX protects trans people, and that’s what courts have been saying for years,” said Mr. Block, a senior staff attorney with the A.C.L.U. who was the lead lawyer on Mr. Grimm’s case. “Even though this administration wants to try to roll back protections, they can’t change what the law says.”

At issue in Mr. Grimm’s case is whether Title IX, a provision in a 1972 law that bans discrimination “on the basis of sex” in schools that receive federal money, also bans discrimination based on gender identity. President Barack Obama concluded that it did.

But in February 2017, President Trump rejected the Obama administration’s position and rescinded protections for transgender students that had allowed them to use bathrooms corresponding with their gender identity.

The practical effect of the Trump administration’s change in position was limited, however, as a federal court had previously issued a nationwide injunction barring enforcement of the Obama administration’s guidance.

Then, the next month, the Supreme Court announced that it would not decide whether Mr. Grimm could use the boys’ bathroom at his high school. Although the court decided not to take his case at the time, some predicted that it would almost certainly return there eventually.

The March 2017 decision was a setback for transgender rights advocates, who had hoped the Supreme Court would aid their cause in much the same way it had helped same-sex marriage advocates two years before.

Instead, in a one-sentence order, the Supreme Court vacated an appeals court decision in favor of Mr. Grimm, and sent the case back to the federal appeals court in Virginia for further consideration in light of the new guidance from the Trump administration. The case was later returned to the District Court to consider whether the school district’s policy had violated Mr. Grimm’s rights.

Mr. Grimm’s case is just one of several on transgender rights that have been litigated in lower courts or been the subject of federal civil rights investigations in recent years. In her order, Judge Wright Allen cited several cases with arguments similar to Mr. Grimm’s. Even with Tuesday’s federal order, there remains a thicket of conflicting state laws and local school policies on bathroom use.

Mr. Grimm’s journey into the spotlight began in 2014, when he was 15 and starting his sophomore year. At that time his family told his school, Gloucester High School, that he was transgender. Administrators were supportive at first and allowed him to use the boys’ bathroom.

But amid an uproar from some parents and students, the school board barred Mr. Grimm from using the boys’ bathrooms and adopted a policy requiring students to use the bathrooms and locker rooms for their “corresponding biological genders.” The board added that “students with gender identity issues” would be allowed to use private bathrooms.

The A.C.L.U. argued that requiring Mr. Grimm to use a private bathroom had been humiliating and had, quoting him, “turned him into ‘a public spectacle’ before the entire community, ‘like a walking freak show.’”

In its statement, the school board said that it “continues to believe that its resolution of this complex matter fully considered the interests of all students and parents in the Gloucester County school system.”

Sheryl Gay Stolberg, Adam Liptak and Matthew Sedacca contributed reporting. Doris Burke contributed research.

Whereas I do not feel the Court's decision is a bad one; I also feel that the School's Policy is also not a bad one and disagree with the ACLU's Argument about separate restrooms and locker rooms. The more Trans people come out and are supported, the less of a 'public spectacle' they will be. The real issue is will it become Segregation all over again.  And we cannot use Separate as the next argument for Segregation, but this time of the Trans Community.

The current fields of psychology and mental health do not assist the Trans Community in a way they should. Psychologically, Trans people will ALWAYS be just that “Trans”.  One can identify with,  and live a life as much culturally,  as the opposite gender to their birth.  But they will NEVER Be that gender. Psychologically, to support the idea that “Identification With” is the same thing as “Being”, is to encourage and support Delusion!  Identifying With and Living Your Life As, is the best that is possible; and that surely is not an unreasonable way to want to live. But, to be seen AS the opposite gender you are, and have The Law recognize that, IS, by definition Delusional Thinking!

When science can clearly show a continuum, Biologically, of Gender, that matches what we already believe and/or know about Gender, Psychologically, then we can cease debating the issue of gender validity.  And I hope that time comes; but until then, we have to accept the strengths AND limitations of our knowledge.

Phroyd

[weeklycognition-blog]

12|10|18 (Integrative Paper)

          As I enter my first class of Understanding the Self (UTS), I felt anxious that I may not be able to have a good grasp of the lesson because it was my first time tackling a course that talks about the self in a more complex manner. It also became hard for me to follow through the discussion because I don’t really express myself to most of my friends, we don’t discuss who we are, the self ,and such. Though, I’ve experienced a lot of moments where I question my identity in different contexts and instead of arriving to a conclusion of who I really am, I would just let this question pass through me and tell myself that I’ll answer it some other time. The question, “Who am I?” keeps on popping in my head as I face new experiences in life, especially in entering college where I was trying to find myself, where I belong to.

          During the first discussion of the first module, we were briefly asked by the following questions: “What is the self?”; “Where is the self?” and; “How does the self develop?” I’ve expected that these questions were going to be asked in the class but I didn’t expect that we will be bombarded already with it on the first discussion. Some answered with abstract and complex answers while I raised my hand and answered that the self is an individual’s identity. It was a plain answer because again, it is something I don’t usually talk about but I thought of still answering one of the questions with that answer because it is what I actually think of what the self is, generally. And right now, I can actually have a more concrete answers to these answers after the course. Apart from this, not only did I get a bigger scope of understanding myself but also a bigger scope of understanding the people around me, who they are and why do they behave that way.

          At first, the required readings for each lessons were hard to understand and sometimes didn’t really make much sense to me but as we follow through the discussions, the readings became clear to me and some of it changed some of my perspectives and I guess in each modules that were discussed, I learned and realized new things about me and other people.

          In the first module, I learned that the self is not just the individual person but the self is the individual in relation to its environment, the self is always situated in many different contexts, and it it is constructed and social. Along with this we learned about Bronfenbrenner’s Theory wherein we discussed the Process, Person, Context, Time Model and saw how the self is situated in its environment and context. Then we discussed the global and local identities where I found out that my self is composed of different global and local identities.

          The lesson about the thinking self enabled me to understand the structure of the mind to understand the person. I also learned that the mind is ever-changing, it is never static, the mind has the capability to adapt therefore the mind is never static. In this lesson, I specifically learned the two systems of thinking, System 1 and System 2; the cognitive biases, peak and rules, representativeness, anchoring and adjustment.

          Then we go through the feeling self wherein I learned that emotions can and do occur when we are not in the presence of others, emotions mobilizes the organism to deal quickly with important interpersonal encounters. Also, we discussed how emotions are developed, evolutionist and social constructionist. In evolutionist, we have emotions because of out ancestral history while in social constructionist, it focuses on the micro or personal experience of the person. Through this, I got a better insight of how I should understand the context of others because I think for us to understand someone, we must look into their emotional background as well. For me, because I think to logical, I often forget to consider the emotions of some people. Basically, before, I didn’t knew that much that how I respond to my colleagues lacks sensitivity for their emotions but now, I am more careful to what I say to them because I just knew that words do affect people, especially in a state where their emotions are too vulnerable. I also found the discussion interesting about Paul Ekman’s research on depression and I could also see how depression and mental/emotional health really is a big issue because it can drastically affect the person’s life, performance, and etc.

          My favorite module that we discussed in class would be the second module, development of self and identity. For me, the topics discussed were new to me such as Sigmund Freud’s Psychosexual Stages and Erik Erikson’s Theory of Psychological Development because these topics weren’t discussed or even mentioned in our class in high school. In this module I learned that the self is conceptualized as the ego, then there are three assumptions: we are motivated by the unconscious, we are motivated by social & aggressive drives, and we are influenced by our early childhood experiences.

          In Freud’s Conception of Personality, the area of the mind, I somehow thought of the id as the shoulder devil, the superego as the shoulder angel, and the ego as the human wherein the human’s actions are basically the balance of the two. I found Freud’s Pyschosexual Stages and Erikson’s Theory of Psychological intriguing because it gave me a new perception on how a person’s mind develops through time and the reasons why it develops that way. Nevertheless, the perspective that it is more centralized with the person and it’s parents gave me an idea that there really is a direct effect with how people behave and act because of the experiences they have had in their household. In our household, the people are usually quiet and less expressive with their emotions that for example I did something that could anger someone, my parents would react more lenient but logical. Maybe that is the reason why I find my reactions towards annoying instances more calmly and logical.

          In the third module we discussed gender and sexuality which I also found topics interesting because it dealt with the different, sexes, genders, and orientations that I was shocked because some of my classmates did not know the differences of the three and the different orientations. Also, I found this lesson significant because it discussed how the society has its expectations to what a male and female should be and I think it is important to know that some people do not just become that way because they do want to be that way but rather because they were formed to be that way and they can’t help it. So discussing this topic gave me a bigger perception that maybe some people wouldn’t understand why other people do not meet their constructed social expectations because they do not know that what’s happening is natural. I’ve experienced bullying in the past because most of my actions and behaviors are feminine and it lead me to a confusion that maybe I am wrong about my actions and behaviors. At home when I move feminine I would be taught to move more manly but I don’t think that it is something necessary because I am comfortable with the way I move but later on as I grew up, my parents became more open that the way I move is normal, that there’s nothing wrong with it in the first place and shouldn’t even be a big deal. Also, these types of issues where social expectations with regards to sex and gender is not just evident for females but also in males in the Philippine context. Another thing that came to my mind during the discussion was that many Filipinos do not understand that there are other orientations beside gay and lesbian and this somehow annoys me because some chose not to understand that there are other orientations when I educate them. Regardless, I am happy to know that the world is becoming more open to this issue as we modernize.

          In the fourth and fifth module, I learned how there are evident habitus between people and how these are formed, then I learned how discriminations are formed through elitism, and how there are many factors that affects one’s privilege. With the discussion of habitus, I learned that people talk, move, dress, etc in a specific way because they were molded by their environment that way. WIth the discussion of elitism and discrimination, I found out how elitism works and how it causes discrimination. Lastly, in intersectionality, I learned that there are many factors, such as age, sex, religion, class, and etc., that could determine whether a person is privileged or oppressed based on their context.

          Overall, the course gave me a better perception with how I and other people behave and react that way and I think it’s important because as we progress to a more modernize world, it can be a better place to live in if we all understood each other and if people were kinder. And at the end of course, I somehow got a more clear idea of my self. 

[hollywoodjuliorivas]

Opinion|Put Women in Charge More Save jcrivas 133 SETTINGS EDITORIAL Congress Can’t Let Mr. Trump Kill Obamacare on His Own DAVID BROOKS We Used to Build Things PAUL KRUGMAN Let Them Eat Paper Towels DAVID LEONHARDT Puerto Rico vs. Florida and Texas OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR Mayim Bialik: Being a Feminist in Harvey Weinstein’s World OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR Trump’s Obamacare Order Will Deepen Health Inequality LETTER Ken Loach: Clarifying My Comments on the Holocaust OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR Can Spain Become a Country That No One Wants to Leave? EDITORIAL The Guggenheim Surrenders on Free Expression MICHELLE GOLDBERG Put Women in Charge EDITORIAL Gun Carnage Is a Public Health Crisis OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR The G.O.P. Is a Mess. It’s Not All Trump’s Fault. CONTRIBUTING OP-ED WRITER Trump’s Sellout of American Heritage EDITORIAL A Disaster in the White House for Puerto Rico ON CAMPUS We Brought Charles Murray to Campus. Guess What Happened. OPINION White Nationalism Is Destroying the West LETTERS Sexual Coercion in the Workplace LETTERS Decrying Cyrus Vance’s Decision Not to Prosecute Harvey Weinstein OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR Why We Ended Long-Term Solitary Confinement in Colorado OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR Girls, Don’t Become Boy Scouts Loading... OPINION Advertisement Opinion | OP-ED COLUMNIST Put Women in Charge Michelle Goldberg OCT. 13, 2017 Continue reading the main storyShare This Page Share Tweet Email More Save 133 Photo People at the Women’s March on Washington in January. Credit Tracie Van Auken/European Pressphoto Agency Most women I know — and probably most women you know — have stories about sexual harassment. Mine happened in college, with a professor who was older than my father and who made me think he was genuinely interested in my writing. One day in his office, he told me he wanted to “kiss and molest” me. I muttered something about having a boyfriend and fled. As stories like this go, I got off easy. I remember thinking at the time, “Huh, so this is sexual harassment.” I wasn’t particularly traumatized, but it was a blow to my faith in my own talents. I felt ridiculous for having believed that this man, whom I very much admired, saw me as a person with promise instead of an easy mark. Cumulatively, incidents like this erode women’s self-confidence and make it hard for them to find mentors as their male peers do. But in my case, there was no accumulation; I never again experienced anything like it. There’s plenty of harassment in the media; in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein scandal, some women passed around an anonymous, crowd-sourced Google Doc listing men in my industry accused of sexual transgressions. I’d heard some of these stories but have somehow been immune since that office visit so many years ago. Why? I’m sure the friendly people on the internet will say it’s because I’m undesirable, but despite the Weinstein affair, it’s not just dewy bombshells who experience harassment. Maybe I’ve simply been lucky. But I credit the fact that I worked at a succession of publications — Salon, Newsweek and The Daily Beast, The Nation, Slate — headed, for most of the time I was there, by women. (This was unusual; as of 2016, according to the American Society of News Editors, women still made up only 37.11 percent of “newsroom leaders.”) The books I’ve published have been acquired and edited by women. For most of my 20s and 30s, I never had to worry that getting ahead in my career meant staying in the good graces of a straight man. Newsletter Sign UpContinue reading the main story Sign Up for the Opinion Today Newsletter Every weekday, get thought-provoking commentary from Op-Ed columnists, the Times editorial board and contributing writers from around the world. Sign Up You agree to receive occasional updates and special offers for The New York Times's products and services. SEE SAMPLE MANAGE EMAIL PREFERENCES PRIVACY POLICY OPT OUT OR CONTACT US ANYTIME More women should have the same privilege. Since the Weinstein scandal broke, several conservative men have argued for a greater separation of the sexes at work. “Think: If Weinstein had obeyed @VP Pence’s rules for meeting with the opposite sex, none of those poor women would ever have been abused,” tweeted the former White House aide Sebastian Gorka, referring to Pence’s refusal to dine alone with women other than his wife. But the Pence rule, broadly applied, would penalize women while purporting to protect them, since women’s careers suffer when they can’t build personal relationships with important people in their fields. A better way to at least begin to address the endless problem of men misusing their power is to put more women in charge. Obviously, female bosses can be abusive and can create cultures where abusive behavior toward underlings is tolerated. But women may face less harassment at companies with fewer straight men at the top. Research “shows that when workplace power disparities are gendered (e.g., most of the support staff are women and most of the executives are men), more harassment may occur,” says a 2016 study of sexual harassment from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Claire Cain Miller recently wrote in The Times, “In interviews, women in companies with many female or gay executives were more likely to say one-on-one relationships had never been an issue for them.” Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT Continue reading the main story After Hillary Clinton’s shattering loss, it sometimes seems like female leadership itself has fallen out of fashion. The president is a misogynist thug who has boasted of some of the same crimes Weinstein is being pilloried for. His daughter and adviser, Ivanka Trump, mouths platitudes about female empowerment while supporting the rollback of a federal rule on equal pay. Her attempt to portray herself as a champion of “Women Who Work,” the title of her most recent book, seems tailor-made to support left-wing critiques of what’s sometimes called “corporate feminism,” a feminism that fetishizes the success of elite women. 133 COMMENTS In this moment of backlash and retrenchment, the type of “You go, girl” feminism obsessed with professional cheerleading and pop culture affirmation has come to feel as dated as shoulder pads. Feminism’s energy has shifted left, toward women who want to dismantle the ruling class, not diversify it. When “broader female access to executive perches in Wall Street and Silicon Valley gets treated as some sort of movement-wide victory, then something clearly has gone wrong in our understanding of what feminism is and can do,” Jessa Crispin wrote in The New Republic. As if to underline her point, the financial firm that installed the “Fearless Girl” statue opposite the “Charging Bull” on Wall Street recently paid $5 million to settle charges of gender and racial pay discrimination, turning the artwork from a symbol of female moxie into one of corporate hypocrisy. Nevertheless, as long as we have a hierarchal society, the gender of those at the top matters. In any field where women consistently have to please men to realize their ambitions — or simply to survive — there will be exploitation. Right now, that’s almost every field, and that’s what has to change. No woman just starting out should ever be told she has to choose between working for a Harvey Weinstein and working for a Mike Pence. If there must be bosses, fewer of them should be men. Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook and Twitter (@NYTopinion), and sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter. 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