Except that maybe common sense is not that "common", but simply an illusion of our cultural upbringing/brainwashing.
Another possibility is that common sense should dictate that superficial, largely irrelevant matters such as physical appearance and clothing, or artificial, transitory, relatively useless and irrational concepts such as "professionalism" (as extended to physical appearance and clothing) are not worthy of such strict definitions and regulations.
Many norms are essentially shorthand, a code by which we signal to each other: “I am not going to be a source of chaos to you.” Since we are locked in our own subjectivity and strangers to each other, and since embodied life is uncertain and may allow filth to encroach at any moment, this is an extremely useful form of shorthand.
Agreed, some norms are rational and useful. Imposition of clothing codes based on arbitrary capricious fashions and cultural fads is not one of them. In fact, the imposition of any clothing altogether tramples on one of people's most basic human rights: that of bodily autonomy and self determination; the freedom to choose what we put in and on our body.
The nihilistic extreme of your examples suggests a lack of understanding of the difference between norms grounded in ethical and human rights vs arbitrary, superficial, often irrational cultural norms.
Indeed, clothing is useful to protect ourselves against the weather, and for comfort (perhaps hygiene in some contexts), but should NOT be imposed tyrannically on those who would prefer not to wear it. Nudist camps/clubs or groups of nudists at beaches and parks indeed conduct art, music, yoga and qi-gong classes (among others) in the nude, without any negative consequences.
On the other hand, marrying off your 4-year-old niece or trading her off for goats overlooks her value as a unique human being, her autonomy, her capacity to consent rationally, and puts her at risk of stymieing a healthy development (i.e., if she's treated like a sex slave by those she's sold to). Thus, "norms" against such behavior, which are actually coded into LAW, are not irrational. Same goes for killing and taking other people's property, as it directly trespasses on other people's freedoms and rights to the pursuit of happiness. Imposing clothing choices based on capricious fashions and cultural fads would be nothing more than an unnecessary superficial norm that serves no rational, functional purpose.
So you’re saying that cultural norms are pointless and teachers should be able to wear swimsuits or giant breasts to work? I think most people would disagree.
Wearing swimsuits and giant prosthetic breast to work is, at worse, *perfectly harmless*.
Private establishments and institutions choosing "club rules" based on arbitrary, personal (often neurotic) beliefs is fine.
What I think is atrocious is for public institutions, establishments, and places to impose unnecessary repressive regulations, based on mythological beliefs, in people who may not share such beliefs.
Clothing has an enormous carbon footprint. Lots of resources go into producing it, distributing it, washing it, etc. Who are we to decide how other people spend their money? Modern threads are often toxic to humans (they outgas chemical compounds detrimental to health) and not environmentally friendly.
It's a tragedy that the natural naked state in which God/Nature/Evolution have designed/created us to be could be so irrationally feared by many and deemed "indecent" or "undesirable". It makes absolutely no sense.
From an ethical point of view, deciding for others that they MUST cover their God-given nature against their free will lest they face legal repercussions is the epitome of human perversion, stupidity, and outright evil tyranny.
If we condone this, we're implicitly condoning vax mandates, arranged marriages, etc., the entire lot of fascist impositions that dictate what a person can or cannot decide for their own body and life.
I’ll go out on a limb here and guess that this teacher has issues that go far beyond inappropriate dress. Nobody with a normal psyche and ego does this.
We are fast moving toward a society led by the mentally ill and the senile.
I would guess that a person with such poor judgment also struggles in other areas, but if the teacher’s been a good teacher they need a chance to keep teaching.
In my view this person has disqualified himself from being anywhere around children. Of course he is rated as a good teacher. He is a member of a protected class. Nobody would dare say that he is not a good teacher.
I do wonder whether tenure protections are part of the issue too. In my high school, the French teacher struggled with mental illness and used to go behind a chalkboard and fart loudly in class. It was extremely disruptive, as you can imagine. She was so notorious that many students who wanted to take French--including me--chose not to. But she couldn’t be fired or even placed on involuntary leave because of tenure.
Go behind a chalkboard and fart loudly in class????? Oy!
Maybe the school district cannot fire someone for wearing something -- even something that is arguably indecent -- but they can certainly have a talk with the teacher about appropriate workwear instead of saying to the international media and all the parents and kids that they _support_ this ridiculous prosthesis.
Kids need to be able to recognize their feelings of revulsion, disgust, or fear and be encouraged to honor and act on those feelings -- not shove them away and hide them behind cheery slogans about the right to self-expression.
Who’s next to exercise the right to self-express? The local flasher? The local animal torturer and future serial killer?
As are, basically, all gender impersonators: transsexuals, drag queens etc. I’ve never seen one dress as anything but an (often grossly exaggerated) stereotype of women. Ever seen a drag queen not in high heels? A transsexual in jeans?
I completely agree with you that a female teacher would not get away with wearing these giant fake breasts. The outfit is inappropriate for anyone, and that’s the only argument we should need.
But at the same time, the part no one wants to say out loud (except terfs) is that it’s even more inappropriate because this person is biologically male. In this context, it screams sexual fetish—while a biological woman wearing something like this might have body dysmorphia or other mental illness. If some students are more uncomfortable around this individual than they would be around a biological woman wearing the same thing… I think that’s valid because it is different.
It does scream sexual fetish. And while we can’t control the private sexual fetishes of public school teachers, we can surely ask that they don’t bring them to work and inflict them on the children and their coworkers. We wouldn’t allow Louis CK to whip out his dick and masturbate in shop class, so we shouldn’t allow this either.
"The school board, for its part “is ‘standing behind’ an ‘accepted’ transgender teacher.… Protecting any person’s ‘gender rights’ is ‘the stance the school board is taking and they are standing behind the teacher,’ said Shuttleworth.”
Let's be honest, they're probably standing behind her because it's far less distracting than standing in front of her...
I agree with you: this goes beyond the confines of "gender" and pours over into the domain of professionalism. But I think it's even worse, this is an issue of sexual exhibitionism--with children being forced to participate in this man's fetish. This man has absolutely no place working with children in any capacity, regardless how effective a teacher he may or may not be. His lack of judgment in this instance is so egregious that it overrules any other considerations you could reasonably take to justify his merit as a teacher. I'm absolutely aghast that any administrators or school board members, let alone any of the parents, have defended this individual.
What is it about "gender" that allows men such as this carte blanche to parade themselves about in such abject sexual objectification of women? Why is this celebrated and defended when the same behavior in women would be rebuked, with scorn and judgment, instantly? What are the young women who are students at Oakville going to take away from this? With the sudden influx of ROGD in young women who are uncomfortable with the changes in their bodies and their own objectification, I can easily see this man's grotesque caricature of womanhood serving as a potential catalyst.
“with children being forced to participate in this man's fetish.”
Yes that’s sort of how I view it too. I think it’s absolutely outrageous and disturbing but how do we fix it?
They are being exposed to it, yes. It’s in their faces. That’s wrong. As long as he is not speaking sexually to the children or trying to get them to engage with him, this is still a problem of how he dresses. If he stopped dressing that way and didn’t talk about his sexual quirks, and kept it all private, I think he could still teach.
But the question I always ask myself is how do we fix this? I don’t think we fix it, in the public square, by saying how disgusting and disturbing it is (even though it is!) because at least half of the public has been brainwashed into thinking enormous prosthetic breasts are just what any normal “transwoman” would want to wear to work. This is by the way insulting to transwomen who are just wanting to live quiet lives dressing as women and being addressed as she, without doing anything weird to their fellow humans.
I think we fix it by shifting the discussion away from (just) the weird sexualized gendered manner of dress of this particular person, and toward a discussion of what manner of dress is appropriate to wear at schools.
I don't believe that his actions speak for the motivations of all trans-identified people, nor should trans-identified people be characterized broadly as sexual deviants. However, I feel that his particular inclinations are motivated intrinsically by sexual exhibitionism, with a narcissistic desire to subject those around him to his fetish, and extend beyond his manner of dress. The underlying issue, from my perspective, isn't his manner of dress; rather, it's the fact that he is attempting to "embody" the female form in a way that is garishly hyper-sexualized. That has no place, whatsoever, outside of his private life--especially when its done around adolescents. In the image you posted, his clothing is not at all offensive or provocative. I don't think anyone would look twice at any other person wearing the same shirt/sweater he's wearing. What provokes such disdain is the ridiculous prosthetic breasts with nipples that visibly protrude. That was a conscious, deliberate decision on his part in order to expose himself to others in a highly sexualized manner. Regardless whether or not he is explicitly speaking to children in a sexual manner or overtly engaging with them, he is implicitly doing so by virtue of his appearance and is fully aware of the fact.
To me, the most abhorrent part about this is he is subjecting children to his paraphilia and is given cover by the same people whose jobs are to prevent children from this very harm. All in the name of gender ideology. I believe he is defended precisely because people believe that "enormous prosthetic breasts are just what any normal “transwoman” would want to wear to work," and any misgivings they rightly may have are cast aside for fear of being "transphobic." It seems that the second we stop publicly decrying how disturbing this is, this becomes normalized. Perhaps if people are informed that his behavior is not typical of trans-identified individuals, then people like him wont get a free pass. In any case, it's utterly repugnant that those in positions to stop this are instead protecting him.
Yes I agree with you. Unfortunately there is a substantial subset of people with a paraphilia that got lumped into the “trans” bucket. If he were a one-off outlier, I think people could see what a sexual deviant he was, compared to other “transwomen”— but since a large subset of “transwomen” are just like him (they need their own name, seriously—“ sexual deviant” did just fine) people have a hard time seeing the difference.
If this is what a lot of “transwomen” look like —over-the-top sexualized cariacatures— it’s hard for the people at the school boards, who’ve been instructed to be “inclusive” to understand that this is not behavior that they must permit in the name of DEI and righteousness.
All too true. There are a few different psychological "profiles" of trans-identified people and the paraphilic subset you mentioned is certainly prevalent. "Trans" is less a social group and more a population suffering from a psychological disorder.
You're spot on with this being handled as a DEI issue, but there have to be some administrators that have at least a glimmer of humanity alive in them to know that this is just outright wrong. Maybe some of it's also fear of authoritarian institutional backlash: apparently Canada is even harder on this issue than the US, in terms of DEI. With that being said, I have no idea what would spur a parent to defend this.
Always a pleasure talking with you, Dolly - you are one of my favorite writers on substack!
Thank you so much, GS! I really appreciate your thoughts and participation!
re : ", I have no idea what would spur a parent to defend this." I don't either. I'm left of left -- I want everyone to feel comfortable in their own skin and accepted and included -- but some behavior just isn't appropriate in some contexts. It doesn't seem that hard to say no to it!!!
Let's be honest, this is beyond insane. If I were a woman, I would be outraged and insulted by this behavior. As a parent and teacher, I find it disgusting. I personally don't care what people do in their private lives; it is none of my my business. But, I am concerned about the social unraveling that's going on.
“But some women have enormous breasts!” Yes, they do, but 1) they also wear appropriate undergarments (unless they’re in a porn film) and 2) those are neither real breasts nor even implants.
Yep. And even then, it's a problem: my partner has macromastia and teaches high school. Boys are distracted by her body! She does her best to minimizes this with dress, but if she went to work with a clinging skintight top she would absolutely be asked to change.
Some men have large penises, but a teacher whose penis was plainly visible through his pants would be asked to change, as would someone who was wearing a visible strapon. How in the world is "don't flaunt your sexual characteristics to children" a tough ask?
Yeah, that is so insulting to women and girls with large breasts. My daughter goes to a huge amount of trouble to make sure her breasts don’t draw attention to themselves, including having to shop at special bra stores and wearing big shirts. Busty women irl don’t go around like this.
Similarly, men with autogynephilia have a hard time believing that women aren’t typically sexually attracted to themselves because men with AGP are.
It’s a real failure to understand what it’s like to BE a woman and that tells me that despite protestations to the contrary, men who want to present as women are not _actually_ women. The slogan TWAW has caused a lot of trouble. Some might merit being honorary women. Some might merit being thrown in prison.
Totally with you on this. It's the same rules for all or no rules at all.
It is unacceptable that we allow one group to do what we allow no one else just because its members claim it makes them so terribly, terribly sad if the rules that apply to all apply to them, too.
In recent years we have accepted and adopted, grudingly or enthusiastically, much stricter rules on what's considered sexually appropriate behavior. There are ongoing discussions in many industrialized countries about whether to tighten the rules here and there, ranging from penal codes to rules for sexual harassment at the workplace or in schools.
One group - or at least many of its members - just claims to be excempt from the new rules and the old rules alike. They say they can not adhere to them because they are oh so special and oh so vulnerable. If they have the same rights and obligations as everyone else, they say, their rights are being violated. And there are political movements who openly support this extreme sense of entitlement.
It’s weird. The focus on getting special perks and privileges because you’re “oppressed” is just very bizarre. The only sensible way forward is a set of rules that applies to all. No enormous prosthetic breasts period.
It's amusing that it doesn't seem to occur to anyone that this guy is running a long troll. He's successfully gotten the school board to put out an official communique defending his right to wear triple Z cup fake tiddies (while in a pink mask no less), after garnering international attention for the stunt. They look like idiots in front of students, parents, and the global public. By extension, so do the gender schizos whose reign of terror has scared the board into loudly supporting him. It's possible he's for real but it just seems too over the top.
I think some of these guys really have a problem with porn and their woman-fetish. I’ve heard over and over that it makes them lose all perspective or sense of…just normalcy, in the sense of having a balanced life that’s not hyperfocused on a weird warped sexuality.
I feel sorry for anyone in that situation and wonder about their ability to do their work.
I think the true situation is much sadder than an extreme troll.
I think that's why I prefer the troll hypothesis: if he's sincere it's depressing beyond words. And yeah, I've heard of the porn-to-autogynophile pipeline before. I agree that scenario is also plausible. Either way we should know soon enough depending on whether he says anything.
Yes “if he’s sincere it’s depressing beyond words.” That level of self-humiliation is hard to watch. It’s like watching someone drunk and unconscious in the gutter, marinating in his own vomit. You feel sorry for him and yet you wish he would get it together.
its no different than alcohol or drugs. some can do cocaine for years and quit no problem. some use it once and theyre so addicted it ruins their job and marriage and makes them broke. i was a serious drunk at age 16, used heroin, cocaine, and used them at the same time (how john belushi died), had a sexual addiction to porn for decades that i was treated for and also, like many, developed porn fueled agp arousal which i still have. none of it caused me to be pubic about it, talk to anyone about it, share this fetish with anyone (except now). it didnt prevent me from my main intrests and family, or job. its an addiction for some, a hobby for most , a choice for all. certanly some need psych care and are using agp to avoid deep psych issues, just like any dope addict or alcoholic. none are helped by enabled to self harm. certanly are getting off on various related highs, including violating rights of others by violating peoples boundarys amd exposing others to their fetishes. this shouldnt be allowed. but this is what the billionaires who financed the gender ideology movement paid for. most of these agp ppl are miserable.
Kyle thank you so much for sharing your perspective. On the outside looking in, to me it appears very much like an addiction, and enabling anyone’s addiction -- encouraging it, even -- hurts them.
The article says she teaches industrial arts. She should really be teaching physics, because those things are big enough to generate their own gravitational field! If they were any bigger, you wouldn't be able to see them at all because of the event horizon!
I'm pretty sure she'll have to stop teaching shop regardless of whether the school stands behind her--no one should be operating power tools or heavy machinery while wearing those things!
There was some serious concern expressed about the teachers hair or...bosom being caught in the machinery, but that’s been dismissed by many people. I guess if those things get caught, they’re easily removed and won’t mangle anyone.
Thank you! This is such a sensible response, and it is crazy to me that everyone is arguing about a different issue. The real issue is professional attire for work and school, and there is no way that that outfit makes the cutoff. Of course, I was raised by my schoolteacher mom and school principal dad, so I am keenly aware of what is considered appropriate clothing for school!
I also commend you for your compassion for the teacher--for willing to extend the benefit of the doubt.
And it should be. But the translobby has muddied the waters so any attempt to apply the principle of one rule for all is seen as an attack on transpeople.
This is not only egregious in itself. It is outright dangerous. It undermines any sense of universalism - and it is meant to. If we play this any further, many more groups will claim that they are actually excempt from the law or the social rules that apply to everyone and what we'll end up with is the abolishment of equal and same rights for all.
This, btw, is the exact oppoiste of what left and liberal movements have always been about.
Exactly, but you know the next move of course. He has to wear his prosthetic breasts because of gender dysphoria and it’s a real problem and it’s a disabling condition and what, are you mean bastards going to fail to _accommodate a disability_?
To which I say there can be no “accommodation” to enacting one’s fetish in a public school, even if it makes the person very, very sad and disappointed to be told no.
Behind so much of this lies the left's insistence that Western societies are nothing but corrupt, genocidal, cis-heteronormative patriarchal white-supremacy capitalist tyrannies (wait, I forgot ableist!) that must be burned to the ground and rebuilt into the queer socialist eco-feminist trans BIPOC utopia. I wish I was making that up, it's like we're trapped in a never-ending Onion article. You know you're in trouble when satire can't keep up with reality. There was a time when my first reaction to your article would have been shocked disbelief; now it's just another day in the open-air asylum that is left-world. Sigh.
I agree with you completely, except I hate hearing this described as left-world. It’s not anything that resembles a real “left” as we’ve understood it since about 1848. People who used to consider themselves on the left, who naturally rooted for the underdog, got fooled and distracted en masse by this stupid identitarian stuff.
The “insistence that Western societies are nothing but corrupt, genocidal, cis-heteronormative patriarchal white-supremacy capitalist tyrannies (wait, I forgot ableist!) that must be burned to the ground and rebuilt into the queer socialist eco-feminist trans BIPOC utopia” is not a message from “the left” but rather it’s stupid nonsense from the plundering class to distract us while they continue to plunder.
It’s designed to trick people and set them at each others’ throats, so they are distracted from the fact that the billionaires are taking all the resources and everyone else is getting poorer every year and finding it harder just to live.
More and more people don’t remember (I don’t, except from my grandfather) that the working class 70 years ago could have an unskilled job at a shoe factory, and support a family decently from that, and go on vacation once in a while, and go to the doctor when they were sick, and retire with a pension in a home they owned with roast beef for Sunday dinners. (The first stupid trick that was sold to the working class was the idea that a 401k could be better than that—“you invest your own money just like rich people!”).
We’re so far removed from those days, when the working class had a reasonable amount of resources and could live decently, that people have forgotten those days existed.
Instead of the obvious problem being “the working class can’t live decently anymore, and everyone’s kids are funneled into a life of debt with the promise of a ‘better’ job if they attend college, and they end up shopping for Instacart anyway,” instead of seeing the real enemies (the plundering class), people perceive their enemies as their political opposites, but everyone’s talking points (on both sides, not just the faux-left’s) are painfully stupid and pointless.
The problem is not the stuff that the wacky faux left focuses on (although it is a meta-problem that they babble on and ignore economic problems). The problem is not that the wacky faux-left is “in control” (of anything but superficial things like DEI) and a return to simple common sense will fix it. The problem is, while we’re distracted by all this, the vast majority of people are getting less and less of a share of the resources in the form of decent wages and basic economic security, and it’s getting worse every year. If people work they should be able to live decently. That’s just no longer true.
And people are mad (including me) because they perceive things are going to hell, but most people are distracted as to WHY life has gotten so much harder.
The plundering class’s strategy worked really well. None of these people on the faux-left are concerned in the least with any of the real problems of the working class. With no one pushing back, the plundering can continue until we’re all in tent cities, except for the few who are behind armed walls with piles of money and security teams. Sounds lovely.
I spent a lot of time in movement left and academic left circles from the early 80's through about 2012, and I can say with certainty that the crazy identitarian politics we're seeing today are the product of an organic evolution of leftwing theory and practice since the 60s--I watched it happen. And since I departed academia for the nonprofit world, I've seen it metastasize and take over that sphere (and in spaces such as this and other substacks, observed the long march in many other spheres of American society as well). Have the plutocrats taken advantage of this circus? Without doubt. However, it would be wildly inaccurate to say that they've created it. The so-called social theory behind this stuff was already seeping out of college campuses and displacing old-school left/labor politics back in the early 90s; indeed, I was practically a dinosaur way back then with my attachment to old-school left/labor politics, and it's only gotten weirder. I've seen the change from inside of enough activist and movement spheres to know that this stuff has been formulated and promulgated by true believers (with the help of a lot of useful idiots). It just happens to be convenient for plutocrats, and if I was a plutocrat, I'd probably donate to the cause, just to keep them muddled, off my back, and out of my money bin!
I agree with much of what you said here, except the 401k shot. The first trick we all feel for, was social security, which is the classic definition of a ponzi scheme. Had they set aside the money (preferably into your own account), that's one thing. A poor investment to be sure, but at least it was your own. SS relies on new entrants to fund those who reliably contributed, exactly like what madoff did. All contributions go into the general fund. It will mathematically collapse at some point. If we ran our employees' 401k in that manner, I'd be thrown in jail. Literally
Moreover, if you gave people the choice between a fund which they control (including an option to invest only in "no risk" government bonds which all 401k's have), and can be passed down generationally, OR SS, when properly described as the ponzi scheme it is and which is not user controlled (you could lose everything you paid in should you die), what do you think most would choose? No question, they'd be far, far better off with a self-controlled fund. And that's not even partial investing in equity, which would blow away what they have now with SS.
But it's been demonized, completed unfairly, by a bunch of lying politicians. SS is fraudulently run, in a way 401k's never could be
I must respectfully disagree. This teacher has sent a clear message, and it is not about appropriate attire. And this person is not dressing inappropriately in his job as a bank teller- he is a teacher around children every day. That is not coincidental to the issue, it is the primary issue.
Bishops, too, gave priests the benefit of the doubt. That’s how we ended up with serial pedophile priests.
As Maya Angelou said, “when people show you who they are, believe them.” It’s time we stood up to protect children instead of cowering before the trans activists.
I agree that being around kids all day makes his outfit different/more troubling than if he were a bank teller.
But when you consider that every institution, every media story, every celebrity, every school will defend his behavior as “normal” and to be “protected” you can understand why someone in the depths of his own obsession with his sexual fetish might think this is totally fine.
The problem is that society as a whole is NOT banding together to tell him that this is not fine, and different behavior is expected.
He’s a problem yes, but the bigger problem is how our entire culture is currently supporting him so he can’t learn what’s appropriate.
Really, I don’t understand why we find it so difficult to stand up for children and just say flat out, “This is wrong. We will not allow children to be treated this way. If you don’t understand how to comport yourself around children, you will not be allowed around them. You may go somewhere else and behave that way, but not in a classroom. And no, we won’t wait until something worse happens- you’ve already done enough damage.”
Of course I don't really know, but I suspect this person is really not Trans and is instead trolling the school board demonstrating what happens when "self-identification" is the sole criteria for a "gender-identity."
I mourn the passing of dress codes! I mourn the passing of school uniforms. I mourn the passing of teachers being held to a strict moral code. I mourn the passing of treating sexual perverts, well, like the deviant, sexual perverts they are! I mourn that adults that expose such sexual deviancy to children are no longer locked up. I mourn that today's children are forced to suffer through classes while they are obviously confused, distressed, bewildered, titilated, not knowing what's going on, or what to think, while adults parade every known sexual perversion in front of them instead of teaching them the basics of math, science, reading, etc. Parents, take your schools back! I'll bet the reading, math, and science scores are in the toilet at this school as they are in every other school that allows this nonsense to be shown to our children.
It makes me very angry that defending common sense makes you look like a reactionary, troll, or curmudgeon.
Not that I’m not two of those things, but still
I agree!!!!
Except that maybe common sense is not that "common", but simply an illusion of our cultural upbringing/brainwashing.
Another possibility is that common sense should dictate that superficial, largely irrelevant matters such as physical appearance and clothing, or artificial, transitory, relatively useless and irrational concepts such as "professionalism" (as extended to physical appearance and clothing) are not worthy of such strict definitions and regulations.
That’s easy to say — oh professionalism is useless and irrational.
Why not go naked to work then?
Why not tell your boss exactly what you think of her?
All norms are useless and irrational.
Marry off your four-year-old niece.
Trade her for some goats.
Kill the people next door if you like their house better, and take it.
Dispensing with norms is one of those naive utopianish ideas that’s impossible to execute. All cultures have norms. Show me one that doesn’t.
Many norms are essentially shorthand, a code by which we signal to each other: “I am not going to be a source of chaos to you.” Since we are locked in our own subjectivity and strangers to each other, and since embodied life is uncertain and may allow filth to encroach at any moment, this is an extremely useful form of shorthand.
Great way to describe it, Jeff! Thanks.
Thank you.
Agreed, some norms are rational and useful. Imposition of clothing codes based on arbitrary capricious fashions and cultural fads is not one of them. In fact, the imposition of any clothing altogether tramples on one of people's most basic human rights: that of bodily autonomy and self determination; the freedom to choose what we put in and on our body.
The nihilistic extreme of your examples suggests a lack of understanding of the difference between norms grounded in ethical and human rights vs arbitrary, superficial, often irrational cultural norms.
Indeed, clothing is useful to protect ourselves against the weather, and for comfort (perhaps hygiene in some contexts), but should NOT be imposed tyrannically on those who would prefer not to wear it. Nudist camps/clubs or groups of nudists at beaches and parks indeed conduct art, music, yoga and qi-gong classes (among others) in the nude, without any negative consequences.
On the other hand, marrying off your 4-year-old niece or trading her off for goats overlooks her value as a unique human being, her autonomy, her capacity to consent rationally, and puts her at risk of stymieing a healthy development (i.e., if she's treated like a sex slave by those she's sold to). Thus, "norms" against such behavior, which are actually coded into LAW, are not irrational. Same goes for killing and taking other people's property, as it directly trespasses on other people's freedoms and rights to the pursuit of happiness. Imposing clothing choices based on capricious fashions and cultural fads would be nothing more than an unnecessary superficial norm that serves no rational, functional purpose.
So you’re saying that cultural norms are pointless and teachers should be able to wear swimsuits or giant breasts to work? I think most people would disagree.
Wearing swimsuits and giant prosthetic breast to work is, at worse, *perfectly harmless*.
Private establishments and institutions choosing "club rules" based on arbitrary, personal (often neurotic) beliefs is fine.
What I think is atrocious is for public institutions, establishments, and places to impose unnecessary repressive regulations, based on mythological beliefs, in people who may not share such beliefs.
Clothing has an enormous carbon footprint. Lots of resources go into producing it, distributing it, washing it, etc. Who are we to decide how other people spend their money? Modern threads are often toxic to humans (they outgas chemical compounds detrimental to health) and not environmentally friendly.
It's a tragedy that the natural naked state in which God/Nature/Evolution have designed/created us to be could be so irrationally feared by many and deemed "indecent" or "undesirable". It makes absolutely no sense.
From an ethical point of view, deciding for others that they MUST cover their God-given nature against their free will lest they face legal repercussions is the epitome of human perversion, stupidity, and outright evil tyranny.
If we condone this, we're implicitly condoning vax mandates, arranged marriages, etc., the entire lot of fascist impositions that dictate what a person can or cannot decide for their own body and life.
Well, there go all my outfits...
I didn’t see those pics!
And dammit, Klaus, crop me out of there before you send them to her 😅
I’ll go out on a limb here and guess that this teacher has issues that go far beyond inappropriate dress. Nobody with a normal psyche and ego does this.
We are fast moving toward a society led by the mentally ill and the senile.
I would guess that a person with such poor judgment also struggles in other areas, but if the teacher’s been a good teacher they need a chance to keep teaching.
In my view this person has disqualified himself from being anywhere around children. Of course he is rated as a good teacher. He is a member of a protected class. Nobody would dare say that he is not a good teacher.
I do wonder whether tenure protections are part of the issue too. In my high school, the French teacher struggled with mental illness and used to go behind a chalkboard and fart loudly in class. It was extremely disruptive, as you can imagine. She was so notorious that many students who wanted to take French--including me--chose not to. But she couldn’t be fired or even placed on involuntary leave because of tenure.
Tenure might be part of it--great point.
Go behind a chalkboard and fart loudly in class????? Oy!
Maybe the school district cannot fire someone for wearing something -- even something that is arguably indecent -- but they can certainly have a talk with the teacher about appropriate workwear instead of saying to the international media and all the parents and kids that they _support_ this ridiculous prosthesis.
Kids need to be able to recognize their feelings of revulsion, disgust, or fear and be encouraged to honor and act on those feelings -- not shove them away and hide them behind cheery slogans about the right to self-expression.
Who’s next to exercise the right to self-express? The local flasher? The local animal torturer and future serial killer?
Agree with you on this one. Also, it makes fun of the gender the person is trying to assume.
It does give that impression, doesn’t it? Making fun or being overly weirdly sexual. Neither one is good.
As are, basically, all gender impersonators: transsexuals, drag queens etc. I’ve never seen one dress as anything but an (often grossly exaggerated) stereotype of women. Ever seen a drag queen not in high heels? A transsexual in jeans?
Yes. It’s really based on stereotyping.
I completely agree with you that a female teacher would not get away with wearing these giant fake breasts. The outfit is inappropriate for anyone, and that’s the only argument we should need.
But at the same time, the part no one wants to say out loud (except terfs) is that it’s even more inappropriate because this person is biologically male. In this context, it screams sexual fetish—while a biological woman wearing something like this might have body dysmorphia or other mental illness. If some students are more uncomfortable around this individual than they would be around a biological woman wearing the same thing… I think that’s valid because it is different.
It does scream sexual fetish. And while we can’t control the private sexual fetishes of public school teachers, we can surely ask that they don’t bring them to work and inflict them on the children and their coworkers. We wouldn’t allow Louis CK to whip out his dick and masturbate in shop class, so we shouldn’t allow this either.
"The school board, for its part “is ‘standing behind’ an ‘accepted’ transgender teacher.… Protecting any person’s ‘gender rights’ is ‘the stance the school board is taking and they are standing behind the teacher,’ said Shuttleworth.”
Let's be honest, they're probably standing behind her because it's far less distracting than standing in front of her...
Arguably, there is no room in front of him.
Hi, Dolly!
I agree with you: this goes beyond the confines of "gender" and pours over into the domain of professionalism. But I think it's even worse, this is an issue of sexual exhibitionism--with children being forced to participate in this man's fetish. This man has absolutely no place working with children in any capacity, regardless how effective a teacher he may or may not be. His lack of judgment in this instance is so egregious that it overrules any other considerations you could reasonably take to justify his merit as a teacher. I'm absolutely aghast that any administrators or school board members, let alone any of the parents, have defended this individual.
What is it about "gender" that allows men such as this carte blanche to parade themselves about in such abject sexual objectification of women? Why is this celebrated and defended when the same behavior in women would be rebuked, with scorn and judgment, instantly? What are the young women who are students at Oakville going to take away from this? With the sudden influx of ROGD in young women who are uncomfortable with the changes in their bodies and their own objectification, I can easily see this man's grotesque caricature of womanhood serving as a potential catalyst.
“with children being forced to participate in this man's fetish.”
Yes that’s sort of how I view it too. I think it’s absolutely outrageous and disturbing but how do we fix it?
They are being exposed to it, yes. It’s in their faces. That’s wrong. As long as he is not speaking sexually to the children or trying to get them to engage with him, this is still a problem of how he dresses. If he stopped dressing that way and didn’t talk about his sexual quirks, and kept it all private, I think he could still teach.
But the question I always ask myself is how do we fix this? I don’t think we fix it, in the public square, by saying how disgusting and disturbing it is (even though it is!) because at least half of the public has been brainwashed into thinking enormous prosthetic breasts are just what any normal “transwoman” would want to wear to work. This is by the way insulting to transwomen who are just wanting to live quiet lives dressing as women and being addressed as she, without doing anything weird to their fellow humans.
I think we fix it by shifting the discussion away from (just) the weird sexualized gendered manner of dress of this particular person, and toward a discussion of what manner of dress is appropriate to wear at schools.
I don't believe that his actions speak for the motivations of all trans-identified people, nor should trans-identified people be characterized broadly as sexual deviants. However, I feel that his particular inclinations are motivated intrinsically by sexual exhibitionism, with a narcissistic desire to subject those around him to his fetish, and extend beyond his manner of dress. The underlying issue, from my perspective, isn't his manner of dress; rather, it's the fact that he is attempting to "embody" the female form in a way that is garishly hyper-sexualized. That has no place, whatsoever, outside of his private life--especially when its done around adolescents. In the image you posted, his clothing is not at all offensive or provocative. I don't think anyone would look twice at any other person wearing the same shirt/sweater he's wearing. What provokes such disdain is the ridiculous prosthetic breasts with nipples that visibly protrude. That was a conscious, deliberate decision on his part in order to expose himself to others in a highly sexualized manner. Regardless whether or not he is explicitly speaking to children in a sexual manner or overtly engaging with them, he is implicitly doing so by virtue of his appearance and is fully aware of the fact.
To me, the most abhorrent part about this is he is subjecting children to his paraphilia and is given cover by the same people whose jobs are to prevent children from this very harm. All in the name of gender ideology. I believe he is defended precisely because people believe that "enormous prosthetic breasts are just what any normal “transwoman” would want to wear to work," and any misgivings they rightly may have are cast aside for fear of being "transphobic." It seems that the second we stop publicly decrying how disturbing this is, this becomes normalized. Perhaps if people are informed that his behavior is not typical of trans-identified individuals, then people like him wont get a free pass. In any case, it's utterly repugnant that those in positions to stop this are instead protecting him.
Yes I agree with you. Unfortunately there is a substantial subset of people with a paraphilia that got lumped into the “trans” bucket. If he were a one-off outlier, I think people could see what a sexual deviant he was, compared to other “transwomen”— but since a large subset of “transwomen” are just like him (they need their own name, seriously—“ sexual deviant” did just fine) people have a hard time seeing the difference.
If this is what a lot of “transwomen” look like —over-the-top sexualized cariacatures— it’s hard for the people at the school boards, who’ve been instructed to be “inclusive” to understand that this is not behavior that they must permit in the name of DEI and righteousness.
All too true. There are a few different psychological "profiles" of trans-identified people and the paraphilic subset you mentioned is certainly prevalent. "Trans" is less a social group and more a population suffering from a psychological disorder.
You're spot on with this being handled as a DEI issue, but there have to be some administrators that have at least a glimmer of humanity alive in them to know that this is just outright wrong. Maybe some of it's also fear of authoritarian institutional backlash: apparently Canada is even harder on this issue than the US, in terms of DEI. With that being said, I have no idea what would spur a parent to defend this.
Always a pleasure talking with you, Dolly - you are one of my favorite writers on substack!
Thank you so much, GS! I really appreciate your thoughts and participation!
re : ", I have no idea what would spur a parent to defend this." I don't either. I'm left of left -- I want everyone to feel comfortable in their own skin and accepted and included -- but some behavior just isn't appropriate in some contexts. It doesn't seem that hard to say no to it!!!
Let's be honest, this is beyond insane. If I were a woman, I would be outraged and insulted by this behavior. As a parent and teacher, I find it disgusting. I personally don't care what people do in their private lives; it is none of my my business. But, I am concerned about the social unraveling that's going on.
💯
“But some women have enormous breasts!” Yes, they do, but 1) they also wear appropriate undergarments (unless they’re in a porn film) and 2) those are neither real breasts nor even implants.
Yep. And even then, it's a problem: my partner has macromastia and teaches high school. Boys are distracted by her body! She does her best to minimizes this with dress, but if she went to work with a clinging skintight top she would absolutely be asked to change.
Some men have large penises, but a teacher whose penis was plainly visible through his pants would be asked to change, as would someone who was wearing a visible strapon. How in the world is "don't flaunt your sexual characteristics to children" a tough ask?
Exactly — a requirement that applies to everyone equally
Yeah, that is so insulting to women and girls with large breasts. My daughter goes to a huge amount of trouble to make sure her breasts don’t draw attention to themselves, including having to shop at special bra stores and wearing big shirts. Busty women irl don’t go around like this.
They simply don’t want to!
Similarly, men with autogynephilia have a hard time believing that women aren’t typically sexually attracted to themselves because men with AGP are.
It’s a real failure to understand what it’s like to BE a woman and that tells me that despite protestations to the contrary, men who want to present as women are not _actually_ women. The slogan TWAW has caused a lot of trouble. Some might merit being honorary women. Some might merit being thrown in prison.
Yes. It’s just bizarre!
Totally with you on this. It's the same rules for all or no rules at all.
It is unacceptable that we allow one group to do what we allow no one else just because its members claim it makes them so terribly, terribly sad if the rules that apply to all apply to them, too.
In recent years we have accepted and adopted, grudingly or enthusiastically, much stricter rules on what's considered sexually appropriate behavior. There are ongoing discussions in many industrialized countries about whether to tighten the rules here and there, ranging from penal codes to rules for sexual harassment at the workplace or in schools.
One group - or at least many of its members - just claims to be excempt from the new rules and the old rules alike. They say they can not adhere to them because they are oh so special and oh so vulnerable. If they have the same rights and obligations as everyone else, they say, their rights are being violated. And there are political movements who openly support this extreme sense of entitlement.
It’s weird. The focus on getting special perks and privileges because you’re “oppressed” is just very bizarre. The only sensible way forward is a set of rules that applies to all. No enormous prosthetic breasts period.
It's amusing that it doesn't seem to occur to anyone that this guy is running a long troll. He's successfully gotten the school board to put out an official communique defending his right to wear triple Z cup fake tiddies (while in a pink mask no less), after garnering international attention for the stunt. They look like idiots in front of students, parents, and the global public. By extension, so do the gender schizos whose reign of terror has scared the board into loudly supporting him. It's possible he's for real but it just seems too over the top.
I think some of these guys really have a problem with porn and their woman-fetish. I’ve heard over and over that it makes them lose all perspective or sense of…just normalcy, in the sense of having a balanced life that’s not hyperfocused on a weird warped sexuality.
I feel sorry for anyone in that situation and wonder about their ability to do their work.
I think the true situation is much sadder than an extreme troll.
I think that's why I prefer the troll hypothesis: if he's sincere it's depressing beyond words. And yeah, I've heard of the porn-to-autogynophile pipeline before. I agree that scenario is also plausible. Either way we should know soon enough depending on whether he says anything.
Yes “if he’s sincere it’s depressing beyond words.” That level of self-humiliation is hard to watch. It’s like watching someone drunk and unconscious in the gutter, marinating in his own vomit. You feel sorry for him and yet you wish he would get it together.
its no different than alcohol or drugs. some can do cocaine for years and quit no problem. some use it once and theyre so addicted it ruins their job and marriage and makes them broke. i was a serious drunk at age 16, used heroin, cocaine, and used them at the same time (how john belushi died), had a sexual addiction to porn for decades that i was treated for and also, like many, developed porn fueled agp arousal which i still have. none of it caused me to be pubic about it, talk to anyone about it, share this fetish with anyone (except now). it didnt prevent me from my main intrests and family, or job. its an addiction for some, a hobby for most , a choice for all. certanly some need psych care and are using agp to avoid deep psych issues, just like any dope addict or alcoholic. none are helped by enabled to self harm. certanly are getting off on various related highs, including violating rights of others by violating peoples boundarys amd exposing others to their fetishes. this shouldnt be allowed. but this is what the billionaires who financed the gender ideology movement paid for. most of these agp ppl are miserable.
Kyle thank you so much for sharing your perspective. On the outside looking in, to me it appears very much like an addiction, and enabling anyone’s addiction -- encouraging it, even -- hurts them.
I had that thought too. Maybe he is on Christopher Rufo’s payroll! If so, the school is sure taking the bait.
I really doubt Rufo is paying anyone.
So do I. It was meant to be a joke, but I guess not a good one.
tfw I can detect a troll in a news story but not irony in a comment.
The article says she teaches industrial arts. She should really be teaching physics, because those things are big enough to generate their own gravitational field! If they were any bigger, you wouldn't be able to see them at all because of the event horizon!
“I’m here all week, folks!”
I'm pretty sure she'll have to stop teaching shop regardless of whether the school stands behind her--no one should be operating power tools or heavy machinery while wearing those things!
Ba-dum-BUM!
There was some serious concern expressed about the teachers hair or...bosom being caught in the machinery, but that’s been dismissed by many people. I guess if those things get caught, they’re easily removed and won’t mangle anyone.
Thank you! This is such a sensible response, and it is crazy to me that everyone is arguing about a different issue. The real issue is professional attire for work and school, and there is no way that that outfit makes the cutoff. Of course, I was raised by my schoolteacher mom and school principal dad, so I am keenly aware of what is considered appropriate clothing for school!
I also commend you for your compassion for the teacher--for willing to extend the benefit of the doubt.
Thanks Mari! The conversation seems so odd, and it could be so cut-and-dry!
And it should be. But the translobby has muddied the waters so any attempt to apply the principle of one rule for all is seen as an attack on transpeople.
This is not only egregious in itself. It is outright dangerous. It undermines any sense of universalism - and it is meant to. If we play this any further, many more groups will claim that they are actually excempt from the law or the social rules that apply to everyone and what we'll end up with is the abolishment of equal and same rights for all.
This, btw, is the exact oppoiste of what left and liberal movements have always been about.
Exactly, but you know the next move of course. He has to wear his prosthetic breasts because of gender dysphoria and it’s a real problem and it’s a disabling condition and what, are you mean bastards going to fail to _accommodate a disability_?
To which I say there can be no “accommodation” to enacting one’s fetish in a public school, even if it makes the person very, very sad and disappointed to be told no.
Behind so much of this lies the left's insistence that Western societies are nothing but corrupt, genocidal, cis-heteronormative patriarchal white-supremacy capitalist tyrannies (wait, I forgot ableist!) that must be burned to the ground and rebuilt into the queer socialist eco-feminist trans BIPOC utopia. I wish I was making that up, it's like we're trapped in a never-ending Onion article. You know you're in trouble when satire can't keep up with reality. There was a time when my first reaction to your article would have been shocked disbelief; now it's just another day in the open-air asylum that is left-world. Sigh.
I agree with you completely, except I hate hearing this described as left-world. It’s not anything that resembles a real “left” as we’ve understood it since about 1848. People who used to consider themselves on the left, who naturally rooted for the underdog, got fooled and distracted en masse by this stupid identitarian stuff.
The “insistence that Western societies are nothing but corrupt, genocidal, cis-heteronormative patriarchal white-supremacy capitalist tyrannies (wait, I forgot ableist!) that must be burned to the ground and rebuilt into the queer socialist eco-feminist trans BIPOC utopia” is not a message from “the left” but rather it’s stupid nonsense from the plundering class to distract us while they continue to plunder.
It’s designed to trick people and set them at each others’ throats, so they are distracted from the fact that the billionaires are taking all the resources and everyone else is getting poorer every year and finding it harder just to live.
More and more people don’t remember (I don’t, except from my grandfather) that the working class 70 years ago could have an unskilled job at a shoe factory, and support a family decently from that, and go on vacation once in a while, and go to the doctor when they were sick, and retire with a pension in a home they owned with roast beef for Sunday dinners. (The first stupid trick that was sold to the working class was the idea that a 401k could be better than that—“you invest your own money just like rich people!”).
We’re so far removed from those days, when the working class had a reasonable amount of resources and could live decently, that people have forgotten those days existed.
Instead of the obvious problem being “the working class can’t live decently anymore, and everyone’s kids are funneled into a life of debt with the promise of a ‘better’ job if they attend college, and they end up shopping for Instacart anyway,” instead of seeing the real enemies (the plundering class), people perceive their enemies as their political opposites, but everyone’s talking points (on both sides, not just the faux-left’s) are painfully stupid and pointless.
The problem is not the stuff that the wacky faux left focuses on (although it is a meta-problem that they babble on and ignore economic problems). The problem is not that the wacky faux-left is “in control” (of anything but superficial things like DEI) and a return to simple common sense will fix it. The problem is, while we’re distracted by all this, the vast majority of people are getting less and less of a share of the resources in the form of decent wages and basic economic security, and it’s getting worse every year. If people work they should be able to live decently. That’s just no longer true.
And people are mad (including me) because they perceive things are going to hell, but most people are distracted as to WHY life has gotten so much harder.
The plundering class’s strategy worked really well. None of these people on the faux-left are concerned in the least with any of the real problems of the working class. With no one pushing back, the plundering can continue until we’re all in tent cities, except for the few who are behind armed walls with piles of money and security teams. Sounds lovely.
I spent a lot of time in movement left and academic left circles from the early 80's through about 2012, and I can say with certainty that the crazy identitarian politics we're seeing today are the product of an organic evolution of leftwing theory and practice since the 60s--I watched it happen. And since I departed academia for the nonprofit world, I've seen it metastasize and take over that sphere (and in spaces such as this and other substacks, observed the long march in many other spheres of American society as well). Have the plutocrats taken advantage of this circus? Without doubt. However, it would be wildly inaccurate to say that they've created it. The so-called social theory behind this stuff was already seeping out of college campuses and displacing old-school left/labor politics back in the early 90s; indeed, I was practically a dinosaur way back then with my attachment to old-school left/labor politics, and it's only gotten weirder. I've seen the change from inside of enough activist and movement spheres to know that this stuff has been formulated and promulgated by true believers (with the help of a lot of useful idiots). It just happens to be convenient for plutocrats, and if I was a plutocrat, I'd probably donate to the cause, just to keep them muddled, off my back, and out of my money bin!
I agree with much of what you said here, except the 401k shot. The first trick we all feel for, was social security, which is the classic definition of a ponzi scheme. Had they set aside the money (preferably into your own account), that's one thing. A poor investment to be sure, but at least it was your own. SS relies on new entrants to fund those who reliably contributed, exactly like what madoff did. All contributions go into the general fund. It will mathematically collapse at some point. If we ran our employees' 401k in that manner, I'd be thrown in jail. Literally
Moreover, if you gave people the choice between a fund which they control (including an option to invest only in "no risk" government bonds which all 401k's have), and can be passed down generationally, OR SS, when properly described as the ponzi scheme it is and which is not user controlled (you could lose everything you paid in should you die), what do you think most would choose? No question, they'd be far, far better off with a self-controlled fund. And that's not even partial investing in equity, which would blow away what they have now with SS.
But it's been demonized, completed unfairly, by a bunch of lying politicians. SS is fraudulently run, in a way 401k's never could be
I must respectfully disagree. This teacher has sent a clear message, and it is not about appropriate attire. And this person is not dressing inappropriately in his job as a bank teller- he is a teacher around children every day. That is not coincidental to the issue, it is the primary issue.
Bishops, too, gave priests the benefit of the doubt. That’s how we ended up with serial pedophile priests.
As Maya Angelou said, “when people show you who they are, believe them.” It’s time we stood up to protect children instead of cowering before the trans activists.
I agree that being around kids all day makes his outfit different/more troubling than if he were a bank teller.
But when you consider that every institution, every media story, every celebrity, every school will defend his behavior as “normal” and to be “protected” you can understand why someone in the depths of his own obsession with his sexual fetish might think this is totally fine.
The problem is that society as a whole is NOT banding together to tell him that this is not fine, and different behavior is expected.
He’s a problem yes, but the bigger problem is how our entire culture is currently supporting him so he can’t learn what’s appropriate.
Really, I don’t understand why we find it so difficult to stand up for children and just say flat out, “This is wrong. We will not allow children to be treated this way. If you don’t understand how to comport yourself around children, you will not be allowed around them. You may go somewhere else and behave that way, but not in a classroom. And no, we won’t wait until something worse happens- you’ve already done enough damage.”
Just checking, are these things just strapped on or are they Dolly Parton style.
That would make a difference, no?
Moving on, so a big dildo would be okay too,
Of course I don't really know, but I suspect this person is really not Trans and is instead trolling the school board demonstrating what happens when "self-identification" is the sole criteria for a "gender-identity."
I heard that rumor but apparently the person claims to be sincere.
I mourn the passing of dress codes! I mourn the passing of school uniforms. I mourn the passing of teachers being held to a strict moral code. I mourn the passing of treating sexual perverts, well, like the deviant, sexual perverts they are! I mourn that adults that expose such sexual deviancy to children are no longer locked up. I mourn that today's children are forced to suffer through classes while they are obviously confused, distressed, bewildered, titilated, not knowing what's going on, or what to think, while adults parade every known sexual perversion in front of them instead of teaching them the basics of math, science, reading, etc. Parents, take your schools back! I'll bet the reading, math, and science scores are in the toilet at this school as they are in every other school that allows this nonsense to be shown to our children.