Much of what passes for logical, progressive, legal thinking is none of those – it is illogical, regressive, and twists the law. No one will say this, but the left is setting up twisted liability. Those meant to be protected are being hurt. Examples are legion – and demand attention.
Years ago, in response to sexual harassment in the workplace and schools, state and federal laws emerged to protect those needing protection, chiefly women and girls. A central tenet of these laws and cases was the “hostile environment,” which tolerated discrimination.
Fast forward to 2022. Laws protecting women are bending back on themselves, thanks to the left. They are being used against biological women and girls in education, not for them.
Title IX lawsuits that empower biological girls by preventing the denial of separate female teams, locker rooms, bathrooms, and competitive environments are now about to be used against biological girls and those who defend them as the Biden Administration redefines Title IX.
Where humanity and law have long understood two genders, male and female, across the animal kingdom, the left indulges radical redefinition, asserting 72 separate genders (based on mental health), including “agender, cisgender, genderfluid, genderqueer, intersex, gender nonconforming, and transgender.”
In the leftist zeitgeist of this era, mass-redefinition of all things gender and race to border protection and legitimate causes for disaffection, boys and girls no longer exist – except, of course, they do.
This has significant implications for the application of historically clear laws in utterly unforeseen situations. Thus, a boy who believes he is a girl can now assert the right to compete in girls’ sports and soon sue for Title IX violation if blocked – after the Biden Administration redefinition.
The implications are not good, and not thought out. While some accommodation for emotional and mental dysphoria may be fitting, disenfranchisement of all biological girls – and sudden liability for those who defend biological girls – makes no sense.
The law is being twisted in a way that turns Title IX’s shield to protect girls into a sword to impale them, deter them, demotivate, disenfranchise, and victimize them.
But this is just the start. Think about the entire body of laws called “hostile educational environment” and civil rights that focus on protecting biological women from discrimination rooted in prejudice toward their biological femininity or gender.
Suddenly, these laws can be used against biological women – who have long counted on their anti-discrimination provisions. Instead, 71 genders (or however many one imagines) can now sue biological girls, women, and those who defend them, using the very laws meant to protect them.
Go a step further. Look at the twisted way of thinking the modern left – the Democrat Party – is now giving us, allowing the application of other laws wholly out of context.
Critical Race Theory (CRT) involves teaching that racial identity unchangeably defines one’s potential for success in society, however, measured. In effect, using the Marxist principle of immutable classes, CRT teaches unchangeable institutional racism.
Now, imagine that you are someone who disagrees with the idea that race defines human potential, but with the idea – embodied in our Constitution – that God gives all humans an equal right to success and that society should work to assure that God-given promise gets fulfilled.
In effect, you are anti-CRT, which means that you are viewed by those who teach this brand of Marxism, based on teaching unchanging racism, as a racist. Now, those who are devotedly anti-racist, who subscribe to the Constitutional promises of equal protection and individual liberty unrelated to race, are liable for promoting what leftists call racism.
In other words, laws that push equal opportunity, equality before the law, and constitutional norms that elevate the individual regardless of skin color, are now presumed racist.
Shift again to ideas like citizenship, which is constantly being transmuted, watered down, and given away to those who can crash the border and get here physically but have no legal claim to citizenship or its benefits. The left now empowers them with civil rights, used against citizens.
Shift again to criminal law and consider the way in which basic ideas are being twisted. A biologically female child (unfortunately this has happened) who is assaulted in a girl’s bathroom or locker room by a biological boy who “identifies” as a girl, is now disadvantaged by the idea that the assault was somehow not the school’s fault. Plainly, occurring where it did, with permission given by the school for deep privacy violations, it was.
And think about how the law of assault, which involves putting another person in fear – a reasonable person being in fear – is being twisted.
A girl is no longer expected to entertain any kind of fear when confronted by a biological boy in her bathroom. She is deemed to be the offender, her fear unreasonable if she suggests as that the situation engenders fear. Is that reasonable? Defensible? No, of course not.
What is happening is that basic words, long used in the law in predictable, acceptable, understood ways – are changing. Expectations of what is reasonable are being changed by the left, as well as expectations of privacy, safety, respect, and healthy child development.
Where does all this lead? Back to start, back to a reexamination of what kind of society we wish to live in, one that understands reasonable expectations and majority sensibilities as defining forces, or one that is prepared to throw everything away, from boys and girls to assault.
Perhaps the most prominent unspoken fact is the political left misapplying long-established words and laws in ways that hurt those meant to be protected – girls, women, citizens. The time is now to say words, laws, biology, borders, and safety have real meanings. Time to strop twisting them.