Another day, another drama involving the changing rooms of schoolgirls – and another illustration of how wokeness – all that progressive piety – can be a mask for other motives:

And hey, what could possibly go wrong?

Ah.

Quite right, one might think.

Oh.

“You wicked girls will undress in front of this weird, cross-dressing boy, and you will do it over and over again.”

I paraphrase, of course. Though not, I think, wildly.

Readers are invited to ponder the psychology in play at this terribly progressive school. The triumphal righteousness of compelling thirteen-year-old schoolgirls to undress in front of a mentally ill male or opportunist pervert. A mentally ill male or opportunist pervert that the schoolgirls do not trust. Resulting in the girls feeling frightened and upset.

Imagine that tingle of power. All wrapped in a drag of modish piety.

After Mrs Georgas’ daughter refused to take part, understandably, a compromise of sorts was suggested:

You see,

Entirely at the expense of others.

Such that, “the discomfort or privacy concerns of other students, teachers, or parents are not valid reasons to deny or limit the full and equal use of facilities based on a student’s gender-related identity.” Instead, any girl who doesn’t appreciate being ordered to undress in front of a boy – a boy she does not trust – will be deemed the aberrant party, the one whose behaviour is problematic.

And so, rather than relocate the “trans-identified” boy to (a) the boys’ changing room, or (b) an existing “gender-neutral” space for His Super-Special Self, any girls who complain about the incongruity, the moral inaptness, are to be relocated and isolated. Leaving more compliant girls to endure the indignity and weirdness. Such is wokeness.

At a subsequent public meeting of the Deerfield School District 109 School Board, held on Thursday, Mrs Georgas explained,

Well, yes, pretty much.

And yet the following speaker, a visibly self-satisfied woman named Charles Friedman, who declares herself “a transgender person” and who also just happens to have a transgender child – hey, what are the odds? – was all too happy to disregard the particulars of Mrs Georgas’ complaint and its wider implications.

Indeed, the lady named Charles, a trans activist – one of many present – dismissed the concerns above as “bullying.” Presumably on grounds that not allowing boys to barge into the changing rooms of thirteen-year-old girls and then watch them undress is an act of oppression. A denial of basic rights.

Those with an appetite for grim surrealism can watch the outpourings of subsequent speakers, for whom pronoun stipulation is a thing, for whom big earrings and nail polish establish womanhood, and for whom the creepy violation of thirteen-year-old schoolgirls is a basis for applause.

Should any tender-hearted readers be tempted to assume that the above must be some one-off aberration, by all means think again. And do note the updates to that particular farce.

Previous changing-room adventures – in which the word pattern comes to mind – can be found here, here, here, and here.

Update, via the comments:

Regarding this,

Liz adds, not unreasonably,

Indeed. And yet, in the video of the school board meeting, subsequent speakers, all trans activists, many of whom travelled from far out of town, casually dismiss or ignore the clearly stated concerns, and denounce Mrs Georgas as a bully, a bigot, and, bizarrely, a “white supremacist.”

Because you’re not allowed to object to your children being psychologically abused.

And the option proposed by the school, and affirmed by Ms Charles Friedman, our self-satisfied trans activist – the one who just happens to have a transgender child – is likely to result in further drama. Or the same drama repeated.

If girls who object to a boy’s presence in their changing room are told to change somewhere else, and not in their own changing room, then it seems entirely possible that one by one, quite rapidly, the other girls will follow suit, resulting in the cross-dressing boy having the girls’ changing room all to himself. At which point, this may be invoked as yet another form of bigotry and oppression.

And perhaps the boy or his activist parents, or likely activist parent, will demand he be given access to whichever new space the girls have been obliged to retreat to. Because his psychodrama must be imposed on others, regardless of their objections. And around we go again.

And – as so often – note just how readily the school administrators, these uniformly progressive women, will sell out their supposed sisters. The daughters of their neighbours. In order to look fashionable, and therefore high-status.

It’s also, I think, worth noting the demeanour of Ms Friedman, our trans activist. During her speech, she shows little interest in the concerns of parents. Instead, she is dismissive, self-satisfied and visibly triumphal. The tone is basically, “We have the power over your children now. Suck it up, bitches.”

I can’t help but think that’s rather telling.

I should add that the degree of woke perversity – such that girls who object to the humiliation are the ones deemed problematic and aberrant – is so pronounced that a sense of unreality may ensue. For instance, readers may wish to imagine themselves at the school board meeting above, hearing Mrs Georgas speak, and then hearing her being booed, called absurd names, and her concerns being gleefully dismissed. By men in bad drag.

In light of which, it’s difficult to see any plausible common ground. When activist attendees would rather jeer and preen, and call concerned parents bigots and racists, rather than address their actual concerns, it’s not obvious what room for compromise, or debate, there could be.

Or, Shakespeare For The Tremulous And Neurotic: 

No laughing at the back.

In academic news, Yasmin Benoit, “model and award-winning asexual activist,” announces her new position and wants you to notice her cleavage:

I’m honoured to announce that I’ve been given a visiting position at @KingsCollegeLon! We’re going to be conducting research into asexuality together & our first academic paper will be coming out this month! I’m in my academic era. 🎓#ThisIsWhatAsexualLooksLike pic.twitter.com/cam5uhAvvt

— Yasmin Benoit, MSc (@theyasminbenoit) January 3, 2025

Because she’s so asexual, you know. 

Via Ophelia, who asks a not unreasonable question.

Readers are welcome to speculate as to what, exactly, “asexual rights” might entail, and how being asexual, or, more coyly, aromantic, differs in any meaningful way from having a low sex drive. Other than the statusful, rather pretentious labelling, I mean. 

Update, via the comments: 

Clam quips,

Truly, we live in an age of wonders.

At which point, I should add that Ms Benoit’s insights, aired via Instagram, include a revelation that SpongeBob Squarepants is also asexual. Which may hint at the dizzying levels of scholarship to be anticipated.

Inevitably, Ms Benoit shoehorns in a racial victimhood angle. Because… well, one can’t be seen without one, I suppose. Not in academia. And so, we’re told that asexual people who are also black “just aren’t perceived as the ideal type of asexual representation, nor are we as amplified or included within the asexual community nearly as much.”

Yes, it’s tears and contrivance all the way down.

And I have to say, Visiting Research Fellows aren’t generally so keen to show off their bras in their social media avatars, or to foreground their breasts in every single photo, or indeed to do interviews with Playboy magazine. Complete with breast-heavy – but, like, totally asexual – photoshoots.

Above, one of many such items. For research purposes only.

Toni Airaksinen pokes a stick at some contrived agonising: 

This “intellectual trauma” is, you’ll be shocked to hear, entirely the fault of “whiteness” and “heteromasculinity.”

As we’re in the realm of the excruciatingly woke, the terms violence and trauma are of course misused and deliberately misleading.

The supposed violence and trauma, then, is actually an attempt to excuse rates of classroom misbehaviour among black students.

Throughout the paper in question, the term “brilliance” is deployed no fewer than seventeen times, as if it were some obviously inherent, pre-existing attribute – of students who can’t be arsed to study, who don’t pay attention in class, who undermine the efforts of others, and whose grades, as a result, leave much to be desired.

Even more frequent is use of the term “whiteness,” an alleged phenomenon on which the paper is premised. Though readers in search of some clear and convincing definition, or some compelling evidence of its existence, may find their hopes dashed. We are, however, assured that “whiteness” is something that gets in the way of black students “maintaining their Blackness.”

And furthermore,

Saturated, you hear. Positively dripping with the stuff.

So, to paraphrase our fretful educators: Among these allegedly downtrodden and traumatised minority students, expectations of promptness and accuracy, of arriving at correct and verifiable answers, and handing work in on time, are alien things. Instead, it seems, we get lots of loud and goofy behaviour. Thereby disrupting attempts to learn by other, more conscientious students.

And which, it has to be said, isn’t entirely flattering of the drama’s supposed victims, or an obvious basis for sympathy, even pretentious sympathy. Nor is it an obvious footing for some sweeping, de-whitened reinvention of how mathematical knowledge might be imparted. All conjured into being at the expense of those more diligent and whose classroom behaviour isn’t selfish and disruptive.

Well, again, if a student doesn’t feel obliged to do the work, to learn, or to hand in said work by a given deadline, like everyone else, and instead spends class time pissing about, loudly, then being unwelcome seems an inevitable consequence of those choices.

And constructing elaborate, question-begging excuses for such behaviour, as if these inadequacies were somehow proof of obscured “brilliance,” things to which one should defer, and actively affirm, doesn’t strike me as a convincing, long-term solution. Indeed, it sounds rather… what’s the word? Oh yes, toxic.

Readers will note how any feelings of incompetence and not being welcome are immediately blamed on external causes, on some ectoplasmic “whiteness,” that Befouler Of All Things. As if such feelings had nothing whatsoever to do with the choices and behaviour, and the personal shortcomings, of the students themselves.

Instead, Dr Jasien and her colleagues expect the teaching of mathematics to be driven by the goal of “healing… intellectual trauma,” by paying “attention to the minds and bodies of students.” The students being, it seems, much less obliged to pay attention to anything beyond themselves.

And so, we’re told that “exclamations” and “cacophony” are “to be both expected and valued.” Because when you picture a maths classroom and people getting to grips with differential equations or vector calculus, the first thing that springs to mind is the word cacophony.

Update, via the comments:

Somewhat related:

It turns out that the University of Nottingham and Nottingham Trent University have much to offer the pretentious and racially neurotic: 

As is the custom, an operatic tone is adopted and victimhood is feigned and deployed as a credential, a basis for deference. Though particulars of any credible harm, any actual modern-day “racism,” are thin on the ground. And the reasoning, such as can be discerned, is just a tad contrived. Quite how those “undertakings of white people” – in the arts and sciences – are crushing the hopes and dreams of students, robbing them of breath, remains somewhat unobvious. Likewise, the logical or moral basis for “reparatory measures.”

Yet those doing the demanding, a group of Nottingham academics, insist that these alleged woes, these “enduring detrimental legacies,” whatever they might be, “are issues that require urgent and sustained attention.”

I’m guessing this is where the applause is supposed to go.

Despite the theatre of “ongoing emotional pain,” the proponents of degree-course “decolonisation” seem quite enthused by their scolding and leverage. Their ability to wring pretentious atonement from fellow players of the game.

The central reasoning, such as it is, seems to be that some indirect historical beneficiaries of slavery, including those born after abolition, also gave money to universities, which, in ways somewhat mysterious, invalidates those universities’ modern-day course content and renders it harmful to People Of Pigmentation. “Reading classical European literature” and “travelling to historic landmarks” are among the activities deemed tainted and bruising.

In short, on a par with other recent efforts to “decolonise” degree courses, to purge them of the “inequities” of “white knowledge,” and thereby exterminate any trace of “white supremacy.” As when the Quality Assurance Agency, an organisation that boasts of being “trusted by higher education providers and regulatory bodies to maintain and enhance quality and standards,” demanded that computing courses address “how divisions and hierarchies of colonial value are replicated and reinforced” within the subject.

I’ll give you a moment to ponder that one.

If the particulars are, again, unclear and the reliance on verbiage unconvincing, and if readers are unsure of what “neoliberal systems of power” might be, and how they might bear upon musical notation or the Royal Veterinary College, at least the antipathy towards things deemed “white,” and thus offensive, is hard to miss and evidently relished.

Despite such causal convolution, the racial browbeating is having its intended effect:

And goodness, we can’t have that.