"A new straight-studies course treats male-female partnerships as the real deviance."

Subheadline for a New York Magazine article titled, "If Hetero Relationships Are So Bad, Why Do Women Go Back for More?" The teaser title on the front page is "Do Straight Women Really Exist?" The author of the article is Jessica Bennett.

“In this class, we’re going to flip the script,” [said sociologist Jane Ward to her students on the first day of class]. “It’s going to be a place where we worry about straight people. Where we feel sympathy for straight people. We are going to be allies to straight people.”...

Flipping the script is a good approach to studying the topic, and the topic is worthy of study. However, I don't like being directed to "worry" or "feel sympathy" or "be allies." I'd look at the subject head on. But neutrality is cruel, and women want to present as empathetic. 

The online world seems to get weirder and more retrograde about heterosexuality every day. Idealized masculinity has become more aggressive, more jacked up, and also more high maintenance... while femininity gets ever “softer,” more nurturing and domestic, and somehow still more sexy....

"Garner" of the Day.

I don't really find a "garner" for every day. I just think it's funny to say "of the day" when the word "garner" pops up in a way that amuses me, like this one, last year. The word "garner" has delighted me ever since Meade pointed out that Jeb Bush — remember him? — said it 3 times in a single episode of "Face the Nation."

Here's today's "garner," in a question from the NYT "Ethicist" column:

A few years ago, a close cisgender male friend in a heterosexual marriage began identifying as queer. All of his romantic experiences have been with women. Through therapy, however, he concluded that gender wouldn’t have mattered in choosing a partner when he was single. He’s happily married and is monogamous with his wife. Still, he’s altered his presentation — fashion, hair, piercings, slang — to align with queer culture, and he openly identifies as part of the queer community and attends queer events. It feels as if my friend is attempting to garner the benefits and cultural cachet of being queer while also living a heteronormative life. Is this permissible authentic expression, or is it cultural appropriation?

What benefits and cachet have you garnered recently?

Not only do I get to use my "garner (the word!)" tag — I have tags for "cultural appropriation" and "heteronormativity." That feels like some kind of tag jackpot. Unfortunately, I don't have a tag for "queer." And I'm not making one. Not today.

"For some readers today... ['Heather Has Two Mommies' is] a wholly sanitized version of same-sex coupledom, palatable to the masses...."

"Without the slightest hint of sexual or romantic attraction between the moms (not even a peck of a kiss) the book seems to say, 'Fear not, we’re just like you.'... Dr. Nathan N. Taylor, Ph.D., an assistant professor of education... said the story traffics in homonormativity.... The book 'allows some people to be a part of the American Dream — in this case, upper middle class, cis-gendered, partnered white women'... While we undoubtedly need to multiply the number and kinds of queer narratives in children’s literature, the value of 'Heather' to my daughter and family unit has been immeasurable. A little before she turned 2, Marty, the only child of queer parents at her day care, began asking after her 'father' in various iterations. 'Who’s my daddy? Where’s my daddy? I want my daddy.' It was heartbreaking because my partner and I could only counter with, 'You have two mommies.' (How else to explain the complicated series of events that resulted in the creation of our family?) That’s when I remembered we had a copy of 'Heather,' the 2015 version, sitting on our bookshelf where I’d left it a few years ago...."

Writes Stephanie Fairyington, in "'Heather Has Two Mommies' Is Still Relevant 30 Years Later/My daughter started asking for her daddy, so I turned to Lesléa Newman’s classic picture book and it changed everything" (NYT).

This article was originally published April 17, 2020, but it is featured on the home page of the NYT right now, presumably because this Sunday is Father's Day.

"For men who are allegedly so 'proud' of being straight, they seem to show real incompetence at attracting women to their event."

"Seems more like a 'I-Struggle-With-Masculinity' parade to me. Hope they grow enough over the next year to support / join LGBTQ fam next #Pride."

Tweeted Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez in what I judge to be apt, light-hearted pushback (reported at The Hill).

Here's the video that accompanied her gentle mockery:

The #StraightPrideParade now on its way to City Hall Plaza. #Boston25 pic.twitter.com/44RayYZVRU

— Kelly Sullivan (@ksullivannews) August 31, 2019

What's with "Make Normalcy Normal Again"? What a sad slogan! If you were genuinely proud of what you are, why would you need You, the Individual to also be the norm? And if you are genuinely needy, why would it be enough to be recognized as — of all things — normal?

Also, guys, when you're marching in a parade about your pride, don't be staring down into your cell phone. That's no way to express pride. It is a good way to express neediness. Has anyone "liked" me in the last few seconds?

And maybe refrain from giving the finger?



I mean, is that your plan for the return to normalcy?

By the way, "normalcy" is a word tightly connected to one President, the President most well known for being bad, Warren G. Harding. His famous quote:

"America’s present need is not heroics, but healing; not nostrums, but normalcy; not revolution, but restoration; not agitation, but adjustment; not surgery, but serenity; not the dramatic, but the dispassionate; not experiment, but equipoise; not submergence in internationality, but sustainment in triumphant nationality."

From Wikipedia, "Return to normalcy":

Return to normalcy, a return to the way of life before World War I, was United States presidential candidate Warren G. Harding's campaign slogan for the election of 1920. Although detractors of the time tried to belittle the word "normalcy" as a neologism as well as a malapropism, saying that it was poorly coined by Harding (as opposed to the more accepted term normality), there was contemporaneous discussion and evidence that normalcy had been listed in dictionaries as far back as 1857.

I can't help thinking that whoever put the word "normalcy" in the straight-pridesters slogan intended to screw with the heteronormalists.

ADDED: In "A Hard Day's Night," Ringo, the original incel, is incited to go "parading," and seconds after he responds to the incitement to parade, Ringo gives the Hitler salute!

"I’m sad to report that three or four decades ago, many gay-assertive people (myself included) looked at some of those who identified as bisexual with suspicion..."

"... if not scorn. It wasn’t because we didn’t believe that many were telling the truth about their experience. It was because so many people that I, for one, knew actually identified as gay had been exploiting the 'bi' term as a sexual caveat to avoid the risks of coming out completely. Or, at the very least, they were taking the term on loan as a baby step in that direction.... When celebrities whom everyone knew to be gay—but who hadn’t affirmed it in the media—were asked about such things, they tended to deliver exactly the kinds of statements we hear from some LGBTQ people today. They’d say, 'I don’t want to be labeled,' or 'I’m just sexual,' or 'I’m open.' Today, those descriptions signal broad-mindedness. Back then, they felt like a betrayal, a hedging that pushed the movement back a step, making those of us who had come out feel more isolated and vulnerable at a time when being out had far greater consequence.... If nearly any progressively minded person can find some way to identify as queer, what, exactly, does the term even mean? When I hear about fluidity in that context, it sounds like something made to wash away gay history—my history—drowning it in inclusiveness to broaden its clout."

From "Categorically Gay/For queer people who grew up in an era when rigid identities were essential, today’s fluidity can feel like their history is washing out with the tide" by Jim Farber (in Slate).

Drowning it in inclusiveness to broaden its clout — an interesting phrase. The metaphor is a little overambitious. You've got the water of "fluidity" and it's "washing away" and "drowning," but it's also designed to have "clout." A "clout" is something done with a fist or a hard object. "Fluidity" doesn't deliver "clout."

I'm just talking about whether the metaphor is good, not saying I can't puzzle out the meaning. Bear with me a little longer.

In the phrase, what's getting washed away and drowned is gay history, but the clout has a different target. The clout is to — what? — all the forces of heteronormativity (or something like that). There's too much going on there.

But I can see what he means. Broadening is weakening. Inclusiveness is diluting.

"The National Trust should stop emphasising the role of families in the history of stately homes because it 'privileges heterosexual lives'..."

"... one of its most senior curators has said. Rachael Lennon, the Trust’s national public programmes curator, said that 'inherited and partial' narratives about family estates meant that 'same-sex desire and gender diversity have generally been given little space.'"

The UK Telegraph reports.

ADDED: "A soap impression of his wife which he ate and donated to the National Trust...."

"Only two thirds of Generation Z identify as 'exclusively heterosexual.'"

The UK Telegraph reports.

Maybe they don't like the absolutism of the question.

Research by Ipsos Mori found that 66 per cent of young people, aged between 16 and 22, are "exclusively heterosexual" - the lowest figure of any generation.

Among millennials, 71 per cent say they are exclusively heterosexual, as do 85 per cent of those in "Gen X", and 88 per cent of baby boomers....

Researchers said the statistic showed that the youngest generation were "being affected by more open and fluid attitudes".

Why do pollsters think it's okay to ask about the sexual inclinations of people they don't even know? I'm giving this my "gender privacy" tag. The question might be experienced as retrograde or politically incorrect. The thought might be: These old people with their stupid categories. And then: I'll give the answer that most challenges their pathetic little minds.

That's how I thought when I was 20 (and kind of still do).

"Hormones don't make me cry any more or less, but now my emotions feel normal -- unmuted, not suppressed."

"My health insurance covers the cost of hormones and sex reassignment surgery, if I choose that. It doesn't cover facial feminization surgery, which some say is even more important to mental health, and even physical safety. I avoid using the restroom in public, when I can.... Many parents are concerned about their girls using the same restroom with an adult trans woman in public. I understand the source of the fear. We want children to be safe from danger, perceived or real, but I know of no trans woman who has ever attacked anyone in a restroom. Sadly, transgender folks get attacked, plenty."

From "One transgender woman's long road to finding herself" at CNN.com.

I'm interested in that argument about health insurance. The writer is saying, directly or implicitly, that "facial feminization surgery" should be covered in order to allay the (unjustified) fears of others and because of the transgender person's vulnerability to attack.

But I was most interested in the quote that I put in the post title: "Hormones don't make me cry any more or less, but now my emotions feel normal — unmuted, not suppressed." Are complex emotions abnormal? I can see preferring free-flowing, stronger emotion, but is it necessary to disparage the original feeling as abnormal? I know, the phrase was "feel normal." But I'm questioning the centrality of this idea of the normal. But I suspect this is the language of drug prescription generally. You can get a psychotropic drug from a doctor to only to get you to "normal," not to get you high or as an escape from life's complexity. Is this all too medical? Why isn't there more talk of personal freedom and self-definition and creativity and invention? Because the ethics of doctors are central? Because insurance coverage is desired?

I looked up the word "normal" (in the OED). The first definition is: "Constituting or conforming to a type or standard; regular, usual, typical; ordinary, conventional." Is that what we want to be these days? It used to be what we wanted to get beyond — conformity. And, funnily enough, the third definition is: "Heterosexual." With these 3 examples:

1914   E. M. Forster Maurice (1971) xxii. 106   Against my will I have become normal. I cannot help it.
1972   T. Keneally Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith v. 38   Of course, Jimmie knew, Farrell was not normal and had once begun to caress him.
1990   Lesbian & Gay Pride 11/4   Back west in a long standing ‘normal’ society like old Blighty, many lesbian or gay teachers go in fear of exposure.

Andrew Sullivan called his 1995 book "Virtually Normal." Here he is, back in 1995, explaining why he used those words: Half the people will object to the word "virtually" and half will object to the word "normal." And I observe that there are 2 completely different reasons to object to "normal."

And here's Bob Dylan, because Bob Dylan lyrics from half a century ago pop up unbidden in my possibly not too oversimplified mind:

I’m just average, common too
I’m just like him, the same as you
I’m everybody’s brother and son
I ain’t different from anyone
It ain’t no use a-talking to me
It’s just the same as talking to you

Hey, I have a tag for "normal." Cool.

"Mr. Huntington built the treehouses over several months last year with the help of what he called a 'bronado' of friends."

"He hired contractors to build the skate bowl at the same time. The treehouse crew slept in a bunkhouse on the property, or else in tents or in their trucks. When they weren’t sawing and nailing boards, they loaded up bows and shot arrows; they skateboarded; they swam and fished in the Columbia River; they got stoned and raced motorbikes. One night Mr. Huntington slaughtered a goat and gave a big barbecue for the crew. 'I think of it as a big-boys’ camp,' said Tucker Gorman, a buddy of Mr. Huntington’s [and] a treehouse expert. 'It’s very much like Neverland up there,' Mr. Gorman said."

From a NYT article (with great photos) titled "Escape to Bro-topia/Foster Huntington was an up-and-comer in the New York fashion industry. Then he ditched it all and built his own personal paradise in the sky."

"Bronado" and "Bro-topia" are (unfortunately!) the only "bro-" slang in the article. "Bronado" has been in Urban Dictionary since 2008, when it was defined as "A large gathering of males, drinking and doing nothing." The current top definition is "When a group of bro's begin to fist pump so hard that a whirl wind begins to form and then from that, a Bro-nado rips through the party."

"Brotopia" (without the hyphen) has been in Urban Dictionary since 2007, when it was defined as "A place in which brothers (from another Mother) can bro-lax and or bro-chill in perfect harmony with one another. Although it is believed that a brotopia does exist one has yet to be found." The current top definition is "A totally non-queer land filled with all your favortie [sic] bros."

"My mother was very, very critical of my early efforts... She was, like, 'At your age, the Brontës were doing X, Y, and Z.'"

"I was definitely a poser as a little kid.... It was just clear to me that—you know, in ‘Little Women’ they’re reading ‘The Pickwick Papers’ and putting out a newspaper and being unbelievably productive, and I was not like that. So I had this feeling of inferiority to past models with or without my mother’s criticisms."

From "Outside In/Nell Zink turned her back on the publishing world. It found her anyway," by Kathryn Schulz in The New Yorker.

[U]ntil last year, all of Zink’s work was written for a tiny audience—generally as tiny as one or zero.... Burck, her first husband, attributes the clandestine nature and short half-life of Zink’s writing to the Brontë-or-bust standard of her childhood. “The thought that she might write something that wasn’t good was terrifying,” he said, “so it’s safer to not write or not show anybody what you write.” Zink... recognizes that directing her work to one heterosexual man who wasn’t her partner was a way of protecting herself: her writing could be interpreted as flirting, rather than as writing in earnest. “It’s nice to have the excuse of heteronormativity,” she says. “You can explain it away, you can say, ‘Well, she has a crush on him.’ It lowers the risks for me.”

"Many of my straight friends, even the most liberal, see this logic as warped."

"It’s one thing for them to admit that they would prefer their kids to be straight, something they’ll only begrudgingly confess. But wanting my daughter to be a lesbian? I might as well say I want her to grow up to be lactose intolerant."

What's wrong with that charming Italian PSA that tries to teach the good but obvious lesson men don't hit women?

This is viral, with over 7 million views in 3 days:



I got the link from Instapundit, who presents it like this:

JIM TREACHER: What Happens When You Try To Get A Bunch Of Little Boys To Slap A Little Girl In The Face? “SPOILER: They won’t do it. And if that surprises you for some reason, apparently you’re the target audience for this Italian PSA.”

Neither Treacher nor Instapundit (or, I think, any of their commenters) mentions what troubled me. Before these little boys are ordered by the unseen voice to slap the girl, they are directed to "caress" her, and they do. The girl never speaks. She's simply delivered to the presence of the boy for admiration, and the boys comply, which is easy enough, since a very pretty girl has been chosen for this performance. The girl is never asked: Do you want this little boy to caress you?

And I'm not only complaining about the silence of the girl, the absence of consent to the caress. I don't like the sexualization of the boys. Why is the boy expected to act like an adult — a stereotypical adult male heterosexual — and want to caress a female because she is beautiful? Why is the off-screen voice ordering a boy to do sexual things to a little girl?

Oh — you may want to say — but it's only a "caress." A mother might caress a baby. 

No. A boy finds himself on camera and is asked to step up to the role of an adult in the relations between the sexes. He is invited to do to a girl the things that a man does to a woman, and he draws the line at hitting. Good for him! Mere children know that this is wrong, so you grown men should be ashamed if you don't know any better. That's the message here.

By the way, Treacher and Instapundit seem to miss even that message. The ad-makers weren't trying to get the boys to hit the girl, nor did they mean to surprise us. The idea was: Everyone — even a child — knows this is wrong, so anyone who thinks this is what men do is way outside of the norm.

I'm thinking that Treacher and Instapundit were too quick to find another example of anti-male propaganda.

Man takes 6 weeks off to take care of his new baby, gets featured in the NYT.

"Paternity Leave: The Rewards and the Remaining Stigma" starts out enthusing about this guy who "learned how to lull the fitful baby to sleep on his chest and then to sit very still for an hour to avoid waking her" and "developed an elaborate system for freezing and thawing his wife’s pumped breast milk" and "handed over the baby" to her when she got home and then "collapsed on the couch." He did all this for 6 weeks. That's the opening anecdote, priming us for the generalities:

Social scientists who study families and work say that men like Mr. Bedrick, who take an early hands-on role in their children’s lives, are likely to be more involved for years to come and that their children will be healthier. Even their wives* could benefit, as women whose husbands take paternity leave have increased career earnings and have a decreased chance of depression in the nine months after childbirth. But researchers also have a more ominous message. Taking time off for family obligations, including paternity leave, could have long-term negative effects on a man’s career — like lower pay or being passed over for promotions.

He took 6 weeks off. And he did it because he worked for a firm that gave paid childcare leave, which I don't think his wife had in her teaching job. It was obviously in the family's economic interest. But, maybe, the daring Mr. Bedrick suffered some stigma, even as he's presented to NYT readers as some kind of hero.  Give me a break. Tell me about the man who takes years off to be a stay-at-home parent, who really shoulders the responsibility for the home-based side of a single-earner family and makes that work. For years. Not some paid 6-week gig. And spare me the absurdity — straight out of a Lucy-and-Ricky sitcom scenario — where the man, tasked with women's work, hands over the baby and collapses on the couch at the end of the day.

But I know why the NYT does it this way. It's because the liberal agenda is to change the workplace and make it "family-friendly," not to suggest that couples view the family as a single enterprise and give it the predominance in their life that children deserve.
________________________

* Heteronormativity alert! Come on, New York Times. Not good enough. Gay couples have children too. Stop the marginalization.

Swarthmore, conquering heteronormativity with pornographic chalkings.

That's what some people think:

At Swarthmore College, the first day of Coming Out Week each fall dawns reliably, the first light falling on sexually explicit messages chalked on campus sidewalks by gay student groups the night before. It is a tradition, organizers say, meant to facilitate free expression among gay students and encourage all students to question the reigning “heteronormative” culture....

Among the most controversial chalkings were a “cartoonish” depiction of a female with a “strap-on” device engaged in a**l s*x with the caption, “A**l S*x is for Everyone,” and a drawing of a vagina on the patio of the college’s dining hall that was intentionally washed away, said Tatiana Cozzarelli, a junior at Swarthmore and one of the organizers of the National Coming Out Week activities...

“There’s not one message of the chalkings. But some of them challenge heteronormativity and make straight people think about their sexuality in a way they often haven’t in the past.”...

Students counter-chalked following the original chalkings, and after a rain, gay students chalked again, Westphal said — an escalation of a “chalk talk” that hasn’t been seen in previous years. Cozzarelli said many gay students were disappointed with the counter-chalking, feeling that they had one week per year to express their voices, “not to create a dialogue of voices of people who aren’t normally silenced on top of the chalkings of people who are silenced.” One of the counter-chalkings, “Why don’t you shut the f**k up already?” was particularly upsetting, Cozzarelli said, as it “contributed to this norm of silencing queer people.”

Well, at least they're having a dialogue.

IN THE COMMENTS: Ron says something especially funny.

Palladian finds reason to exclaim "Geez, aren't there any gay boys at Swarthmore?" and says:

May I, once again, register my extreme irritation at the term "heteronormative"? Not only is it an ugly "word", but it's expressing a stupid concept. Of course heterosexuality is "normative"! If these silly queer club kidz (who, no doubt, consider themselves members of the "Reality-based" community) spent less time chalking strap-ons and taking Peace and Gender studies courses and more time studying biology, they'd understand that reproduction is a biological imperative and is naturally the primary focus of all life. There's nothing discriminatory about this, and nothing that can or should be changed. It doesn't invalidate the people who aren't geared toward the opposite sex.

What any marginally intelligent person with an "activist" streak should be focused on is constructive changes to public policy, not "challenging heteronormativity" or silly pseudo-psychological street theater that does little but annoy and disgust people who have more important things to think about. And if you can't stop doing this sort of thing, don't be so damned serious about it for God's sake! Becoming self-righteous about someone defacing your chalk pussy drawing makes you look both humorless, naive and, above all, stupid.

Ernst brings up Tom Wolfe's "I Am Charlotte Simmons":

As I recall the story was that gay students chalked explicit drawings, and the campus maintenance workers erased it because they believed it was anti-gay. Of course the campus gay groups demanded an apology for the insensitive and opporessive erasure of chalk drawings.

Ha ha. Perfect!

Audible Althouse, #19.

The new podcast is an hour long. Topics: male and female brains, 3 Stooges comedy, 3 Stooges sex, the Marx Bothers, some Halloweenish thoughts about the new Supreme Court, heteronormativity, military memoirs, lawprof bloggers, good and bad commentary about Samuel Alito, why so many Catholics have been nominated to the Supreme Court, the affinity between physicists and religionists, the politics of Intelligent Design, and the demand for nuanced reporting on the riots in France.

A few things about "heteronormative."

Here's a Harvard Crimson opinion piece by a student named Travis Kavulla that compares the older term “homophobia,” which makes an accusation of bigotry, and the newer "heteronormative," which protests the presumption that everyone is heterosexual. "Homophobia" is a stronger term, but, as such, it asks for less: stop being hateful toward gay people. "Heteronormative" is less of an insult, but it asks for more:

[O]n college campuses, the quest to end heteronormativity is having some real consequences. Responding to complaints that dorms that house those of the same sex together are heteropresumptive, a handful of liberal arts colleges have taken down those bothersome gender barriers entirely.

And for some years now, BGLTSA has been tilting at windmills to transform Harvard’s “gendered” bathrooms into “gender-neutral spaces.” The argument for the change is that those—and here’s another term to add to our overpopulated lexicon—“identifying” as transgendered feel alienated from gender-specific bathrooms, that they cannot be classified by those silhouetted stick figures, and so require a totalizing change to make them feel comfortable....

Caving willingly to pressure, Wesleyan College’s imprimatur has been accorded to a group that wants to educate professors and incoming freshmen on the use of the transgendered pronoun “ze” and its possessive “hir.”

Perhaps what’s most disconcerting about all of this, however, is not the impact these new terms are having on everyday life or mainstream academia—for most people, overtly or quietly, recognize the gay rights movement’s latter-day silliness.

Rather, it’s the prospect that a community whose goal has so long been “acceptance” is isolating itself and alienating others by creating a separate body of knowledge that only they appear to care about or know. Of those transgender terms, BGLTSA’s Noa Grayevsky ’07 is quoted in last week’s Fifteen Minutes, “People that are either queer or educated on this topic use [‘ze’ and ‘hir’] pretty widely.” And, of course, no one else does.

And the creation of new genders has become a hobby for those on the fringe. Consider Kit Yan, a “gender queer” Hawaiian poet who will be performing tonight at BGLTSA’s invitation. In one poem, after rolling through several dozen “genders”—including appellations like “polyamorous,” “heteroflexible,” and “boydyke”—Yan solemnly declares, “and that’s just the beginning...There may be as many as a million genders / Just floating around, searching for the right person / To snatch them up.”

The ivory tower is the only place where such nonsense can find a home and even as we on campus witness the germination of a new, ever stranger vocabulary, few can imagine taking any of it seriously.

In the world at large, social acceptance and gay marriage seem to be accomplishable (and sometimes, accomplished) goals of the gay rights movement. What fruits can those who are using these new, awkward, polluting words possibly hope to reap?

Kavulla bundles an awful lot of things together, including my longtime concern about gender-neutral bathrooms. (Note: I'm not referring to single-user bathrooms.)

The switch to gender-neutral bathroom changes the conditions of real life for everyone and is unacceptably burdensome to women and, especially, girls. People need to keep their wits about them on this subject, which stands apart from the realm of speech and ideas. By the same token, colleges shouldn't be bullied into abolishing every single-sex dorm.

Speech and ideas are different. It is fine to criticize people who assume everyone is heterosexual. If a man says he has a date and someone refers to the date as female, the assumer can be zinged as "heteronormative." But those who are relentless, grim, and heavy-handed about this deserve some back talk. Everyone doesn't need to think about your issues all the time.

Trying to get people to say "ze" and "hir" is probably only silly. It's not going to happen. Feminists tried something like that long ago and ultimately settled for "Ms." and a lot of "he or she"-ing. But if the "ze" and "hir" crowd start making any actual progress, the rest of us will need to rouse ourselves from complacency and say no.

As for Kit Yan -- poets can say whatever they want. They can play with language, make up words, invite us to think all sorts of things -- true, false, and fantastical. Unless they are stirring up hatred, I'd lay off the poets. Most poets are quite bad and are utterly ignored. If Kit Yan has found an audience, give the poor ... poet a break.

UPDATE: Here are links to old posts of mine about gender-neutral bathrooms:

"Common fear" and "severe misunderstandings."
"De-gendering" restrooms."
The single-sex bathroom issue again.
Is this sex discrimination?
"They encircled me in a very menacing and hostile stance."
In search of the right bathroom.