Apparently a biological male who “identifies as female” plays on the Plymouth Regional High School girls’ soccer team in New Hampshire. When the team played its regional rival Bow High School, some Bow parents, protesting the presence of the player whom they regarded as a danger to the born-female players on the Bow team, wore wristbands like the ones above as a silent protest. The Bow High athletic director had told concerned parents before the contest that “in the wake of a federal judge’s ruling that the term ‘girl’ includes males who identify as female,” he felt he was powerless. (He’s a weenie. If he agreed with the parents, he could simply have his team refuse to play the Plymouth team, accept the consequences, and raise the issue.)
When the parents’ “XX” bands appeared at the game, school officials stopped the soccer match, ordered the parents to remove the wristbands, and even “issued [a] police-enforced ‘No Trespassing order’” against two parents who refused.
In a letter sent after the incident, Superintendent of Schools Marcy Kelley wrote that “prior to and during the soccer game [a parent] brought and distributed pink armbands … to protest the participation of a transgender female student on the other team…[this] “violate[d] school policy against ‘threatening, harassing, or intimidating…any person’” and directing that no person shall ‘impede, delay, disrupt or otherwise interfere with any school activity.’”
But there was no protesting by the dissenting parents, only the wearing of a (“threatening”?) wristband.
Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is….
Was the response of the school to the wrist bands ethical?
I think I’ll just make a few observations and let readers battle this out…
1. New Hampshire’s motto is still “Live Free or Die.”
2. These were parents, not students in a class, making the landmark Tinker case arguably distinguishable.
3. Apparently they don’t teach The Streisand Principle in New Hampshire high school…or to school administrators. Without the school throwing a tantrum, almost nobody would know about this quiet tantrum.
4. What soccer player on the field pays attention to the messages on wristbands spectators are wearing?
5. Apparently Bow, N.H. is overwhelmingly progressive. So perhaps it should be expected that it is following its favorite party’s drift toward censorship.
6. In related news, a spectator at an Arizona Cardinals NFL game last week was told that she had to hand over her MAGA cap or she would be barred from the stadium. The Arizona Cardinals apologized to the woman after releasing a statement explaining that
“In an isolated incident at Sunday’s game, a stadium security member misunderstood a policy on prohibited items. Like most venues, ‘signage, posters, flags, or displays that are….political in nature’ are not permitted. However, that did not apply in this instance. Moving forward we will work to provide clarity to all stadium personnel in these situations. We have also reached out to the individual involved to communicate that their experience was not consistent with our policies and practices and to apologize for that.”
Any guesses regarding the political preferences of that security worker?
6. You know, Donald Trump is an existential threat to democracy.
___________
Sources: College Fix; New York Post.
Ethics Alarms 
Well, the government would view the armbands as ‘misinformation’, stating that XX chromosomes don’t make a person female and cite rare genetic disorders as a justification.
I am really sick of the witchcraft.
More evidence Mrs. OB and I were judicious in fleeing Massachusetts and its environs and rabid inhabitants in 1975. They were well on their way to losing their minds even then.
This is going to be unpopular, but I think we have the feminists to thank for this. Women wanted to have jobs in male-dominated fields. They claimed that they could handle the job. As soon as they got to said jobs, however, they complained about the work environment. They needed the work environment to drastically change in order for women to work in the fields. Defined work rules were tried, but found to be insufficient. Women needed work rules based on how they ‘felt’, not on actual behavior or intent. So laws and rules were drafted that made actions illegal depending on how the ‘victim’ felt about it. Identical behavior could be fine OR illegal depending on the whim of the ‘victim’, as long as the ‘victim’ was female. Legislators should have refused to write such laws and judges should have thrown out such interpretations of regulations. However, since no one wanted to be labelled as ‘sexist’, it was allowed. Now, regulations against ‘threatening’ and ‘harassing’ for any reason are also interpreted this way, but only for the chosen few. Let a Christian student complain that they feel ‘harassed’ or ‘threatened’ during pride month or when they are told to perform a non-Christian religious ritual and see how far THAT goes. Let a female student complain that they feel ‘harassed’ or ‘threatened’ by a student shaking a penis at them in the girl’s locker room and see how far that goes. If a leftist teacher feels ‘threatened’ by the display of an American flag, however…
Sorry feminists, I think you did this to your daughters and you did this to America.
The majority of self-identified feminists think what they did to their daughters is a good thing.
You raise some good points worth considering. I would additionally consider the possibility that many of the all-male workplaces were unethical and abusive, and that changing the conditions in those places so that female humans were willing to work there may have created a healthier environment for the male humans as well.
Often fixing an unethical culture cannot be done simply with rules, but humans try anyway. That can cause problems.
The left likes to point out that sex and gender are two different things.
A female has 2 x chromosomes
a male has an X and Y chromosome.
Gender deals with social expression thus we have only three genders masculine, feminine or neuter.
Sexual preference such as L,G,B or some other preference is neither biological sex or gender.
Transgender is none of these. This group can display masculinity or femininity as we understand the social construct but that does not make them what we consider the majority of the biological types who exhibit such characteristics.
The actions of the school are absolutely unethical and a civil rights violation
What I also find unethical is a school system that cannot distinguish between the three. I don’t care if someone wants to dress as a woman, ask to be called she or her when the outward appearance of the individual mirrors what we consider feminine but I cannot say the individual is female and entitled to compete against only other females.
When teams are required to play against a team with a Trans person on the team that team should field an all male team to prevent a forfeit. That might wake some people up.
“I don’t care if someone wants to dress as a woman, ask to be called she or her when the outward appearance of the individual mirrors what we consider feminine but I cannot say the individual is female and entitled to compete against only other females.”
EXACTLY, Chris. Why is this so hard? Why can’t people understand, “I’m okay with you being whatever you want to be, but sorry, you can’t compete against girls and women. Life’s not fair sometimes.” How does that violate a person’s rights? I can’t fly a commercial airliner because I don’t have a license to do so. How is that unfair or illegal or unconstitutional or unethical, or even mean?
I’m beginning to think the people militating for this are out to destroy competitive sport. It’s too meritocratic and therefore capitalist and elite and oppressive. And heteronormative. As with most revolutionaries, their goal is to make everyone as miserable as they are.
Brilliant idea. Sadly, in the cemetery that is today’s educational world – filled with rot and putrescence – a coach with the cheek to try that would likely be fired for indirectly mocking the “delusionally gendered”.
But I’d love to see a coach try.
Well, you are somewhat wrong. Gender has replaced sex. Stating biological sex is now considered a hate crime. It can get you disciplined in some colleges. You are correct that this was part of the slippery slope that got us here. When they came out with the concept of gender, they said “This is gender, this is how people feel. It isn’t biological sex. You can change how you feel, but you can, of course, never change your sex.” Then, they pushed gender as a substitute for sex. Notice how they now say ‘assigned at birth’, because the gender narrative is that the doctor just arbitrarily assigns you a gender at birth and that CAUSES your genitals to be the way they are and your hormones profile. If that were not the case, the doctor wouldn’t be ‘assigning’ a gender, the doctor would be observing the sex based on the developed genitals caused by genetics. Your genitals and hormones are that way because a doctor ‘assigned’ that to you at birth. That makes it imperative that small children are taught gender theory as soon as possible so they can ‘discover’ what their true gender is. You would think that they would push the idea that 50% of children have been ‘assigned’ the wrong gender (statistics), but this would be incorrect. With gender theory, it appears that ALL children have been misassigned genders and all must transition. If this were not the case, they would not use ‘cisgendered’ as a pejorative. Cisgendered people would just be lucky enough to be ‘assigned’ the correct gender at birth, but this is not how it is practiced.
Now, there is no observable evidence that gender exists. This is a concept like astrology. You can believe astrology, and in that sense, astrology is real. However there is no evidence that astrology is reflected in reality.
Now we get to the witchcraft portion (you might have noticed it already). The postmodernists have rejected the ideas of ‘truth’, ‘facts’, and ‘reality’. They have regressed to a pagan world of magic where everything is possible. They posit ideas like ‘manifesting’, where you can speak things into existence. With this philosophy, they teach that women can become men and men can actually become women. Gender ideology is magic, pure and simple. I do like the fact that they decry the ‘binary’, but you never have anyone demanding hormones or surgery to become anything but a man or a woman! But, the adherents of this religion really believe that this boy has become an ACTUAL woman, so he needs to be treated like one. They are demanding womb transplants be developed, they are giving hormones so males can breastfeed infants, etc. What do you do when they realize this is a religion and they demand protection under the 1st Amendment so that their son can be treated as a woman? Will they be able to demand taxpayer research to develop artificial wombs so that their son can conceive and have an abortion (this is an actual demand I have heard more than 1 transgendered person make).
Biological sex is a reality, gender is fantasy.
Wait for the next game. I know through the grapevine that the parents are not giving it up without a (metaphorical) fight.
They should all don Dos Equis©™® Tshirts & Bite Me! hats!
PWS
I’ve been waiting so patiently for the Dos Equis reference, because it was the first thing I thought when I saw the wristbands…and I don’t even drink beer.
Paul to the rescue!!
“I don’t even drink beer.”
There are others who pick up the slack…
The <b><i>Bite Me</i></b> hat is a nice complement to a <b><i>F**K OFF!</i></b> ensemble, am I right?
PWS
Here, we have conflicting applications of the Golden Rule.
How would any of those parents feel if their daughter were the subject of a stadium full of protesting parents? How would their daughter feel being the subject of such a protest?
I think it could be rightly described as intimidating that a stadium full of adults are protesting a particular teenager. The proper place to protest should either be at the school board level, league or state interscholastic level, and/or the state legislative level. The teen is exercising her rights, and may well only unwittingly have been made a pawn in a nationwide political stunt. The school has a duty to the student to protect her against overt targeting.
As to the particular protest, wristbands are perhaps de minimus. If the parents showed up wearing them, I can’t really say the school has any business telling them to take them off (but it is a close call, as the protest could be construed against inclusion of transathletes in general, or against the particular trans student). If, however, parents were distributing them on school or athletic grounds, that would be absolutely inappropriate, and the school would have a duty to ask them to leave or remove the distributors. However, that duty would apply to distribution of any political materials, not just this specific situation.
Still, the other teenage girls shouldn’t have to compete against biological males. That lone teen should reconsider on her own accord, to do rightly onto them. The trans teen’s parents, guidance counselors, etc, should be advising her. I don’t think exposing her to the pressure of a stadium full of people to change her mind is necessarily ethical. It is a zugzwig, because the parents may well be cheering her on in competing, and the guidance counselors have a split duty to advise what are her rights, as well as to what is right.
Nice analysis, Chris. Like so many of these situations, this one was preventable if cooler minds had prevailed earlier on. But they didn’t. Idiocy prevailed very early on. I bet this kids parents are whack jobs or absent or both. I bet the whack jobs at the school and the school district, and the athletic association are also all in on this idiocy. They want the kid out there causing controversy so they can be liked by the cool people.
I think you meant Rich in Ct.
I don’t see this as competing golden rules.
The parents are not protesting the teen the parents are protesting the policy that allows biological males to compete against biological females. There is a difference.
As for the boy exercising his rights by pretending he is a female I disagree. The United States government does not recognize transsexuals who claim to be women exempt from selective service requirements. Therefore there is no right to claim what sex you will be to enjoy an exemption from a legal obligation. Some jurisdictions permit such choices but there is no defined right to choose one’s sex that differs from the individual’s chromosomal type.
I don’t think anyone would use the competing golden rule defense if the school allowed students to open carry on school grounds. Parents would be cheered on in their protests. I see little difference between the two as both have a significant likelihood of harm to other students.
If I were the coach, I would recruit some of my varsity guys to identify to be girls and stack my team.
I’m curious about #6. Granted, there’s likely been selective enforcement. I doubt they would ban a t-shirt that said, “What can be, unburdened by what has been”, for example. But setting the unfairness aside, wouldn’t a MAGA hat fall under their ban on “political in nature” apparel?
Yes, wanting to make America Great Again is definitely political as it is a message promoted by one party. The other party want to do the opposite, so I searched on my computer for the opposite of great and found;
sordid, squalid, vile, wretched abominable, contemptible, despicable, detestable, hateful, offensive, repulsive, ugly, vicious dastardly, dirty, lousy, sorry little, mean, narrow, small-minded degrading, discreditable, humiliating, ignominious coarse, crude, vulgar. Opposites or Antonyms for great.
Yes, at least in class. In the stands? I doubt it.