• • •
GENDER JOLLIES
Born too late. My friends and I were born a generation too late, and we can only dream of how Title IX legislation—and its broad interpretation—would have changed our lives in high school and college. For eight years, we guys conspired to get a peek into the girls’ bathroom, staying after school, armed with cafeteria spoons and pocket knives, boring strategic holes in the bathroom wall. Had he been around at the time, President Obama would have laughed at our secret peepholes because he authorized today’s high school and college boys to simply walk through the bathroom door with the skirt marked on it and take a look around. My friends and I would have pegged Mr. Obama as the greatest president since Abraham Lincoln and been eager to overturn the Twenty-Second Amendment to vote him in for a third term.
Here is how I imagine it would have been.
“Hey, have you seen this?” said my friend Sam, motioning for us to put down our cafeteria spoons and pocket knives for a moment. In his hand, was a five-page directive, dated May 13, 2016, signed by the US Department of Justice and Department of Education, which he begged us to read. Annoyed by this distraction from the important work at hand, we reluctantly did as he instructed. Sam would later recount how our facial expressions changed from disdain to wonderment. For nearly an hour, we studied, parsed, and memorized every word and phrase, faster and more precisely than we had any Shakespearean sonnet. The things you don’t learn in school.
For example, gender identity. The directive tells us that “gender identity refers to an individual’s internal sense of gender. A person’s gender identity may be different from, or the same as, the person’s sex assigned at birth.” That last phrase in italics threw us off. Sex assigned at birth? It sounded very much like the way a summer camp counselor assigns pre-teen campers to the Chipmunk Cabin or the Gator Cabin.
But we were too excited about now having the ability to choose our gender to worry about sex assignments at birth. To help us with the gender-selection process, we watched the movie What Women Want (several times) and read and reread 6 Ways to Get in Touch with Your Feminine Side. Then, we got busy contacting our family doctors to persuade them to give us a doctor’s note asserting our new gender identities. But that was clearly unnecessary per the directive: “There is no medical diagnosis or treatment requirement that students must meet as a prerequisite to being treated consistent with their gender identity.” Almost seems like we wrote the directive ourselves.
Initially, we were a little tentative, so we wore lipstick around school for a few weeks before using the ladies’ room. But upon careful rereading of the directive—“transgender individuals may undergo gender transition at any stage of their lives, and gender transition can happen swiftly”—we realized that all we had to do was swiftly splash on a little perfume a few minutes before entering the girls’ bathroom. Word got out to the football team, after which I noticed some of the offensive line wearing makeup and sneaking in as well. They were soon followed by a couple of running backs and the starting safety. Before long, most of the team was in there, and not only did they not bother with makeup, they went in wearing shoulder pads and cleats. One of the girls in the bathroom went to the practice field looking for the coach to complain, but she couldn’t find him there because he, too, was in the ladies’ room.
To no one’s surprise, the boys’ bathroom wasn’t getting much use, so little that the administration was able to cancel the janitorial services. One of our teachers, a priest (my school was Catholic) who frequently hung around the boys’ bathroom because of a professed urinary problem, wondered, ever since the directive was issued, where all the boys were.
After a few months, the girls’ bathroom got a little boring, so back to the directive we went, and bingo! Our hands were shaking when we read that “transgender students must be allowed to access such facilities—locker rooms and showers—consistent with their gender identity.” No longer did we have to enroll in ballet classes. Instead, we all switched majors to physical education and requested approval for course overload. In the interests of proper hygiene, we showered after every class.
Again, word got out, and soon the entire football team—including the taxi squad and the coach—were taking showers in the girls’ locker room. They were closely followed by the priest, now cured of his urinary problem, but claiming the emergence of a skin condition that required frequent showering. Within weeks, English, history, and business majors dried up, while requests for enrollment in phys ed majors were done by lottery. Many female students protested to the administration, but school officials brushed them off, citing the directive: “A school may not discipline students or exclude them from activities for behaving in a manner that is consistent with their gender identity.”
The protesting girls said they felt ill at ease taking a shower next to a football player, but the head of administration responded testily, again quoting the directive: “The desire to accommodate others’ discomfort cannot justify a policy that singles out and disadvantages a particular class of students.” One of the girls asked why the logic doesn’t work both ways, i.e., the desire to accommodate other’s (transgender females’) discomfort (taking showers with males) cannot justify a policy that singles out and disadvantages a particular class of students (non-transgender girls). The head of admin listened, scratched her head, and said she was late for her next meeting.
Just when my friends and I thought things couldn’t get any better, they did. We discovered that the directive—that Magna Carta of documents—compelled schools to allow transgender students access to, not only, bathrooms, locker rooms, and showers, but housing, as well. We applied fresh coats of lipstick, bought some pom-poms, and brought our request to transfer to the girls’ cheerleading team’s dormitory to Mrs. Anita Rodrigues, the person in charge of Student Services.
Mrs. Rodrigues didn’t appear to be aware of the directive and gave us the impression of being socially conservative. While watching Mrs. Rodrigues slowly shred our request, we introduced her to the directive. We pointed to the section which read, “A school’s failure to treat students consistent with their gender identity may create or contribute to a hostile environment” and mentioned that we weren’t big on hostility.
With unconcealed contempt, she spat out: “Listen, Robert, Joseph, Sam, and George,” but we again interrupted her, citing the directive: “School staff and contractors will use pronouns and names consistent with a transgender student’s gender identity.” We gently informed her that we preferred to be addressed as Roberta, Josephina, Samantha, and Georgette, so that we could, you know, avoid that dreaded hostility thing. Her anger building, Mrs. Rodrigues called her assistant and instructed her to examine our personnel files, but we demurred, pointing out that the directive says, “Non-consensual disclosure of personally identifiable information such as a student’s birth name or sex assigned at birth, could be harmful to, or invade the privacy of, transgender students.”
Within a week, Mrs. Rodrigues was reassigned to a different department and was seen attending sensitivity-training classes. And within a month, not only was I living in the cheerleaders’ dormitory, but I was placed into a forced triple with Tracy and Barbie, the team’s co-captains. Life was good, with only one complication. Around the time that grades were issued, I had to switch back to the sex I was assigned at birth because my class ranking would be lower if I were included in the female population where the grade point averages were higher.
Alas, none of the above happened while we were in school. Richard Nixon was president, Barack Obama wasn’t yet a teenager, the prized directive wasn’t due for another forty years. So, we continued to burrow away at the bathroom wall with our cafeteria spoons.
• • •
LATTE SALUTE: THE UNTOLD STORY
Once again, conservatives and Republicans criticized President Obama, this time over his apparent salute to Marines with a cup of latte in his hand while disembarking from the presidential helicopter Mari
ne One. The event has been dubbed “the Latte Salute.” Officials traveling with the president shot back at the critics for again savaging the president without having all of the facts and informed them that Mr. Obama was carrying a cappuccino, not a latte.
Sources said that the president was battling a mosquito throughout the flight, and the mosquito landed on the right side of his forehead just as he was disembarking. What looked like a salute was really a determined commander in chief showing that insubordinate mosquito who was in charge by squashing it on the presidential temple. For a nation that admires vigorous leaders and looks for energy in the executive, the president was irked that the press ignored the athleticism of the moment—descending stairs, carrying a hot cup of coffee—without a protective sleeve, mind you, while swatting a mosquito, all done without spilling a drop of cappuccino. Could President Ford have done that? Or President Reagan in his second term?
President Obama, a fastidious user of bone china, was also not happy at the potential damage to his pro-environmental image by being seen carrying a paper cup (loss of trees) with a plastic lid (non-biodegradable). An unnamed official blamed this unfortunate turn of events on a brigadier general on-board Marine One. After a lengthy briefing of the president on the situation in Ukraine, which prevented President Obama from getting any sleep, the general was directed by the president to make a latte to try to compensate for the foregone slumber. After several failed attempts, just as Marine One was landing, the hapless general managed to produce a cappuccino, instead of the requested latte. And because the president needed it “to go,” the general’s handiwork had to be placed in one of those paper cups detested by the commander in chief.
According to a spokesman, President Obama was determined to overcome these coffee frustrations and decided that as he was disembarking, he would take a moment to address the waiting media. He planned on exhorting the nation to follow Michelle’s nutritional message from her Let’s Move program. And he would take a leadership role by switching from whole milk to 2 percent in his lattes. But he never got a chance to deliver that message, undone by that pesky mosquito.
• • •
FAST BREAK IN PYONGYANG
Napping is a high-risk activity in North Korea as the former, now vaporized, Defense Minister Hyon Yong-chol found out after falling asleep during a meeting held by Kim Jong-un, North Korea’s Supreme Leader. Mr. Hyon, already cranky from having been awakened prematurely from his nap, was even more cranky when told he would be executed by an anti-aircraft gun, normally used to shoot objects five miles distant, from one hundred feet away. Imports of NoDoz tablets and Red Bull energy drinks into Pyongyang have since skyrocketed.
Mr. Kim’s tetchiness probably stems from a difficult childhood, marked by the absence of a warm relationship with his father, Kim Jong-il, whom no one is quite sure ever uttered a word as an adult. Reputedly, the father never had to use the bathroom, which some people believe pointed to his divine powers; others claim he simply used the woods behind the presidential palace. In any event, it was enough to confuse his son during his potty-training days, undoubtedly leaving psychological scars of unknown severity.
Classmates and teachers at the prestigious Liebefeld-Steinhölzli boarding school near Bern described the young Jong-un as socially awkward and intellectually dull but obsessed with basketball, despite being unable to hit free throws and turning over the ball too much. His inadequacies on the court, difficult enough to bear, were magnified by the sports accomplishments of his father, a golf prodigy who according to reliable (ahem) North Korea news reports shot 38 under par, including eleven holes in one, the first and only time he played a round of golf.
Upon assuming power after his father took ill and died, the diminutive new leader, listed at five foot two but really just a shade taller than four foot seven, was instantly acclaimed as the best basketball player in the country world universe. Sports news from the secretive country revealed that Mr. Kim was not only winning every dunk contest held in North Korea, but displayed his jumping ability by retrieving dimes, or their North Korean equivalent, placed on the top of the backboard. This latter feat was confirmed by dozens of eyewitnesses who are under continuous surveillance and are permanently strapped to remote-controlled explosives.
The United States, not believing these reports and eager to discredit the North Korean leader and nation, had a difficult time deciding whether to send Dennis Rodman or Donald Trump to observe Mr. Kim on the court. Dennis it was, but the hallucinogens that Rodman was using at the time may have affected his evaluation of Mr. Kim’s leaping prowess. In a debriefing by the State Department upon his return to the United States, Rodman mumbled incoherently something about the rim being set at two foot seven. However, state officials were unable to concentrate, distracted by the wedding dress and veil Dennis wore to the debrief. The next stop on Rodman’s sports diplomacy tour will be Venezuela, bringing with him several rolls of Scott’s toilet paper as a gift to President Nicolás Maduro. Rodman will do an in-depth study of the country’s Ministry of Supreme Social Happiness.
Defense Minister Hyon hasn’t been the only person in the Hermit Kingdom to run afoul of its newest Dear Leader. Mr. Jang Sung-taek, Mr. Kim’s uncle, was allegedly executed by a pack of 120 crazed dogs. Reports indicate that this was a typical move by Kim to consolidate power, but others believe the particularly nasty method of execution was payback by Kim for having been benched by Jang, then coach of Kim’s basketball team, following a missed free throw in a league game. Tryouts start soon for the administration’s Organization and Guidance Department of the Workers’ Party basketball squad. Mr. Kim will play four out of the five positions at the same time. His teammates can use the barking sounds of 120 dogs outside the arena to help them concentrate on making their foul shots.
• • •
PROFILES IN COURAGE
Emory University is considerably less safe after student Horace Shufflebottom wrote Donald Trump’s name in chalk on various parts of the campus early this morning around 1:00 a.m. The pallid, five-foot five inch, 135-pound, Shufflebottom, unnoticed during daylight hours, now competes with Son of Sam and Jack the Ripper in inspiring fear. Dozens of students at Emory now walk to their classes furtively looking over their shoulders, an instinctive reaction to the uncontrollable fear that Shufflebottom and his malignant chalk may be lurking in the shadows.
Within hours of the pernicious chalk markings having been spotted, nearly one hundred students organized a protest and marched to the university president’s office chanting, “Come speak to us. We are in pain.” The president wasted no time in hiring an expert in pain management, who, after diagnosing the condition as phantom pain, began applying deep brain stimulation to the suffering students. Should that fail to alleviate the symptoms, opioids would be distributed, but only to those having GPAs of 3.4 or higher.
As the students milled about in front of the president’s office, one young woman, who said “I don’t deserve to feel afraid at my school,” was commended by the president for her humility. Another student said, “I legitimately feared for my life,” while unwittingly standing next to the spectral Shufflebottom himself, who had quietly joined the protest.
A third student was in pain and feared for his life because Trump is “a figurehead of hate, racism, xenophobia, and sexism in America.” The president thought about sharing his own, much more painful college experience of having to endure chalk markings all over campus saying “Archie Bunker 1976.” However, he didn’t want to exacerbate the already profound pain of the students. Besides, the supply of pain-killing opioids was limited.
Addressing the group, Dylan, the bespectacled student leader of the protest, and a paradigm of courage, said, “We are not afraid of chalk!” He began a discourse that mesmerized the student audience, who intently followed his every word as he recounted how he vanquished his fears of the boogie man in his bedroom closet several months before he entered college.
After Dylan spoke, the crowd again be
came restless and challenged the president, saying that inaction by the administration against the Trump chalkings was the equivalent of supporting Trump’s messages. The president responded by calling out, Pontius Pilate–like, to the protesters, “What actions should I take?”
A few students said, “Provide free chips when ordering a supersized hero at the Student Center.”
“What else?” yelled the president. “Should we ban Trump supporters from campus?”
In unison, the students whooped, “Yes!”
The president continued, “Shall I build a wall around campus to keep Trump supporters from entering?”
Another boisterous “Yes!” from the students.
With the protest still bubbling, the president drafted and released a statement: “During our conversation, the students voiced their genuine concern and pain in the face of the perceived intimidation” caused by having to see the chalked message “Trump 2016” on campus.
Bowing to further pressure from the students for action, and especially concerned about the intimidation factor, he contacted the local high-security prison and arranged for the temporary release of a 6-foot, 7-inch snarling gentleman named Psycho to give students counseling on the differences between real and perceived intimidation. At this point, a few students said, “It is our duty to fight for our freedom. It is our duty to win. We must love each other and support each other. We have nothing to lose but our chains.”
The president responded by promising to have a table set up outside his office with ROTC application forms for those who felt a duty to fight for freedom. He also agreed to bring back Psycho to compare his experiences of being chained to those of the students. The group kumbaya session continued with the assistant vice president for community (no wonder tuition costs have skyrocketed) praising the protest for giving her “greater insight into the pain that some students experienced as a result of the chalkings.”
Adding a Little Levity Page 11