Quickies: Censorship’s Latest Frontier

     Just as ‘trans’ rights appear to be the hot new thing in Leftist agitation, freedom of speech is already taking a hit from it:

     Youths in Fairfax County, Virginia, can now be disciplined and even expelled from school for criticizing the intrusive and aggressive transgender ideology.

     The transgender change in school regulations was imposed last night during a dramatic board meeting where only 12 pro-trans witnesses were invited to testify.

     The board members met on Thursday night only after being informed the night before that the discipline change would be considered. No opposing voices were allowed to be heard, parents were relegated to shouting opposition from the seats and some were ejected from the meeting....

     The new regulation reads:

     No student in FCPS shall … on the basis of gender identity … be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity.

This “discrimination” language means that a student who speaks out against the “gender identity” ideology can be disciplined, and presumably suspended and even expelled, according to board member Elizabeth Schultz, who opposed the change.

     So a supposedly “public” school system, supported by the involuntarily paid property taxes of Virginia residents, can now deny access to those who differ with a ‘trans’ claim or what issues from it. So that when something like this happens:

     Nattaphon “Ice” Wangyot, a male-t0-female transgender athlete became the first trans student to compete for a high school state championship last week.

     Wangyot, a senior at Haines High School in Alaska, beat a number of biologically female competitors to the finals at the state Track & Field meet in Anchorage. But her presence at the race was met with some criticism from her fellow runners.

     ...in Northern Virginia, anyone who cites the obvious unfairness of it can be deprived of the education (such as it is) that his parents have already paid for...and will continue to pay for even after he’s been denied it.

     I have a novel coming out soon that features the following passage:

     “The country was deep in the grip of the ‘diversity and inclusion’ fad. It was mostly before you were born, and pretty much a bad memory by the time you were old enough to notice. Noisy minorities were at their noisiest—and since a history of oppression was the legal and social coin of the realm, every one of them claimed to be ‘oppressed.’ The one getting the most attention at the time was ‘trans.’”
     I wasn’t sure I’d heard her correctly. “A transportation company?”
     She chuckled. “No, biological men who wanted to be women, or to be treated as women. A very few biological women who wanted to be men, or treated as men. They called themselves ‘transwomen’ or ‘transmen.’”
     I barked a laugh. I couldn’t help it. I caught hold of it quickly, and forced myself back to seriousness.
     She smirked. “You can laugh because you have no idea how bad it was. But there was nothing funny about it. Even though there were only a few thousand of them all together, they were unbelievably successful at bending governments and institutions to their whim. They won privileges that very few people can imagine today.
     “Tim’s employer’s Human Resources department was run by a gaggle of vicious women—real ones, not ‘trans’—who’d already succeeded in enacting weird ‘sexual harassment’ rules and rules about how to treat persons of differing sexual orientations. You could get fired for daring to defy the company line...so naturally the company’s vicious women and vindictive homosexuals used the rules like a club to subjugate or flat get rid of anyone they pleased.
     “Well, these insane HR harpies needed new worlds to conquer, so they decided to make ‘trans tolerance’ their next campaign. But they didn’t mean ‘show tolerance for the deluded.’ They meant to make differing with a delusional person—calling a ‘trans’ person by his birth name, or referring to him as ‘he’ when he claimed to be a ‘she’—a hangin’ offense.
     “They rewrote the personnel policies for the company for the umpteenth time. Corporate management gave in without a fight. The new policies included mandatory ‘sensitivity training’ seminars for the entire company. Until Tim was herded into one, he had no idea what was coming.
     “He sat through about twenty minutes of their harangue before he couldn’t take any more of it. He felt someone had to take a stand against the lunacy. And Tim being...well, Tim, he wasn’t going to wait for someone else to do it. So he stood up.
     “He told them their nonsense had gone far enough. He said the ‘trans’ types are obviously detached from reality, that they need therapy to help them accept themselves as they are, not reinforcement for their delusions. That we should treat the mentally ill with compassion but that it’s wrong to cooperate in their lunacy. And he said he wouldn’t bow to any rule, from HR or anyone else, that compelled him to think or speak or act otherwise. And he walked out.
     “His supervisor fired him immediately after the seminar. He didn’t have anything against Tim. In fact, he agreed with him. He just didn’t want to tangle with HR.”

     Food for thought...especially for those of you who aren’t self-employed or happily retired.