Biden weighs rolling back Trump administration Title IX changes
Journalist Ashe Schow and former Education Department press secretary Angela Morabito join 'Fox News @ Night' to discuss
Of all the uncertainties that college freshmen must face, none is more sensitive than the issue of roommates. You might become best friends. You might go to war over who ate the leftover pizza in the fridge. There’s nothing to be taken for granted when it comes to living with a virtual stranger, except that men room with men and women room with women.
At least, for now. If the Biden administration gets its way, schools could force biological female students to live with biological men who identify as women and vice versa.
The Department of Education has proposed a new Title IX rule that demands that colleges treat students in line with their gender identity, not their biological sex. That means that people who identify as women would live with people who identify as women, and people who identify as men would live with people who identify as men.
A biological man who began identifying as a woman at age 13 could be treated the same as a biological man who began identifying as a woman an hour ago. Both could be allowed to room with a woman who has no say in the matter, nor could the school be obligated to alert her in any way that her roommate is not, in fact, biologically female.
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Any school that dared put facts over feelings would be vulnerable to Title IX investigations, and even potentially losing its federal funding. Any student who dared object to living with someone of the opposite sex could be slapped with a Title IX complaint as well.
The Department of Education claims that Title IX's prohibition on sex discrimination includes discrimination on the basis of gender identity. The proposed rule claims to respect existing law that allows colleges to maintain sex-segregated housing facilities, but there’s a catch: The proposed rule redefines "sex" to include gender identity. If the word "sex" is robbed of its meaning, so is the word "sex-segregated." In short, colleges could have nominally male and female dorms, but the definition of male and female would be identity-based, not biology-based.
The cruel irony here is that schools are obligated under Title IX to address threats of sexual harassment and assault. For 50 years, the law has stood to protect all students from discrimination on the basis of sex. Now, the Biden administration’s proposed rule, which was announced on June 23rd, would turn Title IX into a political cudgel rather than a civil rights milestone.
It would be hard to conceive of a more efficient way to make college women less safe than by potentially forcing some of them to sleep just a few feet away from biological men, behind closed doors, without their knowledge or consent. Every feminist should be up in arms to stop this insanity from happening.
The proposed rule claims to respect existing law that allows colleges to maintain sex-segregated housing facilities, but there’s a catch: The proposed rule redefines "sex" to include gender identity. If the word "sex" is robbed of its meaning, so is the word "sex-segregated." In short, colleges could have nominally male and female dorms, but the definition of male and female could be identity-based, not biology-based.
All students deserve equal access to education. In an ideal world, college roommate matching systems could give students the option to check a box if they are comfortable living with a transgender-identified classmate. This would help ensure that students end up in roommate pairs with which they feel comfortable.
There are ways to prevent an 18-year-old woman from having to live with an 18-year-old man without ever being consulted on the matter. But, it appears that the Biden administration would rather skip right past common-sense ideas and go all-in on transgender ideology, even if it could mean forcing women to sleep in the same room as men and punishing them if they complain.
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We, as a country, do not have to accept this insanity. The new Title IX rule is currently a proposal, up for public comment. The Independent Women’s Voice has created an online portal to streamline the commenting process, which anyone can use.
Group of students walking in college campus after classes, back view
The Defense of Freedom Institute also created an online comment portal. It will take a massive public outcry to get the Biden administration to back off, and I encourage you to join me in weighing in on the rule before the September 12 deadline for submitting comments.
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At the core of this problem is a fundamental disagreement about the relationship between men and women. In the leftist worldview, any woman who would prefer not to dorm with a biological man is a bigot. Any woman who dares to ask the question about who she’s living with is a transphobe.
It is a farce that the people who think this way dare to call themselves progressives.