Alberta students start petition to demand gender-specific bathrooms

By Jonathon Van Maren

As Canada’s sexual ideologues continue to wage war on the reality of gender differences, the usual victims are paying the price: Young people. As it turns out, many high school students are not enthused about the idea of using the same bathroom as the opposite sex, and there’s nothing that the progressive school authorities can do to sufficiently hasten their level of enlightenment. As Global News reported in Alberta:

Students at Sturgeon Composite say the bathroom situation at their high school needs to change, and better reflect the needs of the majority after many of their facilities were made gender neutral. At the start of September, students learned about the change.

“The first day of school, when we all walked in and saw the bathrooms were gender neutral and everybody could go into the other gender’s bathroom, it was bizarre,” grade 11 student Graeme Gibson said. “First, it was a shock, then everybody was like, ‘Why is this happening? What the heck is going on?’”

Sturgeon Composite is currently undergoing major renovations, and the bathrooms are included in that.

“The number of gender-neutral washrooms is very high,” said grade 11 student Evan Gabbey. “They sent two whole sets as well as two individual stalls to gender neutral and there’s one set for male and female and that does not at all represent the population of people who require the gender-neutral bathrooms.”

It turns out that the “population of people who require the gender-neutral bathrooms” is, rather predictably, a very small population. This is something that the school authorities could have figured out rather easily, but gender ideology takes precedence over the actual needs of students these days. Those students, it turns out, are pretty upset:

Some students say they feel awkward sharing the new facilities. “The first time I saw them I was nervous and I was like, “Okay I’m just going to not use the washroom today,” grade 11 student Austin Kirk said. He goes out of his way to avoid sharing the gender-neutral washrooms. “I have a chemistry class on one side of the school next to the gender-neutral washroom but there’s a washroom in the lobby that is just a boys washroom and I walk there every time I need to use the washroom.”

A few students told Global News they’re often late for class because lineups can form in the three stall girls or boys bathrooms. Another issue that was raised is privacy.

“I find it uncomfortable. I have other things to do than boys, in there,” student Jacey Taylor said, referring to the changing of feminine hygiene products. “You can hear it.”

The gender-neutral bathrooms have no doors and are therefore open to the hallways. They also have multiple stalls, some with toilets and others with urinals. Those stalls are not completely enclosed.

That didn’t sit well with Gabbey. He decided to start a petition, asking for more gender-specific bathrooms. On the first day, he was overwhelmed by students looking to sign. “I alone had 112 signatures. The only reason I couldn’t get more was I ran out of forms, I couldn’t get enough,” he said.

Gabbey said the idea of having multiple stalls in a gender-neutral bathroom is unique and flawed.

“You don’t see those anywhere. You don’t see those in restaurants, you don’t see them in government offices, you don’t see them anywhere, yet we throw them into our schools and assume it’s just fine. I don’t know whose idea this was but it wasn’t a very good one.”

This is the sort of thing that even idiots used to know: Girls are often not comfortable doing girl things in the presence of boys, and vice versa. It seems that as our progressive politicians become enlightened by gender ideology, they have managed to forget basic things about girls and boys that every generation prior would have simply taken for granted. That the school would begin renovations that result in students either heading across the campus to use the bathroom or force awkward adolescent boys and girls into the same room to do their business is ridiculous—to the point where students are beginning petitions to get rid of it.

Global News reached out to the school and the school division, but no one was available to comment. Education Minister David Eggen is also monitoring the situation. “Sturgeon, clearly they have to make sure that they accommodate everybody, make sure everybody’s needs are met. I hope that they can sort this out as soon as they can.”

Concerned parents recently started a Facebook group looking to educate other parents on what is happening at the school. Annette Gabbey said, “Even today there’s a lot of parents that have no idea on what’s going on in the school regarding the bathroom policy.”

She said she thinks gender-neutral bathrooms should be self-contained — and the school does have a few of those that could be designated gender neutral. The matter has parents speaking out to their trustees. “To make arbitrary decisions like this and not involve the parents is a gross injustice,” mother Amber Harris said. “It’s getting pretty big now. People are starting to perk up because our school is not the only school that’s implementing policies like this.”

I wonder if these parents—who are absolutely correct—realize that David Eggen and the NDP have been working to ensure that parents remain unaware of what is going with their children at school for several years now, most recently with the passage of Bill 24, which makes it illegal for staff to tell parents if their child has joined a Gay Straight Alliance Club. Alberta’s Education Minister is in the process of using the school system to implement a massive social experiment based on the premises of gender ideology, and the unenlightened parents and students who have not yet realized that their premier believes men can get pregnant, among other things, are in for a big surprise. The students have not quite given up hope yet:

There are currently other bathrooms being renovated at Sturgeon Composite, and students hope they will be made gender specific. “It needs to reflect the population of the student body. There are absolutely some people that need to be accommodated with the gender-neutral washrooms and that’s totally cool. But that is a minority,” Gibson said.

Trustees will vote on the matter next Wednesday at 4:30 p.m. in Morinville.

The backlash against the top-down implementation of gender ideology across the country has just begun, and will continue as more parents and more students come to realize that the practical implications of policies sold as necessary to make schools “bullying free” are far more profound than they realized. Rather than schools working to accommodate the handful of students who need special arrangements, Eggen seems to determined recreate reality to suit a handful of students and their activist parents.

It is sad, somehow, that students in high school have to begin petitions so that high school girls can use the bathroom without boys in the next stall. But that is how David Eggen and his ilk want it to be.

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For anyone interested, my book on The Culture War, which analyzes the journey our culture has taken from the way it was to the way it is and examines the Sexual Revolution, hook-up culture, the rise of the porn plague, abortion, commodity culture, euthanasia, and the gay rights movement, is available for sale here.