In a world full of thorny issues, is any thornier than the transgender debate? How do we protect everyone’s “rights”?
Considering how challenging adolescence is for a cisgender kid, I can’t imagine the complications of simultaneously navigating gender identity as a trans kid. Any decent human wants all children, regardless of gender identity, to feel comfortable and accepted, so what about the cisgender child who legitimately feels uncomfortable sharing a locker room with a trans student? Whose “right” to feel comfortable supersedes the other’s?
Maybe the salient questions are: Do any of us have a fundamental right to always feel comfortable and unchallenged, and do any of us have the right to never be offended? Just exactly how coddled do we deserve to be?
These questions are front and center in SLO County schools, and it can be challenging to sort out the hysteria from the legitimate concerns. Do you remember the outrage over the trans female athlete who allegedly twerked in the faces of students in the Atascadero High School girls’ locker room? How about Arroyo Grande High School student Celeste Duyst who went on Fox News to describe being distressed having to change in a locker room with a trans student?
“I went into the women’s locker room to change for track practice where I saw, at the end of my row, a biological male watching not only myself, but the other young women undress. This experience was beyond traumatizing,” Diest said, breaking into tears.
It certainly doesn’t simplify matters that California law regarding trans athletes contradicts the messages coming from tRump and the federal government. The California Education Code states that students must be allowed to participate in school programs and athletics consistent with their gender identity, and the California Interscholastic Federation, which runs California high school sports, follows this state law.
So legally speaking, trans athletes can compete, but what about locker rooms? Up at Paso Robles High School, they’re adding four private changing stalls by the end of spring break with more planned for summer. Is that the answer? It’s certainly a better solution than at least one other suggestion.
Board trustee and notable knuckle dragger Kenney Enney suggested staff look into locker room trailers. Hey, Kenney, how about “normal” and “trans” water fountains while you’re at it?
I guess 1954 and Brown v. Board of Education was so long ago that Kenney forgot the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that “separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.”
To complicate matters, the court recently allowed a lower court ruling to take effect that blocks California’s ban on schools outing transgender students to their parents without the student’s consent. San Diego County parents argued the state policy violated their religious beliefs and parental rights.
“What the Supreme Court did is disappointing. Because it puts these kids in jeopardy,” Gala Pride and Diversity Center Board President Aja Myers told New Times. “Schools are not out there recruiting kids to be queer or trans; that is just unbelievably a false narrative. … They can’t even get them to do their homework. They’re gonna get them to reassign gender? Let’s take on the harder task.”
The problem with this issue is the utter hysteria that surrounds it. Conservatives equate accepting a child as trans as tantamount to child abuse. Charlie Kirk’s organization Turning Point USA and the Daily Wire went so far as producing a documentary called Identity Crisis that condemns parents who accept their child as trans and argues for detransitioning.
OK, but what about a student like Lily Norcross, an Arroyo Grande High School junior on the track and field team who’s trans and whose parents clearly love her? Should they be condemned?
“The least interesting thing about her is her gender identity,” Lily’s father, Trevor Norcross, said. “She’s an amazing kid, super smart. You know, she does not want to be in this position but is also willing to fight for herself and the rest of her community.”
Should Lily have to fight to be accepted?
Sigh.
Speaking of knuckle draggers, I don’t like speaking ill of the dead, but deceased San Miguel Community Services District board of directors Vice President John Green seems like a real bag of dicks. The remaining board members have been trying to fill his vacant seat, but they’re hopelessly divided.
On Facebook, one of Green’s last posts before he passed read, “Ok, last post you’ll see from me on this feed. I have officially been released from Drs care to go home and say goodbye to family So goodbye to friends and those spying on me can SUCK MY DICK …. lets start with Lorre cuz I don’t think Rayinnett could fit it up!”
What a classy way to slip this mortal coil! “Goodbye cruel world! I’m paranoid! Also, I have a massive peen!” What a misogynistic way to go.
Former board member Raynette Gregory was in consideration for Green’s open seat along with three other candidates, but remaining board members—President Ashley Sangster, current Vice President Brendin Beatty, Rod Smiley, and Owen Davis—can’t seem to agree on anything. They asked the county to fill the seat, but that didn’t happen, so now they’ve decided to leave it vacant until November’s election, which means eight months of total decision-making dysfunction.
Good luck, denizens of San Miguel. ∆
The Shredder identifies as machine. Spill your tea at shredder@newtimesslo.com.
This article appears in March 12-19, 2026.
WWIII has basically started, the US bombing Iran and Russia (via Ukraine), the cost of living is out of control, oil tankers are getting blown up and spilling so much oil it makes the Exxon Valdez look like childs play, yet the Shredder spills an equivalent amount of ink whining about genitalia. This is called “deflection,” ladies and gentlemen. The entire press is doing it, they are trying to distract us from the fact that everyone is downwardly mobile now and the predators running our country, masquerading as politicians, have debased the dollar so much through bailing out failed bank after failed bank, that those of us lucky enough to still have a job, have to actually work two, just to survive.
If the Shredder wants the attention he is dying for, focus on economics. This goes for the entire press. So sick identity politics. I’d be curious how much the Democratic party, local banks, and local developers are paying him to spew the inane nonsense found in this weak column.