In 2014, Barack Obama’s DOJ sued the Pennsylvania State Police for treating male and female applicants equally. Earlier this month, some media and politicians were up in arms because Missouri lawmakers voted to hold female House members to a dress-code standard approximating that of their male colleagues. But “equality” has always been more ploy than principle. Now there’s yet another example of this, this one relating to school dress codes.
Very upset about them is one Minerva Canto, writing at the Los (Lost?) Angeles Times. “As parents, we expect that our sons and daughters will be treated equally if they attend a public school as is guaranteed by the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution and Title IX…,” she states.
But while Canto may expect this equal treatment, she apparently doesn’t welcome it. After all, she later complains that “dress codes skirt laws against discrimination by regulating items of clothing for all students rather than creating separate rules for girls and boys.” Got that?
Treating students equally and thus conforming to anti-discrimination law is to skirt anti-discrimination law. It’s sort of like a Zen Koan, I guess.
But in practicing the Zen of Destroying Civilization, the feds surely have Canto’s (bare?) back. Because the “United States Government Accountability Office (GAO), a congressional watchdog agency, called for schools to overhaul their dress code policies, or risk discriminating against ‘[b]lack students,[’] ‘students with disabilities,’ ‘LGBTQI+ students’ and religious minorities last year,” related Fox News. This is making headlines again because USA Today published a Tuesday article titled “Sexist, racist and classist: Why the feds are getting involved in school dress codes.”
How any of this is the business of the GAO was not explained. But as with Canto’s complaint, the gripe here is that all these students are being treated equally. Then again, sex-specific dress codes can be a problem, too. Canto and USA Today also kvetch about a North Carolina charter school that required girls to wear skirts, skorts, or dresses until the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals intervened.
In other words, you can’t treat kids differently. And you can’t treat kids the same. What can you do?
Give the Left exactly what it wants when it wants it, accepting that its whims are subject to continual change without notice.
By the way, the 4th Circuit, perhaps picking up where the now reformed 9th Circuit left off, “slammed the skirt requirement in its ruling, writing that it was ‘based on the view that girls are ‘fragile vessels’ deserving of ‘gentle’ treatment by boys,’” informs Fox. Really? It is? Is this also true of Scotsmen with their kilts? That’s not what this site says. I think the 4th Circuit just made it up.
(Note: Since considering girls “fragile vessels” deserving of “gentle” treatment is so offensive and antiquated, they’ll now be required to register for the draft just as the boys are and have the exact same roles once in the military, right? Or am I missing something?)
It becomes even more apparent how ridiculous, and perverse, this effort is when learning what so upsets the bare-it-all leftists. “Nearly all — about 93% — of the nation’s schools have some kind of dress code policy, with about half of all schools enforcing a strict dress code, and about 1 in 5 schools requiring uniforms, the Government Accountability Office found…, writes USA Today. “Most districts have some variation of bans against spaghetti strap shirts, short skirts, leggings, muscle shirts, sagging pants, or certain clothing colors or logos.”
Interestingly, the paper doesn’t mention that the “certain clothing colors or logos” proscription is designed, at least in part, to eliminate gang regalia. Canto adds, taking obvious umbrage, that at her kids’ high school “tank tops, crop tops and low-cut tops” are also forbidden.
If you, like me, aren’t acquainted with all these “fashions” because you aren’t fixating on young girls and their sartorial leanings as much as the groomers are, know that these are spaghetti strap shirts, while crop tops are seen in the news segment below (the other styles are self-explanatory).
Despite this, Canto complains that one teacher at her kids’ school tells girls in her class with crop tops “not to ‘dress like prostitutes.’” How outrageous, telling girls they’re dressing like prostitutes just because … they’re dressing like prostitutes.
Speaking of which, the ACLU and hate group Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) are on the bare-it-all side, doing their best to strip dress codes bare. The SPLC wrote on Twitter, “Clothes are just that — Let kids wear what they want, free from discrimination,” while the ACLU calls school uniform policies “repressive.” Yeah, it’s just like North Korea.
One is left with the impression that these leftists oppose dress codes in principle. But unless they advocate allowing kids to attend school in thong bathing suits or au naturel, they believe in dress codes, too; the argument is just over where to draw the line.
Of course, the imperative of modesty — and its legitimate goal of controlling male lust and female vanity — is passé to these people. The line is, again, wherever they say it is at a given moment, using as justification the argument of equality or equity or whatever else feels right.
But it all goes along with telling youths they can be whichever sex, and have whatever sex, they want. In this case, the groomers just can’t get the kids undressed fast enough.
