"Why only two very similar voices for this issue. Where are the 5 or 6 perspectives that normally appear in these 'Room For Discussion' segments."

"Did the Times previous editorial advocacy result in excluding women (or men) who have a differing perspective? Surely there are more than two (almost identical) perspectives regarding the treatment of transgender persons and others with reasonable and informed but differing perspectives can easily be found. This is not a 'Room For Discussion;' this is an 'Echo Chamber' for one perspective."

Says the 4th-highest-rated comment on the NYT forum: "Transgender Students in High School Locker Rooms/Can transgender students' rights be protected while recognizing other students' concerns about privacy in a locker room?" The "debates" are from the New York Association for Gender Rights Advocacy and from the National Center for Transgender Equality.

What are the 3 higher-rated comments?

1. "Call yourself Tarzan. Call yourself Jane. I don't care. I don't know you from Adam. But I know a man when I see one. I had better not see one in my locker room."

2. "Only a 'rights' crusader would force male bodies on females in locker rooms. It takes a reasonable person to understand why this is a problem for young females. Unfortunately, crusaders are neither reasonable nor interested in compromise."

3. "Trouble is, nearly all of these 'transgendered' kids are not transgendered in any commonsense rendering of that term. 'Presenting' as female is by definition superficial; long hair and a dress. Strip down and you still have a young man. And therein lies the problem."

Remember, this is The New York Times, which, just yesterday, ran an editorial vilifying the people of Texas who voted down an equal-rights law seemingly out of resistance to male bodies in the girls' bathroom and locker room.

"Sometime in the near future, a transgender teenager in Texas will attempt suicide — and maybe succeed — because vilifying people for their gender identity remains politically acceptable in America."

The first sentence of a NYT editorial titled "In Houston, Hate Trumped Fairness."

The language is so extreme — "vilifying," "hate." It seems to me that the focus on access to women's bathrooms wasn't aimed at the transgendered at all, but on males who might take advantage of a new opportunity to engage in voyeurism and sexual assault.

Elsewhere in the NYT, I see empathy for women who are sensitive and perhaps over-sensitive to matters involving their bodily privacy and safety and encouragement to men to become more sensitive.

Is this sensitivity supposed to shut off when a more treasured/trendy interest appears on the other side of the balance?

"How Bathroom Fears Conquered Transgender Rights in Houston."

The headline in The Atlantic after Houston voted — 61 to 39 percent — against the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance, or Proposition 1, which would ban discrimination based on gender identity (and 14 other factors, including sexual orientation). The "startlingly simple" opposition message was "No men in women’s bathrooms."

"No one is exempt," intoned a narrator in one TV ad that featured a young girl in a restroom. "Even registered sex offenders could follow women or young girls into the bathroom. And if a business tried to stop them, they’d be fined. Protect women’s privacy. Prevent danger. Vote no on the Proposition 1 bathroom ordinance."...

Supporters pointed out that it was already against the law in Houston to enter a bathroom with the intent to harass someone....

That response doesn't address the problem faced by a business that would like to intervene but can't know the intent of the person following a woman. Also, people frequently want additional protection. I'm thinking specifically of gun control, which tends to be supported by the same people who would like to open up access to women's bathrooms. These people aren't satisfied by the argument that it's already against the law to commit murder and other gun violence.

"Federal education authorities found on Monday that an Illinois school district had violated anti-discrimination laws..."

"... when it did not allow a transgender student who identifies as a girl and participates in athletics to change and shower in the girls’ locker room without restrictions."

“All students deserve the opportunity to participate equally in school programs and activities — this is a basic civil right,” Catherine Lhamon, the Education Department’s assistant secretary for civil rights, said in a statement. “Unfortunately, Township High School District 211 is not following the law because the district continues to deny a female student the right to use the girls’ locker room.”

"Readers say they were 'shocked' to find a mistake on page 72 of my book, 'Between You and Me.' "

"Shouldn’t 'younger than me' be 'younger than I'?"

Mary Norris defends her position declaring that in her book, "than" works as a preposition." (And, in case you don't watch the video, she does understand the argument that "than" is a conjunction)

I bought the book, "Between You and Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen." The passage on page 72 — which she isn't going to change — is:

Nothing makes it clearer how intimately and deeply pronouns are embedded in our lives than having to alter them to refer to someone you’ve known all your life. Just when I was mounting an assault on the Italian language, sorting the nouns that ended in a (mostly feminine) from the nouns that ended in o (mostly masculine), struggling to make sense of the ones that ended in e, the difference between sex and gender leaped out of the textbook and into my real life: my younger brother announced that he was transgender. Dee was two years younger than me, and we had been close— or at least I thought we were close. We grew up together in Cleveland and we both escaped to New York, where we were friends, sometimes neighbors, often confidantes, collaborators, drinking buddies....

"What they are saying is that because I don’t think surgery will turn a man into a woman I should not be allowed to speak anywhere."

Said Germaine Greer.

Addressing claims that she had been hurtful towards transgender women, Greer added: “People are being hurtful to me all the time. Try being an old woman. For goodness sake, people get hurt all the time. I’m not about to walk on eggshells.”...

Asked about the petition [to stop her from speaking at Cardiff University, she said]: “I don’t really know what I think of it. It strikes me as a bit of a put-up job really because I am not even going to talk about the issue that they are on about."

The link goes to The Guardian, where the article is illustrated by a photo of Greer, in fully wrinkled old-lady form, next to a photo of Caitlyn Jenner that's been photoshopped beyond recognition to the point of looking like a 30-year-old. 

More here: "I don’t expect people to agree with me. On the other hand, I don’t expect them to throw things at me.... I just don’t think that surgery turns a man into a woman. A perfectly permissable view. I mean, an un-man is not necessarily a woman. We don’t really know what women are and I think that a lot of women are female impersonators, because our notion of who we are is not authentic, and so I am not surprised men are better at impersonating women than women are. Not a surprise, but it’s not something I welcome."

I'm especially interested in the propositions: 1. "We don’t really know what women are," and 2. "a lot of women are female impersonators." And, by the way, once you have this level of skepticism, the opinion about transgender people becomes almost meaningless. Greer doesn't seem ready to concede even that women are women.

AND: Elsewhere in The Guardian today, there's "From Twiggy to Germaine Greer: eight classic images of powerful women/The Design Museum’s new exhibition, Women Fashion Power, about the way influential women wear clothes opens on Wednesday. Here, from Twiggy in a trouser suit to the high-shine shoulderpads of Dynasty, eight women write about the most eye-catching looks in the show." The photo of Greer shows her at the age of about 36. The text is fully celebratory:
Click for more »

"These days, at least in liberal enclaves, a girl who likes baseball or wants her hair cut short is more likely to be called 'gender-nonconformist' or 'gender-expansive'..."

"... with any suggestion that she’ll grow out of such behaviors suspect as evidence of condemning rather than honoring them. She may be applauded for transcending another paradigm (the dread princess, with her ball gowns, glitter and wands) or monitored closely for signs to her adult orientation."

From a NYT article "Where Have All the Tomboys Gone?" Is there something wrong with the word (or the idea of) "tomboy" (or something good that should be revived)? I think it's better to use a word that expresses what we are seeing in the way a young girl looks and acts as she is now, than to be making predictions about what she'll do later on in life, especially if we're jumping into visualizations of her future sexual preferences and activities. It's creepy to impose adult templates. Leave the child to her freedom and personal privacy. Let children be children.

That doesn't mean you have to say the word "tomboy," which could be objected to because it's calling the girl a "tom" and a "boy," saying she's somehow male. It was a lighthearted word in the old days, and maybe for some it still is, but wearing comfortable playclothes and engaging in sports doesn't need to be associated with maleness. I'd step back and not go all gender-y with children. Let them be individuals and try to support whatever healthy, positive interests and attributes they find for themselves.

ADDED: Proofreading this post, I think I sound absurdly, flat-footedly sensible. The answers here seem so obvious to me. I don't know why so much discussion is needed.