High school boys weren’t culture war’s aggressors

By Chris Powell

According to a report in Connecticut’s Hearst newspapers, the recent destruction of a feminine hygiene products dispenser that had been installed in a boys bathroom at Brookfield High School “ignited a culture war.”

But the “culture war” wasn’t ignited by the vandalism at all. It was ignited by the dispenser’s incongruous installation, which had been prompted by a requirement in a state law that is to take effect soon — a requirement that feminine hygiene dispensers must be installed in at least one boys bathroom in every public school, even as the products at issue also are to be made available in girls bathrooms and school offices. 

If this was “culture war,” the device’s installation was the aggression and its destruction was the defense.

The Hearst report got worse, portraying the device’s destruction as benighted opposition to making feminine hygiene products available to students without charge. But no one objected to the free distribution of those products. The objection was to the new law’s presumption that men can be women and women can be men if only they pretend hard enough, and that in the face of this pretense people should cheerfully surrender their longstanding right to gender privacy in bathrooms.

Of course vandalism should be punished, not celebrated, especially in this case, since the new law could have been protested far more effectively and legally. 

That is, the insulted male students could have played along with the law’s silly premise by taking one of the feminine hygiene products with them whenever they used the bathroom. Soon the dispenser would be empty and no school official could reprimand anyone about it without contradicting the law’s premise: that gender is just a state of mind and that one can be any gender one wants to be. No one could disprove that any boy pocketing a feminine hygiene product wasn’t feeling transgender that day.

The law here seems to have crept through the General Assembly without notice or debate. It should be debated, and could be if any legislator proposes amending it to remove the provision about boys bathrooms. Contrary to the Hearst report, feminine hygiene products would still be easily available to students without charge.

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TRUMP BAD, GANIM GOOD: Former President Donald Trump, being prosecuted for absconding with classified documents when he left the White House, is claiming to have been above the law when he was president, just as Richard Nixon claimed to be. In an interview with David Frost in 1977, the former burglar-in-chief ridiculously contended: “When the president does it, that means it is not illegal.”

But the prosecutions of Trump have become disproportionate to his offenses and thus have become persecutions, and his adversaries are blind to the ironies that are piling up.

After all, Trump only claims to be above the law. But his opponent in this year’s presidential election, President Biden, actually is above the law. For while Biden also absconded with classified documents after his vice presidency, a special prosecutor from the president’s own Justice Department has declined to bring charges against him because he is senile.

Biden has gotten away with exactly what Trump is being prosecuted for.

Democrats in Connecticut are especially blind to the ironies. Even as they have condemned Trump, last week on the eve of Bridgeport’s do-over election for mayor the state’s leading Democrats — Governor Lamont, Lt. Gov. Susan Bysiewicz, and U.S. Sens. Richard Blumenthal and Chris Murphy — went out of their way to endorse the re-election of Joe Ganim, who was convicted of 16 federal corruption charges and served seven years in prison for crimes committed during his first stint as mayor. 

How did the Democratic leaders rationalize their endorsement in light of that disgrace? Apparently they think Ganim is doing a good job, despite the absentee ballot box-stuffing his campaign undertook in the Democratic primary last year, the offense that brought about a second primary and election.

But rationalizing their support for Ganim may have been easier since no one in the press seems to have asked them about his crimes.

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Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years. (CPowell@cox.net) 

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