Recently, the Obama Administration mandated a new policy, aimed at cracking down on “discrimination” in public schools. The decree states that, because it is discriminatory to maintain policies that segregate boys and girls from school locker rooms, showers, and bathrooms, and any school found to discriminate against students is subject to removal of federal funding.
This move has met fierce resistance nationally, from parents and students alike, even prompting a group of Medford, Oregon students to skip school in protest.
The Family Policy Institute of Washington has signed onto a letter to Congressional leadership asking them to respond swiftly to the Obama Administration’s overreach. The letter asks Congress to:
Formally oppose the mandate
Side with states, families, and schools in litigation
Hold hearings and summon the Department of Education and Department of Justice
Draft legislation that reins in the DOE/DOJ’s overreach, and hold a vote quickly
FPIW joins a long list of other organizations in signing the letter, which you can read in its entirety here.
Add your name to the list of people telling President Obama to mind his own bathroom!
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FPIW’s newest ‘College Kids Say the Darndest Things‘ video was featured Wednesday night on FoxNews’ The O’Reilly Factor. You can watch the segment with Bill O’Reilly and comedian Dennis Miller below:
The video then made its way to National Review Online, where columnist David French wrote, “…it’s hard to deny reality, but these students give it a valiant effort. And to think — this nonsense now has the force of law, sanctioned as objective “fact” by the Department of Justice. It didn’t take long for progressives to lose their minds.
Across video platforms, the College Kids Say the Darndest Thingsseries has reached over 3 million people since mid-April. You can watch the first episode (on identity) and second episode (on gender) below:
You can help us fund the next episode by clicking here: wafami.ly/1OtsOX2.
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May 13, 2016 (LYNNWOOD) — Following the Obama Administration’s issuance of threats to public schools not adhering to the new guidelines and interpretation of Title IX of the Civil Rights Act, FPIW Executive Director Joseph Backholm made this statement:
“The President’s behavior is lawless. If the United States wants a law that forces grade schools, middle schools, and high school to allow boys into the girls locker room, that’s something the Congress would do, not the President. Even if it were lawful, every parent should be concerned that the President just threatened to intentionally diminish the quality of public education by way of removing funding unless we start forcing girls to share locker rooms with boys at school.”
Joseph Backholm is available for comments and interviews Friday afternoon. Please contact FPIW’s offices at (425) 609-0242 or email Zach Freeman at zach@fpiw.org to schedule an interview.
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Last month, I interviewed some students at the University of Washington discussing identity in the context of the recent debate over bathrooms. It was published in video form as College Kids Say the Darndest Things. The response to this video has been diverse, as you would expect it to be.
Today, however, I received maybe my favorite response of all from someone named Katie W., who claims to be a graduate student at the University of Washington.
Here it is.
To Whom is [sic] May Concern,
I am a graduate student at the University of Washington. I recently viewed a video in which the director of your ‘institute’ interviewed students on my school’s campus and was extremely disturbed. I came to this website to read his bio and was further concerned by the work that he and this group are attempting to accomplish.
Perhaps you should take another view of your own video, 5’9 white guy, in an attempt to hear what these young people are trying to say about identity, their opinions are much more developed and thought out an than your fixed idea of how people are allowed to be.
I’m unsure if you have taken any kind of history class, or learned about how Western civilization has been developed, but white dudes like yourself have been attempting to control and fix identities for a pretty long time. And this video is a clear example of the anxiety they begin to feel when human beings push the borders of their attempted control.
I would encourage you to do some anti-oppression race and gender training, maybe led by someone who in not a straight white man. There are other people in the world that have allowed themselves to think outside your boundaries. Even though that gives you extreme fear, anxiety, discomfort, they still get to be alive, and surprise: their lives and being are still valuable.
The questions you pose in these videos deserve thought, attention, and reflexivity. The way you present the issue of identity is a reductionist attempt at control.
Signed,
Katie W.
The thing Katie and I agree on is that we were both “extremely disturbed” by what we witnessed, but for different reasons.
It appears that merely questioning the wisdom of logic that allows anyone to be whatever they want whenever they want is simply a “reductionist attempt to control.”
Apparently, this is what we learn in grad school.
https://www.fpiw.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/UW-Library.jpg6831024Joseph Backholmhttps://www.fpiw.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/lighthouse_web-180x180.pngJoseph Backholm2016-05-12 09:13:172016-05-12 16:27:41'Disturbed' UW Grad Student Angry Over FPIW Video
FPIW Communications Director Zachary Freeman will appear tonight on Nolan LIVE, a late-night talk program on BBC One in Northern Ireland. The live broadcast will take place at 10:45pm GMT (3:45pm PT).
If you aren’t able to watch the program live, you can catch the segment following the broadcast on the BBC, and on our Facebook page Thursday morning.
Zachary will join award-winning host Stephen Nolan for a discussion of transgenderism, and give some insight into the first episode of FPIW’s viral video series, College Kids Say the Darndest Things.
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The second episode in FPIW’s wildly popular College Kids Say the Darndest Things series launched Monday afternoon, just hours after the federal government inserted themselves into the battle between the unrealistic social justice agenda and biological science.
This episode, filmed near Seattle University, a Jesuit private school, asks college students if there is a difference between men and women. Some of the answers are hilarious, bizarre, and alarming. Is this really what our institutions of higher education are teaching?
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May 9, 2016 (LYNNWOOD) — Governor Pat McCrory has taken a strong stand for safety, privacy, and common sense in North Carolina. The Obama Administration’s baseless overreach into the state should serve as a warning to those in the other 37 states with laws like North Carolina’s: that the Obama Administration intends to push this radical agenda at all costs, regardless of the violations of safety and privacy for women and children.
Following the filing of North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory’s lawsuit against the Department of Justice, in defense of HB 2, FPIW’s Executive Director Joseph Backholm released this statement:
“This may be the best example of government overreach in the history of government overreach. Once the federal government is trying to force local schools to allow boys into the girls locker room, you know government is out of hand.
How can you encourage young people to stop bullying when you tell those same young people that you’re going to take away their education funding unless they allow students of the opposite sex into the locker room with them?
These changes to the Civil Rights Laws that the Obama Administration is pushing have been proposed and rejected in Congress for years. The Executive Branch does not have the authority to change the Civil Rights Act of 1964 on its own, but that’s precisely what they are claiming to have done. They are arguing that the Civil Rights Act intended to give men access to women’s locker rooms by declaring themselves to be women and they’re threatening to stop educating children unless states agree. Enough is enough.”
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The next installment in FPIW’s wildly popular College Kids Say the Darndest Things series will be released on Monday, May 9th at 7:00pm Eastern/4:00 pm Pacific.
The first episode of the series, which aims to generate conversation about some of the most pressing issues in our culture, has been played more than 2.1 million times in over 220 countries. In the episode, filmed on campus at the University of Washington in Seattle, FPIW Executive Director Joseph Backholm asked students questions about identity; specifically, whether or not he should be able to identify as a 6’5″ Chinese woman. The answers he got were both hilarious and highly concerning. If you haven’t seen it yet, check it out here.
Episode 2 was filmed near Seattle University, a private, Jesuit Catholic school located about three miles from the University of Washington. In it, Joseph, a law-school alumnus of Seattle University, asks students about the difference between men and women. Like in the first episode, the answers are hilarious, but also highlight the strange world view students are being taught by the academic establishment — both in secular and faith-based institutions.
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In case you haven’t had a chance to see it, you can see the video and the transcript below.
Transcript
Joseph Backholm: There’s been a lot of talk about identity lately. But how far does it go, and is it possible to be wrong? We went to the University of Washington to find out.
Backholm, to student: Are you aware of the debate happening in Washington State around the ability access bathrooms, locker rooms, spas, based on gender identity and gender expression?
Student 1: I think people should be able to have access to the facility…
Student 2: I think bathrooms could and potentially should be gender-neutral because there doesn’t need to be a classification for differences…
Student 3: I think people definitely should have the ability to go into whichever locker room they want…
Student 4: Uh, I feel like at least public universities should try and do their best to accommodate for those who do not have a specific gender identity…
Student 5: You know, whether you identify as male or female and whether your sex at birth is matching to that, you should be able to utilize the resources…
Backholm: So if I told you I was a woman, what would your response be?
Student 6: (shrugs shoulders) Good for you, okay! Like, yeah!
Student 2: Nice to meet you…
Student 7: I’d be like…what? Really?
Student 8: I don’t have a problem with it…
Student 4: I’d ask you how you came to that conclusion…
Backholm: If I told you that I was Chinese, what would your response be?
Student 6: I mean I might be a little surprised but I’d say, like, good for you! Yeah, be who you are!
Student 3: I would maybe think you had some Chinese ancestor?
Student 4: I would ask you how you came to that conclusion and why you came to that conclusion…
Student 5: Um, I would have a lot of questions (laughing), just because on the outside, I would assume that you are a white man…
Backholm: If I told you that I was seven years old, what would your response be?
Student 6: (struggles to answer)
Student 3: Um, I wouldn’t believe that immediately…
Student 1: Uh, I probably wouldn’t believe it but I mean, it wouldn’t really bother me that much to go out of my way and tell you, “no, you’re wrong.” I’d just be like, “oh, okay, he wants to say he’s seven years old…”
Student 6: If you feel seven at heart, then…so be it, yeah! Good for you.
Backholm: So if I wanted to enroll in a first grade class, do you think I should be allowed to?
Student 1: Uh, probably…not, I guess? I mean, unless you haven’t completed first grade up to this point and for some reason need to do that now…
Student 6: If that where you feel mentally you should be then, I feel like there are communities that would accept you for that…
Student 4: I would say so long as you’re not hindering society, and you’re not causing harm to other people, I feel like that should be an okay thing…
Backholm, If I told you that I am six feet, five inches tall, what would you say?
Student 8: (long pause)
Student 5: Now that, I would question…
Backholm: Why?
Student 5: Because you’re not… (laughing) No, I don’t think you’re six foot five.
Student 3: If you truly believe you’re 6’5”, I don’t think it’s harmful…I think it’s fine if you believe that…it doesn’t matter to me if you…think you’re taller than you are.
Backholm: So you’d be willing to tell me I’m wrong?
Student 3: I wouldn’t tell you you’re wrong…
Student 8: No, but I’d say that I don’t think that you are…
Student 6: I feel like that’s not my place, as like another human, to say someone is wrong or to draw lines or boundaries…
Student 1: No, I mean, I wouldn’t just go like, “oh, you’re wrong and it’s wrong to believe in it,” because again, it doesn’t really bother me how you want to think about your height or anything…
Backholm: So, I can be a Chinese woman…?
Student 5: (laughing) Um, sure…
Backholm: But I can’t be a 6’5” Chinese woman?
Student 5: (long pause) Yes…
Student 4: If you thoroughly debated me or explained why you felt that you were six foot five, I feel like I would be very open to saying that you are six foot five…or Chinese…or a woman.
Backholm: It shouldn’t be hard to tell a 5’9” white guy that he’s not a 6’5” Chinese woman, but clearly, it is. Why? What does that say about our culture? And what does that say about our ability to answer questions that actually are difficult?
Closing slide: If you stand for nothing, you’ll fall for anything.
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I’ve just seen your interesting interviews with “nonjudgmental” students at the University of Washington.
Your question about our ability to answer the questions that really are difficult remains up in the air, but I can tell you that people can’t deal with life-and-death issues even when someone’s life is at stake.
While teaching linguistics at a university in Michigan, I routinely had young damsels walking up to me after class from a group of 85 students to ask for personal advice.
One of them had been sleeping in the bed with a drug addicted boyfriend whom her parents had inexplicably allowed to move in when she was a teenager. Now she wanted to get him out, but she couldn’t. I gave her my best advice and the courage to kick him out. (More than courage, I gave her the realistic fear of how things may end up if he didn’t.)
Another one had become the “girlfriend” of a procurer and pornographer who took a class or two on campus so that he could recruit women for his operation. He had falsely convinced her he was “protecting” her from the sex industry, when in fact, he was following all the steps routinely used to break a woman into prostitution or pornography. At this point, he was at the step of trying to create an obligation that she could not earn enough in a normal way to pay back. I blew the lid off the whole thing for her and told her how to get away from the guy, which she did.
Now, the question is, why were these girls going to their professor with this? Why not a counselor or even a friend?
The reason, they told me, was that nobody in their lives, but me, would be judgmental.
Even when a young woman’s life was in danger, nobody did anything more than encourage her to clarify her feelings, and some even encouraged the one girl to discuss her concerns with the pornographer to find out how he felt!
So people now can’t make judgments even when it’s necessary.
Signed,
[Professor K.]
In case you missed it, here’s the video everyone has been talking about.
If you’d like to support more projects like the video series, shown above, please click here to link arms with us.
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