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My main objections are to the following points: - Specifically calling out protecting "conservative ideas" in their section on creating an "intellectually open

My main objections are to the following points: - Specifically calling out protecting "conservative ideas" in their section on creating an "intellectually open campus environment". This is a dog whistle that makes it patently clear which viewpoints will be protected, and which won't. See what happened to Mahmoud Khalil for a recent example of how this will work in practice. - Preventing admissions of foreign students based on "hostility to America or our allies", which is obviously an attempt to silence dissent. Who is responsible for defining what "hostility" means? If a foreign student supports boycotting Israel due to their ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people, would they be barred from admission to an American university? I would contend that threatening to annex Canada and Greenland constitutes "hostility to American allies", but since those talking points are being espoused by the sitting president, it stands to reason that this administration's justice department wouldn't intervene to prevent a potential student with similar views from from admitted to an American school. - Forcing institutions to define bathroom usage criteria based on biological sex. Putting aside for a moment the fact that this is a blatant attempt to humiliate trans people -- how does this work in practice? Do you hire someone to stand at every bathroom door and prevent people from entering if they don't fit your notion of what that gender is "supposed" to look like? Do you demand identity documents before letting someone use the toilet? There are plenty of videos online of cisgender people being accosted in the bathroom that aligns with their biological sex simply because other people _assume_ based on their appearance that they are trans.

clessed 1y ago
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- baked_beanz 1y ago
  More Republican politicians have been convicted of sexual misconduct in bathrooms than trans people. Perhaps we can start with the real issue, and ban them from public bathrooms first? Remember, facts don't care about your feelings! Source: https://www.complex.com/life/a/amanda-wicks/republican-legislators-arrested-for-bathroom-misconduct https://www.complex.com/life/a/amanda-wicks/republican-legis...
  - desselc 1y ago
    Bathrooms aren't segregated by the political party one might belong to, so really your comment is an irrelevant aside.
- joshuamorton 1y ago
  > No, the expectation is that people will respect boundaries and voluntarily stay out of the single-sex spaces they have no right to be in. So currently, these people have the right to be in these spaces (whether or not you disagree that they should, legally, they do), the expectation would, I assume, be that people will respect boundaries and not accost people based on assumptions about their genitals. And yet as GP said: > There are plenty of videos online of cisgender people being accosted in the bathroom that aligns with their biological sex simply because other people _assume_ based on their appearance that they are trans. Why would we expect people who are currently accosting people who are in the right place to respect them more when there is additional legal justification to harass them? Perhaps phrased differently: would you support legal repercussions for someone who falsely or incorrectly reports someone as using an "incorrect" bathroom? If the assumption is that everyone is following the boundaries of these spaces, then breaking that assumption is, bad faith and grounds for a complaint of harassment. You'd agree?
  - clessed 1y ago
    If the policy of MIT or any other institution states that certain spaces are designated as single-sex only, then no, people of the opposite sex do not have the right to use these spaces. I don't expect people to have a problem with understanding this, in practice. It's really not that difficult to understand what sex you are and where you're allowed to be. Children learn this quite early on. (Edit: My account is now rate-limited because of downvotes, so I can't reply to any responses. However I would like to point out that if MIT is currently allowing staff and students to use single-sex spaces that are designated for the opposite sex, this is very likely to be a Title IX violation. Unfortunately, sexism is rife in institutions of higher education, and MIT is no exception.)
    - joshuamorton 1y ago
      > If the policy of MIT or any other institution states that certain spaces are designated as single-sex only, then no, people of the opposite sex do not have the right to use these spaces. Correct, but this is not MIT's policy today, responding to your edit, I do not believe your understanding of title IX is correct, See [0]. >I don't expect people to have a problem with understanding this, in practice. It's really not that difficult to understand what sex you are and where you're allowed to be. Children learn this quite early on. But in places that do have such policies, people who are using the correct bathroom get harassed. Given that you assume this is easy to understand (and I think I agree), would you support laws that codify harassing people about using the incorrect bathroom as criminal, given that you assume these don't need enforcement, we should discourage vigilantism, right? [0]: https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/LSB10953 https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/LSB10953 suggests that there is a circuit split on whether policies banning students from using gender-identity matching bathrooms would be a Title IX violation, with the 4th and 7th circuits saying that disallowing students from using their preferred bathrooms is a violation, and the 11th saying it is not. Currently there is no circuit split around the opposite question: the 3rd and 9th (and presumably also the 4th and 7th) circuits agree that allowing students to use gender-identity matching bathrooms would not be a Title IX violation, and the 11th Circuit's argument doesn't appear to preclude to a school or district choosing to allow gender-segregated bathrooms, it just allows sex-segregated bathrooms. MIT is under the 1st circuit and I can't find any federal cases at the district level, so it is technically not required to act in any particular way, but given other circuit precedent (and, I think, supreme court precedent under Bostock which says basically the same thing for title VII), I would suspect your interpretation would open MIT to legal risk.
kjksf 1y ago
Your "I don't know what words mean" is very selective. So you don't know what "hostile to US" means. Do you know what "Unwelcome verbal, nonverbal, or physical conduct based on protected characteristics" means? This is one of the many vague prescriptions in MIT code of conduct. If I make a sour face at a gay person, is it "unwelcome nonverbal conduct"? Should I be punished for that? But not punished for shouting "from the river to the sea" i.e. demanding annihilation of Israel? Is your argument that we should just scrap all code of conducts because it is by nature open to interpretation? Or you just object to those that tickle your politics?
kjksf 1y ago
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- deleted 1y ago
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- dem_bones_ 1y ago
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- TimorousBestie 1y ago
  > And if someone violates that rule and is reported, they need to punish that person appropriately, just as they punish for any other violation of stated rules and regulations. So how and where exactly is it established that a violation has occurred? If not Seal Team Six and DNA testing (the latter wouldn’t solve the problem conclusively in any case). How exactly are you, random bystander, supposed to know if an arbitrary stranger is male or female? Real people get this judgment wrong about cisgendered strangers all the time, this isn’t a hypothetical. See sibling comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45543644 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45543644 for a list of cited examples. Do you intend for the accused to display their genitals as an affirmative defense? To whom? Is every random accusation going to cause an interaction with the police and a gross violation of privacy? Because that’s what it sounds like you’re suggesting here.
  - asighn 1y ago
    What's with this bizarre fantasy that humans can't distinguish the sex of other humans? It has to be the most stupid of all the trans activist arguments.

clessed 1y ago

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baked_beanz 1y ago
More Republican politicians have been convicted of sexual misconduct in bathrooms than trans people. Perhaps we can start with the real issue, and ban them from public bathrooms first? Remember, facts don't care about your feelings! Source: https://www.complex.com/life/a/amanda-wicks/republican-legislators-arrested-for-bathroom-misconduct https://www.complex.com/life/a/amanda-wicks/republican-legis...
- desselc 1y ago
  Bathrooms aren't segregated by the political party one might belong to, so really your comment is an irrelevant aside.
joshuamorton 1y ago
> No, the expectation is that people will respect boundaries and voluntarily stay out of the single-sex spaces they have no right to be in. So currently, these people have the right to be in these spaces (whether or not you disagree that they should, legally, they do), the expectation would, I assume, be that people will respect boundaries and not accost people based on assumptions about their genitals. And yet as GP said: > There are plenty of videos online of cisgender people being accosted in the bathroom that aligns with their biological sex simply because other people _assume_ based on their appearance that they are trans. Why would we expect people who are currently accosting people who are in the right place to respect them more when there is additional legal justification to harass them? Perhaps phrased differently: would you support legal repercussions for someone who falsely or incorrectly reports someone as using an "incorrect" bathroom? If the assumption is that everyone is following the boundaries of these spaces, then breaking that assumption is, bad faith and grounds for a complaint of harassment. You'd agree?
- clessed 1y ago
  If the policy of MIT or any other institution states that certain spaces are designated as single-sex only, then no, people of the opposite sex do not have the right to use these spaces. I don't expect people to have a problem with understanding this, in practice. It's really not that difficult to understand what sex you are and where you're allowed to be. Children learn this quite early on. (Edit: My account is now rate-limited because of downvotes, so I can't reply to any responses. However I would like to point out that if MIT is currently allowing staff and students to use single-sex spaces that are designated for the opposite sex, this is very likely to be a Title IX violation. Unfortunately, sexism is rife in institutions of higher education, and MIT is no exception.)
  - joshuamorton 1y ago
    > If the policy of MIT or any other institution states that certain spaces are designated as single-sex only, then no, people of the opposite sex do not have the right to use these spaces. Correct, but this is not MIT's policy today, responding to your edit, I do not believe your understanding of title IX is correct, See [0]. >I don't expect people to have a problem with understanding this, in practice. It's really not that difficult to understand what sex you are and where you're allowed to be. Children learn this quite early on. But in places that do have such policies, people who are using the correct bathroom get harassed. Given that you assume this is easy to understand (and I think I agree), would you support laws that codify harassing people about using the incorrect bathroom as criminal, given that you assume these don't need enforcement, we should discourage vigilantism, right? [0]: https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/LSB10953 https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/LSB10953 suggests that there is a circuit split on whether policies banning students from using gender-identity matching bathrooms would be a Title IX violation, with the 4th and 7th circuits saying that disallowing students from using their preferred bathrooms is a violation, and the 11th saying it is not. Currently there is no circuit split around the opposite question: the 3rd and 9th (and presumably also the 4th and 7th) circuits agree that allowing students to use gender-identity matching bathrooms would not be a Title IX violation, and the 11th Circuit's argument doesn't appear to preclude to a school or district choosing to allow gender-segregated bathrooms, it just allows sex-segregated bathrooms. MIT is under the 1st circuit and I can't find any federal cases at the district level, so it is technically not required to act in any particular way, but given other circuit precedent (and, I think, supreme court precedent under Bostock which says basically the same thing for title VII), I would suspect your interpretation would open MIT to legal risk.

kjksf 1y ago

Your "I don't know what words mean" is very selective. So you don't know what "hostile to US" means. Do you know what "Unwelcome verbal, nonverbal, or physical conduct based on protected characteristics" means? This is one of the many vague prescriptions in MIT code of conduct. If I make a sour face at a gay person, is it "unwelcome nonverbal conduct"? Should I be punished for that? But not punished for shouting "from the river to the sea" i.e. demanding annihilation of Israel? Is your argument that we should just scrap all code of conducts because it is by nature open to interpretation? Or you just object to those that tickle your politics?

kjksf 1y ago

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deleted 1y ago
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dem_bones_ 1y ago
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TimorousBestie 1y ago
> And if someone violates that rule and is reported, they need to punish that person appropriately, just as they punish for any other violation of stated rules and regulations. So how and where exactly is it established that a violation has occurred? If not Seal Team Six and DNA testing (the latter wouldn’t solve the problem conclusively in any case). How exactly are you, random bystander, supposed to know if an arbitrary stranger is male or female? Real people get this judgment wrong about cisgendered strangers all the time, this isn’t a hypothetical. See sibling comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45543644 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45543644 for a list of cited examples. Do you intend for the accused to display their genitals as an affirmative defense? To whom? Is every random accusation going to cause an interaction with the police and a gross violation of privacy? Because that’s what it sounds like you’re suggesting here.
- asighn 1y ago
  What's with this bizarre fantasy that humans can't distinguish the sex of other humans? It has to be the most stupid of all the trans activist arguments.