The Financial Times has an interesting article describing the latest college campus "victim group": so-called trans-gendered students. The piece focuses on the controversey at all-women Smith College, where it seems some of the girls want to be boys:

"If they want to be boys, they should go to a co-ed school," says one alumnus from the 1990s, who did not wish to be named for fear of being labelled intolerant."

If that isn't through the looking glass. A woman afraid to be named because the pro-tolerance crowd might not tolerate her.

We later learn about Hana Meadwell, a first-year transgender activist (that's right folks, (s)he's probably not more than 19 years of age), who fears Smith College is not liberal enough: "The negative side wonders why a man would want to go to a women's college or why he'd want to stay. They're uninformed."

Their you have it. If you people on the "negative side" think Smith should protect its all-women tradition, you are "uninformed." End of argument. Teenager wins, no further discussion needed.

In spite of Hana's contention that Smith doesn't "want to deal with the trans issue right now," the college has constructed "gender-neutral" bathrooms on campus. That sounds like "dealing" to me, particularly with the cost of construction these days.

If the ADA put pressure on floor plan efficiency by increasing the size of bathrooms (and believe me, it did), what will constructing a complete third class of bathrooms for transgendered people do? And rest assured, those bathrooms will have to accomodate disabled-transgendered individuals as well.

And don't think I'm Chicken Little on this nonsense - it's right in the article:

the activism of transgender students and their supporters raises complicated questions about the way we think about gender. Is it what we're born with or is it merely one of many roles we learn? Either transgender recognition is merely political correctness at its most extreme, or it represents the next crucial battle for civil rights.

Oh, lord, here we go. If gay marriage is controversial and divisive, what will transgendered marriage look like?