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Culture War Roundup for the week of April 24, 2023

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I am confident the general phenomena of "student tells a trusted teacher information the student doesn't want their parents to know and the teacher keeps that confidence" is a phenomena as old as teachers and students. What information students confide changes over the time but I don't think this is a new phenomenon or status quo.

This is the typical shuffle. In the past there were much more lax child safety laws, which could lead to a child getting beaten by his father for wanting to join the chess club instead of rugby, or for doing home ec instead of shop. This was considered a bad thing and rightly so.

Now if you so much as flinch at the idea of a bunch of barren authoritarian busybodies parenting your child in secret into destroying their life so we can tweet about making a difference, we can point back at those dads beating kids for not playing rugby and call you a danger to your child, and then quietly smile as your brains tears itself in two between overwhelming rage at the travesty of justice that is likening your shocked reaction to the discovery of betrayal to mercilessly beating your child, and overwhelming heartbreak at the realisation that this scum has actually convinced your child that you are a monster. And you have zero recourse, you either roll over and give them what they want, or you explode, and they take what they want.

And then if we talk to the unsympathetic we just have to pretend we actually think it's the same, even if we have demonstrated sufficient intelligence and self awareness in the past to make such a confusion impossible.

I guess I don't agree. Either that telling parents is more generally the "safer" option or that mildly anti-LGBT parents would be more outraged about their child's transition being hidden than more strongly anti-LGBT parents.

Yes of course a mildly opposed person will be less outraged than a strongly opposed person, but that was never in dispute. The question is if it's safer for teachers to lie to parents and transition kids behind their backs than to just tell them upfront. Because I guess in my perspective that is the literal definition of grooming.