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PaperclipPerfector  8mo ago (text post)   28360 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 28, 2023

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How do you ensure that a piece of information is simultaneously public and secret? I have no idea, but I hope that someone can explain a reliable strategy because this story makes no sense in its absence.

EDIT: link to the policy in question.

TL;DR: The government of Saskatchewan just enacted a new policy that affects "preferred names" and pronouns for younger students (along with some other changes, which I'll skip over). It requires that teachers obtain parental consent before using new names/pronouns for students under 16 years old. The criticism is focused on two claims: First, being "out" is important. Second, it can be unsafe if a parent learns that their child is transgender.

The first claim has already been argued to death, and there's nothing new in this story.

The second claim is just bizarre in this context. What do they expect would happen in the absence of the new policy? Everybody starts using the child's new names/pronouns in everything from casual conversations to official reports...and the parents don't notice for >2 years?

If I knew that a child had information that could be dangerous if it got into the wrong hands, I wouldn't encourage them to spread it far and wide. In fact, I'd direct them to a professional that would help them to develop a strategy that minimized the damage from its release, or else cope with maintaining the burden of secrecy.

But maybe I'm missing something, so I'll repeat my question: how do you ensure that a piece of information is simultaneously public and secret?

Ahhh the Schrödinger parents - always knows what's best for their child if they decide to transition it, have absolutely no clue what's best for their child if there is any chance to oppose transition ...

Are you aware that psychologists and doctors are involved in this process?

The #1 institution in the world for convincing people not to transition is gender care clinics. Only a tiny fraction of people who come in for an initial consultation end up medically transitioning; most are dissuaded after talking to psychologists and doctors about whether it's actually the best path for them.

  • -26

The parents can only bring the kid to the gender care clinic if they know what is going on; the school conspiring to keep this all a secret from them means they don't know.

How long do we expect this to be true? The obvious continuation of the logic is for schools to provide sex changes gender care behind parents’ backs. They already do it with abortion.

They already do it with abortion.

How's this now?

If you are covered under someone else's medical plan (like your parents) and you don't want them to find out, information on abortions for teenagers is always kept confidential by the BC Ministry of Health.

I guess it’s not technically the school providing it. But if a pregnant student walks into the school counselor‘s office, what do you think happens next?

Right, and the kid should certainly tell their parents if they think it's reasonably safe to do so.

Teachers should certainly talk to kids about telling their parents and help them determine whether it's safe and encourage them to do so if it is.

But having the state step in front of that individual judgement and make a blanket policy for everyone will cause a lot of problems. As per usual for state overreach into personal lives.

Then again, teaching kids postmodernist theories of identity in compulsory schools is an even bigger overreach into personal lives. Arguably compulsory schooling itself is. Given that we already live in a world where both of these things happen as a matter of course, what is the argument for stopping the overreach at informing the parents about their children's behavior in school?

Then again, teaching kids postmodernist theories of identity in compulsory schools is an even bigger overreach into personal lives.

First of all, no, teaching ideas is not a hostile act. If it is then we would need to have a serious conversation about teaching religion, and everything else.

Second, what exactly is it that you imagine is happening in schools? I'm sure schools in California have library books that talk about gender, and maybe as many as some kids have ever read them, but it's not going to be in the curriculum or on a test or anything.

what is the argument for stopping the overreach at informing the parents about their children's behavior in school?

Two wrongs don't make a right, I guess?

Doing a bad thing doesn't become good just because you're also doing a second bad thing. I'm not sure what argument you're really trying to make here.

  • -16

First of all, no, teaching ideas is not a hostile act. If it is then we would need to have a serious conversation about teaching religion, and everything else.

If this is actually your position, would you object to courses teaching about the importance of white identity, the countless benefits ADOS received from being brought to America as opposed to kept in Africa, the science behind HBD theories and the pivotal role played by the republican party in ending slavery?

Teaching certain ideas is, in my opinion at least, absolutely a hostile act.

There's a big difference between 'I might object to this as stupid' and 'This is not literally worse than child abuse.'

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Second, what exactly is it that you imagine is happening in schools? I'm sure schools in California have library books that talk about gender, and maybe as many as some kids have ever read them, but it's not going to be in the curriculum or on a test or anything.

My district uses FLASH to teach sex ed. Here's a sample lesson plan: https://cdn.kingcounty.gov/-/media/king-county/depts/dph/documents/health-safety/health-programs-services/sexual-health-education/elementary/es02-family.pdf

Here's a relevant snippet:

Gender identity refers to whether a person feels like a boy, a girl, both, neither or somewhere in between. A person knows their gender identity because of how they feel, not because of their body parts. Some gender identities include boy, girl, trans, and non-binary. You can’t know what a person’s gender identity is by looking at them, or by how they dress. When a person’s gender identity is different from what the doctor said when they were born, that person might say they are transgender, or just trans. When a person’s gender identity is the same as what the doctor said when they were born, that’s called being cisgender.

Every person has a sexual orientation and a gender identity, and kids’ families are made up of people who are of all different sexual orientations and gender identities.

This lesson is something that 41% of Americans, including 18% of Democrats, think shouldn't be taught in public schools: https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2022/06/28/americans-complex-views-on-gender-identity-and-transgender-issues/

If it is then we would need to have a serious conversation about teaching religion, and everything else.

I, too, remember the popular political refrain of "it's like ramming your dick down my kid's throat" of 2010.

Of course, the same thing applies to other newly-protected characteristics like, well, sexuality; said dick-ramming happens to be a bit more literal these days.

A government that protects characteristics is, by the reasoning behind protective characteristics, not to then start "affirming" some characteristics over others. The Progress flag and the Christian cross belong in equal measure in government: completely absent.

Oh being cis and straight is absolutely affirmed by schools every minute of every day.

Like a fish in water, it's so common that you don't notice it until it's absent for a moment.

  • -14
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First of all, no, teaching ideas is not a hostile act. If it is then we would need to have a serious conversation about teaching religion, and everything else.

It absolutely can be a hostile act. To go with your religion example, teaching the idea "Jesus Christ is Lord" to Jewish or Muslim students would be a hostile act. By contrast teaching "there are people who believe that Jesus Christ is Lord" would not be, or at least most parents would agree that their kids are going to run into Christians sooner or later, and learning what they believe might help them navigate these interactions. On the other hand sometimes even teaching about an idea would be considered a hostile act. For example, I'm pretty sure many parents would be against having their children be told about the relationship between genetics, race, and IQ (myself included, funnily enough).

Second, what exactly is it that you imagine is happening in schools? I'm sure schools in California have library books that talk about gender, and maybe as many as some kids have ever read them, but it's not going to be in the curriculum or on a test or anything.

I imagine there are many schools draped in the progress flag, with walls covered in progressive slogans. I imagine that even if it's not officially in the curriculum, many teachers take the time to teach that we all have gender identity, and that it's possible for it to not fit your body, and combine that with lessons on privilege. And I imagine, like we discussed in the other thread, that some schools hide from the parents the fact that their children want to transition.

Two wrongs don't make a right, I guess?

Doing a bad thing doesn't become good just because you're also doing a second bad thing. I'm not sure what argument you're really trying to make here.

I think they can. Chemotherapy sans cancer is wrong, but is right when you do have it. The point I'm trying to make is that regulations forcing teachers to inform parents about their children's behavior in school is likely making the best of a bad situation, and there's no way to oppose them on "overreach" grounds.

First of all, no, teaching ideas is not a hostile act. If it is then we would need to have a serious conversation about teaching religion, and everything else.

Some ideas are sufficiently terrible that teaching them to impressionable children is a hostile act. For a nonpartisan example, let’s imagine that schools were teaching time cube(it does, after all, have about the same evidence as modern gender theory, albeit more poorly written). This would be recognized as a hostile act worth getting upset about even though as far as I know the only person who ever ruined his life over believing in time cube was Dr Gene Ray, the cubic and wisest human himself.

Trans is like that, except true believers have a strong tendency to mutilate themselves instead of just declaring themselves the wisest human and naming their personal website ‘abovegod.com’.

Yes, if a primary school curriculum ever has a unit test on the contents of abovegod.org, you will indeed have a valid point.

Until then, I still think you're crying wolf.

Partially by equivocating between very banal and anodyne discussion of what some people believe about gender being social and sex being biological vs the most extreme weird views of niche online trans content providers, and partially by massively overstating how common and central even that banal anodyne discussion is in schools.

And, again: if schools were teaching timecube, that would certainly be very stupid and something we'd want to fix. But it wouldn't be the same type of aggressive and dangerous action as creating a situation where your expected outcome is for a child to be abused by their parents. Violence is worse than speech even if the speech is bad.

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