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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?
The unsafe part makes little sense to me, because the argument is that the parents are inclined to be abusive, so if the child comes out as transgender this would trigger abuse. But then what about the rest of the time? Is the child not at risk of abuse for other reasons (parents are neglectful, parents put too much pressure on to achieve academic or sporting success, parents are emotionally cruel)?
It only makes sense in the context of "the parents are fine except that they will be upset to learn this and will deny that the child is transgender and will use the deadname and try and force the child to conform to natal gender", and that "not affirming that Johnny is now Susie" is abuse of a serious kind.
Then you're asking the child and everybody else to hide this for however many years (from the age of 12 to 18 until Susie is legally an adult? that will never have any slip-up about it or it won't come out some other way) and I don't think that's workable.
It's difficult because yeah, probably are some genuinely transgender kids out there and yeah, parents who would lose it and try and force the kid to be Johnny not Susie, so you have to do what is in the best interests of the child. But on the other hand - the school committing to lie to the parents that 'Johnny' is doing okay in 'his' maths class, while at school they refer to Susie as 'she' and 'her' and help her change into her girl clothes and use the girls' bathroom - like I said, some kid is going to mention this to their parents and then the cat is out of the bag and now the parents can't trust a word from the school ever again because what else were they doing? Were they going to hook Susie up with a doctor to prescribe puberty blockers without parental knowledge or consent? What?
There is the obligation on teachers to be mandatory reporters if they suspect child abuse; I don't think you can manage to have "I think the parents would be abusive so we'll keep it all hush-hush but we won't report to the authorities as we are supposed to do, either" as a workable solution.
I think they would see it as either that, or avoiding providing ammunition to already abusive parents. But from that point of view they might as well keep grades secret because abusive parents can be triggered by those too.
I think that mode lines up more with the common cultural meme which is to basically assume abuse until proven otherwise along certain power differentials. The "raised by narcissists" worldview that looks at this on the parent-child angle hasn't really gone mainstream but I think is guiding a lot of the left-wing agenda around kids under the surface.
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