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Six months or three years can also be exceptionally damaging to a kid who is confused or being taking advantage of by others, be they teachers, peers, or otherwise. The idea that government employees would conceal information from parents about children is so horrifying to me. To talk casually about "buying" time for children to deceive their parents strikes me as deeply misguided.
There is good reason why people sometimes call this "grooming": because the most common kind of adult who keeps secrets about a child from that child's parents is someone who is taking advantage of that child for their own purposes, "grooming" them to some role. If I ever had a child whose teacher presumed to know better than me what was best for my child, that would not be a problem to lightly overlook. If this involved core aspects of my child's identity, I would seek that teacher's dismissal. If it involved my child's sex and sexuality, I would be willing to burn through substantial personal resources to impose serious and lasting costs beyond mere dismissal. I cannot imagine a reasonable and loving parent feeling otherwise. There is nothing so special about transsexual activism as to exempt it from these feelings, and that is why transsexual activism continues to be a catastrophically losing issue for Democrats who swing at that particular tar baby.
I understand that some parents are wrong about what is best for their children, and that some parents are abusive, and so on. But this does not meaningfully distinguish them from teachers, who are also often wrong, abusive, and so on--and teachers have less reason to love children and see to their best interests. As Aristotle notes in the Politics--"how much better it is to be the real cousin of somebody than to be a son after Plato's fashion!"
I have seen enough cases of ROGD, as well as the results of decisive parental action against ongoing ROGD, to believe that the evidence of my own eyes is that schools should absolutely never conceal relevant facts from parents. Not for six months; not for six days. Better that a few children face harsh discipline at home, than many be subjected, with the aid of government actors, to the (often, lifelong) suffering brought on by politically popular social contagions.
You seem to just be imagining teachers to be some type of demonic criminal bent on destroying children's lives, and the children (re: teenagers old enough to be considered adults in most human cultures throughout society) to be these entirely non-agentic dolls with no sense of their own life and no knowledge about what is actually best for themselves. This seems entirely alien to me and it's unlikely we will be able to agree on much when our priors about how the world works are this far apart.
In particular:
That is not what we are talking about. Teachers are not assigning children new pronouns against their will.
We are talking about children (again, primarily teens) knowing what is best for themselves, including what is best for their own safety.
It's an open question whether children do know better than their parents in any particular case, but the teacher isn't making any decisions here.
What is the difference between 'concealing information about' and 'not informing on'? Because it's not like we're talking about a law preventing teachers from giving parents information, even when the teacher wants to; we're talking about a law forcing teachers to give parents information, even when they don't want to.
So what is the line about which information teachers should be forced to notify parents about? Is it horrifying for teachers not to notify parents if they find out a student is gay? Is it horrifying for teachers not to inform parents if a teen starts dating someone? Is it horrifying for teachers not to inform parents if a teen is flirting with someone? Is it horrifying for teachers not to inform parents if a teen gets an erection in class?
My feeling is that their is no line, it is not a teacher's duty to be informants on the personal lives of their students. It is a teacher's duty to teach them, and being an informant for the state to their parents makes that harder to do. If a parent cares about their child's life then it is their job to find out about it, and if they've scared their child into thinking it is literally not physically safe to tell them something then that is the parent's fuck-up and they're not entitled to state-sponsored spy operations.
No, he isn’t. He’s arguing that teachers are no less likely to be wrong/abusive than parents. And they aren’t.
Read the rest of the comment though. Teachers aren't doing anything or making any decisions here, the children decide what they want and some teachers humor them to some degree if they are particularly indulgent or supportive.
The only question is whether the state should force teachers to inform on their kids to parents.
Sure, but early teens are idiots. The question is whether the teacher should decide whether to believe them or have to involve the parents, and the argument for the former rests on teachers being less likely to be wrong/abusive than parents.
I can buy that teachers in inner city schools catering to lowest common denominators are in that situation, but it just does not pass the smell test that this is the case for the average teacher vs average parent. And you’ll notice trans kids is not a phenomenon among the LCD’s, it’s an upper middle class contagion.
This seems like an odd equivocation.
There's no discussion of whether the parents or teachers are more likely to be abusive. If a teacher is abusive in the classroom they get fired, and besides the only teacher we're talking about here are the supportive ones who want to be good allies. The only abuse that is at question here is from the parents.
Similarly, we're not talking about who is more likely to be wrong here. The only concern is about abusive parents, not incorrect parents. We're trying to prevent abuse.
yes, in teh average case the student has already told their parents everything long before coming to the school with it.
In the average case, the parents are the ones making the request, because their child asked them to and convinced them it was the right thing to do.
We're not talking about the average case, we're talking about the case where a child is begging their school not to tell their parents because they think they'll be abused, and the school finds this plausible enough to go along with them.
Do you think that in those rare cases, it's still more likely that the student is wrong and the best thing for the student is for their parent to know?
'Among the demographic where parents are most likely to abuse their kids for coming out as trans, very few kids come out as trans' is maybe not the ringing endorsement of your position that you think it is.
No, you aren't. Even granting your premise that transgenderism is real, 99.9999999% of adolescent cases are just psychosomatic angst best treated with a stern "honey, you're wrong about this. Go look at yourself naked in the bathroom mirror to check your gender" and the goal is to prevent that approach.
Yes. Kids are stupid, transgenderism is made up, and the definition of 'abuse' in this case is just "calling mentally ill teens on their bullshit instead of letting them seriously harm themselves".
Few among demographics that have real problems come out as trans, yes.
Your entire argument seems to be 'I reject all empirical observations and assert my ideological position as true no matter what', which isn't really an argument that can be engaged with.
I could spend a half hour writing a wall of text about what social constructs are and how the categories are made for man and so forth, but it's hard for me to imagine you are here and don't already know those things. It seems more likely that this is a case of visibly ignoring them in order to do ideological virtue signalling.
So, good luck with that I guess.
Could you, please?
Moreover, could you define 'gender' in a non-self-referential way that isn't just biological sex?
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