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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?
Secrets can be open, like that one kid in class that everyone knows has an eating disorder/is gay/is cutting themselves, but no good would come from formally acknowledging that fact for sociopolitical climate reasons. It's a local version of "someone calls it out intentionally -> outs themselves as not being able to read the room" and "mocking the classmate with suicidal ideation is not actually going to improve their life", which are both things most people understand.
Factions prefer canned responses and buzzphrases when they have no other valid arguments. The first claim is similarly invalid.
Not necessarily official reports. The student knows their situation better than everyone else, naturally, and will take countermeasures if their nickname would show in a report to hostile parents- but really, this isn't really the issue here. In fact, all else being equal, this policy actually (some might say ironically) means a better ability for the student to keep this secret whether it be open or closed because they don't have to worry a particularly progressive faculty member will proactively change their name or gender in the reports.
Transgender names are, at their core, nicknames. Thus, lacking any formal policy, we should expect them to act like nicknames do- maybe some local social sanction follows for not using it, but that sanction does not extend to what the faculty/government is allowed to do. Every public-school-educated person knows at least one classmate that went by such a middle name/nickname, but you'd never be sent to detention by a teacher for not using it, and the student would be maximally free to not use the nickname if they felt it ceased to suit them.
Under the earlier environment, faction-adhering teachers were able to unilaterally sanction students for refusing to use nicknames like these, and while personnel remains policy they're not officially allowed to do that any more (so motivated traditionalist parents have a codified leg to stand on). With this policy in place, [traditionalist/liberal] students are more protected from [progressive] teachers, and attacking the official use of nicknames means arguments that students who choose cross-gender nicknames should have special accommodations/protections because of that will have a bit more difficulty finding traction in the future.
It's worth noting that this still gives progressive parents significant latitude; if they approve the use of the nickname/nick-pronoun then it still has force of law in the classroom even if the student happens to be 7 or 8 (so this doesn't fix the "he wore a dress today so he can add '-ina' to his name and gets to change with the girls" problem). At the same time, however, it also means that traditionalist parents regain control over nickname use, is a public repudiation of "not using your child's nickname is abuse and unsafe", and means a student isn't allowed to use the existing progressive power structure as their own personal army Cartman-style so it will damage progressive prestige among students many years down the line.
The first rule of nicknames is you don't get to choose your own nickname.
Kobe chose his own nickname
Kobe "bean" bryant
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