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PaperclipPerfector  10d ago (text post)   29600 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 21, 2024

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First of all, you have the schools not only promoting, but enabling the trans kids. A kid who goes to a public school will be told that trans people are special, be told to celebrate them, etc. any kid who decides they might be trans will be given access to trans clothing, be allowed to change their name and pronouns, be allowed in cross gender spaces and sports teams, etc. the kids around them will be told how awesome they are, and be forced to acknowledge the new them. Parents are told none of this.

That last bit is what really got me to break my cautious neutrality on this issue. It is absolutely bad enough what Public schools do to kids normally but if they are allowed to press political ideals into their brains and work to influence their actual psychological development without parents involved, it looks extremely dystopic. "The state will shepherd your kid through the psychological turmoil of puberty without your involvement" is a bone-chilling statement.

If I were a parent (I am not) I would insist that it is NONNEGOTIABLE that I be informed of any medical or psychological issues my child exhibits. I would flip tables if the teachers were allowed to actively engage with my kids regarding their sexuality without me being in the loop, full stop.

The argument against 'parental notice' as the standard is simply too weak. "What if the child is hiding their identity because of abuse/risk of abuse at home?" Then figure that out and call fucking Child Protective Services. I am going with the assumption that the parent is inherently more invested in the child's wellbeing than a teacher. Many teachers don't even have kids of their own, why in the hell would they be expected to want and know exactly what is best for others' children?

And as we've seen, the inevitable ratchet on this process is that it will eventually gets defined as child abuse to deny a child's gender identity. In that scenario we now have a situation where a teacher can 'induce' the very condition that can then be used to take the child from their parents. The teacher convinces the child to express a trans identity, and if the parent finds out and is skeptical, teacher gets to report the abuse too.

Sorry, bridge too far for me, I don't care what other justifications you can contrive for it, even if you argue that its such a rare situation I shouldn't worry, the consequences are far too grave for me to ignore.

Now, I live in Florida, and since Desantis took some pre-emptive steps to prevent these sorts of outcomes, I'm not too worried about it happening to me. But yeah, the GOP managed a propaganda coup by centering this issue and more or less forcing the Progressives to defend it and, as it seems, retreat from it a bit.

why in the hell would they be expected to want and know exactly what is best for others' children?

To paraphrase the attitudes of various teachers and administrators my mother had to deal with over the course of my public school education: because while any two fertile, horny morons of opposite sexes can have a kid — they don't even have to get a license or take a class first — educators are trained professionals with the credentials to prove they know what's good for kids better than the kids' non-credentialed parents.

In short: I (the teacher) have a degree in Education and you (the parent) don't, therefore I always automatically know better than you when it comes to your own kid.

Yes, the "we're trained experts thing" seems to be the main thrust. Nevermind the abysmal results we can see.

But I don't think they can ever override the fact that a parent is biologically inclined to want the best for their kid. No way to explain why the teachers are somehow willing to advocate nearly as strongly for the interests of a child that isn't theirs than the ones who birthed the child and will spend immense amount of resources raising it.

OBVIOUSLY this doesn't mean parents 'always know best.' I'm just saying that's a presumption that is difficult to rebut without specifically examining their behavior. The odds of the teachers, in aggregate, feeling as strong a loyalty to the kid as the parents do is very low.

But I don't think they can ever override the fact that a parent is biologically inclined to want the best for their kid.

Sure they can- just point guns at them. The self-preservation instinct in the parent can be successfully leveraged in this way, which is part of why there’s no effective resistance to the faction who believes themselves the True Parents.

I live in a blue county in a blue state. I am a father. My kid is in private school in order to dodge the worst excesses of public schools. There's no secret transitioning at my kid's school. Also class sizes are smaller and the academic standards are higher.

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