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Notes -
Yeah. I remember there was a big thing a few years back about whether or not leather should be welcome at pride, because pride has become a family thing for some people and there are kids there now. But that's a matter of "should leather be pushed out of a space because kids are entering the space".
But bringing leather into a space that is specifically for young kids is beyond the pale. Enough so that I would expect that even the majority of the queer-and-proud population would be against it.
WTF was the school board even thinking here?
Edit: or am I just being gullible, and the books the school board pushed didn't have leather except in the literal sense that one of the characters in one of the books wore a leather jacket?
The school board wasn’t thinking. They’re teachers and they were going with the flow. It is literally incomprehensible to teachers that ‘the experts’, however defined, can be wrong. Like if you suggest it they’ll stare at you blankly, literally not understanding the words you just said. And the experts suggested kids should be taught this stuff, so teachers concluded ‘parents who want to shield their toddlers from learning about BDSM should lose custody of their kids’ instead of ‘the experts should be shot’.
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As to why the "introducing little children to drags" thing exists, see my thoughts here — my best guess is that it's a bizarrely misjudged attempt to counteract the anti-trans argument that goes "trans women are functionally drag queens, drag is a sexual practice that shouldn't be allowed in public, therefore trans women shouldn't be allowed in public" by denying the 'drag is inherently sexual' step of the reasoning, instead of the 'drag queens and trans women are the same thing' step.
Regarding this particular school board, though, I don't think they looked too closely at the material in the first place. They saw a generally-pro-LGBT book and rubber-stamped it without even trying to judge its specific merits.
The topic is integrated into the teaching materials and suggested answers for addressing student questions, and it's difficult to get around the board's bigoted animus.
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Sure, I buy that the school board just rubber-stamped this book without much thought. That part is not surprising to me. The bit that's surprising to me is that they decided to double down, and then double down again, and continue until they're now showing up in front of the supreme court. This case (edit apr 24: as described in the top-level comment) is a giant gift to social conservatives, at a minimum in the court of public opinion and I expect also in the court of law. So I wonder if the school board just doesn't realize that, of if they do realize that and just don't care - I just have a burning curiosity as to what their thought process was when they decided to escalate to this level.
Because they’re public school teachers. ‘The experts being wrong’ is to them like ‘a triangular circle’ or ‘a purpley sort of orange’- not so much wrong as making so little sense that nobody could believe it.
They just don’t realize not everyone thinks this way.
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Your brain does weird things to you once you're in the realm of true belief, I saw the same kind of thing around trans stuff. My conclusion is that they know and care, but consider the actions that got them into trouble axiomatically good. Getting pushback is no argument for backing down. Getting pushback so huge it could set back the whole movement might be an argument for a tactical retreat, but not for conceding that any wrongdoing took place. Then there are more trivial matters like overestimating their own competence, or how much support they have from either the public or the elites.
"good trouble." The phrase was a mantra in 2020.
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Definitely do not care. Schools and libraries near me have basically taken the position that nothing short of the 101st Airborne will get them to stop showing pornography to children. They don't care about elections, court cases, funding, irate parents at school board meetings, nothing. Showing sexually explicit material to children is their terminal goal, and nothing can possibly stop them from doing their favorite thing.
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