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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   33462 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 24, 2023

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It is a similar logic that leads me to oppose laws that mandate reporting to parents when a child expresses the possibility they have an LGBT identity. The foremost concern is the health and well being of the child in question and how disclosure of that information will impact them.

I don't know about legal mandates, but I feel like there should be a strong societal presumption in favor of telling a parent what's going on with their child, especially something massive like using new pronouns and nicknames while at school.

To me, it just seems like such a strange and unsustainable status quo to try and maintain. Are we really trying to keep major aspects of kids' lives secret from their parents, just so we can deceive the parents until they turn 18 and are able to fend for themselves? I can understand the idea of putting the needs of the child above those of the parents, but I don't get how we arrive at this as the most natural solution to the problem of, "If we tell the parents that their kid identifies as trans, the parent might freak out and do something drastic that isn't in the best interest of the child."

In fact, I think that "tearing the band-aid off" and just telling parents about trans children is the "safer" option for LGBT people on the whole. Anti-LGBT parents who might abandon or abuse their LGBT children are a tough problem to solve by government mandate, but I think a mildly anti-LGBT parent is much more likely to have a massive overreaction if they come in 6 months into their child's social transition, which has all happened behind their backs, than they would have if a teacher had reached out to them and said, "Hey, John goes by Jenny now, and prefers she/her, I thought you ought to know."

To me, it just seems like such a strange and unsustainable status quo to try and maintain. Are we really trying to keep major aspects of kids' lives secret from their parents, just so we can deceive the parents until they turn 18 and are able to fend for themselves? I can understand the idea of putting the needs of the child above those of the parents, but I don't get how we arrive at this as the most natural solution to the problem of, "If we tell the parents that their kid identifies as trans, the parent might freak out and do something drastic that isn't in the best interest of the child."

I am confident the general phenomena of "student tells a trusted teacher information the student doesn't want their parents to know and the teacher keeps that confidence" is a phenomena as old as teachers and students. What information students confide changes over the time but I don't think this is a new phenomenon or status quo. I don't think this is the best solution to this problem. The best solution would be something like "there are no parents who would disown or abuse their children for being LGBT" but I have no idea how to bring about that solution! It seems like we've settled on this one as the best alternative, in terms of protecting children's wellbeing. If you have further alternatives I'm open to hearing them.

In fact, I think that "tearing the band-aid off" and just telling parents about trans children is the "safer" option for LGBT people on the whole. Anti-LGBT parents who might abandon or abuse their LGBT children are a tough problem to solve by government mandate, but I think a mildly anti-LGBT parent is much more likely to have a massive overreaction if they come in 6 months into their child's social transition, which has all happened behind their backs, than they would have if a teacher had reached out to them and said, "Hey, John goes by Jenny now, and prefers she/her, I thought you ought to know."

I guess I don't agree. Either that telling parents is more generally the "safer" option or that mildly anti-LGBT parents would be more outraged about their child's transition being hidden than more strongly anti-LGBT parents. When I look at the kinds of people going to school board meetings and whatever complaining about schools policies of keeping student information confidential my impression is they are pretty strongly anti-LGBT, not mildly.

I agree that this is an old phenomenon with a long history: courageous teachers becoming involved with a child's welfare at some risk to themselves. But institutionalizing it changes everything. Guaranteeing state support dramatically reduces the risk to the teacher, which destroys the balance of incentives.

I'm sympathetic to kids trapped in a hellish adversarial relationship with their own parents, but predict that solving their problems by substituting state-approved parental figures will create a different series of problems that will probably affect a much larger number of children. Attempting to solve a tiny minority of problem cases, these laws create a new vector for neglect and abuse, because they cut parents out of the loop, when they are, in most cases, the people most committed to a child's well-being by many orders of magnitude.

It’s a typical pattern in politics- ‘oh yeah, you’re worried about easily predictable consequences of policies I’m pushing for agenda reasons? Well how about [problem my policy may or may not solve and which is much smaller than the easily foreseeable consequences]? Checkmate, hypocrites.’

I am confident the general phenomena of "student tells a trusted teacher information the student doesn't want their parents to know and the teacher keeps that confidence" is a phenomena as old as teachers and students. What information students confide changes over the time but I don't think this is a new phenomenon or status quo.

This is the typical shuffle. In the past there were much more lax child safety laws, which could lead to a child getting beaten by his father for wanting to join the chess club instead of rugby, or for doing home ec instead of shop. This was considered a bad thing and rightly so.

Now if you so much as flinch at the idea of a bunch of barren authoritarian busybodies parenting your child in secret into destroying their life so we can tweet about making a difference, we can point back at those dads beating kids for not playing rugby and call you a danger to your child, and then quietly smile as your brains tears itself in two between overwhelming rage at the travesty of justice that is likening your shocked reaction to the discovery of betrayal to mercilessly beating your child, and overwhelming heartbreak at the realisation that this scum has actually convinced your child that you are a monster. And you have zero recourse, you either roll over and give them what they want, or you explode, and they take what they want.

And then if we talk to the unsympathetic we just have to pretend we actually think it's the same, even if we have demonstrated sufficient intelligence and self awareness in the past to make such a confusion impossible.

I guess I don't agree. Either that telling parents is more generally the "safer" option or that mildly anti-LGBT parents would be more outraged about their child's transition being hidden than more strongly anti-LGBT parents.

Yes of course a mildly opposed person will be less outraged than a strongly opposed person, but that was never in dispute. The question is if it's safer for teachers to lie to parents and transition kids behind their backs than to just tell them upfront. Because I guess in my perspective that is the literal definition of grooming.

I am confident the general phenomena of "student tells a trusted teacher information the student doesn't want their parents to know and the teacher keeps that confidence" is a phenomena as old as teachers and students.

And so have limitations on that.

The question is what shall a teacher incur legal risk over, they are already mandatory reporters for many other things.

If it is a matter of honor, then let there be honor with risk.

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