Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
It’s Not Just About Bathrooms
In case you missed it, @bethanymandel brought up some excellent and important points regarding the messages that schools are sending to young girls when they force them to accommodate transgender girls (actual boys) in their formerly sex-segregated spaces.
I’d like to add that our school board has issued the following draft policy for addressing transgender accommodations on field trips:
Extended Instructional Field Trips
Students should be allowed to participate consistent with their asserted gender identity. Sleeping arrangements should be discussed with staff, the student and family (if the family is supportive of the student). Upon request, the student should be provided with a safe alternative sleeping area.
A student’s transgender status is confidential information and school staff members should not disclose a student’s transgender status as it relates to a field trip without the consent of the student and/or the student’s parent/guardian.
In other words, the student with a gender identity other than the one “assigned at birth” is to be accommodated, without regard to the other students and families involved.
My daughter is in high school and attends school-sponsored trips and camps that involve hotel and dorm rooms. She knows of two transgender boys and at least one individual who identifies as non-binary who attend the same overnight activities. This isn’t hypothetical.
The school board policy has no regard for a young girl’s sense of modesty or safety when sharing a bedroom or possibly a bed! While the policy is still in draft form, there’s no reason to believe that it’s not current procedure. Note the chilling parenthetical “if the family is supportive of the student.”
A lot of Ricochetti greet this topic with mockery, and I think it deserves its fair share, but it’s also such a dead serious issue for parents with kids in school, at any age. We know transgender kids in church and school at elementary, middle and high school levels, but we have yet to see how any of this will play out in the long-term. While I want to treat every person with kindness and compassion, I don’t think the school policies show such treatment of young, impressionable and vulnerable boys and girls (especially girls) who identify as they are.
I realize these are local policies and decisions, but certainly the Democratic Party and major Democratic politicians would like to impose them nation-wide. I find it hard to believe that parents truly favor these changes.
Published in Education
Reality is all well and good, but surely an ever evolving pop consensus on fairness is more compelling.
I feel sorry for kids like your daughter who are put in these compromising positions to meet a political agenda. There is clearly no consideration for the impact on the kids who are normal. It’s tragic.
Is anybody asking why there are suddenly so many gender-confused kids? Is there no curiosity?
We’re in a sick and dying culture. And the LGBT-feminist-leftist bullies — but, I repeat — are running the show.
Just yesterday I was telling my wife that I am thankful that we don’t currently have any daughters that are coming of age. The home school movement has never been more important.
Any broad at any level of government that votes for such measures should be made to do so while naked.
I can’t picture any of us mocking this. The left is out to destroy the concept of two sexes and replace it with anything goes. Putting your daughter at risk (but not theirs) is one of many avenues of attack they are using.
Aside: This is one reason I’ve pushed for turning school board elections from non-partisan into normal partisan elections. People should know the party affiliation of the people for whom they’re voting. Just because these elections are non-partisan, doesn’t mean school board behavior isn’t . . .
Totally agree. I’m also wondering if we should ban any candidates from the education establishment, who’ve already ruined much of public education and don’t need a second shot at it.
Two things I noticed in that statement:
If the family is supportive…. a lot of what the public schools are trying to do involves psychologically separating children from their parents.
I guarantee every kid knows.
When I taught, I took kids on plenty of out-of-town, overnight field trips. The biggest issues I dealt with included the inability to contact parents after a boy stuck a safety pin through his ear (parents were out of the country), cigarettes, and trying to sneak out of hotel rooms in the wee hours. This policy of boys in girl’s rooms (or vice versa…can’t tell the players without a scorecard) is a disaster waiting to happen– our culture is so sexualized to begin with (just drift on over to Instagram and see).
I am asking that, and I have some anecdotal evidence that autism and divorce are factors, as is social contagion and the moving of the Overton window. For instance, older people who grew up when even being gay was not socially accepted don’t understand that having an “alternative” sexual or gender identity confers special status.
It’s very strange that the “compassionate” reaction to a child saying they feel like they’re in the wrong body is to immediately affirm their belief without asking what’s really going on.
School boards are out of control and the only way to fight this is to pull your kid out of school. I know it is difficult, I have two daughters and sacrifice a lot of send them to a small Catholic school in which my husband and I are very involved but it is necessary. Public schools (even in the good districts) have been a mess for a long, LONG time, and parents really need to step up. School boards in Chicago and Austin have voted in curriculum to teach elementary schoolers how to touch themselves, and parents can’t opt out.
It’s time. Take them out or get a bunch of friends and run for school board. This has to stop at the local level.
Oh yeah, the schools seem to have a very antagonistic view toward parents. However, this language also appears to be the result of a coordinated campaign on the part of transgender activists to get schools to adopt their preferred policies. Most parents don’t even realize this is going on and aren’t aware of the policies. And where I live, a fair number of them probably just think it’s great.
@bethanymandel also made the point that these policies are ripe for abuse by boys just trying to invade girls’ privacy. A lot of kids (most?) understand how ridiculous it is to just say you’re the opposite sex, but if the adults are openly abdicating their authority, I think kids will figure out how to manipulate the situation to their advantage.
Would a teacher be able to push back if a boy claimed to be a girl just so he could stay overnight with his girlfriend? Without getting sued for harassment? I think they’d be too afraid in this environment, so I worry about these policies not only for what is communicated to kids, bit also for the minefield it creates for teachers.
Thank you @susanquinn. The thing is, she’s fine, so far. I can talk to her about this stuff and hopefully encourage her to advocate for herself if she finds herself in a bad situation. I do worry that it’s too overwhelming for her, but I mostly worry that such bad ideas are winning.
In terms of mocking transgenderism generally, I was referring to comments in the recent post: http://ricochet.com/699484/youve-come-a-long-way-baby/
It really is a fertile field for mockery, and Dave Chappelle had some jokes about the “alphabet people” in his latest comedy special. And Norm MacDonald has wondered whether Caitlyn Jenner gets to use the ladies’ tees when she plays golf.
As for school boards being non-partisan, our choices are all Democrats. No Republican ran for any office in our county or district in the last election.
Or, just find out who the Teachers Union is supporting, and vote for *anyone* else.
Only if you have tenure. And, if you have been able to: hold your breath, play by their rules and say all the right things, take the lousy assignments as the grunt that you are, truly befriend your shop steward, volunteer to make phone calls the weekend before election day, ensure that all your students pass, and generally stay under the radar for the three years or so it requires to be granted tenure…then you have become a true believer and wouldn’t say anything anyway.
Adults in the school system making accommodations for “transgender” and “non-binary” students are committing child abuse. Therefore, I do not mock their policies.
Nonetheless, I still remember the Obama Administration’s “Dear Colleague” diktat that required school to let boys use girls’ facilities started with a generous sounding statement that the school couldn’t make anyone (with clear reference to the “transgender” student) uncomfortable. Yet in the body of the letter said that the discomfort of everybody else was of no consequence.
So, to these people, only the sensibilities of the politically favored minority matter. The sensibilities of everyone else matter not.
Oh, wow. This is bad, but I actually wonder if it’s even worse than that. Who goes into teaching these days unless they are a true believer to start with? I’ve considered teaching, but I don’t think I could stomach the lies I would have to tell or the truths I would have to suppress to get along. Not to mention the jargon.
The youngest teacher my daughter had last year was widely recognized to be terrible, partly due to her youth, but mostly because she pushed political causes in the guise of science. She may not have realized she was doing it except that she hedged when I asked her to clarify an assignment that my daughter thought was blatantly political activism.
I know, I know…just home school. Except that so many of the teachers are excellent at teaching very specialized subjects. Also, I don’t want reasonable students and parents to voluntarily disappear from the public school community.
I hear you, but I honestly want to know what to do if you think it’s child abuse. It does seem like systemic child abuse, as well as parental abuse in at least once instance I’ve encountered. If I saw a mother beating her child, I’d know to call the authorities. But in such as case as encouraging transgender beliefs in a pre-pubescent child, it seems like butting in where I don’t belong. And what would any authorities do except affirm the child and parents and condemn me (most likely). I think it’s easy for someone on TV or a podcast to say it’s child abuse, but I don’t see that there exists a similar legal recourse as there does for physical abuse.
The first cut is to eliminate those who are members of the teachers union.
I heard these complaints already in the mid 70s, from people explaining why they weren’t going into teaching. They couldn’t stand the “sensitivity training” classes. And these were people who were left-leaning, spit-on-our-troops types in politics.
Since my children are beyond school age, and my grandchildren have not yet arrived at school age, this is at the moment theoretical.
Parents could refuse to let their children attend school, citing safety concerns (rape and other sexual assault). There is likely a large enough body of parents who are concerned that the resulting loss to the school district of the state’s daily student reimbursement would be noticeable. Also if a large number of students are absent, the likelihood is reduced that any individual student is singled out for punishment by the
bulliesteachers and administrators.Refusing to let your child go on school group trips may be more punishment on your child than you wish to inflict. So, parents could insist on making their own travel and sleeping accommodations for school group trips. Again, a significant number of parents doing this will disrupt the school’s program. Yes, that will cost the parents money and time. But, parents have to communicate that they are serious about this issue. At a minimum, parents demand that roommate assignments be known before the trip.
At the risk of committing long-distance psychology, the “transgender boys” and “non-binary” that your daughter knows are either delusional or pretending for attention.* School policies that encourage such delusional or attention-seeking behavior are not helping those students.
* Said based totally on statistical probabilities.
We have to privatize the schools, including public schools, with vouchers, allow parents to send their kids where ever they can pass entry standards. New Zealand did it and they went from the bottom of the wests schools to just below Finland and Singapore, very quickly. How could we expect to meet the needs of the most diverse population on earth in terms of every measurable or observable variable on earth. It has to be done at the state and city level and can just be done. Forget federal money, it can’t work, even if it weren’t corrupt which it is. Just do it. Instead we home school, buy expensive houses where the schools are relatively decent, or just ignore it because they’ll learn what helps them get into good universities.
I realize that for the time being at least, there is no legal recourse for the psychological child abuse of encouraging “transgender” thinking. Parents therefore need to think of alternatives. Full school choice for everyone would be a desirable alternative, but that’s not going to happen soon enough for parents currently stuck in the present system. It is hard to find ways to have an impact when the current system has been designed over many years by people in the system in ways specifically to avoid accountability to the parents.
It seems the only solution is to band together with other parents and confront the overstepping of boundaries about sexuality and what is being taught. There is no other solution. Scrutinize their assignments. As far as field trips, its nuts that is now an issue, along with sports and the unfair advantage that boys who identify as girls have in this arena.
I’d rather make the education establishment pay. My proposal is to keep your kids out on count day (when per pupil allocation gets determined), but send them the rest of the year to drain the resources of your local indoctrination camp. Now, they’ll eventually get around to including your absent kid in the funding, but it will cost them time and resources to fill out all the mandated paperwork. What does Alinsky say? Make them live by their own rules?
I think this would have to be a national effort and would be a one-time, one vote situation, since if there’s anything the Left is good at, it’s getting their hands on our money. They would likely change the rules after the first incident. But, I think civil disobedience is called for. Take back our kids’ education!
There’s a count day?
Yep. Parents have been organizing and giving feedback to the school board. It’s ongoing and has to be addressed at many levels.
Yes, I think it’s how it works in most states. October 1st in Colorado (or nearest if it falls on a weekend). They entice parents to send their kids (even if they’re sick, they’re asked to show up for attendance) by offering t-shirts or some other treat — pizza for lunch. They have to have some way of allotting the funding to each school on a per pupil basis (extra funding for special needs kids), so they pick a day toward the beginning of the year to count everyone.
Really?
The way to “ban” people from an elected office is to vote for someone else.
Such a precedent might be convenient in a moment, but one day would surely be turned up end.