Stepping into the issue slightly, it becomes interesting. Ignoring the trans element, for now.
There’s an interested debate here about parent’s rights to choose how to parent. Now we as a civilization have decided that there are red lines that parents cannot cross. An extreme example: parents cannot beat their children as punishment. And there’s a lot of not-quite-illegal things the government does a lot of education around, like drinking during pregnancy, in order to improve the quality of parenting and the quality of life for children. So government intervention in parenting is already, largely established – at least when it comes to certain topics.
The government, however, does not intervene as parents take their kids to “Sunday School” and indoctrinate them (oops, my own experiences and biases are showing). And generally, parents are allowed full control over their children’s lives unless they cross that red line. Few parents exhibit full control, micromanaging every aspect of their child’s life, but they probably could and be in the clear, legally – at least when the child is in their physical proximity.
Abstractly: schools, and specifically public schools, are not parents. They have to follow a set of rules set by society at large. And largely, aside from educating the students, they serve as a means to prepare students to become functioning members of that same society. This means that schools need to enforce some sort of public normalization on the students – the exact form of which should reflect the society the students will enter, more or less. Optimally, they’re preparing students for a society that will exist in the future, not the one that exists today, or one that existed in the past, but it’s hard sometimes to know what that future will look like. You take some best guesses about this future society.
So now we have the conflict between the individual and the society. A parent yields some control when sending their kid to a public school, in the hopes that they will become a productive member of society. And this debate is about exactly how much control is yielded. And this debate is in many ways a core debate for our whole country - one of which can encompass residential schools, multiculturalism, religion, and more. Sometimes the guesses made about future society are off the mark, and what is intended to be a policy for good turns into a policy that was retrospectively harmful. We won’t know until the future arrives.
But then the discussion gets completely overwhelmed by transphobic dogwhistling, and the resulting backlash, hiding the core of it.
Great post. I would add that it’s also a debate on the nature of what it means to be a parent, of the relationship of a child to their parent, and minors’ status as a legal person. The conservative view sees children as the property of their parents whose will overrides any preferences of the child, whereas the left is increasingly moving towards the idea that children are an autonomous person with agency and rights that supersede the wishes of the parent. It seems that a lot of parents take issue with that fact, as I’m sure many do with the fact that they are no longer “allowed” to beat their children.
Yes, there’s definitely a core of this element here. At one point in time, women were legally the chattel property of their husbands. Do you own a child like you own a pet? Is sending your kid to school like sending your dog to doggie daycare?
Quoting one of my favourite sci fi writers, Becky Chambers (in: A Closed and Common Orbit) – an alien reflecting on humanity:
“At the core, you’ve got to get university certification for parenting, just as you do for, say, being a doctor or an engineer. No offence to you or your species, but going into the business of creating life without any sort of formal prep is . . .’ He laughed. ‘It’s baffling. But then, I’m biased.”
Becky Chambers! Now that’s a crossover I didn’t expect here. Love her work.
To push the analogy to its breaking point, it was also used to justify slavery and is still used to justify mistreatment of animals.
I think this ultimately all stems from a lack of empathy, which I consider a foundation of conservatism – the indifference to the fact that one’s desires may not align with the preferences of the person to whom they are directed.
Sample bias, probably. We nerds are the early adopters. ;)
A couple of communities on server that might be interesting to you, one of them of my own creation:
[email protected], PrintSF
a lack of empathy, which I consider a foundation of conservatism
It’s probably at least one vector. Religion is another one. The ironic thing, of course, is “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”. But it’s hard to teach empathy through rote memorization of a text that hasn’t been updated in nearly 2000 years. Knowing the words, and living the words, are two different things. And even then, many of the words are out of date (pork is delicious!).
The ironic thing, of course, is “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”
Not that ironic if the parents’ views genuinely differ from their child’s. The parent can be homophobic and genuinely see it as an abhorrent thing that should be remedied.
This is the scary thing about conservatism/religion. It gives people the tools, through an absolutist and precsriptivist system of beliefs, to otherize people, and rationalize away the empathy that they do feel. Or perhaps use their empathy to justify doing horrible things to someone “for their own good”, like the parent trying to remedy their child’s “abhorrent behaviour” for example.
TBH, I try to give my pets as much autonomy as is safe for them. E.g., they’re going to the vet whether they want to or not if they’re sick. But I try to let them decide when they want attention, and what kind of attention and interaction they want, rather than forcing them. They seem to be happier that way.
I also don’t worry about training them, because they’re all cats.
Why would a kid come out to a teacher when they didn’t tell their parent?
Only reason I can think of is because the kid is afraid of their parents. Why would that be?
So this is all about parents wanting to beat the trans out of their kids. This is about enabling child abuse.
Of course kids aren’t that stupid. They’ll know that they now have to keep these kinds of things from their teachers the same as they’re keeping it from their parents.
It’ll just make kids not trust school staff anymore. Child abuse will be under reported. Child molestation will be under reported. Kids will be less willing to talk to guidance counsellors. Teenage suicide rates will increase.
Blaine Higgs is the biggest enabler of child abuse, child molestation, child suicide in all of Canada right now.
Why would a kid come out to a teacher when they didn’t tell their parent?
Only reason I can think of is because the kid is afraid of their parents
Seen this second hand via my partner who’s a teacher. The parents eventually found out and suddenly the kid wasn’t trans anymore. Can’t imagine why that would be.
You’re missing the point by focusing on function of the players involved. Policies that protect trans students are ultimately rooted in risk assessment. There are risks to personal safety if someone is outed facing an unsafe environment at home. And to wellbeing and, ultimately, personal safety again if someone is forced to live as a gender they don’t identify with. These risks, on both sides, are drastically reduced by offering a safe space and support in being who you are. The delineation of responsibility between parents and schools in preparing kids for their lives is separate from how to best offer support for the safety and well being of queer kids.
People keep saying “protect trans students” but what does that functionally mean? They get higher care/priority over other students getting bullied? Can you explain what it means exactly? It all seems very vague and needlessly divisive if you ask me.
These aren’t vague points at all. I mean, it’s understandable if you aren’t aware of the elevated suicide rates among trans people and the impact of gender affirmation in suicide prevention in that regard, the body of literature supporting that isn’t all that accessible to lay people, but surely you’re not ignorant to the fact that someone else brought up in this very thread, that parents can abuse kids for being trans (or just queer in general), and if someone doesn’t feel safe being out at home, there’s usually a reason… right?
No one is saying that trans kids should take priority over other kids who are “getting bullied”, that’s missing the point by a wide mark. Maybe you didn’t intend it, but you’re sealioning here, the answers you’re asking for are already available to you in this very discussion. Creating a safe environment for kids isn’t some zero sum game. Advocating for trans students isn’t about making them a “higher priority” over other kids. Frankly, approaching issues like that is what creates division, not advocacy and acceptance.
Stepping into the issue slightly, it becomes interesting. Ignoring the trans element, for now.
There’s an interested debate here about parent’s rights to choose how to parent. Now we as a civilization have decided that there are red lines that parents cannot cross. An extreme example: parents cannot beat their children as punishment. And there’s a lot of not-quite-illegal things the government does a lot of education around, like drinking during pregnancy, in order to improve the quality of parenting and the quality of life for children. So government intervention in parenting is already, largely established – at least when it comes to certain topics.
The government, however, does not intervene as parents take their kids to “Sunday School” and indoctrinate them (oops, my own experiences and biases are showing). And generally, parents are allowed full control over their children’s lives unless they cross that red line. Few parents exhibit full control, micromanaging every aspect of their child’s life, but they probably could and be in the clear, legally – at least when the child is in their physical proximity.
Abstractly: schools, and specifically public schools, are not parents. They have to follow a set of rules set by society at large. And largely, aside from educating the students, they serve as a means to prepare students to become functioning members of that same society. This means that schools need to enforce some sort of public normalization on the students – the exact form of which should reflect the society the students will enter, more or less. Optimally, they’re preparing students for a society that will exist in the future, not the one that exists today, or one that existed in the past, but it’s hard sometimes to know what that future will look like. You take some best guesses about this future society.
So now we have the conflict between the individual and the society. A parent yields some control when sending their kid to a public school, in the hopes that they will become a productive member of society. And this debate is about exactly how much control is yielded. And this debate is in many ways a core debate for our whole country - one of which can encompass residential schools, multiculturalism, religion, and more. Sometimes the guesses made about future society are off the mark, and what is intended to be a policy for good turns into a policy that was retrospectively harmful. We won’t know until the future arrives.
But then the discussion gets completely overwhelmed by transphobic dogwhistling, and the resulting backlash, hiding the core of it.
Great post. I would add that it’s also a debate on the nature of what it means to be a parent, of the relationship of a child to their parent, and minors’ status as a legal person. The conservative view sees children as the property of their parents whose will overrides any preferences of the child, whereas the left is increasingly moving towards the idea that children are an autonomous person with agency and rights that supersede the wishes of the parent. It seems that a lot of parents take issue with that fact, as I’m sure many do with the fact that they are no longer “allowed” to beat their children.
Yes, there’s definitely a core of this element here. At one point in time, women were legally the chattel property of their husbands. Do you own a child like you own a pet? Is sending your kid to school like sending your dog to doggie daycare?
Quoting one of my favourite sci fi writers, Becky Chambers (in: A Closed and Common Orbit) – an alien reflecting on humanity:
Becky Chambers! Now that’s a crossover I didn’t expect here. Love her work.
To push the analogy to its breaking point, it was also used to justify slavery and is still used to justify mistreatment of animals.
I think this ultimately all stems from a lack of empathy, which I consider a foundation of conservatism – the indifference to the fact that one’s desires may not align with the preferences of the person to whom they are directed.
Sample bias, probably. We nerds are the early adopters. ;)
A couple of communities on server that might be interesting to you, one of them of my own creation: [email protected], PrintSF
It’s probably at least one vector. Religion is another one. The ironic thing, of course, is “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”. But it’s hard to teach empathy through rote memorization of a text that hasn’t been updated in nearly 2000 years. Knowing the words, and living the words, are two different things. And even then, many of the words are out of date (pork is delicious!).
Not that ironic if the parents’ views genuinely differ from their child’s. The parent can be homophobic and genuinely see it as an abhorrent thing that should be remedied.
This is the scary thing about conservatism/religion. It gives people the tools, through an absolutist and precsriptivist system of beliefs, to otherize people, and rationalize away the empathy that they do feel. Or perhaps use their empathy to justify doing horrible things to someone “for their own good”, like the parent trying to remedy their child’s “abhorrent behaviour” for example.
TBH, I try to give my pets as much autonomy as is safe for them. E.g., they’re going to the vet whether they want to or not if they’re sick. But I try to let them decide when they want attention, and what kind of attention and interaction they want, rather than forcing them. They seem to be happier that way.
I also don’t worry about training them, because they’re all cats.
Why would a kid come out to a teacher when they didn’t tell their parent?
Only reason I can think of is because the kid is afraid of their parents. Why would that be?
So this is all about parents wanting to beat the trans out of their kids. This is about enabling child abuse.
Of course kids aren’t that stupid. They’ll know that they now have to keep these kinds of things from their teachers the same as they’re keeping it from their parents.
It’ll just make kids not trust school staff anymore. Child abuse will be under reported. Child molestation will be under reported. Kids will be less willing to talk to guidance counsellors. Teenage suicide rates will increase.
Blaine Higgs is the biggest enabler of child abuse, child molestation, child suicide in all of Canada right now.
Seen this second hand via my partner who’s a teacher. The parents eventually found out and suddenly the kid wasn’t trans anymore. Can’t imagine why that would be.
You’re missing the point by focusing on function of the players involved. Policies that protect trans students are ultimately rooted in risk assessment. There are risks to personal safety if someone is outed facing an unsafe environment at home. And to wellbeing and, ultimately, personal safety again if someone is forced to live as a gender they don’t identify with. These risks, on both sides, are drastically reduced by offering a safe space and support in being who you are. The delineation of responsibility between parents and schools in preparing kids for their lives is separate from how to best offer support for the safety and well being of queer kids.
People keep saying “protect trans students” but what does that functionally mean? They get higher care/priority over other students getting bullied? Can you explain what it means exactly? It all seems very vague and needlessly divisive if you ask me.
These aren’t vague points at all. I mean, it’s understandable if you aren’t aware of the elevated suicide rates among trans people and the impact of gender affirmation in suicide prevention in that regard, the body of literature supporting that isn’t all that accessible to lay people, but surely you’re not ignorant to the fact that someone else brought up in this very thread, that parents can abuse kids for being trans (or just queer in general), and if someone doesn’t feel safe being out at home, there’s usually a reason… right?
No one is saying that trans kids should take priority over other kids who are “getting bullied”, that’s missing the point by a wide mark. Maybe you didn’t intend it, but you’re sealioning here, the answers you’re asking for are already available to you in this very discussion. Creating a safe environment for kids isn’t some zero sum game. Advocating for trans students isn’t about making them a “higher priority” over other kids. Frankly, approaching issues like that is what creates division, not advocacy and acceptance.