Somehow I was unaware until school started this week that the state I live in, Indiana, passed a law this year requiring the school to REPORT to the parents if a child requests to be called by a different name or gender pronoun than they registered under…and the parent has to give written permission for the school to use said name or gender pronouns. This has put a ridiculous burden on the teachers, of course. Today I got an email notifying me that my son, Ben, would like to be called Ben and not Benjamin. I signed a form. Thousands of other parents will do so as well.

This is absolutely fucking ridiculous in so many ways. The pursuit of eliminating trans people at all costs has gotten so out of hand. This is some Taliban shit.

Please…for fuck’s sake call my kids whatever they want to be called, have drag queens read to them…teach them that slavery was bad and gay people exist. Let the teachers teach. Help my kids to be smart and kind and call it a day…I trust our public school system. This is so infuriating.

To the people passing these laws, I hope your children and grandchildren are ashamed of you and put you in a shitty nursing home and never visit you…and then you die (of old age) and the next generation is better. This is disgusting.

    • @mysoulishomeOPEnglish
      6•1 year ago

      I’m totally down for protesting but fucking with the schools isn’t the way to do it…they are victims in this too and forced to do crazy things. Imagine having to ask all of the students what they want to be called on the first day of school and then having to initiate email notification/permission requests to parents. They had to build forms and systems for all of this nonsense

      • @APassengerEnglish
        2•1 year ago

        People change due to discomfort (pain) or pleasure. If neither is experienced or transmitted to the deciders, likely nothing changes.

        Finding the path with the least amount of friendly-fire is good, but some civil disobedience seems fine with me.

        May even be that the teacher is cool with the below:

        Ben -> Benn -> Ben

    • @orphiebabyMEnglish
      2•1 year ago

      I’m not going to lie, I misread that as: “Now get him to ask for a new name, ‘Bimothy’.”

      …I’ve been joking too much with my (incidentally-trans) housemate and best friend about fake/silly portmanteau names lately. The name “Bess” came up and I’m like… “what is that even short for?” They were like “Queen Elizabeth, apparently”, but I said “Bessica”.