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.
Now that’s a crossover I didn’t expect here.
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.
Members of Higg’s cabinet have resigned. In their resignation letters they say they reigned because he’s an authoritarian.
This is liberals or leftists saying this. This is lifelong conservative saying he’s an authoritarian.
All my life there have been trans people. Trans people have been around for a long time. They aren’t anything new.
What is new is this panic over trans people. At least it’s the first time I’ve seen it in my lifetime.
Where is this panic over trans people coming from? We see it in NB. We see it in Florida. We see it in Russia.
Wait why are they passing anti-trans laws in Russia? Don’t they have bigger problems?
The problem they’re trying to solve isn’t the trans people. They need to tighten their control over people. What’s the easiest way to control people? Make them hate.
Hateful people are easier to control. So focused on their perceived enemy they can’t think about anything else.
But to make people hate you need a target for that hate. What is the most convenient target? Trans people. A groups so small, most people don’t know any of them. So aren’t as likely to stick up for them. Besides that, people changing gender is confusing. It makes people uncomfortable. Makes them feel icky. Makes them feel like they want it to go away somehow.
Trans people are the canary in the coal mine. Because the bastards always go after them first. Because they’re the easiest target. But the monster down in that mine doesn’t just eat canaries. It eats everyone.
So why is it for the first time in my life I’m seeing this panic over trans people? Because authoritarians are running a play out of a play book. And while it’s the first time in my life I’m seeing this happen, it’s not the first time it’s happened in history. Trans people have been around a long time. They were around in Germany in the 1930s. Until they weren’t. And the monster that killed the trans people didn’t stop there. It just kept on killing.
We shouldn’t have any illusions about what’s happening.
“The cultural marxists are promoting deviancy to weaken Western Civilization”
“The Jews are promoting deviancy to weaken the Aryan Race”
Same shit different century. And a lot of these bastards aren’t even bothering with code words like “cultural marxist” or “western civilization”.
Blaine Higgs is an authoritarian running a play right out of the fascist play book. These bastards always go after the trans people first.
My Grandfather was a New Brunswicker. Fought in a brutal war against the axact kind of shit Blaine Higgs is about. Higgs is disgracing my grandfather. He’s a disgrace to all of us.
Someone should tell Blaine Higgs to butt out of the lives of queer students.
Wait why are they passing anti-trans laws in Russia? Don’t they have bigger problems?
You hit the nail on the head here, albeit obliquely. Authoritarian governments around the world are banging the anti-gay/anti-trans drum because they have bigger problems, and they desperately need their voters’ eyes off those bigger problems. It’s easy to loot the piggy bank when people aren’t looking.
We’ve had a really good run, especially if you’re rich, but it’s coming to an end, and the economy is breaking down on the poor first because the rich know it’s coming to an end and they’re panicking. They had almost twenty uniterrupted years of cheap money and neoliberal non-interference but the bill is coming due and we have a generation of wealthy folk who cannot imagine not making wheelbarrows of cash every minute. So they’re putting in the squeeze on the rest of us: tax cuts, service cuts, price increases–you name it, it’s on the table.
Poor people are noticing this, and they’re starting to get upset, especially when COVID kind of tore the veil away. The last thing the rich want is a left-wing government to get in and renegotiate the social contract, so they’re hoping to keep the current state humming along by blaming economic issues on social policy. LGBTQ issues are a great one for this: LGBTQ people make enough fascist-curious and vulnerable voters uncomfortable enough that they’re safe to dogwhistle (we can’t say “Jews” just yet).
What will be the acid test is how companies respond: for the last decade, the rainbow dollar has been worth more than the Nazi dollar, and it’s important we keep the economic pressure up. Voting is great, but it only happens every four years or so, but you buy stuff every day, and the companies that actually whisper in the ears of the government pay attention when people stop buying their stuff.
So yes, by all means, punch a Nazi when you see one, but also make sure you let the businesspeople who are potentially Nazi-curious because the Nazis are promising tax cuts know that the Nazi dollar is toxic.
You might laugh, but German industrialists were full-throated in their support of Naziism in the 1920s because they saw it as a useful way to increase their wealth, bust trade unionism and suppress Marxism. Naziism didn’t start with the gas chambers, it started with things that looked the the Convoy, especially the “backed by business” part. So yeah, boycott companies and burn their social equity when they kowtow to right-wing harassment, and give your explicit support to organizations that are Allies. Make sure that the momentum we all spent decades building doesn’t get rolled back.
Side note: something that is going to make this harder is that we’ve lost a lot of platforms in the last five years: Twitter is now a Nazi bar, Facebook…was never great, Reddit is coming unglued and media consolidation has favoured the right-wing (TorStar sold to a conservative a while back, and is looking to merge with PostMedia). I really hope people wake up and realize we’re actually really close to getting kicked back to 1970 in terms of what kind of a voice we have.
And I - Bo7a - Tell Poilievre to go fuck his hat.
One wonders if Poilievre thinks conversion therapy should have also been left to the provinces?
Look, you’re being too hard on Pierre, asking what he actually believes in. I think he’s been perfectly clear, he believes he’ll say anything to cozy up to the regressives to fend off the People’s Party.
Just wanted to remind people of this.
I’ve always found it interesting that these raging debates about gender & sexuality in students seem to completely ignore the actual students in question, as if they don’t matter at all.
Conservatives appear to view their kids as property more than they do people, and anything they do outside of parental control is effectively “property damage”. Children probably need some guiderails to account for their developing minds, but the limits there probably shouldn’t be used to prop up hate speech and abuse.
Wow this thread devolved into hate speech pretty fast
These bastards always go after the trans people first.
It’s not entirely accurate to say that ‘fascists always come for the trans people first.’ The Nazis, for instance, developed a deeply horrifying eugenics program that didn’t single out any one group initially, but targeted any population they deemed ‘undesirable.’ (Google ‘T4 Project’ for more info.) Among the first victims were people with conditions we now understand as autism. In fact, the term ‘Asperger’s syndrome’ came from Hans Asperger, a clinician working in Nazi-occupied Vienna who labeled some autistic children as his ‘little professors.’ These were children he deemed could contribute to society and were thus worth saving. This is one reason why many in the autistic community prefer not to use the term ‘Asperger’s’ anymore—it’s just ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder) now. If you read the book ‘Neurotribes,’ it provides an in-depth exploration of how the Nazis manipulated narratives of ‘mercy’ and ‘alleviation of suffering’ to justify their genocidal acts, starting with what they euphemistically referred to as ‘euthanasia’ of disabled children. LGBTQ+ individuals, including those we would now identify as trans, were also heavily persecuted, often being wrongfully categorized as ‘mentally ill.’ But these atrocities were widespread and multifaceted, targeting numerous groups concurrently, not sequentially.
I mean, if we’re bringing up specific examples of targeted groups, it’s a demonstrable fact that yes, the queer community in Germany was targeted in the very very early years of Nazi rule. Yes, Aktion T4 was horrifying, but as you mention there are so many groups they targeted, saying “what about these people?” only serves to distract from specific echos of history people should be calling out today.
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Some of us are queer AND ND, you know… in fact, most queer people I know are ND in one form or another. An anecdote isn’t data of course, but have you ever checked out, say for example, the prevalence of autism among trans people? These experiences aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive.
Your experience is valid, and you’re not wrong at all to feel that advocacy within the realm of mental health has so much catching up to do. That being said, everything you wrote kind of contradicts your first statement. Your own outlook is an “us vs them” conceptualization, I do hope you recognize that (it seems you do) and are working towards breaking out of that. I get it’s not easy to be vulnerable in this way and discuss how you feel in this regard, and you do make some very valid points when it comes to perpetuating harm through outdated methodologies and such, but it really is another discussion entirely.
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If an LGBT+ person were required to declare their orientation at the outset of employment just to receive basic decency, the company’s management would rightly face severe backlash.
I’m non-binary, I disclosed this during my interview when I was hired, I wear a they/them pronoun pin everyday, and maybe 20% of my coworkers/employers bother to occasionally gender me correctly. So I kinda disagree with this take, queer people are far from automatically receiving basic decency at work.
I always strive to avoid pitting one group against another, as this divide-and-conquer tactic is a hallmark of fascism.
Your comparison of the state of queer rights and neurodivergent rights in your comment kinda comes off as pitting one group against another, if I’m being frank. The lack of advancement in rights for neurodivergent people is deplorable, but is in no way related to the advancement in rights of queer people. I get your frustration, but directing that frustration to the ones who oppress us rather than towards other marginalized groups feels like it might be more productive.
