Great piece! As a parent of three kids, two of whom are leaving the most turbulent phase of the teen years and one of whom is entering, I can't tell you how much this subject, and the Times story, affected me. I bet if you surveyed all of the donors to, say, the Human Rights Campaign who also have kids, roughly 99% of them would be disturbed, if not outraged, by the thought that a school would actively HELP their child hide something important from their parents. I'm going to limit myself to a few thoughts form a parents' perspective:
1) Look, I'm a graduate of public schools, a believer in public schools, and a supporter of public schools. My wife and I picked where we currently live in large part because it has a good public school system, because we both thought it was important to send our kids to public schools. We've been pretty happy with the education our kids have gotten and certainly don't regret our choice. And let me tell you: we would NEVER trust those teachers, or administrators, to make decisions like this for our kids. We'd listen to their advice, but they don't know our kids nearly as well as we do and, honestly, the vast majority of them just aren't qualified to be substituting their judgment for ours on this issue, any more than they are on the question whether our kids should go to a therapist. It's a real problem the Ed schools seem to be teaching younger teachers that it's fine for them to displace kids' parents on anything LGBTQ-related.
2) A common reaction from the activist community, seen in both the article and on Twitter yesterday, was "any kid who wants to hide this from their parent obviously has a good reason to do so." And, my God . . . were you never a teen? Have you never met a teen? A typical teen developmental stage is withdrawing from their parents emotionally. This is often accompanied by an incorrect belief that their parents wouldn't understand, or approve, or whatever; the classic bubbly and happy 12 year-old who turns into a sullen and resentful 14 year-old who only grunts at her parents. This has NOTHING to do with the parents in many cases; it's a normal psychological stage, a way the kids build independence. To simply assume that teens would only lie to their parents, or want to avoid difficult conversations with their parents, only if they had good cause to do so is insane.
3) Which leads to the big problem with the "lie to the parents" approach that I'm not seeing many people discuss: schools might be irrevocably damaging parent-child relationships that would otherwise be healthy. Most sullen and resentful 14 year-olds snap out of it by the time they're 17 or so, and rebuild their relationship with their parents on a more adult and sustainable emotional footing. But with other adults in their lives encouraging them to just cut their parents out? That can do lasting damage. That is, seriously, how cults work. It's nuts to me that people are being so cavalier about the possibility of doing real damage to family relationships like this.
4) As for the "outing the gay" comparison: another problem with it is that schools aren't really involved in the sex life of a gay kid, whereas the whole issue here is that schools are actively "transing" the kids in question. So the analogy isn't "should schools who know a kid is gay tell his parents?" It's "should schools who know a kid is gay make a classroom available for him to mess around with his boyfriend after school, and then tell the parents that the kid was really at band practice" or something like that.
I think policies like this only happen when a bunch of people who don’t have kids get into the room, because they’ve forgotten or mythologized their own childhood so they remember themselves as small adults. Just completely divorced from reality.
Valid points all. Especially on the notion of alienating a kid from their parents. I see this in online discussions too: encouraging young people to cut off their parents, describing parents as "phobic" etc for having *any* hesitation about pronouns or "deadnaming". The truth is that most upper middle class normie parents are not anti-LGBTQ bigots, but it's being framed that way to kids.
Your points 2-3 are the ones I always make. I hid and wanted to hide TONS of things from my parents as a teenager, and it wasn’t because they were abusive or unkind or unsupportive. They were great parents. It’s developmentally normal to want that independence; that doesn’t mean you get it! Absent evidence that the home environment is unsafe - to a standard established by law - I don’t think schools should actively conceal a child’s social transition. I also think that if a school is going to actively facilitate social transition, they should notify parents (so if the school agrees to let a kid use a different bathroom, that should prompt a straightforward notification to the parents).
All of this makes me feel so old, because I came of age in the 1990s when my lesbian friend’s mom had to have a pitched battle with our school to be able to bring a girl as her prom date. I was the president of our gay straight alliance and the administration allowed us to exist (which was rare and prob only possible because it was private school) but we couldn’t put up posters advertising our meetings or anything like that. The idea that schools and teachers are the allies of LGBT kids against hostile parents is such a weird change to me.
My parents are amazing, loving, and supportive. And yet, as a teenager, I hid SO MUCH from them just...cause. I was 15, I was dumb, and I was terrified of them knowing that I'd ever masturbated, or tried a cigarette, or knew certain "bad" kids at school, etc. Should the school have helped me hide my dabbling with cigarettes from my parents just because my mom would be VERY ANGRY if she ever found out?
This reminds me of a library world term coined by Fobazi Ettarh: vocational awe. "Vocational awe describes the set of ideas, values, and assumptions librarians have about themselves and the profession that result in notions that libraries as institutions are inherently good, sacred notions, and therefore beyond critique." In this way librarians come to see themselves as bearing the mantle of intellectual freedom, being the defenders of democracy, etc. These concepts are not wholly untrue (though grossly inflated), but the problem comes when this leads to mission creep, and especially in the refusal to accept criticism.
I see these teachers doing the same thing. They have elevated themselves to be the saviors of children who would otherwise be unable to flourish, who might even DIE. These children alone can decide what their "true self" is, and their teacher may be the only ones they can trust. There is a pretty wide gulf between teaching children to read and leading them into a murky ill-defined psychological morass which is to be concealed from parents.
I'm shocked that the concept of concealing things from parents isn't questioned more. When I was a child I was taught that any adult saying not to tell my parents something was a big red flag for potential abuse.
If you want to explore the vocational awe concept, here is the original article. I see other potential parallels.
Yeah, me too. You start to see it, in various places.
She loses me with the divergence to institutional racism, but then she drops:
"The problem with vocational awe is the efficacy of one’s work is directly tied to their amount of passion (or lack thereof), rather than fulfillment of core job duties. If the language around being a good librarian is directly tied to struggle, sacrifice, and obedience, then the more one struggles for their work, the “holier” that work (and institution)" and I think yes, it's the performance aspect of it that reminds me of the TikTok teacher-preachers.
"Gender identity refers to a person’s internal sense of being male, female or something else"
I'm sorry if this gives offense, but I'm curious what others think of this: I truly don't understand the concept of "internal sense of being male, female or something else."
I know I'm a woman for obvious anatomical reasons, but I don't have an "internal sense of being female." As a commenter on another thread said, "I don't know what it's like to be a woman; I only know what it's like to be me."
Now, an internal sense of being a woman makes a lot more sense in a society with rigid gender roles: "I want to do x (go to university, join the military, be a priest, own property in my own name), but only men are allowed to do x. I must be a man!" But our society, with a few exceptions, just isn't like that. Let's look at some examples from my life right now. Would I still be able to do these things if I were a man?
Work as a scientist --> check
Practice a martial art --> check
Watch "Love, Actually" --> My husband is a man, and he openly and unashamedly loves this movie. It's adorable. So, check.
Cook delicious food --> check
Call my parents and tell them I love them --> check
Be a loving parent to my son --> He would call me Daddy rather than Mommy, but other than that, check.
Comment on Substack threads --> check
I mean, of course I get that some things (especially pertaining to fashion/makeup/hairstyle) continue to be strongly associated with a given gender in our culture, but is this an argument for "gender identity" or for broadening our idea of gender norms? Should we, as a society, tend toward "If you are biologically male but want to wear makeup, you must be trans or nonbinary" or "Some men want to wear makeup and still remain men, and that's okay"?
…Should we, as a society, tend toward "If you are biologically male but want to wear makeup, you must be trans or nonbinary" or "Some men want to wear makeup and still remain men, and that's okay"?…
It’s so obviously the second. The question is, how is this actually in dispute?
It isn't in dispute. It just doesn't cover everyone.
Some men want to wear makeup *and also* be seen by the rest of society as women.
Some men want to wear makeup *only because* it will help them be seen by the rest of society as women.
Some people do in fact want to live as the opposite gender as an end in and of itself, not because they really want to do something else (like wearing makeup) but they think only one gender has permission to do it.
Thanks for that reply. Helps me clarify my thoughts, which is good.
To me, I think society’s *default* to a boy/man who wants to wear a dress should be simply “that boy/man wants to wear a dress”. And not to read more into it. Not to presume anything further. That (to me) is true acceptance.
But of course, if a boy/man says “I want to be seen/treated as a girl/woman by society” that’s different. How we respond to that *is* in dispute.
Assuming (even extreme) non-conformity to sex role stereotypes to constitute a separate identity or as a symptom of a pathology is what I take issue with.
Boy wants to wear a skirt, so what? It’s really no big deal, unless we make it one. Get him the skirt, clap when he twirls, and then go about your day. Asking him how he identifies, asking him if he feels like a girl, is not appropriate.
I'd agree with all of that, right up until the last sentence.
I think there's a difference between presuming that gender non-conforming behavior *must be* a sign of something deeper, and acknowledging that it *can be* (and often is) a sign of something deeper. Like, if a boy wants to wear skirts but shows no interest in kilts, there's a good chance that the association of skirts with femininity is part of what he enjoys about it.
Yes! Absolutely take your point on skirt vs kilt. However, an affinity for femininity is *not* the same as femaleness.
For example, I was a what would be considered a traditionally “masculine” child (interests/appearance/expression) and am still sometimes called “sir”. I really despise most things considered “feminine” (make-up, high heels). Men make more sense to me, in many ways, and the social intricacies of groups of women often confuse me. I’m would be considered a “traditionally masculine” woman, or at least a non-conforming woman.
I don’t think of myself as any “less female” or less of a “woman” because some things I do and wear are culturally coded “masculine”.
I think there's a pretty big grey area where it makes more sense to defer to how people say they want to be treated than to insist on fitting them into a certain category. (In most aspects of life, at least - obviously if you're, like, at the ob/gyn, then the parts you have will matter a lot more than how you prefer to be treated.)
If you decided that being called "sir" wasn't an annoyance, but actually something you liked, and you went as far as to make your appearance more masculine to encourage people to do it more often, then I do think it would make sense so say you're "less female" at least in some sense - you would be deliberately inhabiting a male social role more than a female one. (Some people might object that the right word for the social role is "feminine" or "woman" or whatever, not "female", but I don't waste my time trying to keep up with all that.)
I hear what you’re saying here, but I think the last sentence is actually super important.
Until recently, the vast majority of trans-identified people were biological males who *self-identified as the opposite sex without prompting.* If a 5-year-old whose parents and other people in their life have never said anything involving the word “trans” or even articulated the concept in any way at all, and the kid says they’re a girl despite that fact, then I think a solid argument can be made that there’s something inate at work. What that actually is, and how we should deal with it are separate questions, of course.
But with today’s group of trans-identified people, there’s a whole conceptualization *provided for them.* The existence of this presumptive intellectual framework is inherently suggestive, as far as I can tell.
For this reason, I strongly agree with the statement with which you said you disagreed: “Asking him how he identifies, asking him if he feels like a girl, is not appropriate.”
We don’t need to be putting these ideas into people’s heads. We need to get back to a place as a society, imho, where trans-identified people come to a conclusion about themselves on their own.
I know that’s a tricky proposition, and not a black and white one exactly, practically speaking, especially now, given that the genie is already out of the bottle, so to speak. But I think that general principle is a valid one: don’t ask people if they “feel like” the opposite sex just because they exhibit some gender atypical characteristics. It’s not a neutral act, or a kind one.
Noah I agree 100% with this. A spontaneous utterance is completely different. Those specific questions are leading.
I grew up in the 70s. I had a lot of anguish about my future, because of my sex. I had no good female role models. I thought girls were silly and vain. Life as a woman looked awful. Nobody talked to me about any of this. I figured it out eventually and I realized I never really wanted to be male, I wanted to be a person. I didn’t see women being independent, strong, etc.
As I got older I found female role models. It expanded what I believed was possible. Had I been asked when I was younger I’m not sure if I would have explicitly stated that I wanted to be a boy (in terms of wanting a penis/male sexed body) but I absolutely would have said I did not want to be a girl/female, that I hated being female. I definitely did not want to “develop”. I’m glad no-one asked, I’m glad there weren’t “options” for girls like me.
I respect your viewpoint here, but based both on what I've experienced first-hand and on what I've learned from engaging with the community, I must disagreely as strongly as humanly possible. Indeed, if it were possible to disagree even more strongly than that, I would do so.
Here's why: because self-identifying as a member of the opposite sex *is not a universal part of the trans experience.*
The topic of an "innate sense of gender" has come up in various threads here. In summary: not everyone has a conscious experience of "feeling male" or "feeling female". Many people, possibly even most, only experience their gender as something that can be physically observed: "I have boy parts, people treat me like a boy, so obviously I'm a boy. What else could 'being a boy' possibly mean?"
They'll feel various types of discomfort associated with gender dysphoria (see https://genderdysphoria.fyi/ for a rundown), or a confusing sense of happiness or relief when someone mistakes them for the opposite sex, and they may not even realize that their perception of their own gender is what's behind it. They'll get the same benefits from transitioning as any other trans person, but they might not even realize it's a possibility without some kind of external prompting.
For that population, expecting them to "come to a conclusion about themselves on their own" is like expecting them to know when they have a vitamin deficiency. Even if they have a problem big enough that their quality of life is suffering, they won't automatically be aware of what's causing it, and many of the symptoms have more common causes (did you know irritability, fatigue, and headache can be signs of a B12 deficiency?). There *are* ways they can narrow down a cause, but only if they know what the possibilities are.
"""But I think that general principle is a valid one: don’t ask people if they 'feel like' the opposite sex just because they exhibit some gender atypical characteristics."""
IMO, it's better not to ask *anyone* if they "feel like" the opposite sex -- because being trans doesn't necessarily mean "feeling like" the opposite sex anyway. There are better questions to ask.
Re "Some men want to wear makeup *and also* be seen by the rest of society as women."
And herein lies the problem! What human being has the "right" or the ability to force others to see them as they see themselves? He or she can wish as fervently as they like, but humans are autonomous, sentient beings who can, and will, form their own thoughts, feelings and impressions.
I mean, I can insist to you that I am handsome, brilliant, kind, generous and hilarious, but if *you* experience me as an unattractive, dull, crass, selfish clod, should I really take offense?
"What human being has the "right" or the ability to force others to see them as they see themselves?"
No one, which is why I wasn't talking about "forcing" anyone to do anything.
That was obvious in context, since the sentence before that pointed out that some people wear makeup specifically in order to increase the chance that others will see them as women.
Those who want to be seen by the rest of society as women also do things like adopting feminine hairstyles, wardrobes, speech patterns and mannerisms, etc., as well as using hormones and surgery to obtain a more feminine body shape. Those things are often done as an end in themselves, but they may also be done as a means to an end.
> Some men want to wear makeup *and also* be seen by the rest of society as women.
Here's the thing though, society can just say "no".
Which really is what the appeal to a mystical "innate gender identity" is all about; that is, if it's *innate*, who are we all to say no? Innate things can't be *changed*, and it's discriminatory to deny people's innate senses, whatever they are.
If most people go "that sounds like a bunch of hooey", then there's no leg to stand on as far as "wanting to be seen as a woman".
Here's the thing though, society can just say 'no'.
"""
Of course, and it often has and does. Likewise, society has often said "no" to men wanting to wear makeup (even if they still remain men), for example.
There's no cosmic judge *forcing* society to be fair, kind, tolerant, or compassionate; if we want to live in a society that is, we have to push for it ourselves.
"""
Which really is what the appeal to a mystical "innate gender identity" is all about; that is, if it's *innate*, who are we all to say no? Innate things can't be *changed*, and it's discriminatory to deny people's innate senses, whatever they are.
"""
I don't think that's really it. Just look at the point we've been responding to in this subthread: "Some men want to wear makeup and still remain men, and that's okay".
You might ask, is the desire to wear makeup *innate*? And if it isn't, doesn't that mean society can say no?
Well, no, the desire to wear makeup isn't innate. And yeah, society could say "nope, makeup is only for women, men can't wear it". But without a legitimate reason for saying no, society would look awfully petty and cruel -- and I think a lot of people would even call it discriminatory, even if it isn't based on an innate sense of wanting to wear makeup, because it still boils down to arbitrarily deciding who gets to do something based on the circumstances of their birth.
You're kind of losing me here. You seem to be now conflating "the desire to wear make up" with "the innate sense that one is a woman". The point of this thread is "those are different things", but you're bringing them together and seemingly arguing that if society accepts men wearing makeup, they have to accept men-as-women. Apologies if I'm misunderstanding.
I'm saying the innate sense doesn't have to be a part of it at all.
I'm arguing that if society accepts men wearing makeup, they might as well accept men presenting themselves fully as women, using hormones and/or surgery to look more feminine, going by feminine names, and being called "her".
Because if I don't need an "innate sense of needing to wear makeup" in order to be accepted by society as someone who gets to wear makeup, then why should I need an "innate sense of being a woman" in order to be accepted by society as someone who gets to do any of that other stuff? If simply having the desire to wear makeup is enough for society to accept me wearing makeup, shouldn't simply having the desire to do the rest be enough for society to accept it as well?
I find the whole idea of an internal sense of being male or female hard to wrap my head around, too. I know some other commenters have tried to describe the sensation, and I understand that gender dysphoria causes intense distress due to this mismatch, but it seems like it's far from universal and the common notion that everyone has a "gender identity" is very odd to me. Like, when I'm filling out forms at school, I'm asked to give my gender identity or fill in the blank of "I identify as...", and I want to tear my hair out and yell "I don't have a fucking gender identity!"
I'm grateful I just missed all of this in adolescence and grew up in the final days of the popular messaging being "girls can do 'boy' stuff and not be any less of a girl; boys can do 'girl' stuff and not be any less of a boy", with the ultimate aim of breaking down those gendered associations like 'boys like trucks, girls like cooking' and whatever else. I know this comes up sometimes in Jesse's writing and more often on Blocked & Reported, but this new concept of gender identity is regressive and only serving to further entrench gender stereotypes.
That's a common response, and totally understandable. I think the language of "identity" can be pretty unhelpful, because a lot of people just don't have an experience that feels like having a sense of gender.
This article (by a trans feminist, no less) refers to it as "cis by default" -- https://thingofthings.wordpress.com/2015/01/28/cis-by-default/. But, hell, I'm trans and I *still* don't have an internal sense of gender. I've had to carefully deduce it, by thinking about (or getting myself into) situations where I perceive my gender differently, or where I'm treated as a different gender by others, and then observing my reactions.
Yeah, “non-binary” or “gender fluid” in practice seems to mean “I want to pick and choose which gender norms I conform to in my personal quest for identity”. Which, fine, cool, adolescents love pushing norms and “finding themselves”. But the vast majority of these seem like external “display” stuff like fashion, hairstyles, etc, and I also struggle with the concept of having an “internal sense of being” about a pixie cut or a skirt (but I’m also not an anxious teen anymore).
That said I do think there are a small number of people who genuinely have gender dysphoria to the point that it amounts to “body dysmorphia over sexual characteristics” and treating that condition via social and physical transition is probably the least bad tool we have. But that seems like a much more serious and fundamental thing than Demi Lovato’s brief experimentation with being a “they”.
"I'm sorry if this gives offense, but I'm curious what others think of this: I truly don't understand the concept of 'internal sense of being male, female or something else.'"
It can be a difficult concept to understand, because most people *don't* experience anything that they can obviously identify as an internal sense of gender.
Instead, they have a bunch of experiences that are in fact related to their gender -- being greeted as "ma'am", being pointed to the women's section when they enter a store, seeing a feminine shape in the mirror, feeling clothes fit a certain way, etc. -- and those experiences just seem normal.
There's no voice whispering "you're a woman", there's just the way you react to the thousands of little daily reminders that people see you as a woman and you have a female body.
Imagine waking up tomorrow and noticing that suddenly those reminders are all wrong. You walk into a shop and the greeter calls you "sir". You ask where the jackets are and they point you to the men's section. You pass by a mirror, and although you can't put a finger on what's wrong with your reflection, it doesn't feel like you're looking at yourself.
You might feel like something was wrong with the world -- or with you. That's the feeling of having an "internal sense of gender" that doesn't line up with your external presentation.
Or maybe you might not. Who knows.
If you'd like to learn more, https://genderdysphoria.fyi/ goes into more detail on the ways it can be experienced.
Part of me wonders if having a very strong internal sense of gender independent of physical sex is genuinely pretty rare, and instead most people are just “cisgender by default”. Like, I’m a man, but my sense of being a man stems almost entirely from my perception of my own biological reality - I have male organs, I can feel the effects of testosterone, but if I never had those I can’t even really point to what part of me would feel “male”. Some of my preferences align with “traditional” gender roles for men, and some don’t. If my interests and preferences were reshuffled, I don’t think I’d feel more or less “manly”.
When people say what it is that makes them feel like they are “really” a man or a woman, I feel like all of them are either preferences/fashion (which are entirely socially constructed) or biological. For me I can’t really point to what about me, other than my sex organs, would change to make me “really” a woman and not just a man that likes to do some female-coded things. Maybe if I was from a society with very strong gender roles where a preference for certain things was only “allowed” for one gender… but I’m not and, quite the opposite, was raised to believe that such strong gender roles are inherently oppressive.
I’m not denying that it’s impossible to have a “strong internal sense of gender”, I just don’t think I have it, at least not independent of my externally obvious biology. If you do have this sense you may not believe me… but recognize that’s the same struggle I have in believing that you do.
Gender dysphoria is apparently much more common among autistic individuals. Who, among other things, often have hypersensitivity to various sensory inputs (e.g. inability to “tune out” disruptive stimuli). Or they struggle with “unwritten rules” or situations where not following the written rules is expected/encouraged. This strikes me as an interesting parallel… and maybe causal?
"""I’m a man, but my sense of being a man stems almost entirely from my perception of my own biological reality - I have male organs, I can feel the effects of testosterone, but if I never had those I can’t even really point to what part of me would feel “male”."""
Very understandable. I had the same experience. And even now, as a trans woman, I still have basically the same experience. [Pause for snarky response.] I can check different boxes on a list of physical traits, I can feel the effects of estrogen being different from the effects of testosterone, but there's never been a voice in the back of my head whispering "male" or "female", before transitioning or since.
"""When people say what it is that makes them feel like they are “really” a man or a woman, I feel like all of them are either preferences/fashion (which are entirely socially constructed) or biological."""
Well... I think people are sometimes too quick to dismiss the "socially constructed" stuff, while overlooking what it signifies.
To make an analogy: language also is socially constructed. The words we use to express a compliment are totally dependent on the culture we live in; the words "Du bist schön" and "Tu es belle" are just noises, with no natural inherent meaning, only the meaning given to them by a culture that speaks that language. But the act of complimenting someone, the reasons we do it, the message it sends, the feeling it inspires in the recipient... those are all parts of the same common human experience, no matter which words our culture uses to express it.
Likewise, fashion is socially constructed, which means a skirt and a necktie are just pieces of fabric. They aren't naturally "male" or "female"; they only have a gendered association because of the culture that's been built up around them. But when you grow up in that culture, you learn that your choice of clothes can send a message, just like the words you use.
When a little boy hears "skirts are for girls, if you wear a skirt then people might think you're a girl", he might recoil and avoid wearing skirts, even if he likes them aesthetically, because he doesn't want people to think he's a girl. Or... he might decide wearing a skirt suddenly sounds kind of fun. He might decide to start wearing skirts, even if he doesn't especially care for them aesthetically, because he likes the idea of being mistaken for a girl, or doing things that (his culture says) are "supposed" to be for girls.
*That* feeling -- being averse or attracted to something that you understand will send a gendered message in your culture -- can be a clue about your internal concept of gender.
"""This strikes me as an interesting parallel… and maybe causal?"""
It's certainly interesting. There doesn't seem to be any evidence that autism causes gender dysphoria (or vice versa), though, only evidence of a correlation.
In fact, one reason mental health providers might want to keep an eye out for signs of GD after an autism diagnosis is that autistic people often have a hard time recognizing emotions (in themselves as well as others), or describing what they're feeling, or identifying what caused them.
If you're someone who doesn't experience an "explicit" sense of gender, and can only deduce it from how you feel in situations where your gender-related expectations aren't met, *and* you have difficulty noticing changes in your own emotions or connecting them to causes, then you might not even notice there are specific gender-related things that make you feel uncomfortable until someone inquires about them.
> Imagine waking up tomorrow and noticing that suddenly those reminders are all wrong. You walk into a shop and the greeter calls you "sir".
This is *always* brought up to try and explain gender dysphoria, and it *always* gets the same response: "it would be *weird*, but it wouldn't change how I view myself, since clearly that person is just wrong".
In other words, it's just saying the same thing in a different way, and most people don't agree with it.
I'm not saying it would, or should, change the way you see yourself. In fact, I wasn't trying to convince anyone of anything, which makes it a bit strange that your reaction was "most people don't agree with it".
What is there to agree or disagree with? Do you expect everything to be a confrontation?
I was simply responding to someone who said they "truly don't understand the concept" of an internal sense of gender, by describing a situation where attention would be drawn to it -- that exact "weird" feeling you mentioned.
If your reaction after spending, say, a year in that same situation -- every single person you encounter treating you as a member of the opposite sex -- would still be "that's weird, everyone in this universe is so determined to be wrong!", then congratulations. You probably have a very strong internal sense of gender.
It's less about the internal sense of what you are vs. the internal since of what you aren't. If you were born male but you feel this affinity to "femaleness", regardless of any particular ability to define it, and you feel it so much so that you want to make invasive permanent adjustments to your physical form, we'll, that's the issue. It really doesn't matter what the gender boundary actually is. It's just a function of how you feel about your physical form while living within society.
> you feel it so much so that you want to make invasive permanent adjustments to your physical form
Which in every other context, we consider this either a paraphilia or body dysmorphia and we try to treat it.
The analogy to anorexia is such a good one and it should be made more often, i.e. we don't treat anorexics by agreeing with them that are in fact fat and need to stop eating.
OP's question though was about understanding the concept of internal identity. And my point was it's all about how you feel about your physical form vs. how you ultimately utilize it in your real life interactions.
I agree that it's just another form of dysmorphia. And what schools are doing here is unconscionable. They are directly implementing a treatment protocol for a psychological condition with zero parental, or even professional, oversight.
We treat it in this context too. It just happens to be the case that transition is the only treatment that's been found to work.
Lots of people have *tried* to treat it the other way around, by forcing the mind to happily accept the gender associated with the body it's in. It doesn't lead to success. If you think you have a better way of doing it that will finally work, perhaps there's a Nobel Prize in your future.
Interestingly, gender dysphoria isn't the only condition in which the mind is incongruous with the body and changing the body is the only effective treatment so far. There's also the even rarer bodily integrity identity disorder (BIID), in which a patient's limb feels foreign to them and they want to have it removed -- a feeling that doesn't go away with any amount of mental counseling, and which, neurologically, seems to be the inverse of phantom limb sensation. (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/23767378_Body_Integrity_Identity_Disorder_BIID-Is_the_Amputation_of_Healthy_Limbs_Ethically_Justified)
You know, back in the day, Coca-Cola had reams of data showing that consumers preferred the great taste of New Coke. But New Coke turned out to be a historic disaster.
The funny thing is, anyone who spent a few minutes talking to Coke drinkers knew how it would turn out! Their sentiment simply wasn't included in the numeric data the company chose to base its decisions on.
If you spend any time at all talking to people who are transitioning, it'll be blindingly obvious that it's working for them in at least *some* sense. So if someone shows you data that doesn't reflect at least *some* type of improvement, you should be suspicious.
In the real world, that "40% of trans people commit suicide" stat, while totally wrong in most ways (like specifically in the fact that it wasn't generalizable to the trans population at large), *was only counting people who had transitioned*. In other words, every single person who cites that as a reason why we need to allow for easier transitions is absolutely full of it.
I agree that’s a fine way to think about it, but it seems like many are losing sight of the fact that transition is indeed a “treatment”/“intervention” and should be treated with all the care that that implies.
Treatments have costs and side effects - certainly gender transition does. On the margin, given the current state of technology and medical evidence, I think we need to proceed cautiously and recognize that, all else being equal, transition should be maybe not a last resort but certainly not something undertaken unless it’s been determined to be absolutely necessary.
I think what you're describing is basically the status quo. Medical transition *is* treated with the care and cost/benefit analysis that "treatment" implies.
"""certainly not something undertaken unless it’s been determined to be absolutely necessary"""
Well, OK, *that's* not the status quo. But it's also a suspicious level of scrutiny, don't you think? Why should the bar for medical transition be higher than the bar for cosmetic surgery, for example, considering that many of the procedures involved are exactly the same ones that cis people get electively?
It’s generally frowned upon to give minors elective cosmetic surgery.
We have serious cultural reservations about whether we should encourage cispeople to accept their bodies or to alter them surgically. Body positivity wars with Botox parties. Gossips mock women for sagging but also for having obvious work done. That human Barbie woman got treated as a circus curiosity.
People write angry editorials about how the nipped, tucked celebrities on magazine covers are destroying little girls’ self-esteem. A number of epidemiologic studies have identified an increased risk of suicide among women who have received cosmetic surgery. People definitely worry that this stuff can be pathological.
A teenager demanding cosmetic surgery or permanent sterilization or steroids because they feel like they will kill themselves if they don’t get it would absolutely get a high level of scrutiny at any provider that doesn’t deserve a malpractice suit.
Even for BIID, the consensus seems to be "don't cut off healthy limbs"
"Instead of only curing the symptom, a causal therapy should be developed to integrate the alien limb into the body image." (This is just from the abstract, I haven't read the whole paper, so feel free to ditch the grain and pour a whole barrel of salt on it)
Yes, I'd recommend reading the whole paper. (Sci-Hub has it if you search by DOI.)
Notice that the part you quoted says a therapy "should be developed"! There isn't actually an alternative therapy that works; the paper simply argues that we should keep looking for one because amputation is ethically problematic. Maybe we'll find one someday; maybe not.
These trans fights are going to destroy what's left of this country, I swear it.
I largely agree with what you have said, Jesse, but I'd like to throw in my take. When the first person I knew who transitioned asked for a different name and pronouns, I was happy to comply, and, by and large, I did so successfully. However, I don't know how successful I would have been if I'd had to call her "Darla" in some situations and "Don" in others. (Names changed to protect the innocent.) I am sure I would have fouled it up, most likely many times.
According to these policies, teachers are required to use these pronouns in school, but NOT in front of parents (if the child has indicated this), so what happens if they make an honest mistake? What if Mr. Gormley the Science Teacher says, "Janice--uh, I mean, John's--grades are good, and she--I mean, he--really applies himself." This teacher has just violated the policy, however unwillingly, and now that cat's out of the bag. The student's parents now know about the alternative name/pronouns, AND they know that Mr. Gormley has been keeping secrets. Are those parents likely to trust *anything* they are told by a teacher at that school?
(I don't know if this hypothetical has ever really happened, but if it hasn't, I am sure it eventually will.)
These sorts of policies, well-intentioned as they are, set up an adversarial model, in which parents are assumed to be cruel and teachers required to be dishonest. This is not a sustainable model, to say the least. I don't propose that teachers run around reporting student's every move, but there's a mighty mile between choosing not to reveal information irrelevant to pedagogy--as in the case with gay kids--and deliberately concealing something parents likely need to know.
Jesse made a remark on one of the B&R episodes last week along the lines of: "there's a category of people for whom something does not exist or happen if it isn't in the NYT." I have to confess that I'm in that category for this issue.
I simply assumed that the idea that teachers would even attempt to conceal something like this from parents of a public school student over the long term was progressive tick-tok LARP spun in to libs of tick tok rage bait. I am astounded by this coverage.
Jesse points to the psychological harm of splitting one's identity between home and school, but I think destruction of trust in the parent-child relationship is even more troubling. Ultimately, regardless of "I'm your mom now" non-sense, children really only have their parents and maybe extended family to rely on in moments of crisis, and teachers are potentially damaging relationships in ways that may perhaps take decades to undo. God forbid one of these kids runs away from home and gets into serious trouble.
The exposure to potential legal liability here is astounding. Someone with an MA in education really just isn't qualified to make these determinations, and probably does not have the time in the day to manage this deception. I live in one of the states mentioned in the article (MD). Last fall our local papers covered some "parents right's" groups around the election, but were pretty vague about what the groups' complaints were (other than complaints about 1619-type curriculum or something). Well I understand now. The teacher summarily caned in MA for informing the dad of the 11 year old has to be one of the most brutal ideological firings I've ever heard of.
Let me close by saying that I really feel for kids who don't feel like they can trust their parents in situations like but. That's tragic. But, perhaps, announcing a policy of "I'll keep your secret" promotes the notion that there's a secret to be kept.
Just last week The Federalist reported on a “Virginia Teen Sex-Trafficked Twice After School Hides Gender Identity From Her Parents” The girl, who at the start of the story identified as a boy, thought she was running away but was sex-trafficked.
I know I know - it’s The Federalist - don’t shoot the messenger, the liberal press won’t touch stories like these with 10-foot poles. The headline if anything, understates what happened to this poor girl - even more than heartbreaking it is enraging.
Your point about teachers not being qualified to make these determinations is really important. I don't know how much training teachers get in psychology but given that therapists have graduate degrees in a mental health field, I think it's fair to assume that they are far less qualified to make these determinations than, oh, say a therapist. And this is not a knock on teachers -- nobody expects a therapist to be able to teach kids to read.
One of my concerns is that a lot of these determinations about what to do with kids in this situation is that it seems to be driven by ideology rather than actual empirical evidence. The mental health field is pretty politicized but at least people in the mental health field are trained to evaluate mental health research. I don't expect principals or teachers have been trained in that and therefore are more likely to advocate for policies that aren't based in empirical data. I have no doubt that the mental health field is heavily politicized but people in that field at least have training that helps them evaluate the evidence and there does seem to be a debate brewing.
The recent premium episode where Katie talked about reading curricula was mind-blowing to me, and made me wonder how much research skills are even a part of graduate education. Like, all these teachers were told “this is the best evidence-based practice,” when in fact that simply wasn’t the case. They seemingly had zero ability to figure out on their own what the truth was.
No personal criticism intended here. It’s not like I have great research skills either. That said, I’m also not doing a professional class job. Seems to me like this should be in the toolbox for people doing those kinds of work.
If someone had asked me about my identity when I was the same age of these kids who "know" they are trans, I would have "known" I was heterosexual...and folks, I was was *very much attracted exclusively to other males* while I was knowing this! But societal prerogatives being what they were, and social influence being pervasive, I assumed this was just some odd kink, that I was straight. In the end, I didn't look under the hood of *any* of that until college, when my straight friends (!) had to tell me, "Dude you're totally gay, and none of us even care..."
Although you could say I'm making the same mistake Jesse is warning against by comparing being gay to being trans, I'm making a different point here: that I know from experience a freshly-pubescent young person *can indeed* be secretly fantasizing about George Wendt on "Cheers," and still be convinced that he is *totally into the ladies y'all,* nothing to see here.
And if that's true (and I know it is) then there are a great many other things young people can be wrong about. Especially if they have been socially incentivized to be that way.
I feel terrible for these kids. I wish I were wrong, but I have that sinking feeling that many of them have chosen a path that does not serve them, and the schools who promise this alternative world where they are endlessly supported and affirmed are just talking about the internet--the real world will not give them what they need once the backlash to all of this becomes mainstream.
Society, collectively, will not have their backs when this is all over.
I am dreading where it's all going. Worst case scenario: I think there will not just be a conservative backlash to LGBT people, schools, progressivism in general, and doctors--but a *mainstream* backlash to LGBT people, schools, progressivism in general, and doctors. Vaccination rates aren't exactly climbing since COVID, I think that when this breaks, they'll plummet. Folks who would have found LGBT people distasteful at first sight will now have a reasonable excuse to vent their prejudice, and who's going to argue with them if this goes where we think it's going? Teachers, who are already caught up in this whether they are on-board with the new program or not, will get an upgrade on their de facto demonization.
Alright now somebody give me a best case scenario quick, I'm freaking myself out LOL.
Best case is probably we just roll back to around 2015 or so where most people were totally cool with teh gays and trans people were a sympathetic curiosity rather than an aggressive political movement. Where it went really sideways is when (mostly straight!) activists started insisting you were a bigot if you were even remotely uncomfortable with your girl children seeing naked dicks in the locker room, introducing first graders to gay burlesque, or putting tweens on powerful hormone blockers.
FWIW I think among the “trans-skeptics” there is a much stronger distinction between “gay” and “trans” than there is among trans activists, so I honestly don’t think your worst case scenario of the backlash spreading beyond T to the LGB is all that likely.
Yeah I'm likely disasterizing--though even this best case scenario will be disaster-adjacent for many, so perhaps I'm just OVERdisasterizing, LOL. Gotta dial it back to 7 from 10.
P.S. I *hard agree* with you that this is mostly the work of the straights! With allies like these...
Yeah I certainly don’t want to give the impression that I think an anti-trans backlash wouldn’t be bad for some people. It certainly will, and unfortunately a lot of the “straight allies” that drove the backlash won’t be the ones bearing the brunt of it.
But I do think that a lot of genuine and durable progress has been made, and any retreat is going to be to “2010” and not “1950”.
I really want to judge you about liking George Wendt, but I have a thing for Matt Paxton from "Hoarders" so I guess I am in a gigantic glass gay house.
It's a gift! I think, in America, if you're into Matt Paxton or George Wendt, you're going to get a lot more eye candy on average than someone pining for guys on the other end of the schlub spectrum.
The most insidious—and most successful—ploy of trans rights activists has been to convince the general public that being gay and being trans are the same kind of trait. Using this analogy, they have convinced most progressives that providing counseling services to gender-nonconforming youth is "conversion therapy" and that these vulnerable youth need to be protected from being "outed" to their potentially abusive parents.
It makes me angry just to hear the term "LGBTQ community," as if lesbians and autogynephiles are all part of the same happy rainbow family (and don't even get me started on the now-meaningless term "queer"). This conflation of sexual orientation and "gender identity" is a misunderstanding that is going to be very hard to eradicate. Until people realize that it's a dangerous oversimplification at best (and a cunning political maneuver at worst), any nuanced discussion about "trans youth" will be seen as bigoted and harmful.
I had a lesson in how meaningless "queer" is when I read an interview with Emma Corrin, who played Princess Diana in "The Crown" a season or two ago. Corrin said that Princess Diana was definitely queer. My reaction: "Wut?" Corrin went on to say that Diana was friendly to gay people and also experienced herself as an outsider. So that's all it takes to be queer? Good to know.
There's one better than that. Emma D'Arcy, the non-binary actor who plays Rhaenyra Targaryen on HBO's "House of the Dragon", has said that they "really like playing women, and I'm good at it." I rolled my eyes so hard I nearly strained myself.
I wonder if the gender extremists know how much damage they are doing to liberal causes with all this. There are so many people repulsed by Trump and the moral bankruptcy of the Republican party who see stories like this and think "well the right is bad.....but at least they aren't advocating that schools let 10 years old's transition and not tell parents."
Now to be clear, that still doesn't justify voting for Trump or his lackeys, but it flips enough people to keep the margins thin. If the left could just NOT BE CRAZY for an election cycle or two they'd have supermajorities in congress.
This is what *really* drives me crazy. There was a post going viral on FB a couple weeks ago to the effect “Why so much hysteria about letting a few dozen kids live their best lives?” I SO wanted to ask “If it’s only a few dozen kids why do you want to throw away the possibility of not destroying the whole planet’s ecosystem for their ostensible benefit?” But I’d have lost half my friendlist in 20 minutes and I’m a coward.
Yeah the amount of reflexive virtue signaling on the left is frustrating. I can't tell you how many times in casual conversation people have felt the need to, for example, throw in a nasty dig at JK Rowling just to prove their bona-fides. I try to lightly push back where I can, but I do feel that cowardice too. If I were to say what I really felt (which agrees with 95% of what the progressive left believes in any case) I'd be labelled a bigot and outcast. I'm trying to be better about not caring about this in 2023, but I'm a work in progress.
Whenever I think of where it would be appropriate for this to not be the case I’m also left with “it’s also not appropriate for the kid to be in that home.”
Like if your parents beat the shit out of you for doing stuff they don’t like you already don’t belong there and the school should be reporting that.
But if your parents just aren’t going to 100% back you, that’s their choice as your guardians because you can’t make good decisions yet.
Yeah - either the home situation is so severe that the teacher ought to be calling CPS, or it’s not, and the kid’s parents should be involved in their child’s “gender care”. “Fully socially transition at school and keep the parents in the dark” is either not enough (in the former case) or too much (in the latter case).
We have rules and a review system for this reason. There’s not some middle state where the school system gets to leave your child in your home but still call the shots based on their personal feeling.
Parents make all kinds of decisions others might question--they let children eat junk food, wear inappropriate clothes, play violent video games. Schools can set dress codes, rules about cell phone use, etc. Facilitating an identity change is pro-active, and concealing it from parents is, like another commenter said, what cults do.
We live in a world where a lot of peoples most emotionally formative experiences come from movies they’ve seen and I think that is why some people go so nuts. Feeling like a good guy in a movie is a great drug.
Sitting around and rubbing your head, wondering “am I the asshole?” and sometimes finding intractable problems and stuff you just don’t know how to fix is a lot less appetizing.
I don't think schools need to tattle on kids to their parents for everything they say. If a kid is talking to friends and a teacher overhears them saying "I might be trans", it would be inappropriate for them to call the parents. Who knows how serious the kid was or of it will persist. Calling the parent risks making the kid paranoid.
If a kid confides in a teacher that they "might be trans", it'd be preferable if the teacher tries to empower the kid to broach the subject with the parents. Again, tattling immediately on something that doesn't have a clear and present danger risks alienating the kid with little reward.
I do believe that if a kid starts requesting to go by a different name, or use a different bathroom, or requests time to change clothes from what they left their house in, it's time to get the parents involved. Schools shouldn't needlessly tattle, but they also shouldn't facilitate a major social change without parental support.
If the young kid asks the school to do something different (different name/pronouns) the parents should be notified. This applies to non-gender related nicknames as well.
But if the kid just expresses doubt/curiosity, I'm not sure that requires immediate notification. Maybe immediate referral to a guidance counselor who can make a determination of whether this rises to the level that need parental notification.
Let's examine a similar scenario: a kid says to their teacher that they might be depressed. In this case, I think the teacher should recommend to the kid that they talk to their parents about it, and they should have the kid talk to the guidance counselor for a better evaluation to determine if parents need to be notified (with a fairly low, but not on the ground, bar for notification). But unless there's indication of suicidal ideation I'm not sure it requires immediate notification of the parents by the teacher.
I agree that depression is serious (I'm guessing we know for the same reason). My point is that a self-diagnosis of depression isn't necessarily serious, and so doesn't necessarily mean immediate parental notification.
Which is why I think a referral to a guidance counselor is the right course of action. I think it's unreasonable to expect a teacher to determine whether a student is showing symptoms of major depression or is just sad. A guidance counselor, who hopefully has received training in this area, would be better equipped to determine if therapeutic (and therefore parental) involvement is necessary.
I guess my bar is: if medical intervention (including therapy) is necessary, parents should be informed. Bumped head, no intervention necessary? No need to tell parents. Scraped knee, need to apply a bandaid? Gotta tell the parents (maybe not right away, but by the end of the day).
"Depression" that by all appearances is just sad ("Teach I'm depressed!" "Why do you think that?" "Timmy took my toy") no need to tell parents. Depression that appears to need therapy to alleviate? Gotta tell the parents.
Male kid wants to wear a dress? No problem fashion is weird. Kid wants to go by a different name/pronouns aka socially transition? Gotta tell the parents, that shouldn't be done without counsel from a professional.
This whole issue is a slippery slope and boundaries need to be made clear. And quick. Because today it's gender but it really can be anything.
Case in point, my white mother truly felt she was black since childhood. Probably because she was socially inept compared to her debutant sisters and since my grandfather was a jazz musician (albeit a conservative republican) she felt more "herself" at jam sessions with black musicians and reading black literature. But hey, it was the 50's and 60's so who knows. My mom grew up, as one does, and the feelings persisted. She married a black man, had 2 halfrican american kids (im one), and eventually officially changed her identity to black... tanning creme, Kente cloth and all. Yeah it was fucking weird! But also it was the 80's and no one in NYC gave two shits. She was eccentric but she was also cool and literally no one questioned it. Of course, she didn't work for the NAACP....lol. She wasn't that crazy, she just FELT black. Would a teacher be OK with socially transitioning a white kid to black in school? Hell no! Did my mother turn out just fine? 100%! Should she have had some therapy that she didn't get? Maybe. Should there be an easier avenue for therapy for teens? Absolutely.
The biggest problem here is consent. If a child cannot consent to therapy by a licensed provider without a parent authorization, an untrained educator should not be able to provide those services without parental consent either. Period. They are children! I mean we have to sign a waiver for an aspirin in school for God sake!
If a kid wants to try pronouns and other names with her friends, even in school, then go for it! If it's disruptive in class, then knock it off. But it is beyond the purview of teachers and admin to, for all intents and purposes, "officially" change a child's identity without a parent consent.
Does anyone else feel like our society has been hijacked by Borderline teenagers??? When I was 16 I certainly identified as 21... in fact my near perfect fake ID said as much. Did any school teacher pull a beer for me from the teachers lounge? Uhhhh... no
The funny or not so funny part is i actually have/had a diagnosed "emerging borderline" teenager (shes AWESOME though, now 20). I know all about it and what it takes to treat it. I was being flip in my comment but i still totally feel like all teens are pushing the borderline envelope these days. they all need treatment! 😆😬
I have a teen daughter who started going by male pronouns and a different name in middle school (California public school). It came out of nowhere and within the first 6 months of lockdown. I have my reasons for being extremely skeptical of the ideology. For my child, I am supportive and honest about my feelings and we are very close. I have tried to hold it lightly and just stay connected and see where things go. Not on board the train, per se, but just being there for my kid.
I can tell you: the school just started using new name/pronouns etc and never notified me. I already knew, and as a long-time volunteer at the school who was well known to many teachers, they had zero reason to think I would not be supportive. But no one told me. However, I find it weird that, they changed the online school / homework parents portal to reflect the new name (which I have complete access to) and also, one teacher called me to discuss missing assignments and used the male name and pronouns the whole time, even though I did not. It begs the question, if the entire idea behind not telling the parents is to "save" the kids from parents who would shun them, I guess....then why be so damn careless about using the name with parents?
I think it comes down to: a). it is very hard to keep two identities compartmentalized and despite the hero-complex, the schools do not have the time or energy to be good at the compartmentalizing, and b). most school employees don't actually care enough beyond just the virtue signaling angle of it. So they get to go home at night feeling good about themselves for affirming my child while I spend an insane amount of time and brainpower doing the very hard and slow work of steering my child towards loving and accepting herself .
Another point to add to this article: not only are gender identity and sexual orientation very different things, but gender ideology (especially in the 11-18 year old crowd) absolutely leaves no ideological room for sexual orientation. Kids are being rushed into a trans identity rather than coming to terms with probably being gay. I see this ALL the time, especially among my child and her friends. Where have all the lesbians gone? They don't seem to exist, they are all Miles or Alex or Jesse and they are "boys". There is a resurgence of gay jokes, calling something "gay" as a burn. The kids kind of act like gay is something to be ashamed of, whereas calling yourself trans is untouchable in the world of making fun of stuff. It all seems very homophobic, and I cannot wrap my brain around how people can lump the LGB with the QIAT++ and act like it is all the same civil rights fight when in fact the QIAT++ is actually trying to erase the next generation of LGB youth
Turns out, parents do not like when schools assume that the values of a student's family are inferior to the values held by the school/teacher/district, and therefore should be supplanted. This is actually a huge grievance listed by parents of nonwhite students when asked about their feelings about schools, exacerbated further based on income status.
The activists who are on the pro-trans-kid train are probably very sensitive to anything that could be perceived as 'white supremacy' or heaven forbid, not centering BIPOC voices, etc. etc. So I wonder if this controversy would play out differently if the key demographic of trans schoolchildren was not overwhelmingly among upper middle class white girls- because then the activists would have to contend with telling minority students that the values held by their parents were problematic.... and well, see how that could be a bit tricky?
I am super tired of people constantly suggesting that anyone who isn't trans who is asking questions about youth gender transition is creepy or weird or shouldn't be covering the topic, but I do wonder about whether Michael Hobbes or David Roberts have children, because the speed with which they dismiss parents concerns suggests to me people who have only considered this issue very abstractly. As a parent who has navigated the issues Katie Baker was raising in her piece in the NYT I am very aware of how isolating it is to know that you are not a bigot or a transphobe but to feel deep in your gut that what is happening to your child is at least as likely to be the result of social contagion as some inherent immutable characteristic that can only be resolved through body modification surgery and lifelong hormone treatments. Just the other day my husband remarked on how humbling this experience has been and that he is not sure what he would think about these issues if we weren't deeply involved in them. I feel pretty sure that I would have been skeptical no matter what because the science of gender dysphoria is still pretty young, but I also realize that if my child had expressed gender dysphoria before puberty and before social contagion and the Dr. had recommended puberty blockers I might well have agreed to them and that also humbles me. Maybe I am wrong and Hobbes and Roberts have teenagers and still feel that there is no controversy and nothing to worry about in this massive rise in AFAB trans youth, but it makes me have a little less contempt for them to think that they just aren't that familiar with what is happening with teenagers these days. I was watching Fleischman is in trouble last night and it features a storyline where a tween girl is sent home from camp for sharing a nude with a boy who shares it widely with his friends and is allowed to stay at camp. It really hammered home the humiliation for the girl, and it was yet another reminder of the myriad reasons why pubescent girls might want to opt out of being female.
I have always been a very liberal person in a very liberal part of this country. It is very alienating and utterly maddening to know this truth about yourself, but also to feel deep in your heart "I know my child-and this is my child coping with some pain" and to have people who have not read or listened to literally anything other than NYT and NPR on the subject - or who do not have children at all- treat you like you are a sad conspiracy theorist.
To add to this issue, I think there is (will be) a growing body of evidence that some state level "teacher's unions" have been on the forefront of state legislation that permits schools-teachers to withhold a student's gender transition from parents. In WA, a 13-year-old can request a name and gender change for school use without informing parents/guardians. I've heard union colleagues claim such legislation necessary for "safety" reasons. I think this puts teachers and other school personnel in a precarious legal position, not to mention an ethical one. I'm waiting for the lawsuits to start.
Granted I went to one of the shittiest high schools in the state and our teen pregnancy rate was about 50% but if you had asked me as a kid what teachers unions did I would said “oh, they protect schizophrenic sex criminals.”
Pretending that the purview of a labor union is solely negotiating wages and PTO allottment is willfully ignorant. Recall that Randi Weingarten consulted with the CDC on school COVID policy- how much more outside one's wheelhouse can it get than a union shill drafting public health policy?
Unions don't have the authority to draft legislation, but they have the influence to elect people who will draft legislation for them, and those politicians will align nicely with the preferred agenda of the union. There is a reason politicians pander to unions to get their endorsements.
I would agree with you, but COVID was a unique case because she was offering expertise on whether there was a significant safety issue.
That would assume she was qualified to determine the level of risk presented to the workers, which I argue she was not.
In fact, I'd go a step further and suggest Weingarten was well aware of the fact that she was basing her position on politics, not worker safety. She admitted as much in the article below.
There was also abundant information from the Nordic countries that the risk of transmission was lower in schools compared to other situations. The head of the NEA was regularly repeating claims from Eric Feigl-Ding, who is regarded by much of the infectious disease community as a major source of misinformation. (He also predicted that monkeypox would tear through schools.) Blue areas of the US were just about the only places in the rich world that insisted that teachers were endangered by keeping schools open.
Davis E, I am one of you. In fact, I am the local president of a WEA-NEA affiliate and can assure you that in my state of Washington, the union influences legislation that goes far beyond wages, hours, and working conditions. I'm not blaming teachers. I am stating facts that apply to a behemoth of an institution that to my eyes and ears has been near completely captured by race and gender essentialism. The membership means well, I think. If you are a member in a local and state that simply advocates for fair wages, etc. consider yourself fortunate.
If a student was showing signs of any other form of body dysmorphia with an increased risk of suicide/self-harm (e.g. anorexia), it would absolutely be considered the height of negligence to not inform the parents. No reason gender dysphoria should be treated differently*
This seems to be yet another case of activists forgetting that slogans aren’t reality. “A (wo)man is anyone who says they are a (wo)man” is a nice rallying cry for trans acceptance, but a terrible way to set policy when you actually have to get down to the business of treating a complex psychological condition.
*As you note, “gender nonconforming” is not necessarily “gender dysphoria”, but at the point where the child is demanding a full social transition, I think that should at least be the default assumption until you go do the hard psychological work to show otherwise).
How about a middle ground like this: hey kid, you think you are trans? That's fine, think about it, maybe talk to your parents. In any case, I - the teacher - am going to keep calling you by your given name and your sex-based pronouns unless your parents tell me they are ok with you changing it. Dress however you want (but I won't provide you with a wardrobe!), ask your friends to call you whatever you want, but the school is going to stick to what's on the parent-provided documents unless they say otherwise. Meanwhile -really, think about talking to your parents, they will most likely be able to help you sort things out. I'm not going to "out" you, that's for you to do. I'm just going to keep teaching you math/social science/creative writing.
As a parent of a gender questioning kid (who seems to have desisted after 3 years), I would hugely appreciate this approach.
Not to trigger anyone, but as a (very) ex-Catholic, I still like what one priest once of my acquaintance said when asked if he would turn in a murderer who confessed to him (this is a subject that also comes up in the movie "The Exorcist," which is not just a shocking horror movie, but a meditation on some much deeper stuff):
If it were a matter of confession, the priest said he could not turn the confessed murderer in. But he would do his best to convince the person that doing so would be the best, most moral move to make.
Likewise, shouldn't teachers (at least) be required to have that conversation? As many have pointed out, it's remarkably stupid when trans activists insist that just because a kid *says* his parents will flog him if they find out he's "trans," it's true. It's not—remember being a teen?
Great piece! As a parent of three kids, two of whom are leaving the most turbulent phase of the teen years and one of whom is entering, I can't tell you how much this subject, and the Times story, affected me. I bet if you surveyed all of the donors to, say, the Human Rights Campaign who also have kids, roughly 99% of them would be disturbed, if not outraged, by the thought that a school would actively HELP their child hide something important from their parents. I'm going to limit myself to a few thoughts form a parents' perspective:
1) Look, I'm a graduate of public schools, a believer in public schools, and a supporter of public schools. My wife and I picked where we currently live in large part because it has a good public school system, because we both thought it was important to send our kids to public schools. We've been pretty happy with the education our kids have gotten and certainly don't regret our choice. And let me tell you: we would NEVER trust those teachers, or administrators, to make decisions like this for our kids. We'd listen to their advice, but they don't know our kids nearly as well as we do and, honestly, the vast majority of them just aren't qualified to be substituting their judgment for ours on this issue, any more than they are on the question whether our kids should go to a therapist. It's a real problem the Ed schools seem to be teaching younger teachers that it's fine for them to displace kids' parents on anything LGBTQ-related.
2) A common reaction from the activist community, seen in both the article and on Twitter yesterday, was "any kid who wants to hide this from their parent obviously has a good reason to do so." And, my God . . . were you never a teen? Have you never met a teen? A typical teen developmental stage is withdrawing from their parents emotionally. This is often accompanied by an incorrect belief that their parents wouldn't understand, or approve, or whatever; the classic bubbly and happy 12 year-old who turns into a sullen and resentful 14 year-old who only grunts at her parents. This has NOTHING to do with the parents in many cases; it's a normal psychological stage, a way the kids build independence. To simply assume that teens would only lie to their parents, or want to avoid difficult conversations with their parents, only if they had good cause to do so is insane.
3) Which leads to the big problem with the "lie to the parents" approach that I'm not seeing many people discuss: schools might be irrevocably damaging parent-child relationships that would otherwise be healthy. Most sullen and resentful 14 year-olds snap out of it by the time they're 17 or so, and rebuild their relationship with their parents on a more adult and sustainable emotional footing. But with other adults in their lives encouraging them to just cut their parents out? That can do lasting damage. That is, seriously, how cults work. It's nuts to me that people are being so cavalier about the possibility of doing real damage to family relationships like this.
4) As for the "outing the gay" comparison: another problem with it is that schools aren't really involved in the sex life of a gay kid, whereas the whole issue here is that schools are actively "transing" the kids in question. So the analogy isn't "should schools who know a kid is gay tell his parents?" It's "should schools who know a kid is gay make a classroom available for him to mess around with his boyfriend after school, and then tell the parents that the kid was really at band practice" or something like that.
I think policies like this only happen when a bunch of people who don’t have kids get into the room, because they’ve forgotten or mythologized their own childhood so they remember themselves as small adults. Just completely divorced from reality.
Valid points all. Especially on the notion of alienating a kid from their parents. I see this in online discussions too: encouraging young people to cut off their parents, describing parents as "phobic" etc for having *any* hesitation about pronouns or "deadnaming". The truth is that most upper middle class normie parents are not anti-LGBTQ bigots, but it's being framed that way to kids.
Your points 2-3 are the ones I always make. I hid and wanted to hide TONS of things from my parents as a teenager, and it wasn’t because they were abusive or unkind or unsupportive. They were great parents. It’s developmentally normal to want that independence; that doesn’t mean you get it! Absent evidence that the home environment is unsafe - to a standard established by law - I don’t think schools should actively conceal a child’s social transition. I also think that if a school is going to actively facilitate social transition, they should notify parents (so if the school agrees to let a kid use a different bathroom, that should prompt a straightforward notification to the parents).
All of this makes me feel so old, because I came of age in the 1990s when my lesbian friend’s mom had to have a pitched battle with our school to be able to bring a girl as her prom date. I was the president of our gay straight alliance and the administration allowed us to exist (which was rare and prob only possible because it was private school) but we couldn’t put up posters advertising our meetings or anything like that. The idea that schools and teachers are the allies of LGBT kids against hostile parents is such a weird change to me.
My parents are amazing, loving, and supportive. And yet, as a teenager, I hid SO MUCH from them just...cause. I was 15, I was dumb, and I was terrified of them knowing that I'd ever masturbated, or tried a cigarette, or knew certain "bad" kids at school, etc. Should the school have helped me hide my dabbling with cigarettes from my parents just because my mom would be VERY ANGRY if she ever found out?
colluding with a young person and hiding it from the parents...predator behavior, really.
One could almost call it grooming-adjacent.
This reminds me of a library world term coined by Fobazi Ettarh: vocational awe. "Vocational awe describes the set of ideas, values, and assumptions librarians have about themselves and the profession that result in notions that libraries as institutions are inherently good, sacred notions, and therefore beyond critique." In this way librarians come to see themselves as bearing the mantle of intellectual freedom, being the defenders of democracy, etc. These concepts are not wholly untrue (though grossly inflated), but the problem comes when this leads to mission creep, and especially in the refusal to accept criticism.
I see these teachers doing the same thing. They have elevated themselves to be the saviors of children who would otherwise be unable to flourish, who might even DIE. These children alone can decide what their "true self" is, and their teacher may be the only ones they can trust. There is a pretty wide gulf between teaching children to read and leading them into a murky ill-defined psychological morass which is to be concealed from parents.
I'm shocked that the concept of concealing things from parents isn't questioned more. When I was a child I was taught that any adult saying not to tell my parents something was a big red flag for potential abuse.
If you want to explore the vocational awe concept, here is the original article. I see other potential parallels.
https://www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2018/vocational-awe/
You saw this in the NYT article, I think, where one of the teachers said something like "my job is to protect kids." No, your job is to teach history.
I love this term.
Yeah, me too. You start to see it, in various places.
She loses me with the divergence to institutional racism, but then she drops:
"The problem with vocational awe is the efficacy of one’s work is directly tied to their amount of passion (or lack thereof), rather than fulfillment of core job duties. If the language around being a good librarian is directly tied to struggle, sacrifice, and obedience, then the more one struggles for their work, the “holier” that work (and institution)" and I think yes, it's the performance aspect of it that reminds me of the TikTok teacher-preachers.
This is a great and insightful comment.
"Gender identity refers to a person’s internal sense of being male, female or something else"
I'm sorry if this gives offense, but I'm curious what others think of this: I truly don't understand the concept of "internal sense of being male, female or something else."
I know I'm a woman for obvious anatomical reasons, but I don't have an "internal sense of being female." As a commenter on another thread said, "I don't know what it's like to be a woman; I only know what it's like to be me."
Now, an internal sense of being a woman makes a lot more sense in a society with rigid gender roles: "I want to do x (go to university, join the military, be a priest, own property in my own name), but only men are allowed to do x. I must be a man!" But our society, with a few exceptions, just isn't like that. Let's look at some examples from my life right now. Would I still be able to do these things if I were a man?
Work as a scientist --> check
Practice a martial art --> check
Watch "Love, Actually" --> My husband is a man, and he openly and unashamedly loves this movie. It's adorable. So, check.
Cook delicious food --> check
Call my parents and tell them I love them --> check
Be a loving parent to my son --> He would call me Daddy rather than Mommy, but other than that, check.
Comment on Substack threads --> check
I mean, of course I get that some things (especially pertaining to fashion/makeup/hairstyle) continue to be strongly associated with a given gender in our culture, but is this an argument for "gender identity" or for broadening our idea of gender norms? Should we, as a society, tend toward "If you are biologically male but want to wear makeup, you must be trans or nonbinary" or "Some men want to wear makeup and still remain men, and that's okay"?
…Should we, as a society, tend toward "If you are biologically male but want to wear makeup, you must be trans or nonbinary" or "Some men want to wear makeup and still remain men, and that's okay"?…
It’s so obviously the second. The question is, how is this actually in dispute?
It isn't in dispute. It just doesn't cover everyone.
Some men want to wear makeup *and also* be seen by the rest of society as women.
Some men want to wear makeup *only because* it will help them be seen by the rest of society as women.
Some people do in fact want to live as the opposite gender as an end in and of itself, not because they really want to do something else (like wearing makeup) but they think only one gender has permission to do it.
Thanks for that reply. Helps me clarify my thoughts, which is good.
To me, I think society’s *default* to a boy/man who wants to wear a dress should be simply “that boy/man wants to wear a dress”. And not to read more into it. Not to presume anything further. That (to me) is true acceptance.
But of course, if a boy/man says “I want to be seen/treated as a girl/woman by society” that’s different. How we respond to that *is* in dispute.
Assuming (even extreme) non-conformity to sex role stereotypes to constitute a separate identity or as a symptom of a pathology is what I take issue with.
Boy wants to wear a skirt, so what? It’s really no big deal, unless we make it one. Get him the skirt, clap when he twirls, and then go about your day. Asking him how he identifies, asking him if he feels like a girl, is not appropriate.
I'd agree with all of that, right up until the last sentence.
I think there's a difference between presuming that gender non-conforming behavior *must be* a sign of something deeper, and acknowledging that it *can be* (and often is) a sign of something deeper. Like, if a boy wants to wear skirts but shows no interest in kilts, there's a good chance that the association of skirts with femininity is part of what he enjoys about it.
Yes! Absolutely take your point on skirt vs kilt. However, an affinity for femininity is *not* the same as femaleness.
For example, I was a what would be considered a traditionally “masculine” child (interests/appearance/expression) and am still sometimes called “sir”. I really despise most things considered “feminine” (make-up, high heels). Men make more sense to me, in many ways, and the social intricacies of groups of women often confuse me. I’m would be considered a “traditionally masculine” woman, or at least a non-conforming woman.
I don’t think of myself as any “less female” or less of a “woman” because some things I do and wear are culturally coded “masculine”.
Do you consider me “less female”?
No, if you’re a female, then that’s what I would consider you to be! Thanks for sharing your perspective.
"""Do you consider me “less female”?"""
Not if you don't.
I think there's a pretty big grey area where it makes more sense to defer to how people say they want to be treated than to insist on fitting them into a certain category. (In most aspects of life, at least - obviously if you're, like, at the ob/gyn, then the parts you have will matter a lot more than how you prefer to be treated.)
If you decided that being called "sir" wasn't an annoyance, but actually something you liked, and you went as far as to make your appearance more masculine to encourage people to do it more often, then I do think it would make sense so say you're "less female" at least in some sense - you would be deliberately inhabiting a male social role more than a female one. (Some people might object that the right word for the social role is "feminine" or "woman" or whatever, not "female", but I don't waste my time trying to keep up with all that.)
I hear what you’re saying here, but I think the last sentence is actually super important.
Until recently, the vast majority of trans-identified people were biological males who *self-identified as the opposite sex without prompting.* If a 5-year-old whose parents and other people in their life have never said anything involving the word “trans” or even articulated the concept in any way at all, and the kid says they’re a girl despite that fact, then I think a solid argument can be made that there’s something inate at work. What that actually is, and how we should deal with it are separate questions, of course.
But with today’s group of trans-identified people, there’s a whole conceptualization *provided for them.* The existence of this presumptive intellectual framework is inherently suggestive, as far as I can tell.
For this reason, I strongly agree with the statement with which you said you disagreed: “Asking him how he identifies, asking him if he feels like a girl, is not appropriate.”
We don’t need to be putting these ideas into people’s heads. We need to get back to a place as a society, imho, where trans-identified people come to a conclusion about themselves on their own.
I know that’s a tricky proposition, and not a black and white one exactly, practically speaking, especially now, given that the genie is already out of the bottle, so to speak. But I think that general principle is a valid one: don’t ask people if they “feel like” the opposite sex just because they exhibit some gender atypical characteristics. It’s not a neutral act, or a kind one.
Noah I agree 100% with this. A spontaneous utterance is completely different. Those specific questions are leading.
I grew up in the 70s. I had a lot of anguish about my future, because of my sex. I had no good female role models. I thought girls were silly and vain. Life as a woman looked awful. Nobody talked to me about any of this. I figured it out eventually and I realized I never really wanted to be male, I wanted to be a person. I didn’t see women being independent, strong, etc.
As I got older I found female role models. It expanded what I believed was possible. Had I been asked when I was younger I’m not sure if I would have explicitly stated that I wanted to be a boy (in terms of wanting a penis/male sexed body) but I absolutely would have said I did not want to be a girl/female, that I hated being female. I definitely did not want to “develop”. I’m glad no-one asked, I’m glad there weren’t “options” for girls like me.
I respect your viewpoint here, but based both on what I've experienced first-hand and on what I've learned from engaging with the community, I must disagreely as strongly as humanly possible. Indeed, if it were possible to disagree even more strongly than that, I would do so.
Here's why: because self-identifying as a member of the opposite sex *is not a universal part of the trans experience.*
The topic of an "innate sense of gender" has come up in various threads here. In summary: not everyone has a conscious experience of "feeling male" or "feeling female". Many people, possibly even most, only experience their gender as something that can be physically observed: "I have boy parts, people treat me like a boy, so obviously I'm a boy. What else could 'being a boy' possibly mean?"
But the thing is... plenty of people who lack an innate sense of gender are still trans! For example, the author of this article: https://medium.com/@kemenatan/gender-desire-vs-gender-identity-a334cb4eeec5
They'll feel various types of discomfort associated with gender dysphoria (see https://genderdysphoria.fyi/ for a rundown), or a confusing sense of happiness or relief when someone mistakes them for the opposite sex, and they may not even realize that their perception of their own gender is what's behind it. They'll get the same benefits from transitioning as any other trans person, but they might not even realize it's a possibility without some kind of external prompting.
For that population, expecting them to "come to a conclusion about themselves on their own" is like expecting them to know when they have a vitamin deficiency. Even if they have a problem big enough that their quality of life is suffering, they won't automatically be aware of what's causing it, and many of the symptoms have more common causes (did you know irritability, fatigue, and headache can be signs of a B12 deficiency?). There *are* ways they can narrow down a cause, but only if they know what the possibilities are.
"""But I think that general principle is a valid one: don’t ask people if they 'feel like' the opposite sex just because they exhibit some gender atypical characteristics."""
IMO, it's better not to ask *anyone* if they "feel like" the opposite sex -- because being trans doesn't necessarily mean "feeling like" the opposite sex anyway. There are better questions to ask.
Re "Some men want to wear makeup *and also* be seen by the rest of society as women."
And herein lies the problem! What human being has the "right" or the ability to force others to see them as they see themselves? He or she can wish as fervently as they like, but humans are autonomous, sentient beings who can, and will, form their own thoughts, feelings and impressions.
I mean, I can insist to you that I am handsome, brilliant, kind, generous and hilarious, but if *you* experience me as an unattractive, dull, crass, selfish clod, should I really take offense?
"What human being has the "right" or the ability to force others to see them as they see themselves?"
No one, which is why I wasn't talking about "forcing" anyone to do anything.
That was obvious in context, since the sentence before that pointed out that some people wear makeup specifically in order to increase the chance that others will see them as women.
Those who want to be seen by the rest of society as women also do things like adopting feminine hairstyles, wardrobes, speech patterns and mannerisms, etc., as well as using hormones and surgery to obtain a more feminine body shape. Those things are often done as an end in themselves, but they may also be done as a means to an end.
Hi, @Tara. I didn't intend to criticize what you wrote; I was just adding my perspective. My apologies that I wasn't clear.
> Some men want to wear makeup *and also* be seen by the rest of society as women.
Here's the thing though, society can just say "no".
Which really is what the appeal to a mystical "innate gender identity" is all about; that is, if it's *innate*, who are we all to say no? Innate things can't be *changed*, and it's discriminatory to deny people's innate senses, whatever they are.
If most people go "that sounds like a bunch of hooey", then there's no leg to stand on as far as "wanting to be seen as a woman".
"""
Here's the thing though, society can just say 'no'.
"""
Of course, and it often has and does. Likewise, society has often said "no" to men wanting to wear makeup (even if they still remain men), for example.
There's no cosmic judge *forcing* society to be fair, kind, tolerant, or compassionate; if we want to live in a society that is, we have to push for it ourselves.
"""
Which really is what the appeal to a mystical "innate gender identity" is all about; that is, if it's *innate*, who are we all to say no? Innate things can't be *changed*, and it's discriminatory to deny people's innate senses, whatever they are.
"""
I don't think that's really it. Just look at the point we've been responding to in this subthread: "Some men want to wear makeup and still remain men, and that's okay".
You might ask, is the desire to wear makeup *innate*? And if it isn't, doesn't that mean society can say no?
Well, no, the desire to wear makeup isn't innate. And yeah, society could say "nope, makeup is only for women, men can't wear it". But without a legitimate reason for saying no, society would look awfully petty and cruel -- and I think a lot of people would even call it discriminatory, even if it isn't based on an innate sense of wanting to wear makeup, because it still boils down to arbitrarily deciding who gets to do something based on the circumstances of their birth.
You're kind of losing me here. You seem to be now conflating "the desire to wear make up" with "the innate sense that one is a woman". The point of this thread is "those are different things", but you're bringing them together and seemingly arguing that if society accepts men wearing makeup, they have to accept men-as-women. Apologies if I'm misunderstanding.
I'm saying the innate sense doesn't have to be a part of it at all.
I'm arguing that if society accepts men wearing makeup, they might as well accept men presenting themselves fully as women, using hormones and/or surgery to look more feminine, going by feminine names, and being called "her".
Because if I don't need an "innate sense of needing to wear makeup" in order to be accepted by society as someone who gets to wear makeup, then why should I need an "innate sense of being a woman" in order to be accepted by society as someone who gets to do any of that other stuff? If simply having the desire to wear makeup is enough for society to accept me wearing makeup, shouldn't simply having the desire to do the rest be enough for society to accept it as well?
I find the whole idea of an internal sense of being male or female hard to wrap my head around, too. I know some other commenters have tried to describe the sensation, and I understand that gender dysphoria causes intense distress due to this mismatch, but it seems like it's far from universal and the common notion that everyone has a "gender identity" is very odd to me. Like, when I'm filling out forms at school, I'm asked to give my gender identity or fill in the blank of "I identify as...", and I want to tear my hair out and yell "I don't have a fucking gender identity!"
I'm grateful I just missed all of this in adolescence and grew up in the final days of the popular messaging being "girls can do 'boy' stuff and not be any less of a girl; boys can do 'girl' stuff and not be any less of a boy", with the ultimate aim of breaking down those gendered associations like 'boys like trucks, girls like cooking' and whatever else. I know this comes up sometimes in Jesse's writing and more often on Blocked & Reported, but this new concept of gender identity is regressive and only serving to further entrench gender stereotypes.
That's a common response, and totally understandable. I think the language of "identity" can be pretty unhelpful, because a lot of people just don't have an experience that feels like having a sense of gender.
This article (by a trans feminist, no less) refers to it as "cis by default" -- https://thingofthings.wordpress.com/2015/01/28/cis-by-default/. But, hell, I'm trans and I *still* don't have an internal sense of gender. I've had to carefully deduce it, by thinking about (or getting myself into) situations where I perceive my gender differently, or where I'm treated as a different gender by others, and then observing my reactions.
This article was the first thing I encountered that really captured how I felt about it: https://medium.com/@kemenatan/gender-desire-vs-gender-identity-a334cb4eeec5
Interesting article, thank you.
Yeah, “non-binary” or “gender fluid” in practice seems to mean “I want to pick and choose which gender norms I conform to in my personal quest for identity”. Which, fine, cool, adolescents love pushing norms and “finding themselves”. But the vast majority of these seem like external “display” stuff like fashion, hairstyles, etc, and I also struggle with the concept of having an “internal sense of being” about a pixie cut or a skirt (but I’m also not an anxious teen anymore).
That said I do think there are a small number of people who genuinely have gender dysphoria to the point that it amounts to “body dysmorphia over sexual characteristics” and treating that condition via social and physical transition is probably the least bad tool we have. But that seems like a much more serious and fundamental thing than Demi Lovato’s brief experimentation with being a “they”.
"I'm sorry if this gives offense, but I'm curious what others think of this: I truly don't understand the concept of 'internal sense of being male, female or something else.'"
It can be a difficult concept to understand, because most people *don't* experience anything that they can obviously identify as an internal sense of gender.
Instead, they have a bunch of experiences that are in fact related to their gender -- being greeted as "ma'am", being pointed to the women's section when they enter a store, seeing a feminine shape in the mirror, feeling clothes fit a certain way, etc. -- and those experiences just seem normal.
There's no voice whispering "you're a woman", there's just the way you react to the thousands of little daily reminders that people see you as a woman and you have a female body.
Imagine waking up tomorrow and noticing that suddenly those reminders are all wrong. You walk into a shop and the greeter calls you "sir". You ask where the jackets are and they point you to the men's section. You pass by a mirror, and although you can't put a finger on what's wrong with your reflection, it doesn't feel like you're looking at yourself.
You might feel like something was wrong with the world -- or with you. That's the feeling of having an "internal sense of gender" that doesn't line up with your external presentation.
Or maybe you might not. Who knows.
If you'd like to learn more, https://genderdysphoria.fyi/ goes into more detail on the ways it can be experienced.
Part of me wonders if having a very strong internal sense of gender independent of physical sex is genuinely pretty rare, and instead most people are just “cisgender by default”. Like, I’m a man, but my sense of being a man stems almost entirely from my perception of my own biological reality - I have male organs, I can feel the effects of testosterone, but if I never had those I can’t even really point to what part of me would feel “male”. Some of my preferences align with “traditional” gender roles for men, and some don’t. If my interests and preferences were reshuffled, I don’t think I’d feel more or less “manly”.
When people say what it is that makes them feel like they are “really” a man or a woman, I feel like all of them are either preferences/fashion (which are entirely socially constructed) or biological. For me I can’t really point to what about me, other than my sex organs, would change to make me “really” a woman and not just a man that likes to do some female-coded things. Maybe if I was from a society with very strong gender roles where a preference for certain things was only “allowed” for one gender… but I’m not and, quite the opposite, was raised to believe that such strong gender roles are inherently oppressive.
I’m not denying that it’s impossible to have a “strong internal sense of gender”, I just don’t think I have it, at least not independent of my externally obvious biology. If you do have this sense you may not believe me… but recognize that’s the same struggle I have in believing that you do.
Gender dysphoria is apparently much more common among autistic individuals. Who, among other things, often have hypersensitivity to various sensory inputs (e.g. inability to “tune out” disruptive stimuli). Or they struggle with “unwritten rules” or situations where not following the written rules is expected/encouraged. This strikes me as an interesting parallel… and maybe causal?
"""I’m a man, but my sense of being a man stems almost entirely from my perception of my own biological reality - I have male organs, I can feel the effects of testosterone, but if I never had those I can’t even really point to what part of me would feel “male”."""
Very understandable. I had the same experience. And even now, as a trans woman, I still have basically the same experience. [Pause for snarky response.] I can check different boxes on a list of physical traits, I can feel the effects of estrogen being different from the effects of testosterone, but there's never been a voice in the back of my head whispering "male" or "female", before transitioning or since.
"""When people say what it is that makes them feel like they are “really” a man or a woman, I feel like all of them are either preferences/fashion (which are entirely socially constructed) or biological."""
Well... I think people are sometimes too quick to dismiss the "socially constructed" stuff, while overlooking what it signifies.
To make an analogy: language also is socially constructed. The words we use to express a compliment are totally dependent on the culture we live in; the words "Du bist schön" and "Tu es belle" are just noises, with no natural inherent meaning, only the meaning given to them by a culture that speaks that language. But the act of complimenting someone, the reasons we do it, the message it sends, the feeling it inspires in the recipient... those are all parts of the same common human experience, no matter which words our culture uses to express it.
Likewise, fashion is socially constructed, which means a skirt and a necktie are just pieces of fabric. They aren't naturally "male" or "female"; they only have a gendered association because of the culture that's been built up around them. But when you grow up in that culture, you learn that your choice of clothes can send a message, just like the words you use.
When a little boy hears "skirts are for girls, if you wear a skirt then people might think you're a girl", he might recoil and avoid wearing skirts, even if he likes them aesthetically, because he doesn't want people to think he's a girl. Or... he might decide wearing a skirt suddenly sounds kind of fun. He might decide to start wearing skirts, even if he doesn't especially care for them aesthetically, because he likes the idea of being mistaken for a girl, or doing things that (his culture says) are "supposed" to be for girls.
*That* feeling -- being averse or attracted to something that you understand will send a gendered message in your culture -- can be a clue about your internal concept of gender.
"""This strikes me as an interesting parallel… and maybe causal?"""
It's certainly interesting. There doesn't seem to be any evidence that autism causes gender dysphoria (or vice versa), though, only evidence of a correlation.
In fact, one reason mental health providers might want to keep an eye out for signs of GD after an autism diagnosis is that autistic people often have a hard time recognizing emotions (in themselves as well as others), or describing what they're feeling, or identifying what caused them.
If you're someone who doesn't experience an "explicit" sense of gender, and can only deduce it from how you feel in situations where your gender-related expectations aren't met, *and* you have difficulty noticing changes in your own emotions or connecting them to causes, then you might not even notice there are specific gender-related things that make you feel uncomfortable until someone inquires about them.
This video goes into the connection with a little more detail: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6MWY6wnpxk
> Imagine waking up tomorrow and noticing that suddenly those reminders are all wrong. You walk into a shop and the greeter calls you "sir".
This is *always* brought up to try and explain gender dysphoria, and it *always* gets the same response: "it would be *weird*, but it wouldn't change how I view myself, since clearly that person is just wrong".
In other words, it's just saying the same thing in a different way, and most people don't agree with it.
Sounds like you've completely missed the point.
I'm not saying it would, or should, change the way you see yourself. In fact, I wasn't trying to convince anyone of anything, which makes it a bit strange that your reaction was "most people don't agree with it".
What is there to agree or disagree with? Do you expect everything to be a confrontation?
I was simply responding to someone who said they "truly don't understand the concept" of an internal sense of gender, by describing a situation where attention would be drawn to it -- that exact "weird" feeling you mentioned.
If your reaction after spending, say, a year in that same situation -- every single person you encounter treating you as a member of the opposite sex -- would still be "that's weird, everyone in this universe is so determined to be wrong!", then congratulations. You probably have a very strong internal sense of gender.
It's less about the internal sense of what you are vs. the internal since of what you aren't. If you were born male but you feel this affinity to "femaleness", regardless of any particular ability to define it, and you feel it so much so that you want to make invasive permanent adjustments to your physical form, we'll, that's the issue. It really doesn't matter what the gender boundary actually is. It's just a function of how you feel about your physical form while living within society.
> you feel it so much so that you want to make invasive permanent adjustments to your physical form
Which in every other context, we consider this either a paraphilia or body dysmorphia and we try to treat it.
The analogy to anorexia is such a good one and it should be made more often, i.e. we don't treat anorexics by agreeing with them that are in fact fat and need to stop eating.
OP's question though was about understanding the concept of internal identity. And my point was it's all about how you feel about your physical form vs. how you ultimately utilize it in your real life interactions.
I agree that it's just another form of dysmorphia. And what schools are doing here is unconscionable. They are directly implementing a treatment protocol for a psychological condition with zero parental, or even professional, oversight.
We treat it in this context too. It just happens to be the case that transition is the only treatment that's been found to work.
Lots of people have *tried* to treat it the other way around, by forcing the mind to happily accept the gender associated with the body it's in. It doesn't lead to success. If you think you have a better way of doing it that will finally work, perhaps there's a Nobel Prize in your future.
Interestingly, gender dysphoria isn't the only condition in which the mind is incongruous with the body and changing the body is the only effective treatment so far. There's also the even rarer bodily integrity identity disorder (BIID), in which a patient's limb feels foreign to them and they want to have it removed -- a feeling that doesn't go away with any amount of mental counseling, and which, neurologically, seems to be the inverse of phantom limb sensation. (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/23767378_Body_Integrity_Identity_Disorder_BIID-Is_the_Amputation_of_Healthy_Limbs_Ethically_Justified)
> It just happens to be the case that transition is the only treatment that's been found to work.
Except it doesn't? You have to ignore so much data to come to this conclusion.
Except it obviously does.
You know, back in the day, Coca-Cola had reams of data showing that consumers preferred the great taste of New Coke. But New Coke turned out to be a historic disaster.
The funny thing is, anyone who spent a few minutes talking to Coke drinkers knew how it would turn out! Their sentiment simply wasn't included in the numeric data the company chose to base its decisions on.
If you spend any time at all talking to people who are transitioning, it'll be blindingly obvious that it's working for them in at least *some* sense. So if someone shows you data that doesn't reflect at least *some* type of improvement, you should be suspicious.
In other words, "It works, believe me".
In the real world, that "40% of trans people commit suicide" stat, while totally wrong in most ways (like specifically in the fact that it wasn't generalizable to the trans population at large), *was only counting people who had transitioned*. In other words, every single person who cites that as a reason why we need to allow for easier transitions is absolutely full of it.
I agree that’s a fine way to think about it, but it seems like many are losing sight of the fact that transition is indeed a “treatment”/“intervention” and should be treated with all the care that that implies.
Treatments have costs and side effects - certainly gender transition does. On the margin, given the current state of technology and medical evidence, I think we need to proceed cautiously and recognize that, all else being equal, transition should be maybe not a last resort but certainly not something undertaken unless it’s been determined to be absolutely necessary.
I think what you're describing is basically the status quo. Medical transition *is* treated with the care and cost/benefit analysis that "treatment" implies.
"""certainly not something undertaken unless it’s been determined to be absolutely necessary"""
Well, OK, *that's* not the status quo. But it's also a suspicious level of scrutiny, don't you think? Why should the bar for medical transition be higher than the bar for cosmetic surgery, for example, considering that many of the procedures involved are exactly the same ones that cis people get electively?
It’s generally frowned upon to give minors elective cosmetic surgery.
We have serious cultural reservations about whether we should encourage cispeople to accept their bodies or to alter them surgically. Body positivity wars with Botox parties. Gossips mock women for sagging but also for having obvious work done. That human Barbie woman got treated as a circus curiosity.
People write angry editorials about how the nipped, tucked celebrities on magazine covers are destroying little girls’ self-esteem. A number of epidemiologic studies have identified an increased risk of suicide among women who have received cosmetic surgery. People definitely worry that this stuff can be pathological.
Is that where the bar should be?
A teenager demanding cosmetic surgery or permanent sterilization or steroids because they feel like they will kill themselves if they don’t get it would absolutely get a high level of scrutiny at any provider that doesn’t deserve a malpractice suit.
Even for BIID, the consensus seems to be "don't cut off healthy limbs"
"Instead of only curing the symptom, a causal therapy should be developed to integrate the alien limb into the body image." (This is just from the abstract, I haven't read the whole paper, so feel free to ditch the grain and pour a whole barrel of salt on it)
Yes, I'd recommend reading the whole paper. (Sci-Hub has it if you search by DOI.)
Notice that the part you quoted says a therapy "should be developed"! There isn't actually an alternative therapy that works; the paper simply argues that we should keep looking for one because amputation is ethically problematic. Maybe we'll find one someday; maybe not.
These trans fights are going to destroy what's left of this country, I swear it.
I largely agree with what you have said, Jesse, but I'd like to throw in my take. When the first person I knew who transitioned asked for a different name and pronouns, I was happy to comply, and, by and large, I did so successfully. However, I don't know how successful I would have been if I'd had to call her "Darla" in some situations and "Don" in others. (Names changed to protect the innocent.) I am sure I would have fouled it up, most likely many times.
According to these policies, teachers are required to use these pronouns in school, but NOT in front of parents (if the child has indicated this), so what happens if they make an honest mistake? What if Mr. Gormley the Science Teacher says, "Janice--uh, I mean, John's--grades are good, and she--I mean, he--really applies himself." This teacher has just violated the policy, however unwillingly, and now that cat's out of the bag. The student's parents now know about the alternative name/pronouns, AND they know that Mr. Gormley has been keeping secrets. Are those parents likely to trust *anything* they are told by a teacher at that school?
(I don't know if this hypothetical has ever really happened, but if it hasn't, I am sure it eventually will.)
These sorts of policies, well-intentioned as they are, set up an adversarial model, in which parents are assumed to be cruel and teachers required to be dishonest. This is not a sustainable model, to say the least. I don't propose that teachers run around reporting student's every move, but there's a mighty mile between choosing not to reveal information irrelevant to pedagogy--as in the case with gay kids--and deliberately concealing something parents likely need to know.
Jesse made a remark on one of the B&R episodes last week along the lines of: "there's a category of people for whom something does not exist or happen if it isn't in the NYT." I have to confess that I'm in that category for this issue.
I simply assumed that the idea that teachers would even attempt to conceal something like this from parents of a public school student over the long term was progressive tick-tok LARP spun in to libs of tick tok rage bait. I am astounded by this coverage.
Jesse points to the psychological harm of splitting one's identity between home and school, but I think destruction of trust in the parent-child relationship is even more troubling. Ultimately, regardless of "I'm your mom now" non-sense, children really only have their parents and maybe extended family to rely on in moments of crisis, and teachers are potentially damaging relationships in ways that may perhaps take decades to undo. God forbid one of these kids runs away from home and gets into serious trouble.
The exposure to potential legal liability here is astounding. Someone with an MA in education really just isn't qualified to make these determinations, and probably does not have the time in the day to manage this deception. I live in one of the states mentioned in the article (MD). Last fall our local papers covered some "parents right's" groups around the election, but were pretty vague about what the groups' complaints were (other than complaints about 1619-type curriculum or something). Well I understand now. The teacher summarily caned in MA for informing the dad of the 11 year old has to be one of the most brutal ideological firings I've ever heard of.
Let me close by saying that I really feel for kids who don't feel like they can trust their parents in situations like but. That's tragic. But, perhaps, announcing a policy of "I'll keep your secret" promotes the notion that there's a secret to be kept.
Just last week The Federalist reported on a “Virginia Teen Sex-Trafficked Twice After School Hides Gender Identity From Her Parents” The girl, who at the start of the story identified as a boy, thought she was running away but was sex-trafficked.
I know I know - it’s The Federalist - don’t shoot the messenger, the liberal press won’t touch stories like these with 10-foot poles. The headline if anything, understates what happened to this poor girl - even more than heartbreaking it is enraging.
Article is here: http://bit.ly/3ZV0KJX
Your point about teachers not being qualified to make these determinations is really important. I don't know how much training teachers get in psychology but given that therapists have graduate degrees in a mental health field, I think it's fair to assume that they are far less qualified to make these determinations than, oh, say a therapist. And this is not a knock on teachers -- nobody expects a therapist to be able to teach kids to read.
One of my concerns is that a lot of these determinations about what to do with kids in this situation is that it seems to be driven by ideology rather than actual empirical evidence. The mental health field is pretty politicized but at least people in the mental health field are trained to evaluate mental health research. I don't expect principals or teachers have been trained in that and therefore are more likely to advocate for policies that aren't based in empirical data. I have no doubt that the mental health field is heavily politicized but people in that field at least have training that helps them evaluate the evidence and there does seem to be a debate brewing.
The recent premium episode where Katie talked about reading curricula was mind-blowing to me, and made me wonder how much research skills are even a part of graduate education. Like, all these teachers were told “this is the best evidence-based practice,” when in fact that simply wasn’t the case. They seemingly had zero ability to figure out on their own what the truth was.
No personal criticism intended here. It’s not like I have great research skills either. That said, I’m also not doing a professional class job. Seems to me like this should be in the toolbox for people doing those kinds of work.
If someone had asked me about my identity when I was the same age of these kids who "know" they are trans, I would have "known" I was heterosexual...and folks, I was was *very much attracted exclusively to other males* while I was knowing this! But societal prerogatives being what they were, and social influence being pervasive, I assumed this was just some odd kink, that I was straight. In the end, I didn't look under the hood of *any* of that until college, when my straight friends (!) had to tell me, "Dude you're totally gay, and none of us even care..."
Although you could say I'm making the same mistake Jesse is warning against by comparing being gay to being trans, I'm making a different point here: that I know from experience a freshly-pubescent young person *can indeed* be secretly fantasizing about George Wendt on "Cheers," and still be convinced that he is *totally into the ladies y'all,* nothing to see here.
And if that's true (and I know it is) then there are a great many other things young people can be wrong about. Especially if they have been socially incentivized to be that way.
I feel terrible for these kids. I wish I were wrong, but I have that sinking feeling that many of them have chosen a path that does not serve them, and the schools who promise this alternative world where they are endlessly supported and affirmed are just talking about the internet--the real world will not give them what they need once the backlash to all of this becomes mainstream.
Society, collectively, will not have their backs when this is all over.
Nor will the medical profession be able to remedy all the harm that they've done to these people.
I am dreading where it's all going. Worst case scenario: I think there will not just be a conservative backlash to LGBT people, schools, progressivism in general, and doctors--but a *mainstream* backlash to LGBT people, schools, progressivism in general, and doctors. Vaccination rates aren't exactly climbing since COVID, I think that when this breaks, they'll plummet. Folks who would have found LGBT people distasteful at first sight will now have a reasonable excuse to vent their prejudice, and who's going to argue with them if this goes where we think it's going? Teachers, who are already caught up in this whether they are on-board with the new program or not, will get an upgrade on their de facto demonization.
Alright now somebody give me a best case scenario quick, I'm freaking myself out LOL.
Best case is probably we just roll back to around 2015 or so where most people were totally cool with teh gays and trans people were a sympathetic curiosity rather than an aggressive political movement. Where it went really sideways is when (mostly straight!) activists started insisting you were a bigot if you were even remotely uncomfortable with your girl children seeing naked dicks in the locker room, introducing first graders to gay burlesque, or putting tweens on powerful hormone blockers.
FWIW I think among the “trans-skeptics” there is a much stronger distinction between “gay” and “trans” than there is among trans activists, so I honestly don’t think your worst case scenario of the backlash spreading beyond T to the LGB is all that likely.
Yeah I'm likely disasterizing--though even this best case scenario will be disaster-adjacent for many, so perhaps I'm just OVERdisasterizing, LOL. Gotta dial it back to 7 from 10.
P.S. I *hard agree* with you that this is mostly the work of the straights! With allies like these...
Yeah I certainly don’t want to give the impression that I think an anti-trans backlash wouldn’t be bad for some people. It certainly will, and unfortunately a lot of the “straight allies” that drove the backlash won’t be the ones bearing the brunt of it.
But I do think that a lot of genuine and durable progress has been made, and any retreat is going to be to “2010” and not “1950”.
I think you're right.
I really want to judge you about liking George Wendt, but I have a thing for Matt Paxton from "Hoarders" so I guess I am in a gigantic glass gay house.
It's a gift! I think, in America, if you're into Matt Paxton or George Wendt, you're going to get a lot more eye candy on average than someone pining for guys on the other end of the schlub spectrum.
The most insidious—and most successful—ploy of trans rights activists has been to convince the general public that being gay and being trans are the same kind of trait. Using this analogy, they have convinced most progressives that providing counseling services to gender-nonconforming youth is "conversion therapy" and that these vulnerable youth need to be protected from being "outed" to their potentially abusive parents.
It makes me angry just to hear the term "LGBTQ community," as if lesbians and autogynephiles are all part of the same happy rainbow family (and don't even get me started on the now-meaningless term "queer"). This conflation of sexual orientation and "gender identity" is a misunderstanding that is going to be very hard to eradicate. Until people realize that it's a dangerous oversimplification at best (and a cunning political maneuver at worst), any nuanced discussion about "trans youth" will be seen as bigoted and harmful.
I had a lesson in how meaningless "queer" is when I read an interview with Emma Corrin, who played Princess Diana in "The Crown" a season or two ago. Corrin said that Princess Diana was definitely queer. My reaction: "Wut?" Corrin went on to say that Diana was friendly to gay people and also experienced herself as an outsider. So that's all it takes to be queer? Good to know.
It helps if you also dye your hair pink or green
There's one better than that. Emma D'Arcy, the non-binary actor who plays Rhaenyra Targaryen on HBO's "House of the Dragon", has said that they "really like playing women, and I'm good at it." I rolled my eyes so hard I nearly strained myself.
I wonder if the gender extremists know how much damage they are doing to liberal causes with all this. There are so many people repulsed by Trump and the moral bankruptcy of the Republican party who see stories like this and think "well the right is bad.....but at least they aren't advocating that schools let 10 years old's transition and not tell parents."
Now to be clear, that still doesn't justify voting for Trump or his lackeys, but it flips enough people to keep the margins thin. If the left could just NOT BE CRAZY for an election cycle or two they'd have supermajorities in congress.
This is what *really* drives me crazy. There was a post going viral on FB a couple weeks ago to the effect “Why so much hysteria about letting a few dozen kids live their best lives?” I SO wanted to ask “If it’s only a few dozen kids why do you want to throw away the possibility of not destroying the whole planet’s ecosystem for their ostensible benefit?” But I’d have lost half my friendlist in 20 minutes and I’m a coward.
Yeah the amount of reflexive virtue signaling on the left is frustrating. I can't tell you how many times in casual conversation people have felt the need to, for example, throw in a nasty dig at JK Rowling just to prove their bona-fides. I try to lightly push back where I can, but I do feel that cowardice too. If I were to say what I really felt (which agrees with 95% of what the progressive left believes in any case) I'd be labelled a bigot and outcast. I'm trying to be better about not caring about this in 2023, but I'm a work in progress.
“Parents should be instantly notified whenever a young kid says they might be trans” is the correct policy.
Whenever I think of where it would be appropriate for this to not be the case I’m also left with “it’s also not appropriate for the kid to be in that home.”
Like if your parents beat the shit out of you for doing stuff they don’t like you already don’t belong there and the school should be reporting that.
But if your parents just aren’t going to 100% back you, that’s their choice as your guardians because you can’t make good decisions yet.
Yeah - either the home situation is so severe that the teacher ought to be calling CPS, or it’s not, and the kid’s parents should be involved in their child’s “gender care”. “Fully socially transition at school and keep the parents in the dark” is either not enough (in the former case) or too much (in the latter case).
We have rules and a review system for this reason. There’s not some middle state where the school system gets to leave your child in your home but still call the shots based on their personal feeling.
Parents make all kinds of decisions others might question--they let children eat junk food, wear inappropriate clothes, play violent video games. Schools can set dress codes, rules about cell phone use, etc. Facilitating an identity change is pro-active, and concealing it from parents is, like another commenter said, what cults do.
We live in a world where a lot of peoples most emotionally formative experiences come from movies they’ve seen and I think that is why some people go so nuts. Feeling like a good guy in a movie is a great drug.
Sitting around and rubbing your head, wondering “am I the asshole?” and sometimes finding intractable problems and stuff you just don’t know how to fix is a lot less appetizing.
I don't think schools need to tattle on kids to their parents for everything they say. If a kid is talking to friends and a teacher overhears them saying "I might be trans", it would be inappropriate for them to call the parents. Who knows how serious the kid was or of it will persist. Calling the parent risks making the kid paranoid.
If a kid confides in a teacher that they "might be trans", it'd be preferable if the teacher tries to empower the kid to broach the subject with the parents. Again, tattling immediately on something that doesn't have a clear and present danger risks alienating the kid with little reward.
I do believe that if a kid starts requesting to go by a different name, or use a different bathroom, or requests time to change clothes from what they left their house in, it's time to get the parents involved. Schools shouldn't needlessly tattle, but they also shouldn't facilitate a major social change without parental support.
I'm not so sure.
If the young kid asks the school to do something different (different name/pronouns) the parents should be notified. This applies to non-gender related nicknames as well.
But if the kid just expresses doubt/curiosity, I'm not sure that requires immediate notification. Maybe immediate referral to a guidance counselor who can make a determination of whether this rises to the level that need parental notification.
Let's examine a similar scenario: a kid says to their teacher that they might be depressed. In this case, I think the teacher should recommend to the kid that they talk to their parents about it, and they should have the kid talk to the guidance counselor for a better evaluation to determine if parents need to be notified (with a fairly low, but not on the ground, bar for notification). But unless there's indication of suicidal ideation I'm not sure it requires immediate notification of the parents by the teacher.
I disagree. Anything remotely close to serious should be reported to the parents as soon as possible. Depression is serious. (Ask me how I know!)
I agree that depression is serious (I'm guessing we know for the same reason). My point is that a self-diagnosis of depression isn't necessarily serious, and so doesn't necessarily mean immediate parental notification.
Which is why I think a referral to a guidance counselor is the right course of action. I think it's unreasonable to expect a teacher to determine whether a student is showing symptoms of major depression or is just sad. A guidance counselor, who hopefully has received training in this area, would be better equipped to determine if therapeutic (and therefore parental) involvement is necessary.
I guess my bar is: if medical intervention (including therapy) is necessary, parents should be informed. Bumped head, no intervention necessary? No need to tell parents. Scraped knee, need to apply a bandaid? Gotta tell the parents (maybe not right away, but by the end of the day).
"Depression" that by all appearances is just sad ("Teach I'm depressed!" "Why do you think that?" "Timmy took my toy") no need to tell parents. Depression that appears to need therapy to alleviate? Gotta tell the parents.
Male kid wants to wear a dress? No problem fashion is weird. Kid wants to go by a different name/pronouns aka socially transition? Gotta tell the parents, that shouldn't be done without counsel from a professional.
This whole issue is a slippery slope and boundaries need to be made clear. And quick. Because today it's gender but it really can be anything.
Case in point, my white mother truly felt she was black since childhood. Probably because she was socially inept compared to her debutant sisters and since my grandfather was a jazz musician (albeit a conservative republican) she felt more "herself" at jam sessions with black musicians and reading black literature. But hey, it was the 50's and 60's so who knows. My mom grew up, as one does, and the feelings persisted. She married a black man, had 2 halfrican american kids (im one), and eventually officially changed her identity to black... tanning creme, Kente cloth and all. Yeah it was fucking weird! But also it was the 80's and no one in NYC gave two shits. She was eccentric but she was also cool and literally no one questioned it. Of course, she didn't work for the NAACP....lol. She wasn't that crazy, she just FELT black. Would a teacher be OK with socially transitioning a white kid to black in school? Hell no! Did my mother turn out just fine? 100%! Should she have had some therapy that she didn't get? Maybe. Should there be an easier avenue for therapy for teens? Absolutely.
The biggest problem here is consent. If a child cannot consent to therapy by a licensed provider without a parent authorization, an untrained educator should not be able to provide those services without parental consent either. Period. They are children! I mean we have to sign a waiver for an aspirin in school for God sake!
If a kid wants to try pronouns and other names with her friends, even in school, then go for it! If it's disruptive in class, then knock it off. But it is beyond the purview of teachers and admin to, for all intents and purposes, "officially" change a child's identity without a parent consent.
Does anyone else feel like our society has been hijacked by Borderline teenagers??? When I was 16 I certainly identified as 21... in fact my near perfect fake ID said as much. Did any school teacher pull a beer for me from the teachers lounge? Uhhhh... no
“Does anyone else feel like our society has been hijacked by Borderline teenagers??? When I was 16 I certainly identified as 21..”
Ha! 100%!
16 year old me was POSITIVE that I was every bit as mature as the adults I was sneaking into bars to drink with.
The funny or not so funny part is i actually have/had a diagnosed "emerging borderline" teenager (shes AWESOME though, now 20). I know all about it and what it takes to treat it. I was being flip in my comment but i still totally feel like all teens are pushing the borderline envelope these days. they all need treatment! 😆😬
I have a teen daughter who started going by male pronouns and a different name in middle school (California public school). It came out of nowhere and within the first 6 months of lockdown. I have my reasons for being extremely skeptical of the ideology. For my child, I am supportive and honest about my feelings and we are very close. I have tried to hold it lightly and just stay connected and see where things go. Not on board the train, per se, but just being there for my kid.
I can tell you: the school just started using new name/pronouns etc and never notified me. I already knew, and as a long-time volunteer at the school who was well known to many teachers, they had zero reason to think I would not be supportive. But no one told me. However, I find it weird that, they changed the online school / homework parents portal to reflect the new name (which I have complete access to) and also, one teacher called me to discuss missing assignments and used the male name and pronouns the whole time, even though I did not. It begs the question, if the entire idea behind not telling the parents is to "save" the kids from parents who would shun them, I guess....then why be so damn careless about using the name with parents?
I think it comes down to: a). it is very hard to keep two identities compartmentalized and despite the hero-complex, the schools do not have the time or energy to be good at the compartmentalizing, and b). most school employees don't actually care enough beyond just the virtue signaling angle of it. So they get to go home at night feeling good about themselves for affirming my child while I spend an insane amount of time and brainpower doing the very hard and slow work of steering my child towards loving and accepting herself .
Hey -- thanks for sharing that. Would you shoot me an email if you'd be willing to discuss it a bit further? Thanks.
Another point to add to this article: not only are gender identity and sexual orientation very different things, but gender ideology (especially in the 11-18 year old crowd) absolutely leaves no ideological room for sexual orientation. Kids are being rushed into a trans identity rather than coming to terms with probably being gay. I see this ALL the time, especially among my child and her friends. Where have all the lesbians gone? They don't seem to exist, they are all Miles or Alex or Jesse and they are "boys". There is a resurgence of gay jokes, calling something "gay" as a burn. The kids kind of act like gay is something to be ashamed of, whereas calling yourself trans is untouchable in the world of making fun of stuff. It all seems very homophobic, and I cannot wrap my brain around how people can lump the LGB with the QIAT++ and act like it is all the same civil rights fight when in fact the QIAT++ is actually trying to erase the next generation of LGB youth
Turns out, parents do not like when schools assume that the values of a student's family are inferior to the values held by the school/teacher/district, and therefore should be supplanted. This is actually a huge grievance listed by parents of nonwhite students when asked about their feelings about schools, exacerbated further based on income status.
The activists who are on the pro-trans-kid train are probably very sensitive to anything that could be perceived as 'white supremacy' or heaven forbid, not centering BIPOC voices, etc. etc. So I wonder if this controversy would play out differently if the key demographic of trans schoolchildren was not overwhelmingly among upper middle class white girls- because then the activists would have to contend with telling minority students that the values held by their parents were problematic.... and well, see how that could be a bit tricky?
I am super tired of people constantly suggesting that anyone who isn't trans who is asking questions about youth gender transition is creepy or weird or shouldn't be covering the topic, but I do wonder about whether Michael Hobbes or David Roberts have children, because the speed with which they dismiss parents concerns suggests to me people who have only considered this issue very abstractly. As a parent who has navigated the issues Katie Baker was raising in her piece in the NYT I am very aware of how isolating it is to know that you are not a bigot or a transphobe but to feel deep in your gut that what is happening to your child is at least as likely to be the result of social contagion as some inherent immutable characteristic that can only be resolved through body modification surgery and lifelong hormone treatments. Just the other day my husband remarked on how humbling this experience has been and that he is not sure what he would think about these issues if we weren't deeply involved in them. I feel pretty sure that I would have been skeptical no matter what because the science of gender dysphoria is still pretty young, but I also realize that if my child had expressed gender dysphoria before puberty and before social contagion and the Dr. had recommended puberty blockers I might well have agreed to them and that also humbles me. Maybe I am wrong and Hobbes and Roberts have teenagers and still feel that there is no controversy and nothing to worry about in this massive rise in AFAB trans youth, but it makes me have a little less contempt for them to think that they just aren't that familiar with what is happening with teenagers these days. I was watching Fleischman is in trouble last night and it features a storyline where a tween girl is sent home from camp for sharing a nude with a boy who shares it widely with his friends and is allowed to stay at camp. It really hammered home the humiliation for the girl, and it was yet another reminder of the myriad reasons why pubescent girls might want to opt out of being female.
I have always been a very liberal person in a very liberal part of this country. It is very alienating and utterly maddening to know this truth about yourself, but also to feel deep in your heart "I know my child-and this is my child coping with some pain" and to have people who have not read or listened to literally anything other than NYT and NPR on the subject - or who do not have children at all- treat you like you are a sad conspiracy theorist.
To add to this issue, I think there is (will be) a growing body of evidence that some state level "teacher's unions" have been on the forefront of state legislation that permits schools-teachers to withhold a student's gender transition from parents. In WA, a 13-year-old can request a name and gender change for school use without informing parents/guardians. I've heard union colleagues claim such legislation necessary for "safety" reasons. I think this puts teachers and other school personnel in a precarious legal position, not to mention an ethical one. I'm waiting for the lawsuits to start.
Granted I went to one of the shittiest high schools in the state and our teen pregnancy rate was about 50% but if you had asked me as a kid what teachers unions did I would said “oh, they protect schizophrenic sex criminals.”
Pretending that the purview of a labor union is solely negotiating wages and PTO allottment is willfully ignorant. Recall that Randi Weingarten consulted with the CDC on school COVID policy- how much more outside one's wheelhouse can it get than a union shill drafting public health policy?
Unions don't have the authority to draft legislation, but they have the influence to elect people who will draft legislation for them, and those politicians will align nicely with the preferred agenda of the union. There is a reason politicians pander to unions to get their endorsements.
Worker safety issues seem well within the purview of a union.
I would agree with you, but COVID was a unique case because she was offering expertise on whether there was a significant safety issue.
That would assume she was qualified to determine the level of risk presented to the workers, which I argue she was not.
In fact, I'd go a step further and suggest Weingarten was well aware of the fact that she was basing her position on politics, not worker safety. She admitted as much in the article below.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/10/05/the-students-left-behind-by-remote-learning
There was also abundant information from the Nordic countries that the risk of transmission was lower in schools compared to other situations. The head of the NEA was regularly repeating claims from Eric Feigl-Ding, who is regarded by much of the infectious disease community as a major source of misinformation. (He also predicted that monkeypox would tear through schools.) Blue areas of the US were just about the only places in the rich world that insisted that teachers were endangered by keeping schools open.
Again, you are very fortunate your local chapter does not.
Between/Among our comments - a clear call for a more balanced, integrated, collaborative country!
Davis E, I am one of you. In fact, I am the local president of a WEA-NEA affiliate and can assure you that in my state of Washington, the union influences legislation that goes far beyond wages, hours, and working conditions. I'm not blaming teachers. I am stating facts that apply to a behemoth of an institution that to my eyes and ears has been near completely captured by race and gender essentialism. The membership means well, I think. If you are a member in a local and state that simply advocates for fair wages, etc. consider yourself fortunate.
If a student was showing signs of any other form of body dysmorphia with an increased risk of suicide/self-harm (e.g. anorexia), it would absolutely be considered the height of negligence to not inform the parents. No reason gender dysphoria should be treated differently*
This seems to be yet another case of activists forgetting that slogans aren’t reality. “A (wo)man is anyone who says they are a (wo)man” is a nice rallying cry for trans acceptance, but a terrible way to set policy when you actually have to get down to the business of treating a complex psychological condition.
*As you note, “gender nonconforming” is not necessarily “gender dysphoria”, but at the point where the child is demanding a full social transition, I think that should at least be the default assumption until you go do the hard psychological work to show otherwise).
Jesse, thank you. Just thank you.
How about a middle ground like this: hey kid, you think you are trans? That's fine, think about it, maybe talk to your parents. In any case, I - the teacher - am going to keep calling you by your given name and your sex-based pronouns unless your parents tell me they are ok with you changing it. Dress however you want (but I won't provide you with a wardrobe!), ask your friends to call you whatever you want, but the school is going to stick to what's on the parent-provided documents unless they say otherwise. Meanwhile -really, think about talking to your parents, they will most likely be able to help you sort things out. I'm not going to "out" you, that's for you to do. I'm just going to keep teaching you math/social science/creative writing.
As a parent of a gender questioning kid (who seems to have desisted after 3 years), I would hugely appreciate this approach.
Not to trigger anyone, but as a (very) ex-Catholic, I still like what one priest once of my acquaintance said when asked if he would turn in a murderer who confessed to him (this is a subject that also comes up in the movie "The Exorcist," which is not just a shocking horror movie, but a meditation on some much deeper stuff):
If it were a matter of confession, the priest said he could not turn the confessed murderer in. But he would do his best to convince the person that doing so would be the best, most moral move to make.
Likewise, shouldn't teachers (at least) be required to have that conversation? As many have pointed out, it's remarkably stupid when trans activists insist that just because a kid *says* his parents will flog him if they find out he's "trans," it's true. It's not—remember being a teen?
That's exactly what I had in mind, Clay.