Anti-LGBTQIA+ legislation staying lowkey but with big impact

[PBR420]

^There should be teachers that specialize in what you're talking about so all the other teachers can just relax and teach their own subject without having to worry about anything.

[Hakulyte]

Originally Posted by Lights

The problem with this is that pronouns are pretty integral to day to day communication. If I'm a teacher in that school and I'm not allowed to say to use she / her pronouns im like... quitting that job that day. I'm not about to sit there and be misgendered constantly on a daily basis while being underpaid to teach. I'd imagine the majority of trans teachers out there would be in a similar boat- deal with stressful interactions all day or find a new career path. And then you end up with trans people being gradually pushed out of teaching as a result... why?

Imo, its exactly as bad as it reads. The students simply can't be asked to provide their pronouns- dumb, but nothing about them providing them on their own free will. Teachers, however, are outright not allowed to use pronouns that don't align with their birth sex. Which is unacceptable. Teachers are people too.

First reflex as a teacher would be to use "they" and/or dodge the use of pronouns in the first place to avoid potential issues. I would expect students to do the same.The topic would be avoided. Still a decent chance of getting fired from using they instead of he/she. I wonder where's the line. I feel like depending where it is this could go from acceptable to completely unjustified.

Originally Posted by DossarLX ODI

Adding on to what Lights said, this has real impact on teachers. In Florida what's colloquially known as the "Don't Say Gay Bill" actually can make teachers lose their license to teach.



Here's a Florida teacher that got fired shortly after she put up artwork from her students that related to pride flags.

This is effectively a way of violating the first amendment without explicitly saying it. You'll hear justifications like "protecting the innocence of children" or "not indoctrinating our youth" or "not following the state mandated curriculum".

However, these policies are making these topics to be impossible for teachers to discuss without risk of losing their jobs.

Say boys like girls, girls like boys, that's good. But some boys like boys, or some girls like girls, and explain the term straight, bisexual, and gay? Say goodbye to your teaching license.

And with pronouns, well... that's forcing the school to adopt "there are only two genders" and "trans people don't exist/are mentally ill".

Even if someone claims this is unconstitutional, the court system in the U.S. is very slow. So even if a bill is deemed unconstitutional, it can still remain in place for years.

All this does is create an atmosphere of fear and shame for teacher and students. Being someone that myself works in the education industry, this is entirely backwards and stifles free speech.

Logically, it makes sense they would need a lack of transparency for making this work. It just looks so silly from an outside perspective. It just makes me feel like they're out of touch with the topic and don't want to be accountable for it. So, they simply create the tools to be able to continue doing so and you get this. That's pretty impressive in a bad way. I kind of get why this is happening, but I feel like they should have been more transparent about it. Maybe they're not ready to be ?

[_choof]

Originally Posted by PBR420

^There should be teachers that specialize in what you're talking about so all the other teachers can just relax and teach their own subject without having to worry about anything.

how can teachers specialize in this when states are criminalizing the discussion of it in the first place

[mi40]

Originally Posted by _choof

psst mi40 has always been homophobic

by ur definition then all schools have been homophobic prior to like 2010 lol
i dont expect teachers to know everyone's pronouns on a case by case basis unless it's specifically a part of one's official documentation
it's like expecting airport security to refer to you by your pronouns without said pronouns being a part of your passport
that being said the drag shows and whatever being banned is dumb with no logic behind it cuz like ppl said it's stuff being done behind closed doors, who cares

[mi40]

if u truly wish to make pronouns a universally accepted thing, make it a part of official documentation like ur citizenship, driver's license etc so that everyone's on the same page, obviously that's probably a near impossible task but that's what needs to be done if u wanna stop seeing all the back and forth regarding lgbtq acceptance

[Lights]

Originally Posted by mi40

by ur definition then all schools have been homophobic prior to like 2010 lol
i dont expect teachers to know everyone's pronouns on a case by case basis unless it's specifically a part of one's official documentation
it's like expecting airport security to refer to you by your pronouns without said pronouns being a part of your passport
that being said the drag shows and whatever being banned is dumb with no logic behind it cuz like ppl said it's stuff being done behind closed doors, who cares

If you walk up to me and you misgender me out of nowhere, not knowing anything about me- im not going to be thrilled about it, but im not going to hold it against you. The response would be to correct it afterwards and now hey- we're on the same page, conversation can resume. If airport security or any other random stranger makes that mistake, its not going to be the end of the world (so long as they're not going out of there way to be jerks about it). In a teacher-student dynamic where youll both be seeing eachother every day for the greater part of a year, I believe teachers should be able to learn how to refer to their students within the first week or two. being able to remember details like that about your students is just like... part of being a good teacher. After a couple corrections, thats going to stick with you.

Believe me, if things like legal name changes / sex changes weren't prohibitively expensive and complicated to perform, I'd love to get my own personal documentation updated. But unfortunately, some places can tend to make that rather hard to do. This is something that I personally believe should be addressed, but in the meantime- it doesn't hurt to take the time to remember the pronouns of someone you're going to see more than once. paperwork or not.

[Funnygurl555]

Originally Posted by mi40

by ur definition then all schools have been homophobic prior to like 2010 lol
i dont expect teachers to know everyone's pronouns on a case by case basis unless it's specifically a part of one's official documentation
it's like expecting airport security to refer to you by your pronouns without said pronouns being a part of your passport
that being said the drag shows and whatever being banned is dumb with no logic behind it cuz like ppl said it's stuff being done behind closed doors, who cares

the legislation's tryna ban teaching about pronouns or providing one's pronouns or asking kiddos what their pronouns are. it's not about requiring teachers to know kids' pronouns

Originally Posted by mi40

if u truly wish to make pronouns a universally accepted thing, make it a part of official documentation like ur citizenship, driver's license etc so that everyone's on the same page, obviously that's probably a near impossible task but that's what needs to be done if u wanna stop seeing all the back and forth regarding lgbtq acceptance

considering iowa's tryna ban gay marriage i doubt even this would make people accept pronouns

[mi40]

Originally Posted by Funnygurl555

the legislation's tryna ban teaching about pronouns or providing one's pronouns or asking kiddos what their pronouns are. it's not about requiring teachers to know kids' pronouns



considering iowa's tryna ban gay marriage i doubt even this would make people accept pronouns

okay then it's my fault for not understanding the legislation completely, i thought it was to be mandated, prohibiting asking completely is a whole another story

[PBR420]

What's wrong with just using the kids name instead of pronouns? If the kid doesn't like their name they can just provide a nickname or something that the teacher can use instead. And if there is a situation where a pronoun must be used no matter what "they" works for everyone.

[_choof]

lol

[sff_writer_dan]

Originally Posted by PBR420

What's wrong with just using the kids name instead of pronouns? If the kid doesn't like their name they can just provide a nickname or something that the teacher can use instead. And if there is a situation where a pronoun must be used no matter what "they" works for everyone.

Virtually every piece of legislation on this also forbids you using "not their legal name" as part of anti-trans policymaking. They're sometimes written so vaguely that technically calling somebody named Michael "Mike" would actually be a violation, but the extremely obvious intention is to forbid trans and gender non-conforming kids to use a name that doesn't match society's assumptions of the masculinity or femininity of a name relative to the sex assigned at birth of the kid.

Also imagining how ridiculous "just use the kid's name" is in practice. "Okay class, Dan is going to present Dan's project now. Let's all give Dan our attention, and then when Dan's finished, if anybody has any questions for Dan about Dan's work, they can ask Dan."

Also, the thing about using 'they' is that once you know somebody's pronouns, if they're not "they/them" you're now misgendering them. And while your average cis kid mostly doesn't really care if you say 'them' or not (but see how many average boys would be fine with 'she/her' funny how some pronouns are "fine" and some "aren't" even for cis people) but trans kids deal with enough garbage from every direction that the misgendering might be less painful when it's 'them' it's still shitty for no necessary reason.

A kid at my nephew's school told everybody that his name was going to be (Not going to say the actual one, just in the bizarre case that it somehow allows people to identify the kid) but something like "Duderino" and everybody was like "Okay" and they just...called him Duderino for a while, students, teachers, parents, and it was fine. He eventually decided to go back to using his birth name, but it was a couple months of just calling him what he wanted, and nothing bad happened. What's wrong with just talking to people how they want?

[PBR420]

^I didn't know nicknames are illegal too jeez wtf. fair point on the pronoun thing but there should be some loopholes... i'm just spit ballin here ya'll so don't take me too seriously lol.

[sff_writer_dan]

Originally Posted by PBR420

I didn't know nicknames are illegal too jeez wtf. fair point on the pronoun thing but there should be some loopholes... i'm just spit ballin here ya'll so don't take me too seriously lol.

It's not "nicknames are illegal" it's "in the name of being anti-trans, they've said you can't call a kid a preferred name unless it matches the one in the school's documents" and in their haste to stop you calling a trans guy a boy's name, they didn't bother realizing that technically 'nicknames' are also a preferred name that isn't the one in the school documents.

That's not intentional on their part, they're happy for Richards to be Rick and Jennifers to be Jenny, but they are so bad at their jobs, that to stop somebody whose legal name is Richard from being Jennifer, they've screwed it up.

[PBR420]

^I get what you're sayin. Isn't it crazy how such a small number of people can just be like "yo here's some new bs laws and we expect you all to follow them" which most people will because control by fear works pretty good (sadly).

[sff_writer_dan]

Originally Posted by PBR420

I get what you're sayin. Isn't it crazy how such a small number of people can just be like "yo here's some new bs laws and we expect you all to follow them" which most people will because control by fear works pretty good (sadly).

These are the same people proposing laws to forbid trans girls from playing girl's sports when there are literally 0-1 actual trans girls playing girls sports in the whole state. Millions of dollars of tax money going into paying the people who want to keep one or in some cases zero kids away from something that literally does not matter at all.

[Black_Shield]

they could bring back co-ed sports for high school.

[diddleysquin]

Originally Posted by Lights

If you walk up to me and you misgender me out of nowhere, not knowing anything about me- im not going to be thrilled about it, but im not going to hold it against you. The response would be to correct it afterwards and now hey- we're on the same page, conversation can resume. If airport security or any other random stranger makes that mistake, its not going to be the end of the world (so long as they're not going out of there way to be jerks about it). -///- After a couple corrections, thats going to stick with you.

Believe me, if things like legal name changes / sex changes weren't prohibitively expensive and complicated to perform, I'd love to get my own personal documentation updated. But unfortunately, some places can tend to make that rather hard to do. This is something that I personally believe should be addressed, but in the meantime- it doesn't hurt to take the time to remember the pronouns of someone you're going to see more than once. paperwork or not.

This, exactly and all of this is precisely what I wanted to add to this conversation.

[sff_writer_dan]

A trans friend of mine, in addition to the cost of application for a legal name change, also had to appear in court and tell a judge exactly why she wanted to change her name, and he had the power to just go "no" if he wanted to.

And when you look at the state of the court system in most places in the US, I don't think that's necessarily a given that they'll approve it.

[drizzleRomanceGirl]

it's so sad about all the trans youth these kind of bills affect and how many more children might fall into depression and not be able to get the care they need

[salAndy]

Country of freedom, huh? WHERE'S THE FUCKIN FREEDOM??