We can agree that the health of the child is what’s most important. I think trans youths are best served by having that risk conversation with their doctor, and that schools should be able to inform children that these treatments are even available.
This of course is just the opening salvo. In five years it will be illegal at all grade levels and they’ll be jailing teachers over it.
I can’t find anything disagreeable in what you said, FWIW, other than that children at various levels of maturity are still not able to make lifelong decisions at differing levels of impact.
Here’s what’s next for Florida.
A collection of 14 Iowa Republican representatives introduced a billTuesday that makes it illegal for a person affiliated with a public school or public library to knowingly spread “material the person knows or reasonably should know, is obscene or harmful to minors.”
Guess what topics they consider harmful. You get one guess.
Extend that out to parents giving their kids access to PornHub, and I’m all on board.
That’s already been proposed, and I think it might have passed in some states.
This is why Republicans love Putin so much, they see Putin as a defender a white clericofascist ethno-states that they so wish to devolve America into.
I should probably mention that I have an 8 year old trans girl in the house who has been clear about it since she was 4. We did nothing to encourage it and early on I just thought she was looking up to her older sister (like her older brother does) and so both my wife and myself have had lots of conversations with her about it. I didn’t believe it for at least 6 months because a 4 year old is as likely to say they’re Spider-Man as anything else. Some of my conversations with her, while not exactly antagonistic, were definitely me challenging her. She’s never budged, she may be non binary appearance-wise in the future because she still likes dressing up like a boy sometimes but being a girl is her identity. It’s settled.
I know the relation isn’t 100%, gender isn’t sexuality, but I spoke to some good friends of mine who are homosexual. I asked them their experiences for when they knew they were gay. I got the gamut. A couple of them knew when they were little kids, as far back as they could remember. A couple more knew at or after puberty. One of them, from South America, was engaged to a woman before he admitted to himself that it was just the pressure from his family that kept him pretending and being honest to himself meant being gay.
My wife has done a lot of research, both by looking at actual journals and by going into support groups for parents and kids alike, and the same thing happens for trans people. Some of them know when they’re kids and some grow up first.
So, whatever ideas you have (and I mean anyone reading the thread, not anyone in particular) shooting from the hip about how stuff works and how people should or shouldn’t be allowed to do whatever, just keep it to yourself. These conversations, the ones I had with my kid and my wife, together and apart, and the ones my daughter has had with a therapist who specializes in gender identity, these same conversations are happening in many, many houses and offices across the country. We’ve all got it covered for you, all you need to know is that we’re thinking about it harder than you are.
Oh, and as to the bill’s text, I have to wonder what’s going to happen when my daughter mentions she is trans. She tells everyone, she isn’t shy about it. She’s in second grade and when she tells her class she’s trans, does the teacher stay quiet? Do they step in and say there are only two genders? Do they defend my daughter if another kid says that? Will they get fired for it? Will the school get sued when some prick’s kid comes home and says that they met a trans kid at school?
There’s a super religious family that lives across the street from us. All of our kids go and play with them in the street and each other’s back yards. She told them when she was playing with them the second time. The daughter said “nuh uh” and their parent said something like “it’s complicated we’ll talk about it later”. But whatever happened their kids are still respectful and everyone still plays together. I’m sure there was some religious bullshit that was said in that house on that day, but I don’t really care, because that’s their choice. I think that went fine.
None of the stuff the law bans is going to be in a school curriculum, and the only reason this law exists is to drive shitty people (and counter-drive good people) to the polls and cause issues down the line. It’s a stupid, shitty law that does nothing but harm people and will probably tie up the courts.
I was thinking ‘we really should give greater weight to the medical side of things for trans kids to those directly impacted’ and @arrendek comes in with an epic ‘shut the fuck up Donnie’ post.
I don’t know what the effects of the meds are, and how it impacts things like mental/ physical development and body dysphoria, but that’s why my opinion is basically ‘what do those who are experts on this think’, ie trans kids and their doctors.
Thanks so much for that. I would ask you for a favor, you were completely magnanimous in not calling anyone out, but I would really appreciate you ripping apart anything I said. I’m working from theory, not practice, and I want to be, if not Right, at least understanding and right enough to not hurt anyone. I do know a dozen or so
adult homosexuals and non-cis (which sounds ridiculously clunky these days but it encompasses the range of gay men, feminine gay men, feminine gay women, masculine gay women, and the male to female trans and female to male trans people I know) but I’m just opining on the issue when it comes to adolescents.
I think Mia Mulder is a pretty good communicator, and I like how she manages to evidence contradictions. YMMV, but, well, at least it’s not a cis take.
And, as far I remember, she says around what Alstein said above, just more of it.
So the bill mentions it only affects K-Third grade.
I’m confused. Doesn’t sex ed not start until like Fifth grade with parental sign off?
Seems like it’s just a preformative lame duck bill. (so it won’t have any affect one way or another)
Honestly, the medical question is one we haven’t settled yet. We have some time to figure things out. We’re doing the therapist stuff for one reason because a lot of laws that exist or are being proposed limit medical intervention to kids who have a medical history of being trans. We need to build a history of treatment so that a doctor can even prescribe stuff. We’re looking for a doctor now just to let a consultation about our options, well in advance of needing them.
But we don’t know what our daughter is going to want when she gets closer to puberty. Her private parts are also part of her identity. But a few years back when we mentioned her voice getting deep like her Daddy’s she broke down and cried. She may want a change and she may want something we don’t expect, but it’s going to be her choice. We’ve pretty much always been talking to her about options and what other people do and those conversations are getting more serious and detailed. She’ll get to know more and more as the time comes so she can make a decision.
One thing we’ve gotten more serious about lately are hormone blockers that delay the onset of puberty. We’re going to be as damn sure as we can possibly be before we do anything irreversible, and that’s about as close as you can come to giving yourself as much time as possible before doing anything like that.
Edit: Ninja’ed by @Perky_Goth, who is going to offer me refuge in Portugal when the Florida SS comes for my kid.
I’ve heard talks that kids are going to try to wreck this bill by saying they’re LGBT en masse just to make the reporting impossible.
@arrendek Thank you.
@Houngan I thought you were asking questions in good faith, so if it sounded like I was calling you out, I apologize.
Just by that you educated me, because I tend to think of kids as totally under the care and control of adults, and it’s a knife that cuts both ways. I don’t think anyone would argue that a single digit years old child has the same agency as a teenager, but what you made me realize is that those blockers can serve to let the body lag behind the mind while it matures, and the difference between a ten year old’s mind and a fourteen year old’s is profound.
Kids can be wrong, this is why HRT isn’t given to children, even if they wish it, until it’s pretty clear they are certain. Informed consent doesn’t usually kick in until 18.
That said, when a kid says they are trans, they are 99% of the time right. Often the 1%, many times it’s because of other factors not regret.
For younger transfeminine children in particular, the benefits of blockers are huge. Avoiding facial hair growth avoids a painful, expensive treatment just for starts. They also get much better hip development, which is affirming. This is just two of many changes.
Generally, the older you start, the slower the changes are, and the harder it is to deal with things socially, as you have more connections/security clearances/folks who’ve known you for a long long time… It’s harder in so many ways to do it when older.
Not at all, it’s always an emotionally fraught issue and I live on the easy side of it, the majority white bread cis male. But I have both personal and familial reasons to be invested and I want to know down to the roots what the hell I’m talking about. That often comes out as dead neutral “just asking questions” and where I always fear landing is that seeming like disingenuous argument rather than . . . dead neutral questions. I am inherently dead neutral on pretty much every topic and completely open to correction, but that frequently and justifiably comes across as having underlying disingenuous motives for argument sake.
In short, you and I have always had great honest discourse, and if I say something that comes across like, “Oh look at this asshole trying to logic around it!” you’re justified but I’m also doing it out of emotional and intellectual deadness rather than trying some Internet argument judo to get somewhere else.
Edit: except on topics where I know what the fuck I’m talking about, then I am the complete asshole.
As a teen of the 90s, if I had the last name of Mulder I would go around making everyone call me “Mulder” all the time. That’s the first time I’ve seen that name outside of the X-Files.
It’s a valid concern, transfolk in particular often get tired of having to explain everything, and yet, a lot of folks are ignorant, especially older folks.
I know I had to educate my DSA denmother when HB2 came around, as well as another democratic activist who came around to my work (we had a lot of long conversations as a Bernie and Hillary supporter back in 2016, which educated me to what it was like for black women and why Bernie wasn’t trusted) They were old and just didn’t understand it. I didn’t even know what trans was until the DLI Five scandal when Five military trained linguists came out as trans and got discharged, costing the government a million or two. Also around the same time I met someone trans on livejournal, who I am currently watching their vtube stream. She is still one of my best friends, and she helped me understand a lot.
Idaho is already going a step beyond Florida here, apparently gender therapy for trans kids will warrant a felony and a life sentence in their bill. This link has good info on why even less-shitty bills like this Florida one are a problem: