As a teacher to middle school students and a parent to a high schooler, you missed the mark on this one. Kids only confide in teachers if they need a safe adult and they don’t have one at home. I guarantee if a kid feels safe and trusts their parent, their parent would know before their teacher. My kid is in band and has had the same teacher for four years. He sees my kid in school and outside of school for marching band. If my kid went to him to talk about something he didn’t feel comfortable talking to me about, I’d be thankful that my kid had someone else to trust. I don’t know why people don’t trust teachers to do the right thing. While I know there are bad teachers who don’t deserve our trust (just like cops, doctors, journalists, influencers, presidents), most are good and most would do the right thing by our kids. By mandating that teachers need to tell parents, we are taking away a potentially safe adult for kids, the suicide rate will only increase among some of our most vulnerable students.
A big point missed here is no one was ever required to keep secrets. Please read AB1955. This is a common misconception fueled by culture wars. Teachers and schools have never been asked to keep secrets and the point was always that schools have protocols that have been followed for decades that ensured both the students and families were safe. This was always about LGBTQ fear and forcefully outing students and nothing more.
You centered everyone except Trans kids in this piece…a kid should live in complete hell bc parents “deserve to know.” got it. Maybe you and the judge see parenting differently then I do- I don’t deserve anything, I need to work hard to keep lines communication open with my kid. That’s on me.
It's not about keeping secrets from parents....it's about giving the kid time and space to figure things out. Most kids don't want to disappoint their parents and imagine all kinds of scenarios where their parents are "going to kill me". Even if a parent would be open and accepting, kids often don't feel that and make stupid decisions their not-fully-developed brain tells them are logical. Teens commit suicide thinking they are protecting their parents from some sort of shame. Allowing the space for a student to talk to a teacher and figure things out, saves lives.
Jeff, I'm so disappointed and frankly very angry (and I typically agree with your takes, at least in part). Your article says, " public schools within the state are not allowed to prevent employees from notifying mothers and fathers...." but as Sparkplug correctly commented, that was NEVER what AB1955 was about. I've seen this misunderstanding printed in articles from journalists across the country. I've asked many of them to do more research, retract their harmful article and apologize to the trans community, their families, teachers and everyone else this misinformation hurts and endangers. Not one journalist has ever responded to my request. I hope you are different. Ugh!!! Day ruined. ☹️
As the parent of a queer kid, I wanted to chime in on this one. The thought process for the Christian nationalists is simple: They don’t hate queer kids, they “love” them. It’s not their bigotry, it’s the lord’s. ***eye roll*** They always outsource their bigotry. They’ve ran the same playbook forever. Nothing has changed, not even the talking points.
I don’t know. I think it used to be just outsourcing their bigotry. Now it feels more like their god is who they want when they demand to talk to the manager.
The right is sooo messed up about gender. They want hypermasculinity and hyperfemininity and nothing in between. When I was a kid, we had “Free to Be You and Me,” and boys could have dolls and girls could have toy trucks. (Some kids were trans and most were cis, and we all liked what we liked.) Trans people *were* oppressed and often depressed but they weren’t “the enemy.” (That was D&D.)
Now you see men afraid to hold their babies or use reusable shopping bags for fear of appearing effeminate. Look for best friend gifts on-line: it is women only. Like men can’t have best friends.
My guess is that very few right wing Americans perfectly follow every gender stereotype they espouse. Especially men. And then some podcaster or politician says that makes them effeminate and they freak out about being trans. So they blame actual trans people for their fear.
I am neither a psychologist nor an expert on gender, but I worry and read a lot about this.
Jeff, your racism is so blatant we need to tell you that your Talmud upbringing is showing. Stop trying to paint good Christians with a broad brush using the acts of a few fringe elements while completely ignoring your own Tribe and how they repeatedly stir up conflict and discontent in communities around them while avoiding any reflection of how your Tribe is leading us down a path of a never ending focus on sexuality and racism that you all create. Take ownership for Weinstein, Hollywood, and tearing apart anything good that is Goy.
The problem is that there are some very loud anti-trans Christians who paint a lopsided picture of Christianity. Kind of like Netanyahu paints a lopsided picture of Judaism.
It would be easy for me to say “Achtera, your anti-semitism is showing.” But the reality is that nobody’s tribe has a lock on decency or nastiness. Not mine, not yours, not Jeff’s. I have a friend who constantly posts news items about Church leaders who are sex offenders. It has nothing to do with Christianity. It is about humans behaving badly, regardless of tribe.
As a teacher to middle school students and a parent to a high schooler, you missed the mark on this one. Kids only confide in teachers if they need a safe adult and they don’t have one at home. I guarantee if a kid feels safe and trusts their parent, their parent would know before their teacher. My kid is in band and has had the same teacher for four years. He sees my kid in school and outside of school for marching band. If my kid went to him to talk about something he didn’t feel comfortable talking to me about, I’d be thankful that my kid had someone else to trust. I don’t know why people don’t trust teachers to do the right thing. While I know there are bad teachers who don’t deserve our trust (just like cops, doctors, journalists, influencers, presidents), most are good and most would do the right thing by our kids. By mandating that teachers need to tell parents, we are taking away a potentially safe adult for kids, the suicide rate will only increase among some of our most vulnerable students.
Students who present as one gender at home and another at school do so because it isn’t safe to be themselves at home.
A big point missed here is no one was ever required to keep secrets. Please read AB1955. This is a common misconception fueled by culture wars. Teachers and schools have never been asked to keep secrets and the point was always that schools have protocols that have been followed for decades that ensured both the students and families were safe. This was always about LGBTQ fear and forcefully outing students and nothing more.
You NAILED it. That was about to be my comment as well. I'm very angry that Jeff didn't take the time to realize that and report on this properly.
You centered everyone except Trans kids in this piece…a kid should live in complete hell bc parents “deserve to know.” got it. Maybe you and the judge see parenting differently then I do- I don’t deserve anything, I need to work hard to keep lines communication open with my kid. That’s on me.
I'm trying my best here, Barbara.
Great to hear, thanks. Hope you will take my comment seriously as a journalist and, in fact, do better. These kids desperately need us to.
It's not about keeping secrets from parents....it's about giving the kid time and space to figure things out. Most kids don't want to disappoint their parents and imagine all kinds of scenarios where their parents are "going to kill me". Even if a parent would be open and accepting, kids often don't feel that and make stupid decisions their not-fully-developed brain tells them are logical. Teens commit suicide thinking they are protecting their parents from some sort of shame. Allowing the space for a student to talk to a teacher and figure things out, saves lives.
Jeff, I'm so disappointed and frankly very angry (and I typically agree with your takes, at least in part). Your article says, " public schools within the state are not allowed to prevent employees from notifying mothers and fathers...." but as Sparkplug correctly commented, that was NEVER what AB1955 was about. I've seen this misunderstanding printed in articles from journalists across the country. I've asked many of them to do more research, retract their harmful article and apologize to the trans community, their families, teachers and everyone else this misinformation hurts and endangers. Not one journalist has ever responded to my request. I hope you are different. Ugh!!! Day ruined. ☹️
As the parent of a queer kid, I wanted to chime in on this one. The thought process for the Christian nationalists is simple: They don’t hate queer kids, they “love” them. It’s not their bigotry, it’s the lord’s. ***eye roll*** They always outsource their bigotry. They’ve ran the same playbook forever. Nothing has changed, not even the talking points.
I don’t know. I think it used to be just outsourcing their bigotry. Now it feels more like their god is who they want when they demand to talk to the manager.
The right is sooo messed up about gender. They want hypermasculinity and hyperfemininity and nothing in between. When I was a kid, we had “Free to Be You and Me,” and boys could have dolls and girls could have toy trucks. (Some kids were trans and most were cis, and we all liked what we liked.) Trans people *were* oppressed and often depressed but they weren’t “the enemy.” (That was D&D.)
Now you see men afraid to hold their babies or use reusable shopping bags for fear of appearing effeminate. Look for best friend gifts on-line: it is women only. Like men can’t have best friends.
My guess is that very few right wing Americans perfectly follow every gender stereotype they espouse. Especially men. And then some podcaster or politician says that makes them effeminate and they freak out about being trans. So they blame actual trans people for their fear.
I am neither a psychologist nor an expert on gender, but I worry and read a lot about this.
Jeff, your racism is so blatant we need to tell you that your Talmud upbringing is showing. Stop trying to paint good Christians with a broad brush using the acts of a few fringe elements while completely ignoring your own Tribe and how they repeatedly stir up conflict and discontent in communities around them while avoiding any reflection of how your Tribe is leading us down a path of a never ending focus on sexuality and racism that you all create. Take ownership for Weinstein, Hollywood, and tearing apart anything good that is Goy.
The problem is that there are some very loud anti-trans Christians who paint a lopsided picture of Christianity. Kind of like Netanyahu paints a lopsided picture of Judaism.
It would be easy for me to say “Achtera, your anti-semitism is showing.” But the reality is that nobody’s tribe has a lock on decency or nastiness. Not mine, not yours, not Jeff’s. I have a friend who constantly posts news items about Church leaders who are sex offenders. It has nothing to do with Christianity. It is about humans behaving badly, regardless of tribe.