Somehow I was unaware until school started this week that the state I live in, Indiana, passed a law this year requiring the school to REPORT to the parents if a child requests to be called by a different name or gender pronoun than they registered under…and the parent has to give written permission for the school to use said name or gender pronouns. This has put a ridiculous burden on the teachers, of course. Today I got an email notifying me that my son, Ben, would like to be called Ben and not Benjamin. I signed a form. Thousands of other parents will do so as well.
This is absolutely fucking ridiculous in so many ways. The pursuit of eliminating trans people at all costs has gotten so out of hand. This is some Taliban shit.
Please…for fuck’s sake call my kids whatever they want to be called, have drag queens read to them…teach them that slavery was bad and gay people exist. Let the teachers teach. Help my kids to be smart and kind and call it a day…I trust our public school system. This is so infuriating.
To the people passing these laws, I hope your children and grandchildren are ashamed of you and put you in a shitty nursing home and never visit you…and then you die (of old age) and the next generation is better. This is disgusting.
I’m totally down for protesting but fucking with the schools isn’t the way to do it…they are victims in this too and forced to do crazy things. Imagine having to ask all of the students what they want to be called on the first day of school and then having to initiate email notification/permission requests to parents. They had to build forms and systems for all of this nonsense
I'm not going to lie, I misread that as: "Now get him to ask for a new name, 'Bimothy'."
...I've been joking too much with my (incidentally-trans) housemate and best friend about fake/silly portmanteau names lately. The name "Bess" came up and I'm like... "what is that even short for?" They were like "Queen Elizabeth, apparently", but I said "Bessica".
Holy shit. That they didn't at least carve out an exception for shortening a given name shows how poorly thought through this shit is. No Mike, Luke, Dan, Jenny, Liz, Mark, Beth, and the rest of you. Your teachers and friends may have called you that all of your life, but you are now Michael, Lucas, Daniel, Jennifer, Elizabeth, Macus, Elizabeth.
Yep my sister in law had to sign papers that Emerson, Finley and Addison could be called Emmie, Finn and Addie. Definitely keeping kids safe from……….drag queens? Pedos? Secret gender affirming care?
Another thing I think about is that my daughter talked to a school counselor and now a therapist…I am 100% fine with them keeping things private unless it’s a threat of violence or suicide. Sometimes mental health care needs to include discussing things with TRUSTED adults and not your parents. Of course I wish she would tell her mom and I everything she tells her therapist…but no way she ever fucking would. Better the trained mental health expert than getting advice from other teens.
This essentially a direct challenge to that. Kids can’t have secrets. The school may not use discretion.
We should roll our some black mirror shit and monitor them on video 24/7 and some kind of brain chips as well…