Parents with Inconvenient Truths about Trans #transphobia #dunning-kruger #conspiracy

Parents with Inconvenient Truths about Trans #transphobia #dunning-kruger #conspiracy pittparents.com

I have a pretty comfortable teaching career. I’m leaving it at the end of this year.

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After attempts to move the needle in my school district regarding gender ideology, I’ve concluded that I no longer have a clear conscience about working in a setting in which this issue affects me on an hourly (not daily – hourly) basis. And based on the publication that you’re reading this in, you can probably guess why.

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I remember a teacher meeting in 2015 in which a young arts instructor sitting next to me said to everyone that we should have all students introduce themselves with their pronouns and found that to be an odd way of advocating for the inclusion of the handful of students we had who might identify as a different gender.

Things kept evolving and, for awhile I thought it was mostly a new development among our young people. But then I saw information coming down the pipeline from the school district and eventually started to learn that my school district wasn’t going to just foster acceptance and tolerance—it was actually going to become a disseminator of the new ideology.

In late 2018, I opened my inbox to find an “integrity memo” stating that parental consent is not required to refer to students by a different name, pronoun, or gender. […] That seemed egregious. I passed this onto Abigail Shrier who then posted it on Twitter. I figured that this would bring some much-needed bad publicity to my school district and possibly pressure them to change their policies.

[skipping many, MANY fake stories]

My choice is to leave. And on my way out the door and beyond, I intend to make as many parents as possible aware of what is happening so that they can make a well-informed educational decision for their children. What will your decision be?

Times have clearly changed—but now, from the outside, I am going to do my best to blow the whistle and restore sanity to my once honorable profession.

6 comments

Does she think anyone with a shred of critical thinking believes these fake stories? No, because this is being posted in the PITT. The PITT doesn’t try to convince other people to hate trans people, it serves as an echo chamber to rile up butthurt narcissistic parents who already hate trans people into a blood frenzy. I’ll provide some examples of the fake stories below.

- That the school released an online module telling teachers that gender and sex are both social constructs.
- That a teacher in support of it “insisted that “this is doctrine” according to our state and the school district”.
- That a trans-femme activist teacher insisted that you must alternate between the pronouns of people who use multiple sets (e.g. she/they)
- In the same paragraph, a non-binary teacher apparently has a student with a color-coded bracelet indicating their pronouns… that they switch out every single day.
- That a large chunk of her class picked out “alternative names that they choose primarily from Greek mythology and outer space”
- That “the social studies teacher down the hall taught his students that the concept of binary gender was a western colonialist imposition”.
- That the school is encouraging 4-year-olds to be trans.
- That third-graders are being made to announce their pronouns on the first week of school.
- Ending the removed section of the article off with that “many public school districts have been overtaken by activist teachers who are deeply interested in dismantling the concept of gender and are profoundly anxious to talk about it with their students.”

What did pronouns do to you, Mabel? Did they put a banana peel on top of a large staircase so you would fall down it?

Does she think anyone with a shred of critical thinking believes these fake stories? No, because this is being posted in the PITT. The PITT doesn’t try to convince other people to hate trans people, it serves as an echo chamber to rile up butthurt narcissistic parents who already hate trans people into a blood frenzy. I’ll provide some examples of the fake stories below.

Those are not necessarily fake stories. Exaggerated, perhaps; used to stir up a moral panic — certainly. But I can believe that there are at least grains of truth in quite a few of those.
Why? Because being in actual LGBTQ communities (a bit IRL but especially online) and talking to actual people, I’ve seen basically those kinds of views… very often.

- That the school released an online module telling teachers that gender and sex are both social constructs.

Maybe hard to imagine schools in a lot of places putting this into their curriculum, but this is a pretty normal view to have in the LGBTQ community. If we or our allies have the chance to write parts of curriculums — and at least in some places we did get the chance — this is the sort of thing we might put into it.
Not as some sort of conspiratorial “grooming” to corrupt poor innocent kids, of course — but simply because we consider sex and especially gender to be social constructs. After all, societies teach and enforce what these things are, don’t they? Yes, even what “(biological) sex” is.

It’s now sadly a bit ironic that radical feminists would have largely agreed there, at least in regard to gender, until the point when TERFs basically became the only face of the movement. And with TERFs, “gender is a social construct” is more a theoretical tenet that they loudly claim they hold, but don’t truly agree with in practice.

But yeah, the point you made there doesn’t really hold, as there are plenty of us LGBTQ people who would happily create and release such a module (with good intentions!). So… not likely to be fake.

- That a teacher in support of it “insisted that “this is doctrine” according to our state and the school district”.

Yeah, this one is weird. I’m not even sure what the PITT parent was trying to say here, but it sounds like it may be some sort of broken telephone quote that originates in a misunderstanding.

- That a trans-femme activist teacher insisted that you must alternate between the pronouns of people who use multiple sets (e.g. she/they)

What I’m kind of doubtful of there is the “must” part; otherwise, I can totally believe this. Yes, ‘she/they’ people who alternate pronouns (and ask others to do the same when talking about them) do exist; I’ve met them (online).
Not bullshit, not a ‘fake story’; and given that these people exist and LGBTQ communities tend to be pretty big on respecting pronouns even when they’re of the ‘atypical’ kind, I can see this claim of the PITT parent as being basically true.

- In the same paragraph, a non-binary teacher apparently has a student with a color-coded bracelet indicating their pronouns… that they switch out every single day.

Might be fake, or at least based on unsubstantiated rumor (wouldn’t be the first time, far from it).
That said, I also wouldn’t completely dismiss such a person existing — as we do have some pretty odd and out-there folks in the community.
Also, genderfluid people are hardly unheard of.

(continued in next post)

(continued)

- That a large chunk of her class picked out “alternative names that they choose primarily from Greek mythology and outer space”

Heh, while the “large chunk” may perhaps be an exaggeration, I can actually kinda believe this :)

I mean, have you met trans and enby (non-binary) people? Have you seen their chosen names?
I have, a fair number of them. And as a trans woman, I can certainly tell you that we tend to have a fondness for, shall we say, exotic names.
Hell, sometimes it seems that the people with the ‘normal’/common names are the exceptions!

Taking an ‘out-there’ name is not my thing, but why would anyone judge those people for it?

- That “the social studies teacher down the hall taught his students that the concept of binary gender was a western colonialist imposition”.

Completely believable story, actually. This view is actually very common and very normalized among that part of the left which is sometimes (and often derisively) called “woke”.

Hell, in quite a few of the leftie communities I’ve been in, the view quoted above is considered basically an obvious and well-known fact. Especially in certain parts of academia in the US.

And if any such person became a teacher, you could bet your ass that this is what they’d be teaching! Again, not as part of some ‘woke’ conspiracy to corrupt good ‘normal’ children, but simply as a truth that is worth grappling with.
Therefore, in that view, the "western colonialist imposition of binary gender" should be overcome for the good of us all, leaving us more free to be ourselves without oppressive limitations.

So, again, quite likely not a fake claim.

- That the school is encouraging 4-year-olds to be trans.

Now this one does seem like it’s just plain fake. Or, if there’s a grain of truth to it, it’s probably something far more innocuous, like teaching children of that age something like “some girls feel like boys, and some boys feel like girls, and some feel like a bit of both — that’s okay and they shouldn’t be teased for it.”

Which is actually a good and age-appropriate thing to teach to little kids, but of course to someone like these “PITT parents” that is interpreted as “encouraging 4-year-olds to be trans” and of course awful and harmful (in their minds).

- That third-graders are being made to announce their pronouns on the first week of school.

Again, this is more a case of “Is ‘being made to’ what actually happened?”, i.e. is it true that it was forced, rather than whether it’s true that such things happen.

After all, such ‘pronoun circles’ are a thing, especially in some adult communities, and I don’t see why a queer-friendly teacher (or one who’s queer themselves) wouldn’t want to do this with their class.

In other words… again, a perfectly likely story in some places, except for the “being made to” part.

- Ending the removed section of the article off with that “many public school districts have been overtaken by activist teachers who are deeply interested in dismantling the concept of gender and are profoundly anxious to talk about it with their students.”

While this is of course tendentious and alarmist like the rest of that post, I have little doubt that teachers who would like to actively dismantle the concept of gender do exist. I mean, there are plenty of such people, so why wouldn’t some of them be teachers?

Anyway, all in all… @PLMMJ, please don’t take what I’m about to say as arrogant, as it’s not intended that way.
But I would suggest familiarizing yourself more with the actual LGBTQ community before claiming that a story about them espousing views which are rather common and typical in said community (and stated openly and proudly by many of its members!) are some sort of evidence for the story being obviously fake.

Well I was wrong, but the last part I have never heard in my life (from the left or the right) and thought so ridiculous that no one could actually believe it.