Two members of the Orange Unified School District board have been removed by parents who opposed a policy requiring school staff to out transgender kids.

Parents in Southern California have voted to remove two conservative school board members after they spearheaded a policy that forcibly outs transgender students to their guardians.

Members of the Orange Unified School District board voted 4-0 to enact the policy in September. It was passed at 11:30 p.m., after the three opposed members walked out and withheld their votes.

The policy states that parents must be notified when a student seeks “to be identified as a gender other than the student’s biological sex or gender listed on the student’s birth certificate or any other official records.” This includes names, nicknames, and pronouns, and applies even if the student hasn’t taken action but has discussed the matter with a counselor.

…

At the initial meeting in September, the board was overwhelmed by crowds who showed up to either protest or support the policy. However, the majority of the attendees voicing support did not have children in the district’s schools, and most were not residents of the area, according to the Times.

  • GladiusB@lemmy.world
    1091·
    8 months ago

    Absolutely not. This is a hot take that is not well thought out. At least the way I took your statement is that the parents are the reason the kids are hiding it. I.e. they won’t be accepting or there is some other notion that the parents are responsible for.

    First off, kids in high school are constantly battling for their independence. Their autonomy is their goal almost exclusively until things go wrong. A good parent has to watch out from afar and hope they taught their kid well.

    Second, the kid could have all sorts of reasons to hiding this. Maybe it was never talked about before. Maybe when it was they didn’t know how to say what they had to say. Kids have a hard time even saying feelings on food choices when they aren’t aware of the vocabulary for those feelings. They just flat out don’t know what they are feeling until they have a meltdown and talk about it.

    Third, the parents aren’t always in the way. Kids don’t give parents enough of a chance to rise to the occasion without giving them a chance. Saying they acted this way or that way is not fair and not at all what a good relationship is about. They gotta give their parents a shot to handle it or all of it is speculation.

    • stembolts@programming.dev
      525·
      8 months ago

      Lotta text to say you don’t create an environment where children feel safe talking to you.

      Lemme show you what we see when we read your post.

      1. Kids wanna be autonomous, I expect that they’ll do it wrong and I’ll then enforce my corrections.
      2. I didn’t teach communication to an adequate level with my children so they have meltdowns, I think this is normal.
      3. Kids should give parents more chances. Seriously kids, give me more chances. Another chance please, another chance.

      Obviously I’m taking massive liberties with your text, but so are you with every other family that isn’t yours. Doesn’t feel nice does it? That’s one reason why all of your posts are disliked.

        • EldritchFeminity@lemmy.blahaj.zone
          23·
          8 months ago

          Is drug use any different than what? Kids wanting to go by a different name? Or self-harming?

          On all 3, being required to tell the parents is a big issue as the parents might be a part of the problem. Plus, requiring staff snitch on kids is a great way to get kids to never tell anybody that they’re having problems and just bottle it up inside until it festers into some kind of breakdown or long-lasting mental health issue. My mom was a guidance counselor for many years, and she had to make plenty of house calls with CPS in tow.

          Sometimes, kids need the help or advice of a third-party adult that they trust who isn’t their parents or their friends’ parents. Hell, in my 20s, I was a manager at a fish market, and even I played that role many times. Oftentimes, it was as innocuous as distracting an earnest and loving mom so that she would stop trying to answer questions for her kids during their interview with the boss instead of letting them answer for themselves, or helping them work up the courage to tell their parents something important like that they’re gay. But if I had broken their confidence and told their parents? The kids who asked me for advice on stuff like how to quickly save money so that they could get an apartment when they turned 18 because their mom was kicking them out of the house would’ve never dared come forward with that.

          Demanding teachers put the feelings of some parents above the wellbeing of the most vulnerable kids by not letting them use their own judgment to do what’s best for each kid on a case by case basis isn’t the right way to go about this.

        • BreakDecks@lemmy.mlEnglish
          242·
          8 months ago

          Are you arguing that exploring gender identity is similar to getting addicted to drugs? This is a very stupid take…

        • stembolts@programming.dev
          141·
          8 months ago

          Your statement is extremely open-ended so it is impossible to know what you mean by this, so I can only answer generically.

          Yes, drug use is different for various reasons.

          A granular example is that some drugs, such as cannabis, limit brain development permanently when consumed below a certain age. Other drugs have similar impact. Since this causes measurable damage to a child’s development, it is different.

          If there is a connection between a child wanting to keep information about their perception of themselves private from their care giver and the damage caused by some intoxicants I am failing to see it and would appreciate more insight into your rationale.

          Finally, unrelated to your reply at all… I am realizing that autonomy itself is seen as harming a child by many parents. Controlling parents are not a new thing, so this is not surprising to me, but I think if we were to boil down opposition to this, in most cases, we would be left with, “I don’t see my child as a potential adult, I see them as a subservient to be controlled.”

          The way to raise children to be functioning adults is to offer them the same respect, freedom, and autonomy that they will have when they arrive at adulthood. Does that mean let them do whatever they want? Obviously no. But there does seem to be an astonishingly large population that doesn’t seem to see their own children as being separate from their parents. Differing experiences, views, challenges that the parent has no idea how to deal with, or at worst, is openly hostile towards. Children are the experts on themselves, parents are mentors to guide the way, but many parents seem to treat their children as prisoners and their home as a comfortable prison. A comfortable prison is still a prison, and the prisoner will notice whether it be now or when they are older and start discussing their childhood with friends.

          In short, children are far more aware than many give them credit and will develop into that awareness with confidence if guided by gentle mentorship. Or they will grow through the prison floor like a pissed-off dandelion if restrained.

          I’m not a writer, open to critique always.

    • EldritchFeminity@lemmy.blahaj.zone
      24·
      8 months ago

      Let’s take a step back and look at the mandate in question because the scenario it puts forward is so farcical that I can’t imagine a situation where it’s true.

      The idea of a kid being publicly out at school but not at home makes no sense. Kids might be out with their friends, sure, but having the entire school recognize them as a different gender than their parents? The only situation where this mandate would take effect is one where a kid has privately confided in a teacher or counselor, or maybe at a school LGBT group or something. All of which are situations where breaking the kid’s trust and consent are the worst way to go about things. A kid’s consent is just as important as an adults.

      In the above scenarios, the way to go about it is encouraging the kids to help them gain the confidence to come out on their own or protect them from transphobic and homophobic parents. Snitching on them won’t help either way.

      The only purpose of this mandate is to make trans kids afraid of being outed to transphobic parents. The cruelty is the point.

      • GladiusB@lemmy.world
        417·
        8 months ago

        If the mandate is to keep it from abusive parents cool. I approve of this. My original comment had very little to do with the article. It has more to do with the comment that kids hide things from their parents because of their parents. Kids hide things because they don’t want to get caught in some instances. Especially if they are lying. Which is the original comment parent to the comment I replied to.

        • EldritchFeminity@lemmy.blahaj.zone
          15·
          8 months ago

          If my kid (which I do have one) was trying to pass as another gender in school, but not home, I would want to know.

          From the parent comment.

          The comment you replied to and the parent comment were both about the mandate in the article, which is why you’ve gotten the pushback that you have. Neither had anything to do with kids lying to hide things other than protecting themselves from transphobic parents. The mandate in the article was expressly created for the purpose of outing kids to transphobic parents, hence the comment about kids not trusting their parents usually for good reason.

          • GladiusB@lemmy.world
            28·
            8 months ago

            The parent comment absolutely said they did not know how the felt not knowing if their kid reported to school as transgender and then not to the parent.

            • EldritchFeminity@lemmy.blahaj.zone
              8·
              8 months ago

              Right, it also said this:

              I understand it could be dangerous for some kids to be outted to their parents, but I don’t know that we should be governing based on the worst possible outcomes, when keeping the secret could also be dangerous to some.

              To which the comment you replied to said that when kids don’t trust their parents, there’s usually a reason. Which you disagreed with and called a “hot take.”

              The whole conversation is about kids lying to their parents about being transgender, in regards to a mandate that forcibly outs them to their parents. We’re not talking about kids lying about drugs and alcohol or something like teenage rebellion, but about kids lying about a fundamental part of who they are. And the most likely reason that they would do so is because telling the truth would be dangerous. There’s no sensible scenario where a kid would be publicly out to the entire school without their parents knowing, so this would be the kind of thing a kid would confide in a counselor or something privately, and if this were a therapist or a doctor the kid was telling, there are literally laws preventing them from telling the kid’s parents without the kid’s permission.

              There’s also the fact that the OP is based on a zero sum fallacy in which schools are either telling all parents or telling no parents, and that’s not how things work. Plus, now that I’m looking at that quote, “keeping the secret could also be dangerous to some”?? How could not telling a parent that their kid is trans be dangerous for the kid??

                • EldritchFeminity@lemmy.blahaj.zone
                  4·
                  8 months ago

                  Except the person you replied to was specifically talking about trans kids not telling their parents that they’re trans. So you’re arguing against a point that nobody made.

                  And in cases like that, where a trans or gay kid won’t tell their parents, it’s usually because their parents have made it abundantly clear their entire lives how they feel about LGBT people. There’s plenty of other reasons. Anxiety is completely irrational, for example. But those cases are just a matter of not telling them yet. And that’s a choice for the kid to make, not the school. There’s literally laws preventing pediatricians and therapists from telling parents stuff like that without the kid’s consent. Schools can provide counseling to help kids gain the confidence to do that, but they don’t have the right to forcibly out kids. Kids have just as much a right to privacy as their parents.

                  More importantly, you’re falling for the same zero sum fallacy as the parent comment, which is the exact intention of this mandate (besides hurting trans kids). They want to remove all nuance from the issue and make your immediate emotional reaction bias your opinion. It’s never an all or nothing situation. Every single day, schools make case by case decisions about how to best take care of the kids there. Some things are best dealt with without, or simply not important enough to bother, getting the parents involved. You probably don’t need to be called and told that Robert asked a teacher to call him Bob instead. And yet, under that mandate? The school would be required to do exactly that.

                • ripcord@lemmy.world
                  31·
                  8 months ago

                  I think you’re potentially right in some cases. But the much more LIKELY scenario when a child wouldn’t be out to their parents like this - a pretty rare scenario - would be when there’s a good reason for it. Which I think is the root disagreement here.

                  Otherwise if the parents and kids are communicating so poorly there’s also something pretty broken in the home.

    • BreakDecks@lemmy.mlEnglish
      191·
      8 months ago

      What about a child exploring their gender identity bothers you so much that you feel that intervention should be mandatory? Why do you view being trans as a bad thing by default?

      • GladiusB@lemmy.world
        324·
        8 months ago

        Nothing bothers me about that at all. It bothers me when people blame parents for not being close to their kids like it’s always the parent’s fault. Kids are secretive for millions of reasons and reducing it to “they are secretive when there is something wrong with the parent” is not fair at all to them.

        • jumjummy@lemmy.world
          151·
          8 months ago

          Guess what? Kids exploring gender identities is not some scary dangerous thing, and if you have the right bond with your kids, they will tell you. These “outing” prohibitions are there to protect the kids from parents who have created such an environment at home that the kids don’t feel safe telling them.

          Children aren’t some objects that parents own and control.

          • GladiusB@lemmy.world
            215·
            8 months ago

            I never insinuated ownership. That’s a jump you made. Kids hold things back for more reasons than the parents. There are plenty of people that do things their parents don’t know about for whatever reasons they justify.

            • BreakDecks@lemmy.mlEnglish
              121·
              8 months ago

              That’s no reason to force teachers to share everything they know with parents, especially since this is specifically targeted at kids who explore their gender identity, rather than something harmful that might actually justify alerting parents.

              You came in here initially defending a legal mandate that targets vulnerable children, and now you’re defending yourself as if your original point was that parents should be more involved in their children’s lives.

              Nobody disagrees with you on the latter, only the original argument you are now trying to deflect from.

                • BreakDecks@lemmy.mlEnglish
                  8·
                  8 months ago

                  including the kids.

                  Absolutely deranged take in response to this conversation. If anyone needs to mind their own business it’s the transphobic ghouls trying to force teachers to out queer kids to their parents.

                  And maybe you. Absolutely zero self awareness to butt into a conversation to tell everyone else to mind their business, and add nothing else to the conversation but your own nose.

              • GladiusB@lemmy.world
                214·
                8 months ago

                I never disagreed with any mandates or agreed with them in any shape or fashion. I disagreed with blaming parents for their kids not wanting to tell the parents.

                • BreakDecks@lemmy.mlEnglish
                  6·
                  8 months ago

                  So all of the parents who emotionally and physically abuse their their queer children are faultless, and abused children should unconditionally trust their abusers because they’re their parents and must know what’s best?

                  And now you’ve spent the last 8 hours angrily arguing this in a thread about queerphobic educational mandates, because you have absolutely no opinion about the mandares of which we are all discussing?

                  C’mon man… You don’t have to die on this very stupid hill. You don’t even have to admit that you are wrong. You can just stop digging this hole.

                  • GladiusB@lemmy.world
                    19·
                    8 months ago

                    I’m not defending anyone that abused anyone. Read the fucking writing. I’m saying that MOST parents aren’t given a chance to even know about every kid. Kids build up these gigantic pillars of fear and don’t even give their parents a chance to respond.

                    Am I talking about the dicks that bully their kids? No. I’m talking about every day parents that love their kids and are kept out of the dark for the kid’s choice. It happens all the time. Then they grow up and realize all their fears were their own doing.

                    I have seen it soooooooo many times.

                    Are there shitty parents that are crappy? Yes. But that is not who I was talking about at all. Read what the fuck I wrote.

    • UnpluggedFridge@lemmy.world
      8·
      8 months ago

      There are millions of things kids keep from their parents while growing up, and they do it for millions of different reasons, some good some bad and some goofy. Why do we need the government stepping in deciding which secrets, especially those that have nothing to do with the administration of education, are valid?

        • UnpluggedFridge@lemmy.world
          6·
          8 months ago

          Everything requires context. Sometimes kids hide things because their parents may react with violence or some other form of extreme punishment. But regardless of the reason, I would be concerned that these mandatory disclosure policies are stifling the 1st amendment rights of the children, and even worse they are doing so based on a specific viewpoint.