I know plenty of loving parents who are pretty open and tolerant, and are either agnostic or atheist, who are seriously concerned or outright against what's being taught in schools in relation to gender. My kid isn't near school age yet so I don't know much about it, but from what I gather it's changed pretty quickly and they're scared of how its going to influence their kids decisions and what kind of control the parents ultimately have.
100%, liberals definitely aren’t immune from being scared of change either….and I’ve tried to become a bit of a conduit for information on these topics for friends with young kids, in part because some of it runs contrary to their instinctual “common sense” instant take on a subject…..so it’s worth doing the research to have the proper response to many of their issues.
I will say that I struggle with the idea of a adolescence aged kid making a permanent, life altering decision like that.
I’ve found this to be a bit of a phoney boogeyman….from what I’ve read it sure seems like any parents of kids considering any kind of transition, are inundated with information on the topic, questions to determine if it’s a phase, a antidote to something else, or an earnest representation of who they feel they are inside.
A teen at the age of puberty is either going to receive testosterone that alters they physiology (naturally or synthetically)…..or they’re going to have that testosterone blocked (either by nature or by science)……if parents believe it’s in their child’s best interest to do the opposite of what their teen believes represents them best, that feels a bit odd to me.
should we discuss what age blockers can first be taken….study the impacts of reversing that if they changed their mind…..and have age restrictions before anything more drastic like surgeries can take place? Sure.
…..but not even teaching kids that this exists. Doesn’t seem help
Its a confusing time in your life that can be really rough on some kids, and I think the fear is kids who don't fit in or are depressed or bullied etc. etc. will look at this as a big change and a "way out" of the perceived hell they are in.
I was a white, middle class, hetero, handsome, tall, funny devil, who had a great circle of friends, and could drift from one social circle within school to another pretty easily….couldn’t have had the deck stacked more in my favour growing up…
…and my memories of school are absolute hell, as I was a anxious mess internally 24/7/365…85% panic attack the whole time, when I wasn’t drunk or stoned……so I can’t even fathom the concept of either having feelings for the same sex, and having to hide it because of how it was viewed back then, or believing internally with every fiber of my being, and not being able to even conceive of voicing that to anyone because of how depraved something like that was portrayed in culture.
So I’m far more concerned about the kids who have those feelings and are being denied being their true selves, than I am the infinitesimally smaller subgroup that might do it as part of a phase or “a way out”…..to me that’s a parents job to discuss, decipher, and help them through in the odd case it isn’t genuine.
….but given that parents are so concerned with kids making a false choice, I can’t imagine that never being addressed on the front end, before any further wteps
But I'm sure the science behind it is there and its all good and I think its just part of moving forward. Like I said I don't know a ton about it. But I can cut people some slack for being worried about what they feel is a significant change is going to affect their kids. Not everybody in the camp concerned about what's being taught in schools is a monster.
I really think it’s just something that runs counter to what 90% of people 35 and up, have as part of their common sense heuristics that worked perfectly fine for us for the first 30 years….but now require some additional education to adjust and improve those prior heuristics.
…..I believe pretty strongly that nearly every argument people have against trans folk, jives 1 to 1 with things people were saying about mixed race couples at one point, or same sex couples a couple generations later….it’s all just excuses for why they don’t like thing changing from how they learned they were “supposed” to be.
Think it’s worth doing the effort to educate oneself as much as possible on it all tho, to at minimum not mistakenly become the modern version one day of the old bigot/racist at the family dinner table that’s saying “it’s just a joke” and every kid is mortified to be related to.
