I've told these stories before, so I won't go into a lot of detail.
I came out as gay 52 years ago, though I had known since I was a small child. My parents never accepted it, although they did make a few half-assed efforts in that direction. After years of trying to have a decent relationship with them, I finally gave up. Eventually, I realized that their inability to deal with their gay son--actually TWO gay sons, but that's another story-- was the symptom. The problem was our whole relationship. My life was a lot better without them in it, and now that I am in my last years--give me another 15 or 20 as long as my health remains good-- I have zero regrets that they weren't there. They weren't there that much when they WERE there.
When my father died 40 years ago, he had a rental rabbi and a few relatives show up for his funeral. When my mother died 23 years ago, I think there was just my sister, and possibly a rental Rabbi. I don't know, because I didn't go.
This is what these parents are setting up for themselves. I tried for years to communicate with my parents, and they simply refused to learn anything, challenge their prejudices, become better people than they were. Assuming this child survives and is not a total mess because of it, they may well find, as my parents did, that their attitude will never make their child sorry that he is transgender, but it will certainly make him sorry that they are his parents.
My father died while I was in the military. Mom died just after I got divorced. I finally came to grips with being Gay after the divorce. I was living with a woman and I probably had 3 men to her 1. I lived in the back row of the Indiana theater. If anyone recognizes the name I may have helped you out.
There are snippets of conversations when I was very young indicating dad was Bi, as I overheard Dad calling his friend "Mary" many times. If they were, they took it to their graves.
I listened to Seth Andrews talking about not speaking with his very religious mother. It is so sad that religion claims to be about love yet drives wedges and builds walls between parents and kids, brothers and sisters.
In the case of my parents, I don't really think it was about religion. The subject rarely came up as the reason for their crappy behavior. A lot of their crappy behavior was due to the fact that they were at very best, mediocre as parents. But in the case of the gay issue, I have long suspected that my father had a bit more sexual interest in other men than he would ever have even Hinted at if he were at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean in a one-man submarine that lost radio contact with the surface.
From my family autobiography of eight or nine years ago, the relevant section:
In my late twenties and into thirties, I began reading a large number of books about homosexuality, psychology, behavioral theory, transactional analysis, ontological philosophers of life and perception like Carlos Castaneda and Tom Robbins, and what later became known as queer theory. All of this was in addition to my already strong grounding in sociology and social psychology, mixing well with the intellectual ferment of '70‘s, when so many certainties were questioned. I came up with a theory I called "Reverse Oedipus" as it applied to gay men. Interestingly enough, a number of gay therapists came up with the same idea the late 80's, though they considered it a refutation of Oedipus, not a reversal of it.
To the extent that the Freudian Oedipal Complex is a real "thing", I think it goes for more than double for the reverse. And it explains the otherwise mysterious "weak or absent father" and the "strong, dominant mother" dynamic without resorting to the argle-bargle of classic Freud. This is what I actually think is the case: a gay boy is born, one who is and will be primarily gay his whole life. Not a bisexual boy— who might have a mass of homosexual experiences, but still identify and be identified as heterosexual— but a gay one. (I met a lot of those faux-mo's when I was single and dating. Often with wives or girlfriends at home, they were forever prowling gay dating websites, pretending that they were looking to realize their "true" natures. It was just necessary to find the "right" man. Weasels all). The boy doesn't have those "sexual feelings" towards his mother, per classic Freud, but rather, towards his father. It doesn't take too long for the father to recognize that this boy is quite different at the very least from the larger mass of "normal" boys, and in ways he cannot himself differentiate consciously. Or, possibly, he merely recognizes that the boy is fundamentally different from himself, or perhaps even all too similar, in ways he would prefer not to contemplate, let alone understand.
So what happens? Dad withdraws. If he is a kind and loving man, he does it with kindness, grace and love at best, and at least avoids as much as possible causing harm to his children. If he is not a kind and loving man, or if his fears and ignorance come into play, he creates difference and distance, if not hostility. (I think this is what happened with both my brother, Dave, and with me. But I will return to Dave's story later). The gay boy may never understand why his father withdraws from him, only that he does. And thus the weak, absent father is created, not as a cause in Freudian mythology, but as an effect in human reality.
This is just one example of this kind of behavior happening, and we know it's happening elsewhere without media coverage shining a light on the bigotry and intolerance. I feel so deeply for the kid caught in the middle of this. When he grows up and leaves home, I hope he finds a community who love and respect him like his teachers and school staff do.
If he grows up. I shudder to think of the religious trauma and bigotry that his sperm donor and gestational vessel will inflict on him now that they have removed him from the one place he received support and respect.
Yeah, I hear you. I worry about that too. Trans kids in supportive families struggle. Trans kids in unsupportive families have an even bigger uphill battle just to exist.
Interesting references to the parents. I feel that you can choose your friends, you can choose your family, but you can't choose your relatives. "Relative" and "family" can be, but aren't necessarily, the same thing. My uncle sexually abused my sister, among other children; he's related to me by blood, but he definitely is not family.
When a bunch of relatives got infected with Right Wing Jesus--I cut off all contact with them. They are Exhibit A for avoiding setting foot in a church!
I most definitely agree. There's a big difference between a "father" and a "dad." When my (step-)sister got married, she wanted my dad and her dad to walk her down the aisle. Her dad insisted that he be the one to walk her down the aisle and my dad agreed. During the reception, when my dad had a dance with her, he asked her why she was looking so glum. She said it was because she wanted both of them to walk her down the aisle. My dad responded, "Your dad gave you away. I didn't." My dad described her response as "Her face lit up."
With conservative religionists of all stripes, going by the rules, as defined by their religion, is far more important than doing the humane and decent thing. I doubt this boy will ever have a relationship with his parents, and he will likely be better off for it. Parents aren't the only people with rights. At some point the child has rights too, and one of them is to not be abused. Religion can be used to justify any horror.
The school did the right thing. I don’t understand how the parents were harmed except that their ability to muck up their son’s life was delayed. I feel sorry for him.
What the school did had to feel mightily empowering to F[], or so I would think, especially in the face of his parents' attitude. I'd be curious to know how the students at that school received him and if at least some of them support him as well.
'Cuz he's gonna need all the support and care he can get.
Seems like the ability to find those safe adults is exactly what these parents are suing to "protect" their son from. It's disgusting. How about if they had spent the time they've dedicated to this insane gaslighting of decent people instead on trying to be the parents their child needed instead. It's so mean-spirited, they are easily adding trauma on top of trauma rather than just loving their child.
I don’t see what harm the parents suffered by having the teachers call the student by their preferred name. This is a performance by the parents to show how their “Christian values” are being thwarted and not about what’s good for their child. Knowing what I know about having a trans child, I worry for F in that home.
As far as calling a student by a preferred name, my students changed their names *all the time.* Raymond became Ray, Jennifer became Jenni, Christopher was Chris.... One year I had four kids named Jason in one class, and *none* of them went by Jason!
Maybe educate yourself on what it actually means to be trans, before you start swinging at things you obviously haven’t a clue about. I’m really tired of people showing their bias with nothing to back it up
There is an almost identical case in Florida. Of course, DeSantis has ensured that parental rights do not extend to directing the medical care of your children according to medical science.
These people seem to think that gender incongruence will simply vanish if it is ignored. Trans kids thrive with parental support of their gender identity. If that support is withheld, they suffer. Moreover, according to research out of Harvard, any exposure to gender identity conversion "therapy" results in "lifelong adverse mental health consequences."
It should be noted that, according to the SPLC, Alliance Defending Freedom is a hate group.
Thanks for the links. It looks like they reached an agreement at last. But how that has missed me, I don't know. I usually read about international union affairs, at least those published here. I have been a union member since Jan. 1983 and worked in two of them for 4 and ten years.
I wonder which European country he is talking about. There was more backlash for miss France 2024 having short hair than the opening of the contest to transwomen 😁
I gather that this was the Reading Rainbow comment. For the record, EVERY mainstream medical association - some 22 of them, including the AMA and American Academy of Pediatrics - underpins its clinical practice standards with gender-affirming care. Those standards are based on a mountain of research which we appreciate through respected academic journals employing robust peer review.
Belief systems like religion are based on faith. Science, in contrast, is based on evidence.
The Alliance Defending Freedom is so transparently (no pun intended but yeah I see it) only interested in their freedom to impose their hate on the rest of us, and punishing not only their own children but limiting the freedom of those of us who don't want to be hateful, harmful monsters to children to help those children. They really HATE freedom. They just want the freedom to HATE.
They want more than that. They want the license to superimpose a simplistic model of gender on EVERYONE, because gender identity is messy and complex, and they don't deal with messy and complex well at all. They want simple and binary and black and white.
If your kid went to school and insisted they be called Peggy instead of Margaret and a teacher did that anyway the parent would be upset. That's why my grandmother brought my aunt Peggy's actual birth certificate in to show that teacher. But that should not have been necessary. If my aunt wanted to be called Peg instead then that is what she should have been called. What is on the birth certificate does not matter. Many, many of the people I knew in high school went by their middle names or a shortened version of their name. Some of them I would find out were called something else when they are at home. My own father was called 'Junior' by everyone in his family but NOWHERE else has anyone referred to him this way. When a kid is insisting on a particular name the right thing for the teachers and staff in the school to do is to refer to them by that name, no matter what they are called at home. If the people at the school called my dad Junior he might have gotten upset. The school did exactly what they should. I only hope the courts not only agree but send CPS to investigate that house.
I don't know about [F] Mead's personal feelings but I would take a flying guess that he just let it go when they were at home because he already knew how insane his parents are. All while trying to just get by until he turns 18 and can get away from the BatS.
The name thing happened to my dad also. He had a legacy French name. In Utah. He was bullied relentlessly about it, and was additionally physically tortured because he was left-handed. (Yes, that was a thing 100 years ago. Everybody in his family called him by his actual name and nobody cared which hand he used, as long as stuff got done.) Eventually he demanded that he be called a nickname in school, which lessened the bullying a bit. He went by that nickname or by his initials the rest of his life (and wrote with his right hand, as he had been broken to do--that's what torture of lefties was called: "breaking"). His real name, and his lefthandedness were closely guarded secrets, known only to family.
Oh I should add that part of the teachers' and other kids' bullying of dad at school was constant misgendering, because that French name "sounded" feminine. He chose a more typical male nickname.
That's awful. That sort of bullying has a lifelong impact on people. Even today, I get comments that my dad's name (I use his middle name as an email handle) is "unpronounceable." To Americans, I assume. A lot of people don't believe that left-handed people were tortured back in the day, but having listened to my dad's stories I have no trouble understanding that "conversion therapy" is not only ineffective but *is* actually torture. Dad never stopped being left-handed and his name never stopped being what it was. He just hid who and what he was.
Not surprised at all. Remember when my oldest sister and her hubby became full blown Jesusbots endlessly pushing their right wing Jesus crap on their school board. End result--their kids wound up all dysfunctional...
And if she or hubby become ill, I'll wager that neither of them trust in their god to heal them through prayer. Nope, it's off to the doctor to seek treatment. Or at least trips to the pharmacy with prescriptions/OTC medications, cheerfully defying their god's will for them.
When I taught high school many many years ago, I was always very careful if I had to punish a particular kid, because if his parents found out about it his dad would beat him with a spanner. Kid kept falling asleep in class because parents took him to church services which lasted until 3 o'clock in the morning. Sigh.
Teachers have an obligation to protect children – even from parents. Perhaps especially from parents.
Remind me of a BL manhua I am reading. Two men were called to their daughter's kindergarten because she threw* a little boy over her shoulder. The boy father's slapped violently his son in front of everyone without even knowing what happened.
* She is only four years old but already learning martial arts and self defense because her eldest brother was kidnapped when he was about her age.
It's clear you hate education, the educated, educators, etc....the question is why? Jealous of something you yourself are incapable of obtaining, no doubt.
Oh, drat, you caught us. We're really hive-minded lizard people from Andromeda, and we can't properly digest the little children until they've been properly marinated in hormones. The Agenda is revealed! Woe! Angst! We are foiled!
You're a burn pit¹, and the good folks 'round here don't appreciate your toxic presence.
But you knew that already. Fuck right off and die, thanks.
(¹ A hole in the ground filled with solid waste and human waste, doused in petroleum products, and set ablaze. Literally a flaming pile of garbage and shit, a cause of respiratory and other health issues in countless Veterans, including myself.)
I'm sure several decades of conservatives looting public education funds and sabotaging science and history curricula with creationist bullshit and revisionist whitewashing has 𝘯𝘰𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘸𝘩𝘢𝘵𝘴𝘰𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳 to do with any of that, right? Nope. Not a chance. Couldn't be. It's 𝘨𝘰𝘵𝘵𝘢 be the Woke!
“Permanently stunted for political reasons”. So that’s the real crime. A novel pandemic that killed millions of people, children included. Anti mask, probably anti vaxx ignorance. Got it.
Ok. So where in all of Jesus' teachings does it say to hate trans along with gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and other sexual orientations than just straight and cis?
The real answer is "Nowhere." Any Christian parent knows this along with the fact that Jesus said "Love one another" and "love your neighbor as yourself." Why can't these bigoted parents act upon this?
What I'm seeing on more conservative sites is a repetition over and over again of how God made people male and female taken from the book of Genesis. I point out how people can be born with sexual organs of both sexes and wonder aloud who made them then. The response is that they are the exception and there's so few of these cases anyways. Aaaargh!
In the great majority of cases parents are not remotely qualified to teach, but many of them become convinced they're qualified to micro-manage those who are.
In my experience, most educators know better than to interfer with their children's education. It would have to be something pretty serious for them to get involved.
I've told these stories before, so I won't go into a lot of detail.
I came out as gay 52 years ago, though I had known since I was a small child. My parents never accepted it, although they did make a few half-assed efforts in that direction. After years of trying to have a decent relationship with them, I finally gave up. Eventually, I realized that their inability to deal with their gay son--actually TWO gay sons, but that's another story-- was the symptom. The problem was our whole relationship. My life was a lot better without them in it, and now that I am in my last years--give me another 15 or 20 as long as my health remains good-- I have zero regrets that they weren't there. They weren't there that much when they WERE there.
When my father died 40 years ago, he had a rental rabbi and a few relatives show up for his funeral. When my mother died 23 years ago, I think there was just my sister, and possibly a rental Rabbi. I don't know, because I didn't go.
This is what these parents are setting up for themselves. I tried for years to communicate with my parents, and they simply refused to learn anything, challenge their prejudices, become better people than they were. Assuming this child survives and is not a total mess because of it, they may well find, as my parents did, that their attitude will never make their child sorry that he is transgender, but it will certainly make him sorry that they are his parents.
And isn't that just too sad?
I have found those who fight hardest are those fighting hardest to deny their own desires.
My father died while I was in the military. Mom died just after I got divorced. I finally came to grips with being Gay after the divorce. I was living with a woman and I probably had 3 men to her 1. I lived in the back row of the Indiana theater. If anyone recognizes the name I may have helped you out.
There are snippets of conversations when I was very young indicating dad was Bi, as I overheard Dad calling his friend "Mary" many times. If they were, they took it to their graves.
I listened to Seth Andrews talking about not speaking with his very religious mother. It is so sad that religion claims to be about love yet drives wedges and builds walls between parents and kids, brothers and sisters.
I didn't talk about this, but you were bang on.
In the case of my parents, I don't really think it was about religion. The subject rarely came up as the reason for their crappy behavior. A lot of their crappy behavior was due to the fact that they were at very best, mediocre as parents. But in the case of the gay issue, I have long suspected that my father had a bit more sexual interest in other men than he would ever have even Hinted at if he were at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean in a one-man submarine that lost radio contact with the surface.
From my family autobiography of eight or nine years ago, the relevant section:
In my late twenties and into thirties, I began reading a large number of books about homosexuality, psychology, behavioral theory, transactional analysis, ontological philosophers of life and perception like Carlos Castaneda and Tom Robbins, and what later became known as queer theory. All of this was in addition to my already strong grounding in sociology and social psychology, mixing well with the intellectual ferment of '70‘s, when so many certainties were questioned. I came up with a theory I called "Reverse Oedipus" as it applied to gay men. Interestingly enough, a number of gay therapists came up with the same idea the late 80's, though they considered it a refutation of Oedipus, not a reversal of it.
To the extent that the Freudian Oedipal Complex is a real "thing", I think it goes for more than double for the reverse. And it explains the otherwise mysterious "weak or absent father" and the "strong, dominant mother" dynamic without resorting to the argle-bargle of classic Freud. This is what I actually think is the case: a gay boy is born, one who is and will be primarily gay his whole life. Not a bisexual boy— who might have a mass of homosexual experiences, but still identify and be identified as heterosexual— but a gay one. (I met a lot of those faux-mo's when I was single and dating. Often with wives or girlfriends at home, they were forever prowling gay dating websites, pretending that they were looking to realize their "true" natures. It was just necessary to find the "right" man. Weasels all). The boy doesn't have those "sexual feelings" towards his mother, per classic Freud, but rather, towards his father. It doesn't take too long for the father to recognize that this boy is quite different at the very least from the larger mass of "normal" boys, and in ways he cannot himself differentiate consciously. Or, possibly, he merely recognizes that the boy is fundamentally different from himself, or perhaps even all too similar, in ways he would prefer not to contemplate, let alone understand.
So what happens? Dad withdraws. If he is a kind and loving man, he does it with kindness, grace and love at best, and at least avoids as much as possible causing harm to his children. If he is not a kind and loving man, or if his fears and ignorance come into play, he creates difference and distance, if not hostility. (I think this is what happened with both my brother, Dave, and with me. But I will return to Dave's story later). The gay boy may never understand why his father withdraws from him, only that he does. And thus the weak, absent father is created, not as a cause in Freudian mythology, but as an effect in human reality.
This is just one example of this kind of behavior happening, and we know it's happening elsewhere without media coverage shining a light on the bigotry and intolerance. I feel so deeply for the kid caught in the middle of this. When he grows up and leaves home, I hope he finds a community who love and respect him like his teachers and school staff do.
If he grows up. I shudder to think of the religious trauma and bigotry that his sperm donor and gestational vessel will inflict on him now that they have removed him from the one place he received support and respect.
Yeah, I hear you. I worry about that too. Trans kids in supportive families struggle. Trans kids in unsupportive families have an even bigger uphill battle just to exist.
Interesting references to the parents. I feel that you can choose your friends, you can choose your family, but you can't choose your relatives. "Relative" and "family" can be, but aren't necessarily, the same thing. My uncle sexually abused my sister, among other children; he's related to me by blood, but he definitely is not family.
I have no contact with my father's family and about 15 years ago I met the sister and the nephew who were missed in my life.
When a bunch of relatives got infected with Right Wing Jesus--I cut off all contact with them. They are Exhibit A for avoiding setting foot in a church!
It can be tough. I've seen what divisions can do to families.
Best decision of my life, in both cases.
I didn't think their behavior warranted the respect of "father" and "mother".
I most definitely agree. There's a big difference between a "father" and a "dad." When my (step-)sister got married, she wanted my dad and her dad to walk her down the aisle. Her dad insisted that he be the one to walk her down the aisle and my dad agreed. During the reception, when my dad had a dance with her, he asked her why she was looking so glum. She said it was because she wanted both of them to walk her down the aisle. My dad responded, "Your dad gave you away. I didn't." My dad described her response as "Her face lit up."
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/c53df9c156b97d800211045800e1fb5d9e8b6a3130d50af98bf2098e325b6b99.png
“ 𝑯𝒆 𝒎𝒂𝒚 𝒉𝒂𝒗𝒆 𝒃𝒆𝒆𝒏 𝒚𝒐𝒖𝒓 𝒇𝒂𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒓 𝒃𝒐𝒚, 𝒃𝒖𝒕 𝒉𝒆 𝒘𝒂𝒔𝒏’𝒕 𝒚𝒐𝒖𝒓 𝒅𝒂𝒅𝒅𝒚.”
With conservative religionists of all stripes, going by the rules, as defined by their religion, is far more important than doing the humane and decent thing. I doubt this boy will ever have a relationship with his parents, and he will likely be better off for it. Parents aren't the only people with rights. At some point the child has rights too, and one of them is to not be abused. Religion can be used to justify any horror.
I find great irony in your observation that kindness and decency runs counter to religious rules of a religion that purports to be about those things.
I’ve said for a long time, religion always takes the heartless option.
It doesn't always, but it more often than not.
As often as not, people trade old nonsense for new.
The school did the right thing. I don’t understand how the parents were harmed except that their ability to muck up their son’s life was delayed. I feel sorry for him.
What the school did had to feel mightily empowering to F[], or so I would think, especially in the face of his parents' attitude. I'd be curious to know how the students at that school received him and if at least some of them support him as well.
'Cuz he's gonna need all the support and care he can get.
I hope he has the Trevor Project on speed dial.
Wow, had never heard of the Trevor Project until you mentioned it. Many thanks for the heads-up! 👍👍👍
I think they were embarrassed too. Pride is a big button easily pushed.
I can just imagine how much impact those kind adults will have had on the rest of his life
Oh my, what a way to treat your own kid. I hope the kid has someone safe to run to if it is needed.
Seems like the ability to find those safe adults is exactly what these parents are suing to "protect" their son from. It's disgusting. How about if they had spent the time they've dedicated to this insane gaslighting of decent people instead on trying to be the parents their child needed instead. It's so mean-spirited, they are easily adding trauma on top of trauma rather than just loving their child.
I don’t see what harm the parents suffered by having the teachers call the student by their preferred name. This is a performance by the parents to show how their “Christian values” are being thwarted and not about what’s good for their child. Knowing what I know about having a trans child, I worry for F in that home.
As far as calling a student by a preferred name, my students changed their names *all the time.* Raymond became Ray, Jennifer became Jenni, Christopher was Chris.... One year I had four kids named Jason in one class, and *none* of them went by Jason!
Take your meds, sweetie. You know you spew fückwïttëry when your meds aren't onboard. 🙂
I noticed they liked a post from Libs of TikTok. That’s all I need to know about that rancid trash.
Levar Burton would be so disappointed if he knew someone like you uses "ReadingRainbow."
Maybe educate yourself on what it actually means to be trans, before you start swinging at things you obviously haven’t a clue about. I’m really tired of people showing their bias with nothing to back it up
Hey ! They researched it* don't you know ?
* For about 5 seconds on the first terf's or right wing nut's website they could find.
There is an almost identical case in Florida. Of course, DeSantis has ensured that parental rights do not extend to directing the medical care of your children according to medical science.
These people seem to think that gender incongruence will simply vanish if it is ignored. Trans kids thrive with parental support of their gender identity. If that support is withheld, they suffer. Moreover, according to research out of Harvard, any exposure to gender identity conversion "therapy" results in "lifelong adverse mental health consequences."
It should be noted that, according to the SPLC, Alliance Defending Freedom is a hate group.
Because they are a hate group. SPLC is worth supporting.
I didn't know. Not everything reaches me here in Norway. I would apreciate a link.
Thanks for the links. It looks like they reached an agreement at last. But how that has missed me, I don't know. I usually read about international union affairs, at least those published here. I have been a union member since Jan. 1983 and worked in two of them for 4 and ten years.
Such fückwïttëry....you really should take your meds, sweetie.
Or try watching reruns of the show they're oh-so-ironically named after...
I wonder which European country he is talking about. There was more backlash for miss France 2024 having short hair than the opening of the contest to transwomen 😁
JFC! You people are so fond of doing your own research. Have at it.
Trollski misread "research" as "rear search" and mistook the contents of their rectum for data.
😂
Too bad you weren't with us when Hemant's blog was on Patheos. You would have loved Foxglove's (another transwoman) comments :)
I bet I would have
👎
I gather that this was the Reading Rainbow comment. For the record, EVERY mainstream medical association - some 22 of them, including the AMA and American Academy of Pediatrics - underpins its clinical practice standards with gender-affirming care. Those standards are based on a mountain of research which we appreciate through respected academic journals employing robust peer review.
Belief systems like religion are based on faith. Science, in contrast, is based on evidence.
It was RR, all right.
The Alliance Defending Freedom is so transparently (no pun intended but yeah I see it) only interested in their freedom to impose their hate on the rest of us, and punishing not only their own children but limiting the freedom of those of us who don't want to be hateful, harmful monsters to children to help those children. They really HATE freedom. They just want the freedom to HATE.
They want more than that. They want the license to superimpose a simplistic model of gender on EVERYONE, because gender identity is messy and complex, and they don't deal with messy and complex well at all. They want simple and binary and black and white.
And stupid.
If your kid went to school and insisted they be called Peggy instead of Margaret and a teacher did that anyway the parent would be upset. That's why my grandmother brought my aunt Peggy's actual birth certificate in to show that teacher. But that should not have been necessary. If my aunt wanted to be called Peg instead then that is what she should have been called. What is on the birth certificate does not matter. Many, many of the people I knew in high school went by their middle names or a shortened version of their name. Some of them I would find out were called something else when they are at home. My own father was called 'Junior' by everyone in his family but NOWHERE else has anyone referred to him this way. When a kid is insisting on a particular name the right thing for the teachers and staff in the school to do is to refer to them by that name, no matter what they are called at home. If the people at the school called my dad Junior he might have gotten upset. The school did exactly what they should. I only hope the courts not only agree but send CPS to investigate that house.
I don't know about [F] Mead's personal feelings but I would take a flying guess that he just let it go when they were at home because he already knew how insane his parents are. All while trying to just get by until he turns 18 and can get away from the BatS.
The name thing happened to my dad also. He had a legacy French name. In Utah. He was bullied relentlessly about it, and was additionally physically tortured because he was left-handed. (Yes, that was a thing 100 years ago. Everybody in his family called him by his actual name and nobody cared which hand he used, as long as stuff got done.) Eventually he demanded that he be called a nickname in school, which lessened the bullying a bit. He went by that nickname or by his initials the rest of his life (and wrote with his right hand, as he had been broken to do--that's what torture of lefties was called: "breaking"). His real name, and his lefthandedness were closely guarded secrets, known only to family.
Oh I should add that part of the teachers' and other kids' bullying of dad at school was constant misgendering, because that French name "sounded" feminine. He chose a more typical male nickname.
Rene?
My dad went thru the same torture because he was endlessly bullied because of his name--Francis.
That's awful. That sort of bullying has a lifelong impact on people. Even today, I get comments that my dad's name (I use his middle name as an email handle) is "unpronounceable." To Americans, I assume. A lot of people don't believe that left-handed people were tortured back in the day, but having listened to my dad's stories I have no trouble understanding that "conversion therapy" is not only ineffective but *is* actually torture. Dad never stopped being left-handed and his name never stopped being what it was. He just hid who and what he was.
My name is Beverly and guess who grew up in the heyday of the Beverly Hillbillies?
My incubator's first name is Elsie, she goes by her middle name. Her parents accepted that.
This is probably why she went by her middle name: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pd1UKHOABpk
Not surprised at all. Remember when my oldest sister and her hubby became full blown Jesusbots endlessly pushing their right wing Jesus crap on their school board. End result--their kids wound up all dysfunctional...
👎
As opposed to you with zero thought or compassion beyond hateful bias
Excellent Poe! 🤣🤣🤣
Don't want to use the right name/pronouns, mommy? Then instead of referring to you as Jennifer, I guess we can call you Brace Face or Tinsel Teeth.
How's it taste?
How dare she try to change the natural teeth her god gave her!
And if she or hubby become ill, I'll wager that neither of them trust in their god to heal them through prayer. Nope, it's off to the doctor to seek treatment. Or at least trips to the pharmacy with prescriptions/OTC medications, cheerfully defying their god's will for them.
When I taught high school many many years ago, I was always very careful if I had to punish a particular kid, because if his parents found out about it his dad would beat him with a spanner. Kid kept falling asleep in class because parents took him to church services which lasted until 3 o'clock in the morning. Sigh.
Teachers have an obligation to protect children – even from parents. Perhaps especially from parents.
Remind me of a BL manhua I am reading. Two men were called to their daughter's kindergarten because she threw* a little boy over her shoulder. The boy father's slapped violently his son in front of everyone without even knowing what happened.
* She is only four years old but already learning martial arts and self defense because her eldest brother was kidnapped when he was about her age.
It's clear you hate education, the educated, educators, etc....the question is why? Jealous of something you yourself are incapable of obtaining, no doubt.
Oh, drat, you caught us. We're really hive-minded lizard people from Andromeda, and we can't properly digest the little children until they've been properly marinated in hormones. The Agenda is revealed! Woe! Angst! We are foiled!
You're a burn pit¹, and the good folks 'round here don't appreciate your toxic presence.
But you knew that already. Fuck right off and die, thanks.
(¹ A hole in the ground filled with solid waste and human waste, doused in petroleum products, and set ablaze. Literally a flaming pile of garbage and shit, a cause of respiratory and other health issues in countless Veterans, including myself.)
Hemant has dropped the banhammer on him.
𝘠𝘰𝘶𝘳𝘴 clearly weren't so great at their jobs, but I don't think we can really paint the entire profession with 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 brush, can we?
That one was likely homeschooled by lower primates.
I'm sure several decades of conservatives looting public education funds and sabotaging science and history curricula with creationist bullshit and revisionist whitewashing has 𝘯𝘰𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘸𝘩𝘢𝘵𝘴𝘰𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳 to do with any of that, right? Nope. Not a chance. Couldn't be. It's 𝘨𝘰𝘵𝘵𝘢 be the Woke!
Your IQ is approximately room-temperature...in Celsius.
Hey ! You misspelled Kelvin.
Um, no. That'd be about 293, not the far more accurate 20. 🙂
“Permanently stunted for political reasons”. So that’s the real crime. A novel pandemic that killed millions of people, children included. Anti mask, probably anti vaxx ignorance. Got it.
Ok. So where in all of Jesus' teachings does it say to hate trans along with gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and other sexual orientations than just straight and cis?
The real answer is "Nowhere." Any Christian parent knows this along with the fact that Jesus said "Love one another" and "love your neighbor as yourself." Why can't these bigoted parents act upon this?
What I'm seeing on more conservative sites is a repetition over and over again of how God made people male and female taken from the book of Genesis. I point out how people can be born with sexual organs of both sexes and wonder aloud who made them then. The response is that they are the exception and there's so few of these cases anyways. Aaaargh!
Did you tell them there's more cases of different sexual orientations than they assume?
That would encourage some of them to do even more witch hunting.
Some men are created in female bodies, and some women are created in male bodies. It's a simple concept.
Parents are consistently the worst possible choice to decide how kids are educated.
In the great majority of cases parents are not remotely qualified to teach, but many of them become convinced they're qualified to micro-manage those who are.
Agreed, there's a few who are capable, but most are not.
In my experience, most educators know better than to interfer with their children's education. It would have to be something pretty serious for them to get involved.
Yes. Apparently you, OTOH, have never made their acquaintance. 😉
Yes, my sister is a teacher and over the years many parents have told her how to do her job. Does that describe you?
Happy Festivus everyone! I see the Airing of Grievances has started.
I got a lotta problems with you people, and now you're going to hear about it!
The Meads need to change THEIR first names. I suggest Chad and Karen.
Ken, there is several assholes with this name.
I chose Karen for obvious reasons. Chads are male Karens. :)
Doesn't start with a "K". Ken and Karen Kneadhead.