Cultural Separation from Parents

[Szdfan]

Sure they have. Every form of unconventional gender expression is as old as time itself in virtually every culture in the world. It has just been much more clandestine in the past because people weren’t safe to be public about it.

Really? Gender Fae is as old as time itself?

Sure. People invent new names for things. But there is really nothing new under the sun. Human desires and human nature hasn’t changed. Are you trying to argue that there’s been some rapid evolution of humanity in recent years? Evolution doesn’t happen that fast. We are basically the same people we were 2000 years ago.

A number of non-Western cultures have the concept of a third or fourth gender with individuals who are neither male nor female, but somewhere in between.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_g ... %20genders.

In cultures with a third or fourth gender, these genders may represent very different things. To Native Hawaiians and Tahitians, Māhū is an intermediate state between man and woman known as "gender liminality". Some traditional Diné Native Americans of the Southwestern United States, acknowledge a spectrum of four genders: feminine woman, masculine woman, feminine man, and masculine man. The term "third gender" has also been used to describe the hijras of South Asia who have gained legal identity, fa'afafine of Polynesia, and Balkan sworn virgins.

Inscribed pottery shards from the Middle Kingdom of Egypt (2000–1800 BCE), found near ancient Thebes (now Luxor, Egypt), list three human genders: tai (male), sḫt ("sekhet") and hmt (female). Sḫt is often translated as "eunuch", although there is little evidence that such individuals were castrated.

References to a third sex can be found throughout the texts of India's religious traditions like Jainism and Buddhism and it can be inferred that Vedic culture recognised three genders. The Vedas (c. 1500 BC–500 BC) describe individuals as belonging to one of three categories, according to one's nature or prakrti. These are also spelled out in the Kama Sutra (c. 4th century AD) and elsewhere as pums-prakrti (male-nature), stri-prakrti (female-nature), and tritiya-prakrti (third-nature). Texts suggest that third sex individuals were well known in premodern India and included male-bodied or female-bodied people as well as intersex people, and that they can often be recognised from childhood.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mukhannath

Mukhannath (مُخَنَّث; plural mukhannathun (مُخَنَّثون); "effeminate ones", "ones who resemble women") was a term used in Classical Arabic and Islamic literature to describe gender-variant people, and it has typically referred to effeminate men or people with ambiguous sexual characteristics, who appeared feminine and functioned sexually or socially in roles typically carried out by women.

Eunuchs appear in the Bible and are arguably located somewhere between the binary of male and female. In the ancient world, these castrated servants and slaves often served in royal courts and other centers of power because they were viewed as being less threatening and prevented certain government offices from becoming hereditary. The practice continued in the Christian Byzantine Empire after the fall of Rome. Paul of Aegina described the castration process in a medical text from the 7th Century.

Jesus refers to eunuchs in Matthew 19:

For there are eunuchs who were born that way, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by others—and there are those who choose to live like eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven.

Paul famously encounters the Ethiopian eunuch in Acts 8, who according to tradition brought Christianity to Ethiopia.

There have always been people who don't fit into the strict binaries of male and female. They have always existed. What's changed is that there's been a growing acceptance in the West of people who don't fit in those binaries, which is why there's been a backlash by people who are uncomfortable with it.

[HondurasKeiser]

Changing one’s name to match the gender they feel inside, along with changing one’s pronouns is one of the first steps in “Transitioning”.

And?

A bunch of people here say this issue isn’t about names. Which is it? Teenagers experiment with all kinds of new identities when growing up. And names are pretty trivial. Pronouns even more trivial. Large numbers of students go by different names in class and with their friends. Schools shouldn’t be in the business of trying to discriminate between students based on whether or not a teacher approves of their reason for using a different name.

As I said above. Accommodations that go beyond those that are routinely accepted for all students (choice of nickname) should be dealt with like any other official school accommodation which would require parent sign off. So, for example, my daughter has mild asthma. We had to get a medical form signed by her doctor and a parent in order for her to carry an albuterol inhaler in her backpack at school. Any student who wants to use oppose sex bathrooms or PE classes or whatever should face at least the same level of scrutiny and approval (parent sign off and medical/psychologist sign off) and some sort of official meeting between parents and administrators to iron out specific boundaries and accommodations.

But if I have a Christine in class who wants to go by Chris? So what. Not my or the school’s concern what her motivation is if it doesn’t affect the class. Trying to micromanage that sort of thing just in case some trans kid might slip through the cracks is pointless hysteria.

Those are my opinions. And that is the way things are done where I teach. Students most definitely need official documented accommodations with parent meetings and sign-off if they want any sort of gender-based accommodations that go beyond the trivial like name used in class. Students are definitely not allowed to use opposite sex bathrooms just on their own say so. And even then they are directed to a private staff bathroom behind the office, not the general use student bathrooms. I’m not sure how they handle PE locker rooms, if that has even come up. Perhaps the same way, they may have them change in the coaches area. But again, this would be after meetings with parents, school psychologists, etc. and then as specified on officially agreed-to written accommodations and most certainly not on some student’s own say so.

You’re being deliberately obtuse, Ken. Plenty of people, myself included, have detailed that:
1. Changing of names and pronouns is categorically different from nicknames.
2. Teachers are hiding those changes from parents because they want to help the child explore or transition to a different gender.
3. Transition begins with names and often ends with chemical castration.
4. In certain states, yours included, parent permission for chemical castration is not necessary. California for example fancies itself a sanctuary state for youth from other states that want to chemically transition without parent permission.

I may be off, but it seems to me that you simply cannot conceive the idea that conservatives might actually be right once in a while on social issues.

[HondurasKeiser]

Really? Gender Fae is as old as time itself?

Sure. People invent new names for things. But there is really nothing new under the sun. Human desires and human nature hasn’t changed. Are you trying to argue that there’s been some rapid evolution of humanity in recent years? Evolution doesn’t happen that fast. We are basically the same people we were 2000 years ago.

A number of non-Western cultures have the concept of a third or fourth gender with individuals who are neither male nor female, but somewhere in between.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_g ... %20genders.

In cultures with a third or fourth gender, these genders may represent very different things. To Native Hawaiians and Tahitians, Māhū is an intermediate state between man and woman known as "gender liminality". Some traditional Diné Native Americans of the Southwestern United States, acknowledge a spectrum of four genders: feminine woman, masculine woman, feminine man, and masculine man. The term "third gender" has also been used to describe the hijras of South Asia who have gained legal identity, fa'afafine of Polynesia, and Balkan sworn virgins.

Inscribed pottery shards from the Middle Kingdom of Egypt (2000–1800 BCE), found near ancient Thebes (now Luxor, Egypt), list three human genders: tai (male), sḫt ("sekhet") and hmt (female). Sḫt is often translated as "eunuch", although there is little evidence that such individuals were castrated.

References to a third sex can be found throughout the texts of India's religious traditions like Jainism and Buddhism and it can be inferred that Vedic culture recognised three genders. The Vedas (c. 1500 BC–500 BC) describe individuals as belonging to one of three categories, according to one's nature or prakrti. These are also spelled out in the Kama Sutra (c. 4th century AD) and elsewhere as pums-prakrti (male-nature), stri-prakrti (female-nature), and tritiya-prakrti (third-nature). Texts suggest that third sex individuals were well known in premodern India and included male-bodied or female-bodied people as well as intersex people, and that they can often be recognised from childhood.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mukhannath

Mukhannath (مُخَنَّث; plural mukhannathun (مُخَنَّثون); "effeminate ones", "ones who resemble women") was a term used in Classical Arabic and Islamic literature to describe gender-variant people, and it has typically referred to effeminate men or people with ambiguous sexual characteristics, who appeared feminine and functioned sexually or socially in roles typically carried out by women.

Eunuchs appear in the Bible and are arguably located somewhere between the binary of male and female. In the ancient world, these castrated servants and slaves often served in royal courts and other centers of power because they were viewed as being less threatening and prevented certain government offices from becoming hereditary. The practice continued in the Christian Byzantine Empire after the fall of Rome. Paul of Aegina described the castration process in a medical text from the 7th Century.

Jesus refers to eunuchs in Matthew 19:

For there are eunuchs who were born that way, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by others—and there are those who choose to live like eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven.

Paul famously encounters the Ethiopian eunuch in Acts 8, who according to tradition brought Christianity to Ethiopia.

There have always been people who don't fit into the strict binaries of male and female. They have always existed. What's changed is that there's been a growing acceptance in the West of people who don't fit in those binaries, which is why there's been a backlash by people who are uncomfortable with it.

This is what we might call reading our own modern biases and ideological priors back onto history

[MaxPC]

Every form of unconventional gender expression is as old as time itself in virtually every culture in the world.

So has mental illness; and developmental disabilities; psychopaths and sociopaths; and simple idiocy. Just because a behavior has existed from time immemorial does not make it safe nor right in the eyes of God.

[HondurasKeiser]

I'm not conflating anything.

Teachers (and the rest of society) routinely accommodate student's preferred choice of name regardless of the reason why. And students have dozens of different reasons why they might wish to go by a different name in class. It would be inequitable and discriminatory treatment for a teacher to routinely let all their other students choose how they wish to be addressed in class and then only single out trans (or suspected trans) students for special treatment. There is every reason to allow students to choose how they wish to be addressed in class and absolutely no reason to call out students you suspect of being trans for different discriminatory treatment.

As for keeping things from parents? Schools shouldn't be in the business of constantly policing student behavior that doesn't violate school rules, isn't disruptive, and isn't illegal. We don't live in a communist police state. Students do have some rights to privacy. What exactly do you think should be the procedure here? For schools to call home to report on students any time they do something that some parent somewhere might disapprove of? I have a Muslim student who is friendly to the boy across from her in her table group. Should I call her conservative Muslim parents and tell on her that she is acting friendly towards a non-Muslim boy? And maybe get her beaten? If I have a Hindu boy and see him eating a hamburger in the cafeteria, should I rush back to my room and call his mother to report that he is violating his religious dietary rules? None of that sort of thing is the responsibility of teachers and schools to police.

Talk to your children. And if they aren't sharing important aspects of their lives and identity with you then they obviously don't trust you and you should take a look in the mirror and ask why. Because that is where the real problem lies and not with the fact that some teacher didn't call to inform you that your student asked use a different name in class.

As for other accommodations that are actually an imposition on others and the school. Like bathroom accommodations, locker room or sports team accommodations? Those should only be approved by the school though the same level of coordinated review and agreement that are required for Special Education, 504, and medical accommodations. Namely by all the adults involved: Parents, counselors, doctors/psychologists, etc. Schools should no more implement those sorts of accommodations on just the say so of a teenager than they should implement medical or special education accommodations on the say so of a teenager. In other words, if you need a parent signature and doctors note to get out of PE for some medical reason, then you should also need some similar parent signature and doctor or psychologist's report to attend the opposite sex PE.

If your school has a student named William who goes by Bill, will the school provide secondary diploma and transcript with the name Bill? Will they restrict access to all of his official records that include his legal name?
How about if William says he is a girl and calls himself Katy? Does the answer change?

All the official school records and transcripts reflect the student's legal name that is on the birth certificate and are cross-referenced to the student's social security number and date of birth. Parents need to present the student's birth certificate when they first register the student for school. And I'm guessing that they would need to bring in an amended birth certificate in order to change the name on the student's official record and transcript. Although I'm not a school registrar so I'm not exactly sure what process they follow. Remember that schools keep student records on file for decades (permanently really) so if you were to request a transcript for a student who graduated in 1959 and the school has been around that long then they would likely be able to produce it from their archived records with the student name, social security number, and year of graduation.

If a student has officially and legally changed their name and presented all of that information to the school registrar then I would expect all the school records would be permanently changed. And if they wanted to edit the official record to reflect a different gender then they would need to present an official birth certificate to that effect. This happens much more frequently for things like adoptions. Or say a father abandons the family, the mother remarries, and the student takes on the last name of the new stepfather. Than it ever does for transgender students. One of my daughter's friends legally changed her name after her father left and her mother remarried. She did a legal name change through the county clerk's office and then changed all her school records after that. Although in that case she changed her last name from her biological father's name to her mother's maiden name, not her stepfather's last name.

On the other hand, if a student named Christopher goes by Chip, Chris, Christian, Po, Christophe, Stoffie, Pooh*, Crissie, or Christine with his friends. And the teacher accommodates his wish to go by the name he wants to use then fine. But that has no meaning outside that particular class or conversation. Conservative Anabaptist and Amish world is full of nicknames too, but none of it means anything unless they legalize it.

*And yes, I have had a student who went by Pooh in class and school. His given name was Devontre. He was a star football player who was a 4-star recruit and went on to play for Baylor where they called him that too: https://247sports.com/player/pooh-stricklin-34977/ He carried the nickname forward from childhood. Honestly no one cared.

Were Pooh’s parents in on the nickname? Were you deliberately hiding the Pooh nickname from his family so that he could secretly begin a process that might leave him permanently scarred and sterile?

[Szdfan]

This is what we might call reading our own modern biases and ideological priors back onto history

The only point I'm making is that people who have not fit in the male/female binary have always existed and that some cultures recognized their existence.

Reading the modern nuclear heterosexual family as the universal historical norm is also reading our own modern biases and ideological priors back into history.

[Soloist]

The only point I'm making is that people who have not fit in the male/female binary have always existed and that some cultures recognized their existence.

Reading the modern nuclear heterosexual family as the universal historical norm is also reading our own modern biases and ideological priors back into history.

I would hazard a guess it was only normative in the Jewish nation prior to Christianity.

[Josh]

This is what we might call reading our own modern biases and ideological priors back onto history

The only point I'm making is that people who have not fit in the male/female binary have always existed and that some cultures recognized their existence.

Reading the modern nuclear heterosexual family as the universal historical norm is also reading our own modern biases and ideological priors back into history.

The male/female binary has always existed and always will (I don’t think humans will evolve into a different species like nematodes or amoebas). There is zero evidence anything other than “male” or “female” has ever existed.

As far as people with gential injuries, yes, such people exist; some deformities at birth exist (but are also extremely rare); and some people have done things like be cross dressers. Not no, virtually everyone fits into either male or female.

[Josh]

The heterosexual nuclear female is described as what God created in Genesis with the first people. Everything else is a deviation from God’s design.

[Soloist]

The male/female binary has always existed and always will (I don’t think humans will evolve into a different species like nematodes or amoebas). There is zero evidence anything other than “male” or “female” has ever existed.

This is true except for the 1/100,000 person.