Pride in Schools

[PorcelinaV]

Seems like a thread on Pride Month got deleted?

Anyway...

https://www.wfsb.com/2023/06/05/parents-concerned-over-gender-identity-video-shown-elementary-school-students-granby/

You may not, but I still do. I find "woman face" intensely offensive and while ever it is shown as acceptable by educators, it is giving children the view that "woman" is performative.

I agree. Drag is also about mocking women.

There's no point in wondering why so many girls are frantically trying to identify out of having to be women in society when they're being groomed in school to understand that there are service humans and real humans.

@MalagaNights those links you posted are absolutely sickening

I don’t understand it, why aren’t more people up in arms about this?

Surely the vast majority of people can’t really think this is OK?

The people who think that exposing children to this is OK and progressive are sick in the head

Just because something is mainstream doesn't make it fine though does it?

The thing that bothers me is that women were never asked if we were ok with this. It's just assumed that we have no issue with being mocked, and if we do speak up and say we find it offensive or problematic we are the ones called hateful or bigoted or even homophobic.

It's not a coincidence that something which solely negatively depicts women (drag) is easily mainstream and not considered a problem whereas something that negatively depicts both men and women (blackface) is rightly seen as problematic and called out for being so.

It saddens me more that more parents didn't complain but doesn't surprise me.
Our primary school is often given free cinema tickets for a newish release. One year it was Jurassic world which was a 12a I think. I'd tried to get my daughters to watch the original and the beginning scene had freaked them out so they refused to even contemplate watching any of these films till much much later. I was the only parent who said anything to the school and my daughter stayed with reception class and told her class she had a dentist appointment.
So many parents said after they wish they had thought about saying no as their kids were scared and had nightmares etc. they took all the junior years.
This is a school that wouldn't let the PTFA show a pg at film night!

I only say this as it illustrates how many people will just not rock the boat in anyway even to protect their kids.

On the Pride stuff my kids (now in secondary) say that whenever the school does anything positive on LGB stuff it has the opposite effect and the Gay slurs and homophobia ramp up. I have a lesbian daughter and she won't touch the LGB groups at school.

I didn’t say it was fine, I said it could conceivably have been an innocent error. They reversed it when they heard the objections.

It can take a very long time for long-established customs to be recognised as problematic.

Is drag a long established custom in schools? Or as an entertainment for children?
It is trendy and "right on" among a certain group, I would never expect it to be part of mainstream education.

Having reas this post, I have to retract my previous statement. It does sound as if their brains have fallen out.

No, not in schools, I explained before that pantomime dames, who appear superficially to be very like drag acts, have long been accepted as children’s entertainment.

It doesn’t make it right, but even pantomime dames have long used double-entendre jokes so as to entertain all age groups.

I suspect that’s one of the reasons people are so ready to accept it. Men dressing up as women has been a comedy trope for my entire life and it’s only in the last year or so that I’ve heard anyone objecting.

I’m not saying objecting is wrong, I’m not saying drag is okay, I’m saying it will take more than a couple of years to influence people’s attitudes to something they grew up laughing at and enjoying.

This is the problem though, the slide in boundaries, the slow boiled frog.

Les Dawson, the Two Ronnies, lots of misogyny involved and sexual innuendo but nothing predatory. And the slide is gentle and gradual.

I've just seen a tweet in response to another piece of nutjobbery that is TQ+ politics related 'LGBT is just mental illness isn't it?'. And it makes me want to scream. Because this gentle gentle slide so gradually into crossing the line but making sure it's very hard for anyone to be allowed boundaries without being screamed at for homophobia (including if the person who wants boundaries is lesbian, gay or bisexual in the original terms), is leading to people now identifying the entire group as one inappropriate, unwell bunch. And this is now handing a lot of ammunition to actual homophobia.

So LGB people are now caught between two sides.

The 'you're mentally ill and must be made to stop' ones and the 'you must learn to cope with straight sex but pretend it's still homosexuality ones'. And both sides are equally bloody scary people.

Sorry, my fault, quote fail facepalm.

I agree with you. I think schools should continue to teach about how democracy and government work.

They absolutely shouldn't push some political opinions/ views over others.

No worries!

I tend to think that a lot of kids aren't getting much clear teaching on civil liberties. So I'd love to see that strengthened.

Lesbian parent here. My partner and I actually put in a formal complaint about our dd's secondary school LGBTQ+ lunchtime club because we recognised the safeguarding risks. Upshot was that the school accepted we were correct to complain and made changes. Drag is always sexualised, it is adult entertainment that the vast majority of Lesbians absolutely hate and a lot of gay men dislike as well. It has no place in schools or childrens events and any responsible performer of drag will know that. Gay people are speaking out, alongside parents, because we can clearly see the difference between equal rights and child grooming

Student protest in Canada apparently:

https://twitter.com/RebelNewsOnline/status/1669423352119787520

https://www.foxnews.com/us/students-massachusetts-pride-event-destroyed-decorations-chanted-usa-my-pronouns-district

Students at a Boston-area middle school were accused of homophobia and intolerance by education officials after they tore down rainbow decorations and chanted that "U.S.A." was their pronoun during ‘displays of intolerance and homophobia."

Students at Marshall Simonds Middle School in Burlington were invited to wear rainbow-colored clothing on June 2 in celebration of Pride Month, Fox affiliate, Boston 25 News reported.

"On that same day there was a counter-demonstration in response to what should have been a day to celebrate. Students wore red, white and blue clothing, chanted 'my pronouns are USA' and destroyed rainbow decorations at the school," Nancy Bonassera, co-chair of the Burlington Equity Coalition, said during Monday's select board meeting.

"These displays of intolerance and homophobia are unacceptable and impact the whole community," she added.

I think that some of this kind of action by students is more about being counter-cultural or just an appetite for destruction rather than anything to do with the issue.

I don't see that so much with adults - there, I think the backlash is because they have a real problem with the content in some way.

But my observation of teenagers is that some, particularly males, will be reactive against any agenda pushed strongly by authorities.

I think it's disturbing on so many levels and is a huge red flag that this is automatically dismissed as homophobia. What happened to critical thought?

They're chanting 'my pronouns are USA'. I think that suggests it's not homophobia but refusal to be indoctrinated into a cult and to have to submit to the coercive control of pronouns. Gay people don't demand that others change their language and abase themselves and their own free speech and identity.

The automatic dismissal rather suggests to me that these students have a point and a legitimate grievance - what happened to respecting everyone's identity? Oh, that's right, it's only for some.

They shouldn't have destroyed anything, but they have clearly been pushed to a point of extreme unhappiness and presumably felt this was the only way they could push back.

Unfortunately, it's a tactic that works really well and they know that.

Shutting someone down by calling them hateful or bigoted will usually result in the person backing off, and other people who are just witnesses or haven't really thought it through may assume the person must be unreasonable somehow (no smoke without fire, right?).

The people pushing this shit don't have to have common sense, they don't even need to make sense or be reasonable, as long as they get what they want, which is submission to the cause. To them the ends justify the means. Scary stuff.

It has worked up until now. But increasingly when people are called transphobic, racist, sexist, homophobic, far right, etc they are just shrugging and saying "fine, whatever." Which unfortunately not only means that weaponising these words is losing its effectiveness but also that some people will start to actually become those things. Those weaponising these words are playing such a dangerous game. They will ultimately create the homophobic, racist far right that they are currently pretending exists.