On Monday, the East Aurora School Board in Illinois passed a policy protecting trans and gender-variant students—and then quickly rescinded it five days later.
The measure asked teachers to use appropriate pronouns and names, and to allow trans students to engage in activities like phys ed without disclosing their birth gender.
By midweek the Illinois Family Institute (IFI) was up in arms: In a blogpost, IFI Cultural Analyst Laurie Higgins called the trans-inclusive measure a “radical policy on gender confusion.”
The school board is now imposing non-objective, “progressive” moral, philosophical, and political beliefs—not facts—about gender confusion on the entire school. This feckless school board has made a decision to accommodate, not the needs of gender-confused teens, but their disordered desires and the desires of gender/sexuality anarchists who exploit public education for their perverse ends.
I wonder how many of these board members have thought or read deeply on the issue of gender confusion or Gender Identity Disorder. And I wonder how many of them have read deeply the writing of not just “progressive” scholars but conservative scholars as well.
Gender confusion affects approximately .003 percent of males and .0001 percent of females. Aurora East High School is now accommodating the disordered impulses and unproven beliefs of a statistically miniscule segment of their population and in so doing ignores the beliefs of the majority. Some would argue that this policy also reflects a gross distortion of compassion and profound ignorance about what truly helps the few students who suffer from gender dysphoria or Gender Identity Disorder.
Do we even need to mention that the Southern Poverty Law Center classifies the IFI as a hate group?
How about we take this to the next level?
Our newsletter is like a refreshing cocktail (or mocktail) of LGBTQ+ entertainment and pop culture, served up with a side of eye-candy.
Bowing to criticism, the school board withdrew the policy at a special meeting on Friday, despite the fact that the policy was drafted by the assistant superintendent and parents and community members spoke in favor of it.
Board president Annette Johnson tried to make it sound like the district wasn’t caving in, but wasn’t very successful: “It’s not a question of are we backing down or being intimidated–we are not.” she said. “It’s just… we have to try to make everybody happy.”
Isn’t that essentially caving in?
Johnson did reveal that, of the more than 1,000 emails she received about the change in policy, a majority of complaints came from non-residents.
So, the school board is trying to placate people that don’t even have children in its schools? Someone needs to work on her comprehension skills.
Photo: Ryan Yuk/The Dartmouth
Eric Auerbach
Trans students need to show that they have the balls to fight this. The school board won’t take them seriously until trans people grow a pair, so I hope every trans student in that school district has the cojones needed to make their voice heard.
Amos15
@Eric Auerbach: Jonathan Swift much?
paulahare2
@Eric Auerbach: im transgender i have no balls – im m to f -what have you done?
paulahare2
@Amos15: paula hare v.s. The State of Minnesota Supreme? Court
Paula Hare V.s. The City of Minneapolis
Decisions made it so transgenders oculd have male and female sex changes paid for by the State of Minnesota
Paula Hare v.s. Blue and WHite Cab Co. City of Minneapolis
im transgender i have no balls – im m to f -what have you done?
hyhybt
Apart from anything else, I’m curious where they got those numbers from. Apparently, FTM’s are literally one in a million? That would mean only about 150 of them in the entire country.
Billysees
The article states —
“….the school board withdrew the policy at a special meeting on Friday, despite the fact that the policy was drafted by the assistant superintendent and parents and community members spoke in favor of it.”
How can a policy with so much input from “those involved” be withdrawn ???
Could “outsiders” have that much influence ???
Thedrdonna
@hyhybt: Actually, the numbers for both trans men and trans women are still somewhat up in the air, but the most common numbers I’ve seen are between 1:4000 and 1:30,000 for assigned-males-at-birth, and roughly half as prevalent for assigned-females-at-birth. Many authorities think that the numbers are significantly higher than that, and as being trans* becomes destigmatized we will get more realistic numbers.
hyhybt
@Thedrdonna: Which is still orders of magnitude more common than their numbers.
Thedrdonna
@hyhybt: Yeah, that’s like 1/10 the prevalence of even the old DSM IV numbers, and those are pretty outdated.