You might just be too emotionally involved to serve on your board.

First, I’m not emotional about the topic. Second, I didn’t go proactively looking for it. Third, I’m in agreement with what you have espoused here about love and support for children and families directly encountering the topic.

But say it unexpectedly becomes a prominent topic at a school where you are on the board?

How would you assess whether the complaints about the reorientation of the curriculum are real or imagined?

Do you investigate? Do you assume it’s a political agenda? Do you evaluate whether the focus is in line with the experience that the school has outlined to the community? Do you care whether a reorientation of the curriculum may be diluting the overall educational quality? Do you assume that parents who object to an intensification of the topic are somehow not supportive of children and families facing the issue? Do you feel an obligation to understand the outcomes the reorientation of the curriculum may be producing and which may not be immediately visible? Do you do nothing and simply wait for aggrieved parents to go to the education regulator and take a spin on how that may work out?

Real questions ….

I’ll reiterate my starting point in my first post. Having spent substantial time on the topic in the past three years, I have never — not even once — heard somebody “deny” that trans even exists. I’m sure that exists somewhere but also can’t believe there’s any kind of prominence to that view.

And the school would face a formal rebuke and get double-downgraded on a four-notch scale.

Which actually happened.

Even though the regulator was explicitly in favor of gender identity as a topic but with “proportionate” attention.

Because the school’s leadership had lost the plot. And the board wasn’t as proactive as it could have been, although the head of school was long gone by the time of the rebuke.

So not a great answer, counsel.

Interestingly, your fellow lawyers on the board effectively treated the school as a client and came up with all kinds of rationalizations and justifications for the skewed emphasis on gender identity.

Most of the other board members were much more comfortable weighing up the degree of emphasis on gender identity and concluding it was clearly “disproportionate” without a single one taking a view that there wasn’t a place for gender identity as a topic or that the impacted students and families were due anything other than all the love and support that could be mustered.

Real questions requiring real answers from real adults. On a non-partisan, objective basis.

In your parlance, your response would have earned an “F”.

By a magnitude that would have required a majority, or even nearly all, of the board to resign.

This is not something being done casually or without a lot of discussion and counseling. The first step is hormone therapy, which has begun.

A couple vignettes.

We were meeting with one of the admissions folks during our college tour last summer. The conversation was going as one would expect until my grandkid looked at the admissions person and said "I'm in the process of transitioning from female to male. Will that be a problem on this campus?" Simple, straightforward question, no fuzz on it and no hesitation about asking.

We were driving along and I asked "When I was 10 or so, I found out for sure that I had a very different interest in girls than I did in boys. Did you feel the same?" Answer, "Yes." no fuzz on it. Later conversation was based on this agreement.

We were attending one of the frosh football games back in '22. I watched the opposing team put a very tall, strapping young fellow opposite grandkid on extra points*; grandkid was playing guard**. Strapping fellow knocked grandkid upon his (preferred pronoun) ass repeatedly in valiant, but unsuccessful, attempts to block the kick. No hesitation on grandkid's part about going in for the next extra point. Or the next.



*Beginning with the second extra point attempt. Grandkid's presence on the field had been noted.

**He (preferred pronoun) was moved to center for the 2023 season. I believe, but do not know, that he is getting a bit more playing time.

I’m sure he’s well-supported by family and hope top-caliber medical support is also available.

imagine.

The only place where that support is given grudgingly is football. While his dad is cool with it, his mom (my daughter) has put a "the first time you get hurt" limit on his playing career. After a very difficult concussion episode from playing goalie on the girls soccer team (kicked in the head while fighting for the ball, self-protection never having been a strong suit) before the transition desire was announced, she (my daughter) has a strong, but not airtight, case.

a lot recently. I don't believe in conspiracies, but I do believe in alignment of incentives. In the US, you have a for-profit medical system on one side of the issue, and religious zealots on the other side of the issue. I don't think it's a coincidence that in Europe, where these two factors are far far less influential, that you're beginning to see a much more rapid about-face on treatment protocols for trans identifying kids.

It's also interesting to me that in Europe, lesbian feminists seem to be one of the most outspoken groups on issues like trans women using women's restrooms, playing women's sports, etc. In the US, that group just can't bring themselves to be on the same side of an issue as the religious right.

Although, we did have a few Muslim families that partly objected to the topic on religious grounds.

But even for folks who may have had a religious sub-agenda, the grossly-disproportionate coverage of the topic was enough to lean on. Near-daily, maybe even daily? C'mon, who dreamt up this approach ....

Of course, we had some administrators who responded to any effort to curtail their enthusiasm with "you're just transphobic." For people who want to take that approach, I'm sure the religious right is a convenient bogyman -- sometimes legitimate, sometimes contrived.

And I live in the South. While there may be a few raising a religious objection, they are a relatively small minority.

The obvious objections are things like permanent damage to transitioning minors, the ability of minors to consent, the social contagion problem, teaching small children that they may be the wrong gender, transitioning kids at school without parental consent, biological men in women's spaces, and biological men taking women's opportunities, such as sports.

I suspect that trans activists may use the few who raise religious objections as strawmen to avoid addressing the other issues.

based on religious principles. My take is that the presence of the religious right in US politics makes our left/right culture divide far more polarized than Europe's and makes people less willing to take heterodox positions, publicly at least. For instance, there is a much much stronger TERF (trans exclusionary radical feminist) movement in the UK than the US. "Radical" feminists are obviously very left on most social issues, but in the UK they seem much more willing to break with the left on trans issues than in the US.

lead to more such folks to dissemble less on these surveys?