10
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13-year-old trans girl takes Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison to task over "gender whisperers" comment
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- Authors
- Twitter
- Published
- Sep 7 2018
- Word count
- 570 words
I don't really know how to contribute to this discussion, except to express sorrow and rage at people insisting that they be allowed to force trans kids to be something they're not under the guise of "parental rights." It's so sad and frustrating to see people protest and demonize the support of trans children and their necessary treatments.
I hope someday soon that queer kids can see positive representations of themselves in their media and be supported in being themselves by their families, teachers, and friends. We're making progress in California with their new foster care rules and in Australia with Safe Schools, even as conservatives fight to roll them back.
I remain hopeful for a future where we and our children are normal.
Ah, parental rights; the ever-so-common method of saying that one shouldn't have autonomy over oneself; that children are property rather than humans: that they can be owned.
Certain parents' objections to "outside meddling" in their families by teachers helping their children bears a stark resemblance to certain countries' denouncement of "foreign meddling" in their internal affairs when they're called out on human rights abuses.
There's a parallel to be made, certainly.
That's not what this was about.
There are counsellors who are trained in advising teachers how to support trans students. If a school sees a need for some advice regarding trans students, they call in one of these counsellors. It's important to note that the counsellor comes in only when a school requests it.
This scheme was misreported in one of our right-wing newspapers as being about counsellors who are placed in schools, telling teachers which students are trans - or even might be trans - and then guiding those students towards their preferred gender. However, the focus of the story was that teachers & counsellors are pushing students to adopt unnatural genders.
Then our illustrious Prime Minister weighed in against these people he called "gender whisperers", who are supposedly forcing children to change their genders.
It's nothing to do with "parents' rights". In fact, most times these counsellors are called in, it's because a child is already expressing themself as trans - which implies that the parents are supporting the child's transition.
This is about a stupid conservative Prime Minister who also sends his daughters to private schools so they won't be subject to the "safe schools" anti-bullying program that is taught in state schools - because the "safe schools" program is pro-diversity and pro-LGBT (it was created to prevent bullying against LGBT students).
Small title correction: it's "to task," not "to ask."
(I actually have no idea if titles can be edited by anyone other than @Deimos, so this might be pretty worthless if not.)
Bugger!