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Comment by snowwrestler | Hacker News Reader

Politicizing the person is something that happens to some people against their will.

For example people don’t choose to be gay, it just happens like being tall or having blue eyes. But in Florida there is a law now saying teachers can’t talk about gay people in school. Totally still fine to talk about tall people, though.

This is why “Pride Month” is a big deal but tall people month is not. Gay people didn’t choose to become “political.” But since they are subjected to that scrutiny, they of course want to stand up for themselves, and other people who value equality under the law want to stand up with them.

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>But in Florida there is a law now saying teachers can’t talk about gay people in school.

If only you weren't misrepresenting the Parental Rights in Education bill[1] you'd have a point. There's no reason why a teacher needs to discuss sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, etc. with kindergartens, be that heterosexual or homosexual. That's a private matter that has no place in a classroom, less so in primary grade levels.

[1]: https://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2022/1834

Hi, you’re just incorrect here. Sexual orientation and gender are perfectly appropriate subjects for young children, and have been part of elementary curricula across the nation for decades.

This is one reason why the Florida bill was opposed by pediatricians, child psychologists, and teachers. The professionals whose job it is know how children develop are aligned against the bill because it goes against quite a lot of research about to help children develop emotionally.

Orientation and gender are attributes that children naturally observe in others and in themselves, even at a young age, and ask their teachers about. Denying them answers helps them not at all, but is useful for stigmatizing the subjects (which is of course the point of the bill).

I noticed you also mentioned “sex” as well, but that is a red herring because no school system in Florida, or anywhere in the U.S. actually, starts sex education before middle school.

> There's no reason why a teacher needs to discuss sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, etc. with kindergartens, be that heterosexual or homosexual.

How do you explain the use of English personal pronouns without referencing sex or gender identity? I mean, I know the that the right is perfomatively “anti-pronoun”, but unless they've decided to exclude them entirely from education...

The same issue exists with traditional honorifics (Mr./Mrs./Miss/etc.); with those you can probably get away with “it was what it is” for specific individuals as a baseline, but are teachers really expect to defer questions about them till later grades?

(It's also very hard to to discuss anything about families, actual or fictional, without, in fact, talking about sexual orientation, and while the bill is superficially written neutrally, it's very clear that the intent is to resolve all these issues of perfectly common childhood things that would become impossible to discuss if it were enforced as written by simply by ignoring then as long as the orientations and identities at issue are heterosexual and cisgender.)

> That's a private matter that has no place in a classroom

While I agree that kindergartners may be too young to receive sexual education, I disagree that sex, sexual orientation , gender identities have no a place in the classroom. At least starting in Middle School it’s important to educate children on the realities of the world they are going to see that will include all of these things. I can at least point to Health and History as two subjects that these topics will be relevant in.

Teachers talk to kids about families all the time to illustrate ideas or just to build relationships.

What happens when a student has two dads or two moms?

Homosexuality isn't some abstract idea. Gays have kids and nephews and nieces.

The same goes for all those other topics. There are developmentally appropriate ways of talking about most of them.

I wonder if there are actually any classrooms in America where gender identity or sexual orientation aren't discussed. Particularly in grade school. Particularly in a place like Florida.

Edit: actually if you’re up for a serious discussion, you mention gender identity shouldn’t be a topic in primary school. Sometimes I wonder if we have a shared meaning on the terms “gender identity” because I would love to send my kid to a primary school where gender identity isn’t discussed, but the idea is ludicrous, not because of its immorality, but it’s impossibility. gender is one of the most discriminating social institutions we have. Everything about the way our society is organized is designed to socialize Kids into a traditional gender identity, hell months before being born parents throw gender reveal parties to determine if a kid should like pink or blue, so what would this even look like? Same thing with sexual orientation by the way given the prevalence of prince winning over princess stories in childrens media.

Is there no limit to the amount of "Standing up" or rules about when and with whom you do it? Because it seems to me that if some people reject your existence, and in response you politicise your whole existence and become an insufferable walking-talking political billboard constantly shouting the same things regardless of context or consent of the people you're shouting at, seems to me like that's walking right into their trap?

I can say, speaking from experience, that insufferable political advertising has the effect of making people who had no objection to your existence previously gradually start despising you.

Isn't the best revenge, as always, to live well and normal? Maybe save your moral grandstanding to the next one who says your existence is a sin, and not the user who wants to get shit done?

You have events mixed up. People act in the way you object to because others have politicized their existence. Refusing to be quiet about who they are is a response to people trying to erase them, both culturally and violently. That's what Pride is about. The first one was a riot kicked off by cops invading a space that was exactly as quiet as you would have preferred.

It didn't work. The police came and attacked them anyway. Now we march and get in your face so you'll notice when someone tries to get rid of us.

>People act in the way you object to because others have politicized their existence

I didn't mix up the order of the two :

>>some people reject your existence, and in response you politicise your whole existence

is saying the same thing as

>Refusing to be quiet about who they are is a response to people trying to erase them, both culturally and violently.

>The first one was a riot kicked off by cops invading a space that was exactly as quiet as you would have preferred. Now we march and get in your face so you'll notice when someone tries to get rid of us.

So you mean to say that the identity obsession lgbt people seem to have is just a bizarre distress mechanism so that people constantly notice them and come to their help if somebody tries to be violent with them ? Can this possibly backfire when your presence become so invasive and annoying that you flip me from the [not caring whether you exist or not] state to the [actively wishing you don't exist] state ? Can you not see how a lot of people in the second state would bring about the very outcome you fear ?

Does your culture tell the story of The Boy Who Cried Wolf ?

In this allegory, the wolves are here, they've been here, and they keep coming. Nazis put people like me in the camps. The "good guys" left people like me there. The famous book burning photo everyone, including people who hate people like me, loves to post in relation to free speech was substantially the books of an era equivalent queer center.

Pride is about making you aware of this. The threat is real, and it's here. Now. There's a volley of legislative attacks on people like me at this very moment right here in the US. It follows a brief lull after a string of attacks on access to public life.

>In this allegory, the wolves are here, they've been here

You assert this, then you proceed to describe the events of more than 75 years ago. Where exactly, in the countries you're allowed to hold pride parades today, are the nazis who want you in camps and prisons ? and how is obnoxiosly parading in the streets while wearing half-naked customs preventing those nazis from achieving what they want ?

If you mean by the nazis the countries that still imprison and persecute lgbt people today, how is holding pride parades outside their borders putting pressure on them ? if anything, it's even more justification for their actions ("See what these people do when they win ? Do not let them win at all costs").

Do you have any reason to believe that holding pride parades significantly, and positvely, affect the state of lgbt people anywhere ?

>There's a volley of legislative attacks on people like me at this very moment right here in the US

Is this another deadend conversation about how parents not wanting their children to hear about your sex life an attack on you ? Because it's not, and if you're going to argue otherwise then let us please end the conversation right here. Because I'm tired of explaining to lgbt folks that lack of visibility won't kill them, and that people have the choice not to accept your identity let alone to teach it to their children.

You're only owed 1 thing : Tolerance. The only obligation society has toward you when it comes to your identity is to not kill, imprison or otherwise materially harm you because of it, provided it doesn't involve breaking any laws. Society is not obligated to praise your identity. Society is not obligated to teach your identity to children. Society is not obligated to force people to let you in their life or into their businesses or into their children's public school curricula.

If you can't agree to that, then you don't respect people's choices and therefore yours don't deserve to be respected as well.

> Society is not obligated to force people to let you [...] into their businesses

Courts have routinely disagreed with you here.

>>In this allegory, the wolves are here, they've been here >You assert this, then you proceed to describe the events of more than 75 years ago. Where exactly, in the countries you're allowed to hold pride parades today, are the nazis who want you in camps and prisons ?

Gay bashings, murders, and targeted arrests are more recent examples. Then there’s the millions who died of AIDS while authorities twiddled their thumbs. And to top it off, throw in the social ostracism, the chance of being outed at work (fired), and a sky high suicide rate for a clearer picture.

So, no. The community has not faced any literal Nazis in the past 75 years. But, they have faced just about everything short of that.

This is not far off history. This has all occurred in my lifetime. Some of it still goes on today. Pulse Nightclub was just five years ago.

Have some compassion.

>> "Is this another deadend conversation about how parents not wanting their children to hear about your sex life an attack on you"

No.

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