As to Cori’s point about the localism of K-12 curriculum (state and community): one of the problems that even relatively conservative communities have faced is that teachers trained at education schools are being indoctrinated in this stuff. They don’t learn about classroom management but they learn about the importance of gender. Same thing happening at library science programs. Social work programs. All the credentialed professionals are being trained this way.
The states that don’t require an Ed degree to teach may have the best chance to roll this back. But this will be a long term problem, no matter what happens next.
I find it interesting that I am cheering on these parents, even if they’re using religious belief as the way to stop this, when there’s a long history of conflict between religious parents and public schools where I might find myself on the other side.
Why recognize or teach gender ideology as a religion? I wish we could put it, and all its illogic and backwardness, back in the box. Over the decades, teachers have regularly abandoned ways of teaching, or topics, that no longer serve us, as a society. Why not lobby for that?
One of the books included in Montgomery County, but not discussed here, is "Born Ready: The True Story of a Boy Called Penelope", which was mentioned in a couple of the NYT articles. The protagonist (apparently the author's real daughter) "knows she is a boy" because "she's a ninja", likes blue shirts, and gets As in math and science. Those are bad ideas that shouldn't be taught.
Im afraid that no bad idea has ever died. I bet in year 2137 someone will point out at tumblr neopronouns to prove that these were used and it’s normal in English
Update from TERF Island. Following the discussion last week on the UK Supreme Court decision about sex-based rights, I predicted a wave of crybullying by the gender lobby. We have certainly had that - a stream of highly sympathetic media interviews with harmless-looking trans women bewailing their plight and saying things like ‘they’ve painted a target on my back’.
What I hadn’t predicted was the sheer anger and barely repressed violence from the trans movement. In a wave of demos last weekend, seven statues were defaced in central London alone - one of them honouring a famous woman suffragist. Banners were carried aloft inciting violence against TERFs. The fashionable new slogans seemed to be ‘We piss where we like’ and ‘We (heart) pissing on TERFs’. This is male entitlement in its crudest form. Or, if you want to put it like this, urine as a weapon of war.
Given how the Dems responded to Trumps win by doubling down on the Trans issue I shouldn't have been surprised by the response from many in the UK yet somehow I was...
In Canada, most parents I know fighting gender ideology in schools aren't religious. Of course, some are Christians, but it's not uncommon for regular non-ideological people to see all the red flags.
re Mahmoud V. Taylor: Montgomery County (Maryland) Public Schools allow parents to opt their children out of sex ed (Family Life and Human Sexuality) which is taught in grades 8 and 10. In fact, parents have a right to review the sex ed curriculum for those grades in advance and they must sign a permission slip for their children to attend the classes. The county, however, made it mandatory for pre-K, kindergarten and elementary school kids to listen to "LGBTQ inclusive" storybooks, which deal with sexual orientation and so-called gender identity. The county claimed that teachers found it disruptive when so many parents asked to have their children excused from readings of titles like "Pride Puppy" and "Born Ready: A Boy Named Penelope." I suspect many of the parents who objected were not religious fundamentalists. The books amount to indoctrination in a wildly inappropriate, regressive and counter-factual ideology. How many parents want their beginning readers to search for the words [drag] "queen," "leather" and "intersex?" in a book about a pride parade? (There's a "search and find" exercise at the end.) What mother of a girl wants her kindergartener to hear the message that if she loves math, science and skateboards she may really be a boy? Even a union representing principals in the county called the books inappropriate. Yes, as you all stated, gender ideology is a quasi-religion. If teachers can no longer begin the school day with a recitation of the Lord's Prayer, they should not be allowed to proselytize children in this pernicious cult in the name of "inclusion."
Do American School libraries typically include books promoting Creationism, or Flat Earthism, or Horoscopes, or Style Essences, or any other beliefs that could be classed as pseudoscience's? If they don't then there's a case in my mind for removing any LGBTQ books that promote the the belief that humans can change sex. If they do then you might have to fall back on the sexually explicit nature of many of those books as a way to get them removed.
Well that makes at least two of you around here. You and Eliza, though I question the depth of her commitment to The Essences...
To me it seems a bit woo-woo. Like the core is just fashion advice but it has grown into a little spiritual cult. Who knows, maybe in 20 years when we've put the trans cult to rest we'll be battling the rigid caste system that has since built up around the Style Essences. I mean, in 2005 I didn't think I'd be spending 2025 arguing about the existence of female penises, so who knows what 2045 will hold...
Naturally. Only people with romantic or dramatic essences should be allowed to be Council members.
Recently I’m studying essences of politicians in order to find which essences make someone suitable for the leader. Here are results for 2nd world war leaders:
Stalin dramatic/romantic/natural
Adolf Hitler dramatic/ethereal/ingenue
Hirohito* dramatic/classic/ingenue
Benito Mussolini romantic
Winston Churchill dramatic/gamine
Charles De Gaulle gamine/romantic
Franklin Delano Roosevelt romantic/dramatic/gamine
*I know Hirohito wasn’t the leader, but he was a symbol in propaganda
Do the Essences even apply to males? I assumed the SEC would be a matriarchy. Surely the Council should have at least one representative from each essence in the name of style equity? The big question is what should happen to people who embody more than one essence? Are they to be shunned or elevated within the corridors of power?
My non-gender recommendation is video game Darktide.
The formula for the game comes from Vermintide 2 (my fav game for few years) and 1, but it's set in Warhammer 40k. Generally it's co-op fps pve against hordes of enemies and specials, with character classes, talent trees and combat system easy to pick up with lots of depth to explore. You don't even have to be good at shooting, because game is focused on meele combat. But what makes Darktide and Vermintide 2 so great is abudance of funny dialogues (srsly god-tier writing) and sillyness of over-the-top Warhammer setting.
Darktide had meh launch, but I gave it 2nd chance and I absolutely loved it.
I bought Darktide at launch but didn't find it to be particularly great, and sadly all the people I would've played it with had already exiled me for not believing in girl-dick*. The "Boomer Shooter" called Boltgun was fucking marvellous though, from my perspective as someone who got into the hobby in 1998...
*like most nerd spaces the 40k fandom is overrun with TRAs. It's even made it into several novels. Would it surprise you to learn that the extremely authoritarian, arguably fascist, totally superstitious, and all around pig ignorant Imperium of Man is actually 100% on board with gender identity and sex change surgeries for those who want them? It must say something when even Space Fascists can't be anti-trans in fiction, but anyone who dissents irl is reflexively labelled a fascist by TRAs...
It’s somehow funny that Warhammer is pro-trans, because the community is famously anti-inclusive (idk how much of that is true, I’m not warhammer nerd yet, I plan to embark on that journey tho). I used to think that 4chan transwomen are proof that being trans is not ideology just like gays are all around political spectrum, but… what if the misogynistic breeding grounds are source of trans ideology, imagine that
The company has gone very woke, like a lot of companies did post 2016. The online community is pretty polarised, like most fandoms seem to be these days, which means you might have to choose between an ardently pro trans community or an explicitly anti woke (including any kind of feminism) community.
I don't know if the 40k fandom was more or less inclusive than most nerd spaces were in the pre woke era but they were definitely male dominated.
It has the virtue of being single player and if by any chance you have fond memories of the original Doom games from the early 90s (hence the term Boomer Shooter) then you may well enjoy it.
There's another co-op shooter called Deathwing that came out many years ago that's quite fun *if* you have three other people to play with.
Darktide improved massively since launch: they added weapon crafting system, lots of new missions, 3 new difficulty modifiers, also reworked talents*. Game is better optimised too, my pc is at minimum and the only bugs I encountered during 70h are not fully loaded models of other players in the hub between missions.
*Ogryn is still D tier class in game with other classes being S or A tier
Do the weapons still have levels? Honestly that's one of my biggest pet peeves with many modern games, Fallout New Vegas and even Fallout 4 showed us how weapon modding should be in games. I don't wanna have to swap out my lv7 Revolver for a lv12 version of exactly the same gun just to stay competitive in a game...
Yes and no. Weapons have levels now, but 1) weapons you get as rewards and weapons you can buy are appropriate for your character level, 2) you can upgrade any weapon you have to max stats without long grind (it feels like progression, not like a roadblock or chore). Weapons are also upgraded as category for purpose for weapon crafting - which includes ability of upgrading stats of particular item. However it’s rather fast process, you upgrade that by playing missions with certain weapon equipped and by sacrificing weapons (the same kind sacrificed as upgraded = more exp).
It’s imo very fair system, i have max levels of 10+ weapon categories already in 70h. Currently getting the perfect weapon is really no big deal, unlike in vermintide 2
Non-gender thing of the week: Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. Vidya game my friend and I have been looking forward to since we first saw the trailer last year. She pre-ordered it at two Gamestops, just in case, which was great, because we ventured out on release day to find it still hadn’t arrived at either of them, so that was an hour of the day wasted only to end up buying it on Steam.
Anyway! Gorgeous visuals, compelling story, atmospheric music. I hear the gameplay is good, but I wouldn't know, because I don’t actually like playing video games, I like watching other people them, which is probably an even more degenerate and lazy hobby than playing them myself. 😔
I had the Bibble in high school as obligatory literature and it was just that, literature: biblical language style, key themes important for literature in last 1000 years, some concepts like theodicy. It can't be compared to gender/LGBTQ books, because these don't have cultural significance anywhere near the bibble and it's perfectly possible to understand renaissance poetry without "My name is Jazz"
Good on the investigation into insurance fraud. My daughter’s doctor wrote ‘endoctrine disorder unspecified’ onto her medical record. As far as I know, it’s still there. Infuriating!
Education is also to get informed citizens which is key for democracy. I think Jefferson pushed this way back at the beginning, probably others?
Also science classes teach the idea that something can be wrong and that you can ask for evidence, or do tests oneself, claims can be tested and how. And one can analyze history and English critically - this is what they said, did they support it, how would you support it, how would you show it's wrong?
Listening to discussion about some of the materials included in today's school curricula reminds me of what an utter failure the education of the educators has been--as well as how much of the "cream" of each graduating university class is completely scooped up by occupations both easier and more rewarding than teaching. I despair at both whom we are left with, and what they think they have learned.
One need not belong to a particular religion to object to school content on religious grounds. Indeed, broad coalitions of those of a variety of faiths (and no faith) find poisonous castration-celebration storybooks objectionable. The "religious" character of the objection centers on the dogmas of faith inherent to the material, not those associated with the religions to which the pupils might belong.
Why should the curriculum be stuffed with sexual content? Sexuality is private, personal and intimate. It's abusive to demand children declare, display and demonstrate thoughts, feelings and behaviors that involve something so brand-new, so central to life and so bound up with both physical and emotional vulnerability. It's doubly abusive to grade or reward pupils based on how well they mimic teachers' views on issues they may take decades to fully understand.
Sex education can be a part of health classes, where students learn about human reproductive biology and sexually transmitted diseases; heterosexuality, homosexuality and bisexuality; risk, intimacy and commitment. Discussion of these matters can be integrated into a larger course about caring for and enjoying a healthy body. Fini! How dare schools waste the time they should be imparting reading, writing and math skills--cluing kids in on the latest kink, desperate for more adherents?
As to Cori’s point about the localism of K-12 curriculum (state and community): one of the problems that even relatively conservative communities have faced is that teachers trained at education schools are being indoctrinated in this stuff. They don’t learn about classroom management but they learn about the importance of gender. Same thing happening at library science programs. Social work programs. All the credentialed professionals are being trained this way.
The states that don’t require an Ed degree to teach may have the best chance to roll this back. But this will be a long term problem, no matter what happens next.
I find it interesting that I am cheering on these parents, even if they’re using religious belief as the way to stop this, when there’s a long history of conflict between religious parents and public schools where I might find myself on the other side.
The gender ideas are religious. They aren't based in fact. So one can object to them on a religious basis in that way.
It gets tricky though, it may or may not work, and there may be unintended consequences if it does work. (Not a constitutional expert!)
Why recognize or teach gender ideology as a religion? I wish we could put it, and all its illogic and backwardness, back in the box. Over the decades, teachers have regularly abandoned ways of teaching, or topics, that no longer serve us, as a society. Why not lobby for that?
One of the books included in Montgomery County, but not discussed here, is "Born Ready: The True Story of a Boy Called Penelope", which was mentioned in a couple of the NYT articles. The protagonist (apparently the author's real daughter) "knows she is a boy" because "she's a ninja", likes blue shirts, and gets As in math and science. Those are bad ideas that shouldn't be taught.
Im afraid that no bad idea has ever died. I bet in year 2137 someone will point out at tumblr neopronouns to prove that these were used and it’s normal in English
My non-gender recommendation is the latest iteration of All Creatures Great and Small on PBS- best word to describe it is wholesome.
Update from TERF Island. Following the discussion last week on the UK Supreme Court decision about sex-based rights, I predicted a wave of crybullying by the gender lobby. We have certainly had that - a stream of highly sympathetic media interviews with harmless-looking trans women bewailing their plight and saying things like ‘they’ve painted a target on my back’.
What I hadn’t predicted was the sheer anger and barely repressed violence from the trans movement. In a wave of demos last weekend, seven statues were defaced in central London alone - one of them honouring a famous woman suffragist. Banners were carried aloft inciting violence against TERFs. The fashionable new slogans seemed to be ‘We piss where we like’ and ‘We (heart) pissing on TERFs’. This is male entitlement in its crudest form. Or, if you want to put it like this, urine as a weapon of war.
Given how the Dems responded to Trumps win by doubling down on the Trans issue I shouldn't have been surprised by the response from many in the UK yet somehow I was...
Non gender thing: I read Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters and it rocked my life
I stopped going to Pride when my son was born. I'm a lesbian. I would never, ever show the pride book or the Trans book to a child.
In Canada, most parents I know fighting gender ideology in schools aren't religious. Of course, some are Christians, but it's not uncommon for regular non-ideological people to see all the red flags.
re Mahmoud V. Taylor: Montgomery County (Maryland) Public Schools allow parents to opt their children out of sex ed (Family Life and Human Sexuality) which is taught in grades 8 and 10. In fact, parents have a right to review the sex ed curriculum for those grades in advance and they must sign a permission slip for their children to attend the classes. The county, however, made it mandatory for pre-K, kindergarten and elementary school kids to listen to "LGBTQ inclusive" storybooks, which deal with sexual orientation and so-called gender identity. The county claimed that teachers found it disruptive when so many parents asked to have their children excused from readings of titles like "Pride Puppy" and "Born Ready: A Boy Named Penelope." I suspect many of the parents who objected were not religious fundamentalists. The books amount to indoctrination in a wildly inappropriate, regressive and counter-factual ideology. How many parents want their beginning readers to search for the words [drag] "queen," "leather" and "intersex?" in a book about a pride parade? (There's a "search and find" exercise at the end.) What mother of a girl wants her kindergartener to hear the message that if she loves math, science and skateboards she may really be a boy? Even a union representing principals in the county called the books inappropriate. Yes, as you all stated, gender ideology is a quasi-religion. If teachers can no longer begin the school day with a recitation of the Lord's Prayer, they should not be allowed to proselytize children in this pernicious cult in the name of "inclusion."
Do American School libraries typically include books promoting Creationism, or Flat Earthism, or Horoscopes, or Style Essences, or any other beliefs that could be classed as pseudoscience's? If they don't then there's a case in my mind for removing any LGBTQ books that promote the the belief that humans can change sex. If they do then you might have to fall back on the sexually explicit nature of many of those books as a way to get them removed.
I firmly believe in style essences by Truth Is Beauty
Well that makes at least two of you around here. You and Eliza, though I question the depth of her commitment to The Essences...
To me it seems a bit woo-woo. Like the core is just fashion advice but it has grown into a little spiritual cult. Who knows, maybe in 20 years when we've put the trans cult to rest we'll be battling the rigid caste system that has since built up around the Style Essences. I mean, in 2005 I didn't think I'd be spending 2025 arguing about the existence of female penises, so who knows what 2045 will hold...
And the world would be much better place!
Under the iron grip of the Style Essence Council!
Naturally. Only people with romantic or dramatic essences should be allowed to be Council members.
Recently I’m studying essences of politicians in order to find which essences make someone suitable for the leader. Here are results for 2nd world war leaders:
Stalin dramatic/romantic/natural
Adolf Hitler dramatic/ethereal/ingenue
Hirohito* dramatic/classic/ingenue
Benito Mussolini romantic
Winston Churchill dramatic/gamine
Charles De Gaulle gamine/romantic
Franklin Delano Roosevelt romantic/dramatic/gamine
*I know Hirohito wasn’t the leader, but he was a symbol in propaganda
Do the Essences even apply to males? I assumed the SEC would be a matriarchy. Surely the Council should have at least one representative from each essence in the name of style equity? The big question is what should happen to people who embody more than one essence? Are they to be shunned or elevated within the corridors of power?
Nike's new slogan . . . Just dude it?
And how long before we have a children's book featuring the journey of the little Apotemnophilia girl?
My non-gender recommendation is video game Darktide.
The formula for the game comes from Vermintide 2 (my fav game for few years) and 1, but it's set in Warhammer 40k. Generally it's co-op fps pve against hordes of enemies and specials, with character classes, talent trees and combat system easy to pick up with lots of depth to explore. You don't even have to be good at shooting, because game is focused on meele combat. But what makes Darktide and Vermintide 2 so great is abudance of funny dialogues (srsly god-tier writing) and sillyness of over-the-top Warhammer setting.
Darktide had meh launch, but I gave it 2nd chance and I absolutely loved it.
I bought Darktide at launch but didn't find it to be particularly great, and sadly all the people I would've played it with had already exiled me for not believing in girl-dick*. The "Boomer Shooter" called Boltgun was fucking marvellous though, from my perspective as someone who got into the hobby in 1998...
*like most nerd spaces the 40k fandom is overrun with TRAs. It's even made it into several novels. Would it surprise you to learn that the extremely authoritarian, arguably fascist, totally superstitious, and all around pig ignorant Imperium of Man is actually 100% on board with gender identity and sex change surgeries for those who want them? It must say something when even Space Fascists can't be anti-trans in fiction, but anyone who dissents irl is reflexively labelled a fascist by TRAs...
It’s somehow funny that Warhammer is pro-trans, because the community is famously anti-inclusive (idk how much of that is true, I’m not warhammer nerd yet, I plan to embark on that journey tho). I used to think that 4chan transwomen are proof that being trans is not ideology just like gays are all around political spectrum, but… what if the misogynistic breeding grounds are source of trans ideology, imagine that
The company has gone very woke, like a lot of companies did post 2016. The online community is pretty polarised, like most fandoms seem to be these days, which means you might have to choose between an ardently pro trans community or an explicitly anti woke (including any kind of feminism) community.
I don't know if the 40k fandom was more or less inclusive than most nerd spaces were in the pre woke era but they were definitely male dominated.
Thanks for recommending Boltgun!
It has the virtue of being single player and if by any chance you have fond memories of the original Doom games from the early 90s (hence the term Boomer Shooter) then you may well enjoy it.
There's another co-op shooter called Deathwing that came out many years ago that's quite fun *if* you have three other people to play with.
Darktide improved massively since launch: they added weapon crafting system, lots of new missions, 3 new difficulty modifiers, also reworked talents*. Game is better optimised too, my pc is at minimum and the only bugs I encountered during 70h are not fully loaded models of other players in the hub between missions.
*Ogryn is still D tier class in game with other classes being S or A tier
Do the weapons still have levels? Honestly that's one of my biggest pet peeves with many modern games, Fallout New Vegas and even Fallout 4 showed us how weapon modding should be in games. I don't wanna have to swap out my lv7 Revolver for a lv12 version of exactly the same gun just to stay competitive in a game...
Yes and no. Weapons have levels now, but 1) weapons you get as rewards and weapons you can buy are appropriate for your character level, 2) you can upgrade any weapon you have to max stats without long grind (it feels like progression, not like a roadblock or chore). Weapons are also upgraded as category for purpose for weapon crafting - which includes ability of upgrading stats of particular item. However it’s rather fast process, you upgrade that by playing missions with certain weapon equipped and by sacrificing weapons (the same kind sacrificed as upgraded = more exp).
It’s imo very fair system, i have max levels of 10+ weapon categories already in 70h. Currently getting the perfect weapon is really no big deal, unlike in vermintide 2
Non-gender thing of the week: Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. Vidya game my friend and I have been looking forward to since we first saw the trailer last year. She pre-ordered it at two Gamestops, just in case, which was great, because we ventured out on release day to find it still hadn’t arrived at either of them, so that was an hour of the day wasted only to end up buying it on Steam.
Anyway! Gorgeous visuals, compelling story, atmospheric music. I hear the gameplay is good, but I wouldn't know, because I don’t actually like playing video games, I like watching other people them, which is probably an even more degenerate and lazy hobby than playing them myself. 😔
I had the Bibble in high school as obligatory literature and it was just that, literature: biblical language style, key themes important for literature in last 1000 years, some concepts like theodicy. It can't be compared to gender/LGBTQ books, because these don't have cultural significance anywhere near the bibble and it's perfectly possible to understand renaissance poetry without "My name is Jazz"
Good on the investigation into insurance fraud. My daughter’s doctor wrote ‘endoctrine disorder unspecified’ onto her medical record. As far as I know, it’s still there. Infuriating!
Education is also to get informed citizens which is key for democracy. I think Jefferson pushed this way back at the beginning, probably others?
Also science classes teach the idea that something can be wrong and that you can ask for evidence, or do tests oneself, claims can be tested and how. And one can analyze history and English critically - this is what they said, did they support it, how would you support it, how would you show it's wrong?
Listening to discussion about some of the materials included in today's school curricula reminds me of what an utter failure the education of the educators has been--as well as how much of the "cream" of each graduating university class is completely scooped up by occupations both easier and more rewarding than teaching. I despair at both whom we are left with, and what they think they have learned.
One need not belong to a particular religion to object to school content on religious grounds. Indeed, broad coalitions of those of a variety of faiths (and no faith) find poisonous castration-celebration storybooks objectionable. The "religious" character of the objection centers on the dogmas of faith inherent to the material, not those associated with the religions to which the pupils might belong.
Why should the curriculum be stuffed with sexual content? Sexuality is private, personal and intimate. It's abusive to demand children declare, display and demonstrate thoughts, feelings and behaviors that involve something so brand-new, so central to life and so bound up with both physical and emotional vulnerability. It's doubly abusive to grade or reward pupils based on how well they mimic teachers' views on issues they may take decades to fully understand.
Sex education can be a part of health classes, where students learn about human reproductive biology and sexually transmitted diseases; heterosexuality, homosexuality and bisexuality; risk, intimacy and commitment. Discussion of these matters can be integrated into a larger course about caring for and enjoying a healthy body. Fini! How dare schools waste the time they should be imparting reading, writing and math skills--cluing kids in on the latest kink, desperate for more adherents?