CA Judge Rules That Title of Anti-Trans Ballot Measure Will Remain As-Is

[Carolyn Marie]

https://calmatters.org/education/k-12-education/2024/04/trans-youth/

 

 

Yup, the existing title sound perfectly appropriate and accurate to me, too.

 

Carolyn Marie

[awkward-yet-sweet]

Reading that article, it seems like the attorney general gets to call it whatever unless its an outright lie.  Given the nature of politics in CA, it seems like one side has the bully pulpit for sure.  Labeling it "Restricts Rights" vs "Protects Kids" is very much a matter of perspective.  Unfortunately, that matters since many voters don't bother to read.  Perhaps a better (unbiased) way to handle it would be to simply give the ballot measure a number with no title, forcing folks to read it. 

 

I think it would have been better to handle the various issues covered by the ballot measure separately, rather than all at once.  For example, issues relating to disclosure of medical and social information to parents.  That could be its own ballot measure, rather than lumped in with everything else.  Besides, shorter and more succinct measures are more likely to be read completely. 

[Carolyn Marie]

You make some good points, AYS.  But there are usually already too many ballot propositions each election, so the proponents know it's best to wrap it all up into a nice package.  Plus, it's easier for the signature gatherers.  Otherwise they have to have a separate clipboard for each proposition.  Too much paperwork, dontcha know?

 

This kind of proposition is a loser in CA, so the only possible way the proponents can succeed is to give it the scariest title imaginable and try to put one over on the voters before they get wise.  Bottom line; an ice cube on a hot summer sidewalk has a better chance of success.

 

Carolyn Marie

[VickySGV]

We have had some real dillies come out as the initiative sort of thing, but as @Carolyn Marie said, very few make it out of the petition signing seasons.  I am not surprised at the origin site of this thing, it is probably one of only 3 regressive leaning counties we have in the state. We actually had one of these initiatives started to make it mandatory for police to shoot dead on site any Gay behaving individuals wherever they found them.  For the most part the matters are poorly written in ways to be unenforceable even if enacted.  Thus most never become law or get to the voters.

[Ivy]

• Require students to use bathrooms that align with the gender they were assigned at birth
• Prohibit transgender girls in seventh grade or older from participating in girls sports or other girls-only activities 
• Ban gender-affirming health care — including surgery or hormone treatment — for transgender students under age 18, even if parents consent or the treatment is recommended by a doctor
• Require schools to notify parents if students change their pronouns or otherwise signal they identify as a gender other than what’s on their official student records

Doesn't look like it "protects" anybody.  It actually is about restricting trans kids rights.

 

The ways politicians name their bills etc. is a farce.  Most of the time they do the opposite of what they're called.

[EasyE]

It is sad that we can't have more open and honest dialogue on these types of topics because there is worthy debate for sure. But instead we have become a country where the only goal is to seize political power and then legislate our particular agenda and views of morality.

 

Remember as you read my thoughts below, that I am transgender. OK? I am pro-trans. I am trans.

 

But my middle school aged daughter would be extremely uncomfortable using a school bathroom also used by a biological male, as would nearly all of her friends. That side has to be considered. It's not invalidating to a trans youth's experience to take that into account and hash out what is for the common good of as many people as possible. This is reality - one person's gender expression makes others uncomfortable, in all directions. And there is disagreement on the best way to handle these types of things.

 

Why can't we talk about these things openly, without the inevitable name-calling that follows, and let all sides have their input and work up suitable solutions? (I bet the kids, if left alone, would work up the best solutions)... Instead, we go straight to trying to pass laws, as if we need more of those!

 

And why wouldn't we want parents to know if their child has decided to change their pronouns? That's a big deal and parents are right to raise that as a concern. I certainly would want to know. Not that we need to legislate this, but I would have a hard time with school administrators who try to hide this from me. They are out of line. This is my child. Whether you like my viewpoints or not, I am the parent. Not the school. 

 

Again, I am pro-trans. I am trans. At the same point, I recognize that validating a transgender individual's gender identity doesn't trump everything else in society. And sometimes I see that creeping into these discussions. Plus, we fight a losing battle if we have to have others' validation. We are never going to get it from everybody. Ever. Not even Jesus got it and He is God himself!

 

This country can be very beautiful as we each exercise our freedom to be who we are and let others do the same. But my freedom ends where yours begins and vice-versa. That requires self-sacrifice. Sometimes we have to fall back out of respect for others. Sometimes we have to let the parent be the parent even if we disagree with their politics.

 

My cry in the wilderness is just can we please have more open, honest dialogue where both sides try take the other's views into consideration and quit automatically going the legislative route to criminalize the other side's viewpoints.

 

Sorry for the rant but sometimes all of this wears me out... deep sigh... 

[MaeBe]

19 minutes ago, EasyE said:

And why wouldn't we want parents to know if their child has decided to change their pronouns?

I'm sure even the most transphobic parents would, too. What does it hurt if a child socializes outside of their family in a way that allows them to understand themselves better? I have encountered a handful of kids do the binary, non-binary, back to binary route and they got to learn about themselves. In the end, there may have been some social self-harm but kids are so darned accepting these days. And really, schools aren't policing pronouns, but the laws that are coming out are making them do so--and in turn requiring a report to a parent that may cause some form of harm to the child.

 

If the kid wants to lie to, or keep secrets from, their parents about their gender expressions, what does it say about the parents? Perhaps a little socialization of their thoughts will give them the personal information to have those conversations with them? So when they do want to have that conversation they can do so with some self-awareness. This isn't a parent's rights issue, it's about forcing a "moral code" onto schools that they must now enforce--in a way that doesn't appreciably assist parents or provide benefit to children.

 

21 minutes ago, EasyE said:

my middle school aged daughter would be extremely uncomfortable using a school bathroom also used by a biological male

So, a child that transitioned at 5 and now in middle/high school that is by all rights female must now go into a bathroom full of dudes? What about trans men, how will the be treated in the girl's restroom? I see a lot of fantasy predator fearmongering in this kind of comment. All a trans kid wants to do in a bathroom is to handle their bodily functions in peace. Ideally there would be no gendered restrooms or, at least, a valid option for people to choose a non-gendered restroom. However, where is the actual harm happening? A trans girl in a boy's room is going experience more harm than a girl being uncomfortable about a trans girl going into and out of a stall.

 

How about we teach our children that trans people aren't predators who are trying to game the system to eek out some sexual deviancy via loophole? How about we treat gender in a way that doesn't enforce the idea that girls are prey and boys are  predators? How about we teach them trans kids are just kids who want to get on with their day like everyone else?

[EasyE]

1 hour ago, MaeBe said:

it's about forcing a "moral code" onto schools that they must now enforce--in a way that doesn't appreciably assist parents or provide benefit to children

yes, i agree with this ... i guess my biggest frustrations with all this are: 1) our country's insistence to legislate everything with regards to morals ... 2) the inability to have a good, thorough, honest conversation which wrestles with the nuances of these very complex issues without it denigrating to name-calling or identity politics. 

1 hour ago, MaeBe said:

How about we teach our children that trans people aren't predators who are trying to game the system to eek out some sexual deviancy via loophole? How about we treat gender in a way that doesn't enforce the idea that girls are prey and boys are  predators? How about we teach them trans kids are just kids who want to get on with their day like everyone else?

agreed again... i still have a lot to learn myself ... 

[MaeBe]

6 minutes ago, EasyE said:

i still have a lot to learn myself ... 

I would have balked years ago, echoing the parenting of generations before me, exclaiming "Parents know best!" at what I just wrote. It hasn't been that long, but I came to a realization that some of that need for control is unwarranted. Is my child really harming anything by identifying a certain way? Are they being harmed by having others in and around their lives that do? I have been more conversational with my kids when it comes to things and when we run into issues. Like when friends that were toxic, start coming back into the fold, I wanted to make sure that bad behaviors aren't (re)occurring. Or when we notice behaviors that concern us that we have a dialogue. Those chats aren't always nice, clean, or resolved perfectly, but we're communicating. We're learning from each other in those moments, which lead to things being shared that I am sure other parents aren't hearing from their kids and we grow as people because of it.

 

I will say, it's been easier over the past few years (even before hormones) as this more feminine me finds its way out. I'm a lighter touch, I don't get as entrenched as I once did, and I feel connected a little more emotionally. But, of course, I still make mistakes. As long as we learn from them, right?

[VickySGV]

Parenting and Parental Control play a significant role in my backstory including my addiction history both as child and parent of 3 children now in their 40's.  Big take away that keeps proving true even with new friends and with one of my children as the parent of 3 teenage children is a statement made by one of my parenting counselors and confirmed in other places --

 

Parents, NEVER do the best they CAN or could do, they will however do the best they KNOW HOW to do. 

 

Getting hit with that statement and some other things did lead me to see that I needed to learn my job better as a parent, which I went ahead and did, and have since made major changes.  It made me very aware that my parents had both had very strange and ineffective parenting skills taught to them which I mistakenly was carrying on with my three children.  My children's  other parent who removed themself due to other personal problems was no better due to their background of parenting either.  I am happy to say that my grandchildren benefited from their parents making intentional efforts to be sure that bad family practices were changed and updated.  Result is that one Gender Questioning and two decidedly Cis  grandchildren have supportive parents where bathroom and sports discomfort is based on actual threats of real physical harm or on invasion of personal boundaries.  Possession of a particular anatomy is a neutral subject there.

[Ivy]

2 hours ago, EasyE said:

But my middle school aged daughter would be extremely uncomfortable using a school bathroom also used by a biological male, as would nearly all of her friends.

I am aware of this.  It seems a little unnecessary considering that most of us do this at home every day of our lives.  But okay.  It does seem a bit harsh to require the trans kids to go outside and find a bush to poop under.  Stalls with a little more actual privacy might help.  But the real problem is trans people's existence.  Not to worry, the GOP is working o that one.

I don't think this would be as much a problem if the transphobes didn't harp on it so much.  There are already laws about stalking and assault.

Perhaps, if as a society we were more open about our bodies we could get past this.  Not that this is likely to happen tho.

 

2 hours ago, MaeBe said:

requiring a report to a parent that may cause some form of harm to the child.

Yeah.  That's the problem with these laws.  Kids - especially teens, need some privacy of their own to grow up into who they are.  I can see where a kid might experiment with pronouns for a couple of months, and then decide it's not for them.  Pity for them to get beat up in the meantime.

 

I (thankfully) didn't know everything my kids got into.  And I know my parents didn't know everything about me.   We can give our guidance, but ultimately they need to figure it out on their own.

[Abigail Genevieve]

Common sense seems to be missing from a lot of these discussions.  In my Taylor story he is jumped brutally in a boys' bathroom his freshman year, something he is still trying to straighten out 8 years later and has a radical effect on his life.  Bullying can go either way. Transwomen in the prison system are happy to go to women's prisons, but I have heard that transmen stay in the womens' prison, because they would be killed in the mens' prison.

 

I am leery of blanket "every kid should...." statements and laws everywhere.  To echo a writer you may never heard of, Preston Sprinkle, you should work these things out with the child, and if necessary, with the parents, and communicate.  I don't think a child capable of penetration should sleep with girls on an overnight, or be in a girls' locker room.  Trans kids have limitations as a result of their condition, sort of like people in wheelchairs cannot go mountain climbing, but here is the social realm. Accommodate as you can, but there are limits.  The cisgender kids have rights.  I am not sure where to draw the line as to whose rights should win out.  Nor am I sure regulation imposed by a Legislature or a school board is the way to go.  We saw Louden. 

 

I see no reason for an mtf who transitioned before puberty to not play girl sports, but a child who goes through male puberty has enormous physical advantages over the girls, and we are seeing girls injured.

[Ivy]

8 minutes ago, Abigail Genevieve said:

I see no reason for an mtf who transitioned before puberty to not play girl sports, but a child who goes through male puberty has enormous physical advantages over the girls, and we are seeing girls injured.

This is why a blanket policy can never be fair.  Everything is not black and white.

[Abigail Genevieve]

1 minute ago, Ivy said:

This is why a blanket policy can never be fair.  Everything is not black and white.

People love bureaucracy.  It makes everything cut and dried, black and white, and often unjust, unmerciful, wasteful and downright stupid.

[Abigail Genevieve]

13 minutes ago, Abigail Genevieve said:

 I see no reason for an mtf who transitioned before puberty to not play girl sports, but a child who goes through male puberty has enormous physical advantages over the girls, and we are seeing girls injured.

At the same time there might be mtf boys who transitioned post-puberty who really belong on the girls' teams because they have more similarities there than with the boys, would perform at the same level, and might get injured playing with the bigger, stronger boys.

 

I well remember being an androgynous shrimp in gym class that I shared with seniors who played on the football team.  When PE was no longer mandatory, I was no longer in PE. They started some mixed PE classes the second semester, where we played volleyball and learned bowling and no longer mixed with those seniors, boys and girls together.

[MaeBe]

21 minutes ago, Abigail Genevieve said:

I don't think a child capable of penetration should sleep with girls on an overnight, or be in a girls' locker room.

This is the persistence in thinking of trans girls as predators and, as if, they are the only kind of predation that happens in locker rooms. This is strikingly close to the dangerous myth that anatomy corresponds with sexuality and equates to gender.

[Abigail Genevieve]

8 minutes ago, MaeBe said:

This is the persistence in thinking of trans girls as predators and, as if, they are the only kind of predation that happens in locker rooms. This is strikingly close to the dangerous myth that anatomy corresponds with sexuality and equates to gender.

Have you read the rest of what I wrote?

 

Please read between the lines of what I said about high school.  Go over and read my Taylor story.  Put two and two together.   That is all I will say about that.

[MaeBe]

3 minutes ago, Abigail Genevieve said:

Go over and read my Taylor story.

Please don't expect people to read manifold pages of fiction to understand a post.

 

There was a pointed statement made, and I responded to it. The statement used the term penetration, not "dissimilar anatomy causing social discomfiture", or some other reason. It was extended as a "rule" across very different social situations as well, locker and girl's bedrooms. How that term is used in most situations is to infer sexual contact, so most readers would read that and think the statement is that we "need to keep trans girl's penises out of cis girls", which reads very closely to the idea that trans people are often portrayed as sexual predators.

 

I understand we can't always get all of our thoughts onto the page, but this doesn't read like an under-cooked idea or a lingual short cut.

[Abigail Genevieve]

4 minutes ago, MaeBe said:

Please don't expect people to read manifold pages of fiction to understand a post.

 

There was a pointed statement made, and I responded to it. The statement used the term penetration, not "dissimilar anatomy causing social discomfiture", or some other reason. It was extended as a "rule" across very different social situations as well, locker and girl's bedrooms. How that term is used in most situations is to infer sexual contact, so most readers would read that and think the statement is that we "need to keep trans girl's penises out of cis girls", which reads very closely to the idea that trans people are often portrayed as sexual predators.

 

I understand we can't always get all of our thoughts onto the page, but this doesn't read like an under-cooked idea or a lingual short cut.

Context.  Read the context.  Good grief.

[MaeBe]

1 minute ago, Abigail Genevieve said:

Context.  Read the context.  Good grief.

I get the concept, I believe. You're trying to state that trans kids need to or should be excluded from binary gender spaces and that you acknowledge that answers to accommodate those kids may not be found through policy. I disagree with the capability of "penetration" as being the operative delimiter in the statement, however. I contest this statement is poorly chosen at best and smacks of prejudice at worst. That it perpetuates certain stereotypes, whether that was the intent or not.

 

Frankly, all kids should have the right to privacy in locker rooms, regardless of gender, sexuality, or anatomy. They should also have access to exercise and activities that other kids do and allow them to socialize in those activities. The more kids are othered, extracted, or barred from the typical school day the more isolated and stigmatized they become. That's not healthy for anyone, the excluded for obvious reasons and the included for others--namely they get to be the "haves" and all that entails.

[Abigail Genevieve]

5 minutes ago, MaeBe said:

I get the concept, I believe. You're trying to state that trans kids need to or should be excluded from binary gender spaces and that you acknowledge that answers to accommodate those kids may not be found through policy. I disagree with the capability of "penetration" as being the operative delimiter in the statement, however. I contest this statement is poorly chosen at best and smacks of prejudice at worst. That it perpetuates certain stereotypes, whether that was the intent or not.

 

No.  You are getting stuck on one statement and pulling it out of context.

 

Trans kids have rights, but so do non-trans kids.  That conflict is best worked out in the individual situation. 

[Abigail Genevieve]

People who have no understanding of transgender conditions should not be making policy for people dealing with it. Since it is such a small percentage of the population, and each individual is unique, and their circumstances are also unique, each situation needs to be worked with individually to see that the best possible solution is implemented for those involved. 

[KathyLauren]

<Moderator hat on> 

I think that, at this point we need to get the thread back onto the topic, which is the judge's ruling on the ballot proposition.  If there is more to be said on the general principles of gendered spaces etc., please discuss them, carefully and respectfully, in separate threads.

<Moderator hat off>

[KayC]

As a registered CA voter I would be HAPPY to vote against this bill ... BUT as @Carolyn Marie mentioned it has little chance to make the ballot.  Hopefully this will put the Death Knell on the bill.

 

wrt Parents Rights of notification.  I would agree if there was potential harm to a child, or if the child was involved in potentially harming somebody else.  BUT, that would not be the case in the preponderance of situations.  The decision to Come Out to one's own parents should be up to the individual child only.  If the child does not feel Secure or Safe in their household then it should not be up to the State or School to make that determination.

If the child did feel safe and secure they would have probably already come out.  If they haven't ... then the situation seems obvious.  Protect the Child, not the System.

[Betty K]

Can I just say quickly re the bathroom question, how come no-one ever seems to suggest building more gender-neutral toilets?