South Dakota’s latest expression of Legislative trans-panic came yesterday from the House, which voted 39–30 to ban teachers from talking about “gender dysphoria.”
House Bill 1108 has at least been revised down from the absurd and dysfunctional gag rule that Representative Tom Pischke (R-25/Dell Rapids) wanted to impose on teachers to prohibit any discussion of differences between boys and girls before grade 8. HB 1108 was pared down in committee to focus on gender dysphoria.
Pischke filled the debate with vague and anonymous anecdotes confirming his prejudices and rejection of diversity in South Dakota. He used an e-mail from an opposing educator who promotes a “gender-inclusive” classroom as further evidence that the state needs to crack down on teachers accepting gender nonconformity.
In the midst of the ugliness foisted on us by paranoid Republicans, Representative Lana Greenfield (R-2/Doland), a former teacher herself made this statement: “Our classrooms are meant for instruction, not for putting seeds in children’s minds that aren’t even there in the first place.”
Wow—if Greenfield spent 37 years in classrooms and never put any seeds of new ideas in her students’ heads, what the heck was she doing there?
See and shake your head at the debate yourself, with Pischke taking the floor with his spite at 0:35:00, and Greenfield’s inane comment at about 1:00:15:
Cory wrote:
Wow—if Greenfield spent 37 years in classrooms and never put any seeds of new ideas in her students’ heads, what the heck was she doing there?
I’ll translate for you Cory. It’s the Parents right to educate their children about sexuality, not teachers.
Do you have an issue with that?
Tom Pischke and his homophobic friends must want a South Dakota boycott. How about some lost dollars for the state, Pischke?
Why can’t better people run for the SD Legislature? Why?
Time for me to do my duty as a citizen and to call up Minnesota Public Radio to tell them about the latest SD HATE bill.
Back in my days in school, boys had access to sports activities after school, but girls did not. I guess it was felt that boys were expected to be interested in sports, but not girls. I’m not sure why anyone thought that a two X chromosomes meant that girls wouldn’t want to play football or basketball. In fact, we knew from our vacant lot football games on South 4th Avenue in Sioux Falls that girls did play rough and tumble sports until their parents said they were “too old” to play “boys games.” Generally that meant the girls were approaching puberty.
Of course, all those assumptions about what girls and boys should do and like and aspire to was nonsense. There were many boys who didn’t like sports and many girls who did. Girls had access to a few sports: tennis, gymnastics and swimming. When it came to school-sponsored sports, only gymnastics, as far as I remember, was open to girls.
It was unfair. To girls it was unfair, because their full selves could not be expressed. Even the right to say they didn’t want to participate in basketball was taken away from them. To boys it was unfair, because they were expected to participate in an activity they didn’t enjoy.
Isn’t it great that all of those sorts of gender assumptions that some people had back then were done away with? Teachers, finally, could instruct girls about what boys only had been allowed to be instructed in.
I really think this bill is a sop to the dumb, and really does nothing. If I’m a teacher, I’m going to find a way to make sure students are safe and comfortable being themselves, and if that means having a classroom “discussion” (not instruction) about sexuality generally, I’ll do that, thank you very much. I don’t have to say “gender dysphoria” and I don’t have to “instruct.” But, really, why have such a stupid bill.
Jenny, I saw it happen, although I don’t know exactly how it happened. SoDak, over the course of 40 years—roughly 1970-2010—became a one-party state. That party, nominally known as “Republicans,” became a death-cult, idol-worshipping, knowledge-hating, money-worshipping, crowd of clowns.
Clowns? Just look at and listen to Brock or Lana, Al Novstrup, Phil Jensen, Fred Deutsch, and many others who can slip into and out of the same underwear.
Since the Inception of the Inquisition, in most legislative districts, if you are a pigturd and are on the ballot in the R group, you are “elected.” To get on the ballot, you must appeal to group of morons who are looking for the person who promises to most restrict economic good sense, academic excellence, sexuality, and, generally, personal liberty.
In SoDak, you can’t raise money to fight these pigturds, and you risk your own financial and personal and family security by even trying.
Jason: would you do away with sex education generally? If so, I can’t agree. While you may want to make values-based arguments about sex, studies show that sex education may actually delay sexual activity among kids, increase use of condoms, and reduce std’s and teen prenancy. Here is a 538 piece about it: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-does-science-tell-us-about-sex-ed/
It seems to work.
Jason obviously would do away with education, generally.
The mindlessness of these anti-education bills is stunning. No factual evidence is addressed–only perverted anecdotes that are the products of the sick minds of their authors. But the motive seems to be to prepare the way for teachers such as this sub who was eventually determined ineligible to teach. She “berated [a] fifth-grader for his clothing and made other outlandish remarks — invoking President Trump and religion before falsely telling students the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. committed suicide.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2019/02/13/she-was-trying-put-us-black-kids-down-sub-resigns-after-class-says-she-spread-mlk-conspiracy/?utm_term=.334683d429a9
Dicta,
I am not saying to do away with sex education.
Jenny,
The Minneapolis area elected an anti-Semite. It’s the city of hate.
So what areas of sexuality should teachers cover and what should they not?
None Dicta.
Northern Mississippi wingnuts are famous now-
https://thinkprogress.org/south-dakota-transgender-school-erasure-cabc8f124480/
Rilly good shoe.
https://thinkprogress.org/west-virginia-lawmaker-compares-lgbtq-community-kkk-2e0134271e92/
Yup, the wingnut party is full of white, kristian Gayters and white, kristian closeted Gayters.
So sex and sexuality are not related? I am curious how you would distinguish. If it’s how sexing is done, it’s cool, but if it is who sexing is done with it isn’t?
SDGOP campaigns, Frank and Ernest get it right:
https://goo.gl/ziRZtV
All I can think of typing is; ‘Good thing I have kept my membership to “The Flat Earth Club” current.
Looking to inject some humor into an extremely sad day in the history of South Dakota law making.
CIRD said, “Republicans,” became a death-cult, idol-worshipping, knowledge-hating, money-worshipping, crowd of clowns.”
I think you were too generous. They are so hateful. It’s really sad.
I am really grateful to those of you who’ve stayed in SD and keep fighting. You are people of courage and determination. I do my best to have your back in every way I can.
Here is another of Greenfield’s lucid insights into education, preceded by the headline “Greenfield: ‘Protecting children’ are spin doctor buzz words.”
https://plainsman.com/article/greenfield-protecting-children-are-spin-doctor-buzz-words
Newquist’s link to the Plainsman story on Lana is quite a read. She illustrates well how her crowd of Rotundites have cast themselves into self-parody. I can easily see how she may well have taught for 37 years and not imparted a new idea to anyone.
She is right about “if it saves just one child” (or approximations of such compassionate rhetoric about children) being “buzzwords. Any advocate in argument can break that meaningless phrase out at any time.
“Proponents of medical marijuana told Greenfield and other members of the House Health and Human Services Committee that marijuana was put on Earth by God for people to use,” the article says.
Lana replied, “Is that what they really wanted? No. Medical marijuana would be a stepping stone for legalized recreational marijuana.”
Lana is in a bad place here. Her only reference book for most issues does say that “all green seed-bearing plants” were given to man by god. To admit that, she has to admit that cannabis might have a purpose. Then she might have to remember the films she’s seen wherein babies are suffering seizures until a drop of cannabis product is placed under their tongues, whereat the seizures stop.
“And so, again, we let the children down by not passing the medical marijuana,” she concludes with an attempt at sarcasm.
Yes, she did. Every element of her position on the subject requires acceptance of bull**** as truth when the truth lies on the table in front of you, and her, in considerably more palatable presentation.
In my characterizations of her political party, the Rotundites, above, I neglected to include the most repulsive of all their character defects. Each seems to think his or her twisted interpretation of a book of history and mythology (from which they largely take the mythology while ignoring the history) should be inflicted on all of us.
Bull$#it! I should be able to say bull$#it and not “bull****,” when the object being categorized is clearly bull$#it, not bull****.
It seems possible that this hate on teachers and education is coming directly from the White House, during President Pinocchino’s campaign for his wall in El Paso, TX the other night his son, Donald, Jr., took the stage to indoctrinate teenagers. Junior told the kids to ignore “loser teachers” and to ignore the socialism they teach.
Haters got’s to hate…until their business shuts it’s doors. This guy is as clueless as the haters here in South Dakota. So dumb that they are hurting legitimate business in our state. Dumb means dumb. See how this Colorado business closed shop. https://koaa.com/news/2019/02/11/prime-time-sports-forced-to-close-after-removing-nike-apparel-from-store/
Karma is a real b*tch sometimes.
Jason, don’t be dense. Teaching is all about putting ideas in kids’ heads that weren’t there and never would have gotten there otherwise. Greenfield’s ill-phrased conclusion shows her failure to understand her own profession.
Jenny, better people do run for the Legislature. South Dakotans tend not to vote for them; a voting majority of South Dakotans prefer kakistocracy.
Interesting historical perspective, Donald. a generation or two ago, we might have thought a girl who wanted to play football had some kind of mental problem, some flawed understanding of her sex that needed correcting. We might have feared that a tough girl playing football might make our own daughters act less womanly. Oh, the horrors!
Dicta, I worry Jason’s and Pischke’s and Lana’s thinking goes beyond doing away with sex education. Pischke made it sound like even a teacher who tries to be “gender inclusive,” who strives as Donald suggests to create a safe space for learning for all kids, is an enemy to family values and a threat to young children. Jason and Pischke and Lana appears to want elementary school to be a free fire zone for kids who want to harass kids whose gender identity doesn’t conform to the norms Pischke and Lana want to beat into them.
Mike, and with that news, another year’s worth of the GOED and Tourism marketing budgets goes down the tubes.
I wish I could offer something to dispel that sadness, Francis, but I can’t. South Dakota government is this bad, this stupid, this angry, this fearful, and this wrong. Teachers just trying to be decent to kids and teach kids to be decent to each other are portrayed as enemies of public morality.
Cory … as a licensed teacher, you probably can’t answer this (in CO you could). Are there any LGBTQ teachers in elementary or middle school in South Dakota or aren’t they able to be who they are and still stay employed?
Boy, David, CIRD< that Lana article in the Huron paper is a whopper. I bet if we turned her rhetoric around to argue against all of her beloved restrictions on abortion, she'd flip out. Protecting children is political psin when we're talking about bills Lana doesn't like, but protecting children is God's will when we're talking about bills she likes.
Why do people get hung up on sex education?
It happens everyone knows it happens so mention it.
Denmark has low teen birth rates they teach it
Pbs had a show about teaching it in kindergarten like some other countries
Denmark also has low aggressive sexual assaults.
Americans and SD can’t even say the word in public hardly. Yes parents have a responsibility, however there are a lot of
Parents busy with trying to pay the bills.
Get over it, throw it all out there why are we so afraid???
Why do people get hung up on sex education?
It happens everyone knows it happens so mention it.
Denmark has low teen birth rates they teach it
Pbs had a show about teaching it in kindergarten like some other countries
Denmark also has low aggressive sexual assaults.
Americans and SD can’t even say the word in public hardly. Yes parents have a responsibility, however there are a lot of
Parents busy with trying to pay the bills.
Get over it, throw it all out there why are we so afraid??
T, excellent questions. I think it’s closely related to distorted views of the bible. Sexual issues were not dominant in Jesus’ teachings, loving generosity and caring for others in need was.
Topnotch mental health pros would be the best folks to answer why US citizens on the conservative, right, fundamentalist, repressive, misogynistic, homophobic, evangelical (take your pick) side are so extremely fixated on sexuality. It is bizarre. Surely has a large dose of shame and fear attached.
We’ve often bemoaned the state of the media, especially the propaganda sources like Breitbart, Faux Noise and similar outlets. They feed the sexual hysteria the Wrong seems engulfed by.
Sheila Kennedy has some thoughts on the matter of reforming the media to better serve the citizens and our democracy.
https://goo.gl/45mChX
I’m thinking of the return of a type of Fairness Doctrine and some form of an enforceable Code of Ethics. For example: X number of lies gets a media source penalized, with temporary, or even permanent shutdowns on the menu.
Correct and true information would be a tremendous asset as we rebuild our nation beginning in 2021.
Here’s an idea for Greenfield and the rest of the SDGOP:
“Bills introduced in the first weeks of the session would require all Minnesota schools to have a counselor on staff, mandate instruction about mental health and provide online suicide prevention training for districts across the state. Others would beef up existing mental health grant programs or fund full-service community schools, where students and families could receive medical and mental health services.”
https://goo.gl/hPKoWr
It is fully supported by Sen. Carla Nelson, R-Rochester, chairwoman of the Education Finance and Policy Committee and the rest of the MNGOP. Where did they come up with this radical idea? Why, the teachers, families and school boards asked and legislators actually listened and figured those constituents knew best. Imagine!
That’s the kind of thing a Real State Legislature does. Koch/NRA legislatures don’t do any of that.
Jason,
and your party elected Eric Porterfield.
You have no argument.
Corty wrote:
Jason, don’t be dense. Teaching is all about putting ideas in kids’ heads that weren’t there and never would have gotten there otherwise.
It is the parents decision what is taught to their children.
The party of hate strikes again.
How I became the most hated lesbian in Baltimore.
https://www.afterellen.com/general-news/568221-how-i-became-the-most-hated-lesbian-in-baltimore#dxTPdpYxUevCwPdQ.99
Dicta,
Do I really need to tell you the difference between sexuality and sex?
As is often the case when people are asking questions about where you draw lines, yes, Jason, I want you to make distinctions for me on what is ok to teach and what isn’t. My larger concern is that anal sex, which is of particular concern to many gay men, has an inherently higher risk of transfer of venereal diseases than vaginal and that not teaching gay youth about appropriate precautions puts them at higher risk. I know you want to put a neat little wall between sex and sexuality, but the line is blurry. I don’t understand why preventing the transfer of information is laudable.
Dicta,
Condoms deal with sex education, not sexuality.
Jason, “It is the parents decision what is taught to their children.”
Only partially true. The community actually decides what is taught in school through the elected school board, their hired administration, and teaching staff. Your error is again thinking that schools are for parents — that notion is far too restrictive; much in the same way that communities pay taxes for the community to have a school, curriculum is decided at that level as well. This also checks misinformation or gaps in information of relying on untrained “teachers.”
The ONLY time your statement is wholly correct is if the choice is made to homeschool a student.
So if a student asksA question about Gender dysphoria the teacher can’t explain what it is? The school counselor cannot Talk to a student about gender dysphoria? What if the student has dysfunctional parents that aren’t in the picture, or Parents that are anti-LGBT.
Sometimes, it’s rather embarrassing to be from South Dakota.
Jenny wrote:
So if a student asksA question about Gender dysphoria the teacher can’t explain what it is? The school counselor cannot Talk to a student about gender dysphoria?
The teacher tells the student to talk to their parents and then the teachers informs the parents.
Jenny wrote:
What if the student has dysfunctional parents that aren’t in the picture, or Parents that are anti-LGBT.
Thanks for admitting why laws like this are needed.
Your arrogant and fascist thinking that you, a teacher, or the Government has the right to decide how to raise someone else’s child is disgusting and anti-American.
It’s embarrassing that fascist people like you live in South Dakota.
Jason, you are The perfect example of the typical closed minded South Dakota thinking.
Keeping the education of sex out of public schools Doesn’t solve anything. It won’t make transgenders Go away no matter how much you want them to.
I understand that you have great fear towards the LGBT And with scary sounding words like gender dysphoria. I just think maybe you should come to terms with that fear and anger towards people that Are different than you andmaybe perhaps talk to a counselor about it
Jenny,
This bill is about Parents rights, not lbgt.
You are a fsscist.
Run along Jason
Jenny
That is exactly my point. If a little one asks
A question there is no place in the school to answer the question in a non biased fashion.
I answered questions honestly about “breasts” when my son was in kindergarten, next day I had four of his friends over (noninvited) knocking on the door with their questions. Even though tempted to tell the little shts the truth I politely sent them back to their parents. Which one said “I can’t ask my dad”
This is a natural part of the world we get uptight about and shield from the youth.
I was fortune to
Go to school in Denmark. There
Was no giggling or bullying when it came to
Any closed conversations not allowed in our schools. The hallways were safe and
Free from biase and judgment. We need to take a lesson from this instead of chastising the inquisitive
C’mon now Jenny. Surely you can see Jason prefers parents be allowed to raise their children any way they choose. Ignorant, unvaccinated, abused, etc. Jason has been very clear. Schools have no business trying to educate or protect children. Taking his “argument” to it’s logical conclusion, at least JasonLogic, means fascism. I think schools are basically babysitters taking orders from Much Wiser Parents in JasonWorld.
It’s either that or Jason has massive issues about topics related to sex, gender, sexuality, etc., because he’s become very upset about this.
Jason
You frequently call commenters on this blog ‘fascist’. Can you please define what you think a fascist is?
Teachers’ Union President, Transgender Advocate Push LGBTQ Agenda on Kindergartners
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2019/03/05/teachers-union-president-transgender-advocate-push-lgbtq-agenda-to-kindergartners/
We have some smart legislators in South Dakota.
Jenny,
You voted for the Jew hater.
Now there is a real credible source, Debbo.
If you believe anything that Breitbart post, you are a mental pigmy.
Prove it didn’t happen Roger.
Prove it did happen, Jason, and use a credible source.
You should read the article before making yourself look like an idiot.
“I have a girl brain but a boy body,” McBride read from I Am Jazz, the Washington Post reported. “This is called transgender. I was born this way.”
Yes, I understand the Washington Post lies a lot, but they usually don’t about things they like.
Are you going to apologize to Breitbart and me Roger for you being an idiot?
Roger, let’s allow Jason to play with his, uh, sources. He’d like us to think he’s really smart. Uh, yeah. It’s past your bedtime Jason. Good night.