The problem is SCOTUS has worn down Tinker so much it is practically meaningless, since then they have permitted a lot of infringement on student speech. I don't think this is such a clear case. If his T-shirt said "The Holocaust Did Not Happen" could the school make him take it off? Or "A woman's place is in the home"?
The problem we have in the US, unlike Europe, is we don't have the concept of "Beliefs Worthy of Respect in a Democratic Society" that lets courts distinguish between things like saying there is no such thing as gender identity vs. Holocaust denial or advocating for slavery.
But I really wish his shirt said "There are no genders".
Yes, I would have preferred "there are only two sexes," as the word "gender" has too many meanings and is thus confusing.
However, that is the thing with free speech, do we allow all speech or do we restrict "hate speech?" And who determines which is offensive speech? Because obviously that is the dilemma?
I think the ACLU used to be right in defending the right of U.S Nazi's to march. Yes, totally offensive, but then in a society that values free speech, we who disagree with it can speak up. Dialog, discussion, dissent all should occur, but no restrictions on free speech unless it incites to violence, and even that is sometimes hard to agree on.
Your right to free speech depends largely on where you're speaking. Schools have never been considered a pure public forum where there can be no restrictions on speech, unlike a public park, or other traditional forum for speech. The standard for a march on a public street isn't the same as for schools. The standard for restricting speech in schools has always been lower than incitement to violence. I can stand on the street with a shirt that says "Fuck off" but I don't think there is much debate that schools have the right, some would say obligation, to have some standards for conduct, and that includes speech. Otherwise you could not have any anti-bullying rules, you could not restrict content that is inappropriatefor the student's ages, etc.
Remember, students are not free to leave school if they don't like someone's speech, that is one of the hallmark qualities of a public forum, you are free to leave if you don't like what you're hearing. Schools can regulate speech to maintain order, discipline, and prevent disruption of the educational process. Even Tinker recognized that students in public schools dont have unrestricted 1st Amendment rights. The Tinker's black armbands would have been treated very differently if they had swastikas on them, no public school would allow that.
But I really wish his shirt said "There are no genders".
Maybe I'm confused here, but isn't the feminist take that gender is absolutely real and there absolutely are two of them?
I was taught that gender is the hierarchy of roles and expectations imposed based on sex. There are two genders because there are two sexes. Male people get assigned to the powerful role that is entitled to lifelong servitude from female people, who get assigned to the servant role and all its ritualized submission behaviors.
There are different schools of feminism, but radical feminism holds that gender is a system of oppression of women based on sex. So you can't have a gender, you have a biological sex and society imposeds certain expectations on you based on that. But those expectations are not an "identity" someone can have. You're either a man or a woman. There is no "gender" as an identity on top of that.
The TRAs greatest advantage is our squeamishness about saying "sex" when we mean biological sex because people feel like they're referring to sexual intercourse. So people used "gender" as a euphemism for biological sex, that was all it meant. 20 years ago if you had to fill out a form asking your "gender" everyone understood it meant your biological sex, not your societally defined role or whether you felt masculine or feminine.
TRAs have taken that and first twisted gender into something different than sex, so they could say you could have a "gender" that is different from your sex, now they're saying your gender is your sex so you have to change your body to align it with your gender (at least some TRAs, the there are so many incoherent and contradictory ideas among TRAs as to what "gender" is it is impossible to say there is one belief among TRAs.)
There is never a reason to talk about a person in terms of their "gender" or to talk about different genders. That just feeds into TRA rhetoric.
"Maybe I'm confused here, but isn't the feminist take that gender is absolutely real and there absolutely are two of them?"
Literally the only reason you're confused is that the gender-woo crowd hijacked the word "gender," which traditionally had two meanings (1: a polite euphemism for biological sex, or 2: an adjective most commonly used to modify the word "roles"), so now it has multiple meanings.
"There are only 2 genders" on this t-shirt clearly means "there are only 2 sexes." It's using gender in its primary traditional meaning (#1 above).
The woman wishing that his shirt said "there are no genders" is using the word in its modern gender-woo meaning, which boils down to "identities based on a set of sexist stereotypes."
It's tricky because the word "gender" is used nowadays in so many ways. The way you are using it, of course that is real. The way gender ideologues use it, it refers to a soul of feminine, masculine, or "other" energy, which obviously is not real. I believe the woman you're replying to meant it in that second way.
Ah, thank you! I have been getting increasingly confused when feminist women say "There are zero genders" because, like, if there already were no genders then I wouldn't have to do any feminism any more. I do feminism because there are two genders and that's a bad thing.
I agree that SCOTUS has eroded Tinker, in favor of school administrations. But the UK has such a concept as "Beliefs Worthy of Respect in a Democracratic Society", and Maya Forstater lost in court (initially) by a judge who ruled that an expression of her gender critical beliefs was "not worthy of respect in a democratic society.” She won on appeal.
That was exactly my point. She won. And that was in the context of employment. In the US she would not have even been able to make the argument, the 1st Amendment doesn't apply to employers. We don't have the concept that there are certain ideas and beliefs that people can express and not be subject to adverse actions by their employers. In many ways the First Amendment analysis for schools (K-12) is more analogous to the analysis for where the government is acting as an employer than the public forum analysis. If you work for the government, your speech, on and off the job, can be restricted, i.e., police officers can be fired for racist private speech.
Yeah. I think Don't Ask Don't Tell was a prime example of this in action for many years. You wanna talk about restricted speech while working for the government...
And here I thought our First Amendment rights would have guaranteed such speech! Yikes! Thanks for the clarification.
The First Amendment applies against the government when it is acting in its role as government. It means the government cannot punish you for what you say, not that private actors can't. First Amendment jurisprudence relies on the idea that people who express dangerous or odious ideas will suffer consequences from society, not the government, and that will keep bad ideas from spreading and taking hold. The governmentcant outlaw Holocaust denial, but no ine has to employ or provide services to a Holocaust denier. If the first amendment appllied to private actors, no one could ever fire someone they found out was a Neo-Nazi. When the government is acting as an employer, it has less leeway than a private employer, but can still restrict speech. A public school teacher who tells students they must accept Jesus Christ as their lord and savior can be fired (although SCOTUS is trying to carve out a niche for Christians to proselytizing in public schools). I would hope a teacher who told girls they shouldn't apply to college because they need to get married and have babies would be fired as well.
I think my life in the academy enjoying academic freedom stunted my knowledge (although I always understood that my academic freedom pertained to my research, and not just any damn thing I wanted to say).
And, Not quite the same thing but I had my college advisor tell me it didn't matter what I majored in because I was just going to get married and have children. This was in 1971, so things have changed, although when I took up my first academic appointment I had to sit at a table in the faculty dining room and hear misogynist professors discuss why women with children (I was one) shouldn't work outside the home.
I would also prefer "There are only two sexes", but looks at it more like the freedom to say "There are many gods" or "There is one god".
There are two sexes.
Genders, whether grammatical or psychosocial, are more complicated to count.
Not at all, actually. Gender is a social construct and should not exist, so I just say there are zero, lol.
Justice is a social construct. School is a social construct. Practical jokes are a social construct. So is language, so is the internet.
And as for gender, I speak a language with three of them, so three is the minimum I will accept.
So, money should not exist? Marriage should not exist? Governments should not exude?
They are all social constructs.
Gender used to be a useful concept. I’d like it to be one again.
Gender used to be a useful concept.
How so? This is a gender critical website. We're critical of all forms of gender here.
Seriously? I honestly can’t tell if you’re trolling me. But, assuming you’re not.
“Gender critical” means critical of the theory of gender identity, which is a very recent use of the word “gender”.
The word “gender” used to mean two different things.
Grammatical gender, in which languages use feminine or masculine (or in some languages also neuter) pronouns are used for things. “Your spoon is dirty, it needs washing”, “Please move your chair, she is on my foot.”, “The boiler is leaking - he is cracked.” Linguists and teachers still need “gender” to think about these languages.
Psychosocial gender, the one that is constructed, the one we don’t think is more important than the sexed body - basically a whole set of stereotypes around what the two different sexes are expected by their culture to say and do.”Care work is gendered in our society.” Feminists have historically used this word to describe inequities in the ways women are restricted by social pressures in the patriarchy. Psychologists, historians, anthropologists, archaeologists, and many others, need this concept to help think about the unseen pressures that shape human behaviour - basically to think about the patriarchal system - and how to dismantle it.
The conflation of sex and gender is what we’re critical of, the idea of a pure true gendered essence, that there’s a gender self that is beyond social construction, and that if you’re not of the sex associated with those stereotypes, you need to have your body injected and carved into an imitation of the opposite sex to be okay. We don’t want to abolish sociology, or French grammar.
When it comes to biology, gender is BS and completely useless. The only thing it's done is oppress women and keep us in a box
"At Nichols, students are not only permitted but encouraged to embrace the belief that there are more than two genders. Middleborough teaches “that sex and gender have no biological foundation, are limitless, and are based on personal identity,” court filings showed."
His t-shirt actually states biological & scientific fact if it refers to sex.
How can a school get away with teaching that sex has no biological basis?
Sex has no biological foundation? Do they hear themselves??
The hypocrisy of Democrats on science is mind-blowing. They claim to "believe in science," but embrace this unscientific thinking.
100%. It's jaw dropping to see my fellow Dems claim to believe in science and yet also believe that there is such a thing as a gender-soul.
Except there are many "scientists" and formerly respectable publications like Scientific American that have managed to convince Democrats that the idea of binary sex is not scientifically valid, and "it's so much more complex" than XX/XY. Democrats like to think things are complex, so they fall for these "experts" telling them the idea that there are only 2 sexes is wrong. I can't tell you how many people in my FB feed have shared that Scientific American article, or blog posts from biology professors or some other "expert" saying that sex is not binary because of various chromosomal or hormonal disorders.
So they are listening to "the science", they've just fallen for propaganda claiming to be science.
Yeah, I don't know who the heck took over at Scientific American, but they've been publishing garbage. I almost expect to see a Scientific American article on healing crystals, next.
Ha. Do you live in the U.S? Because here, in all the Blue states, anyway, and many in the Red, and certainly in Massachusetts where this occurred, that is exactly what schools are teaching: "gender identity" where all students are encouraged to choose their "sex". That sex is fluid, thus humans can change it; you can be born in the wrong body, etc. etc. Trans 101. Forget biological sex, it's old hat, believed in by bigots only.
IN MA. there is a whole section in our Dept of Education policies on how to indoctrinate students in "gender' ideology. That is why what this young man is doing is very courageous and important. Another way to dissent to the lies being told our youth in schools. https://www.doe.mass.edu/sfs/lgbtq/genderidentity.html
If you listen to discourse on Reddit about the recent election, its all "But but KH never made Trans as her campaign point, it's all the Republicans who are obsessed with gender ideology".
No shit dude she didn't talk about it, because she couldn't answer a single question if she did campaign on it.
They have pushed this stupidity through all the state-sanctioned institutions, especially education and healthcare.
Yes, I do live in the US. I am an American. But don't have any kids or close relatives young enough to be in school.
But these lies need to stop.
This is why people voted for Trump. And while he wants to hand over control to the States & get rid of the Dept. Of Education, we still need some overarching rules at a federal level.
The Department of Education really has little to do with this. States are passing their own laws and creating their own policies. It is actually against federal law for the Department of Education to impose curriculum on public schools. Trust me, blue states don't need the DOE to tell them to teach about gender identity. They're imposing this on themselves.
Because they've bought into the idea that differences of sex development mean we can never say whether someone is male or female, sex is a spectrum so all that matters is your gender identity.