Okay, so you know the Don’t Say Gay bill in Florida? The one that prohibits “gender ideology” in schools?
Classroom instruction by school personnel or third parties on sexual orientation or gender identity may not occur in kindergarten through grade 3 or in a manner that is not age appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards.
The words “he” and “she” are gender identities. “Mister” and “Missus” are gender identities. It’s illegal for a teacher in Florida to introduce themself as Mr or Mrs. It’s illegal for a teacher in Florida to tell a student another child’s pronouns, even inadvertently.
If a concern is not resolved by the school district, a parent may …. Bring an action against the school district to obtain a declaratory judgment that the school district procedure or practice violates this paragraph and seek injunctive relief. A court may award damages and shall award reasonable attorney fees and court costs to a parent who receives declaratory or injunctive relief.
As far as I can tell, this is exactly the kind of situation the Satanic Temple exists to help with. All it takes is one single parent in Florida to ask the Satanic Temple’s help suing a school for using the words “he” and “she” in the classroom.
BOOM. Overnight, the headlines “DeSantis law forces school to use gender neutral pronouns” would appear. It would be the biggest scandal and loss of face for the Republican party in the eyes of their voters since ever.
Why hasn’t this already been done?
Three links to the same story: letter recommends referring to all students as “they” and “them” to avoid “gendered pronouns” like “he” and “she.”
- https://scoop.upworthy.com/teacher-maliciously-complies-with-dont-say-gay-bill-to-use-they-them-pronouns-for-all-kids
- https://www.huffpost.com/entry/dont-say-gay-he-she-sabotage-teacher-letter-moms-for-liberty-florida_n_62489f02e4b0587dee6a3a1a
- https://news.yahoo.com/memo-circulated-florida-teachers-lays-234351376.html
‘Unrelated’ Aftermath:
I’ve seen that story before, and it doesn’t answer my question. I don’t think this is an issue teachers can solve by malicious compliance doing the right thing. This is an issue that parents need to solve. Because the bill allows parents to sue (and therefore establish legal precedent), not teachers. If a teacher uses genderless language, as you say, they’ll get fired. But if a parent sues a school for having the words he and she, and wins, it is now an incontrovertible part of the law that he and she are forbidden in Florida schools. This means teachers can no longer be punished for following the law, it means they have to follow the law, and this will have a much bigger impact on headlines due to its wider and firmer scope.
Why hasn’t a parent done this?
Note that teachers have an open lawsuit. Specifically:
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- The initial letter was signed, “Thank you, Mx. XXXXXXXXXX”
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- Florida teacher fired for using gender-neutral title Mx.
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- That teach and two others challenged the law in federal court, arguing the state’s laws on titles and pronouns is unconstitutional.
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Because judges are people, not robots mindlessly applying legislation. To succeed in such case you need the judges on the trial and all appeals to all decide to maliciously comply with the law.
Or you need a lawyer to make the very easy case, and the judge to have a shred of integrity.
Why haven’t they tried?
Because it’s not a very easy case. In fact, there is no real case.
- It’s not just a stretch, but a huge leap, to claim that using “he” or “she” counts as “instruction […] on sexual orientation or gender identity”.
- And even if you did manage that, you also have to argue that it’s also “not age appropriate”.
- And if you managed that as well somehow, you have the problem that judges can take into account things like the intent of the lawmakers, and what’s reasonable, not just the raw text of the law.
Side note:
If marriage is between a man and a woman as Republicans claim, then Mrs is not only a gender identity but also a sexual identity, and is doubly prohibited.
(Arguments that Mrs entails allosexual identity are equally predicated on Republican misconception, in this case lack of understanding of the sex/romance distinction)
I would not mind if people started suing schools for having gendered bathrooms.
I think your problem is that you think Republicans care about being logically consistent with their interpretation of the law. I think it’s clear that they take the outcome they want, and then work their way backwards.
This plan doesn’t need Republicans to cooperate. It only needs one parent to try, enough money to hire a lawyer, and a judge to do their job of following the law.
Because TST is shit and can’t follow through on their promises and use the courts to go after dissenters.
Plenty of reading at https://queersatanic.com/articles/ but a pattern becomes visible pretty quickly.
Sounds interesting, but I can’t find any 3rd party site discussing this. Do you have any links to neutral sources?
A lot of the articles in the earlier link have links within to additional sources many of them are links to court documents but some are needs stories like this one. https://www.newsweek.com/orgies-harassment-fraud-satanic-temple-rocked-accusations-lawsuit-1644042 obviously Newsweek isn’t great but I’m on Mobile atm and it’s the first one I found, I’m sure you can find more and from better sources in their article or a search and a lil time
Interesting read. It’s very much he said she said so far, so I’ll withhold judgement until more facts come to light. This would suck a lot if true, though.
I’m not sure how referring to someone as “Mr” would constitute “instruction on gender identity” but do elaborate.
Introducing yourself as a Mr means informing students you identify as a man.
Also the words man and woman are banned according to law.
You quoted why this won’t work yourself.
in a manner that is not age appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards.
They already provided their own “out” for anything they consider acceptable.
Nah, because of one word. Or. That means no gender for grade 3 and under, OR no gender that’s developmentally inappropriate. So yes, gender pronouns are allowed for the big kids, but not for the little ones.
Introducing yourself as a Mr means informing students you identify as a man.
No it doesn’t. What if I’m a woman who prefers Mr as my title.
Also the words man and woman are banned according to law.
No they aren’t. These words tell you the gender identity of someone, but they don’t explain what gender identity is.
Classroom instruction by school personnel or third parties on sexual orientation or gender identity may not occur in kindergarten through grade 3 or in a manner that is not age appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards.
Using words like “Mr,” “Mrs,” “man,” “she,” etc. does not constitute “classroom instruction … on … gender identity.”
If a teacher puts their lunchbag under their desk, they aren’t necessarily giving instruction on object permanence. Just because a psychological concept is associated with an act or phrase does not mean that the mere presence of this act or phrase in a classroom constitutes “instruction” on that act or phrase.
So you’re making the argument that if I were a Florida teacher, I introduced myself as Mx Endocrinous, wore nonbinary and trans and gay flag pins, had an it/its pronoun pin, and referred to myself as dronegender, this would all be perfectly legal so long as I didn’t explain what any of these words or symbols meant?
Nope, because now you’ve started to provide more information than is necessary to identify yourself.
My interpretations of the Florida law for your examples, but of course I’m not a lawyer, this isn’t legal advice, and my interpretation of the law is different than what I believe is ethical:
I introduced myself as Mx Endocrinous,
This is fine. You’re just giving students knowledge to identify yourself.
wore nonbinary and trans and gay flag pins,
I think this is probably on the borderline, but I don’t believe the law would allow this. You’re conveying information beyond what the students need to know to identify you.
On the other hand, I think the law also prevents someone from wearing anti-trans and anti-gay flag pins (if those exist? I’m not up-to-date on hate symbols).
had an it/its pronoun pin,
Legal IMO. At it’s core, it’s just two English words on a pin which have meaning far outside the sphere of gender identity. If you’re using it to indicate how students should refer to you, it’s also legal IMO.
and referred to myself as dronegender,
Not legal IMO. It’s outside of the basic information necessary to have a conversation with or about you.
I don’t personally this is a particularly good law, but I also don’t believe it is as restrictive as you’ve described it. And I’m not a lawyer. The law is written about “classroom instruction,” so as long as what you’re doing doesn’t constitute that, you’re fine. The difficulty, as you’ve pointed out, is defining what that means.
Well if the bare minimum is identification, then all you need is a first name and a last name. No gendered pronouns or titles necessary.
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I don’t think it would be evil to ban gendered pronouns in Florida schools. I think it would provoke a great deal of careful thought in these schools and broaden students’ horizons. And I also think the Republicans would immediately undo it to “save the kids” by repealing the Don’t Say Gay bill inside of a month. So ultimately no harm done, and quite likely some good for the students. But on a broader level, it would do a lot of good by repealing the bill and making Republican policies look hostile to Republican voter interests, delegitimising the party’s image in Florida and swinging the state left.
