Is the depicted person Kayla Lemieux? We know the person is not Stephen Hanna, because the district said so.
If the depicted person IS KL, then this person is NOT a male shop teacher who mocking the real transgendered teacher.
If the person IS NOT KL, why didn’t the district clarify that, the same way they did with Mr. Hannah?
Understand, this isn’t a random transphobe who is also liked. This is a transphobe who has publicly created a hostile working environment and brought international attention to the district, by openly mocking a fellow teacher in a way that can only be described as thoroughly despicable, AND undeniably illegal. The district then openly embraces this teacher, promising to protect them and validate their teaching.
Seriously?
It’s not MY speculation, it’s the open claim of every media account of this situation, with literally zero statements to the contrary from anyone involved, who have commented multiple times about various aspects of the thing.
I have known cismen who reduce being a woman to secondary sex traits, and who have a real love-hate relationship with these traits, and who wear such outfits specifically to mock women. That requires a really specific relationship to female gender.
I have not known transwomen who have that relationship to female gender. I suppose anything is possible, but that would be an exceptionally unusual relationship.
“I was assigned male at birth, and I identify as a woman, and I will wear an outfit designed to caricature women” is not the usual trans approach.
“I was assigned male at birth, and I identify as male, and I am attracted to women but kind of also hate women, so I’m going to wear a ludicrous exaggeration of femininity” is an unfortunately common cis approach.
(Edit: of course there might be a transwoman who wears such an outfit in a sincere expression of gender. I’ve just not encountered that approach before, and consider it much less likely).
Can you provide the specific quote? This situation is unusual enough, and words are being parsed carefully enough, that a paraphrase might be missing something important.
I’ve read multiple stories quoting anonymous sources that say that last year the shop teacher, who identified as male at the time, was reprimanded for “toxic masculinity” and transphobic comments. Granted, it comes from anonymous sources but it’s false to say that there have been “literally zero” statement to the contrary.
And this reporting is from right-wing sources, sources that somehow lost all their “concern” with students being exposed to big boobs once the idea that the big-boobed teacher was a troll was floated.
Now, it’s possible that the Sun is completely fabricating these quotes from a real person who is deeply involved in this situation.
This is interesting. I haven’t seen that, but it does fit the anti-trans speculation, though not necessarily one that has a man targeting a different transwoman teacher.
Once again, we are left with speculation, and if the trolling shop teacher said, “My name is Kayla Lemieux now”, then what’s the district to do? They would act exactly as they have.
Only if they admit that the reason for dressing this way is to mock the other teacher. If they are trolling, but claim that this really is their gender expression, then it wouldn’t be illegal, and you would be chastised for calling it despicable.
If the administration has both transphobes who enjoy this trolling, and trans allies who are torn between wanting to support someone who claims a gender identity, but are aware that it is done in poor faith, then that’s pretty much the statement that they would come out with.
Please cite the media account that says that this is what this person wears every day, not just to school, but at home, while out shopping, while hanging with friends, you know, regular attire.
…as this thread somehow has managed to rocket past the “Republican war on transgender people” thread, with now over twice as many posts as that one, a reminder that this thread is all about this:
It isn’t about the actual discomfort to the student body. Just the potential discomfort. Because we don’t actually know how anyone from the student body actually feels. Because all we have is a video, a handful of (IMHO) questionable photos, and a statement from the board.
Meanwhile, in the UK:
If I were to post a story a day in this thread from the actual war on transgender people I would still only be scratching the surface. Things are really bad out there folks. I know how easy it is to get distracted. I’d be a hypocrite to say otherwise. But this thread really is about nothing. It was posted on September 19. Since then we have learned literally nothing new.
I barely care about this story, but in reading the thread it was pretty annoying that @RickJay was resisting inquiries into what exactly he confirmed and how he confirmed it. I have no emotional investment into the story being true or false, but I was intrigued by this seemingly deliberately uncooperative attitude.
I jumped in just to satisfy my own curiosity about whether or not he was being disingenuous.
I posted this:
He quoted that post and replied thusly:
A: The pictures are real.
B: Which pictures?
A: The pictures are real.
I did not miss that. There were also other links to other pictures in the thread. Did you miss that
Something I did miss is you posting that your friend confirmed the pictures in the article linked in the OP. I missed it because you didn’t post it.
I asked, “Which pictures?” in a post asking for clarification and you chose to respond with, “The pictures,” in a cagey manner. You made a deliberate choice not to clarify when you could have put the issue to bed.
You could have posted something like, “I sent a link to the story in the OP to my friend who is works in the district and my friend confirmed that that article was accurate and the pictures and videos in that Daily Mail article are authentic.”
It’s not just me. Multiple posters were asking for clarification and you could have cleared it up at any time, but you chose to play a game of pretending to engage while actually deflecting.
You answered, “What you mean by ‘The pictures’ isn’t clear, which pictures are you referring to?” with, “The pictures.”
It is clear that you’re not making a honest effort at contributing to the discussion in this thread. You posted what you posted. Everyone can see it.
Yup. I’m finding myself once again going after the low-hanging fruit, i.e., chela and his shitty bigotry. My bad, and I’ll try to stay out of the thread hereafter.
The actual war on transgender people is depressing as hell, and i feel totally helpless to do anything about it. My liberal state had a ballot measure to restrict trans people (and anyone who might not look exactly like their gender) from bathrooms. I did lobby a bunch of people to go vote against that. But when Florida screws over trans people, there’s not a lot i can do.
This thread is just annoying. It’s much easier to post about a minor annoyance than to read and engage with real, horrible problems that I’m helpless to do anything about.
That definition seems so simplistic as to not really be a definition at all. You really believes that’s all one needs to do is identify in order to be something? What if I identify as black, but I’m not? Or First Nations? Or Jewish? Or 23 when I’m really 17? Where exactly do you draw the line?
I believe that’s the “if we allow gay people to get married, then what?” slippery slope argument. I feel confident in saying we can cross each of those bridges as we come to them. This isn’t an all or nothing issue.
Plus, we’ve already had one major story about ‘trans-racial’ with Rachel Dolezal.
I think it’s helpful to realize that words can have multiple meanings, and sometimes these meanings overlap or conflict, and this may cause confusion. Both of these are valid definitions for women:
An adult of the sex typically associated with childbirth
A person who identifies as a woman
You’re right that the 2nd definition is very simplistic. It doesn’t actually define anything. The first definition is objective and actually defines what it is, but the second definition could be anything. But this is true for other words as well. For example, if someone says “I identify as a fan of the Dallas Cowboys”, that tells you very little about what that means to them. Perhaps it means they go to all the games, know all the players, dress in blue and grey, and so on. Or maybe it means they like the team but don’t watch the games, don’t know the players, and know very little about football. The gender version of words like “woman” is sort of like “fan” in that sense. It’s a personal identification that may or may not align with the group as a whole.
Another way to think of it is that a statement like “A season ticket holder to the Dallas Cowboys” is an objective statement that has a clear meaning. Either the person has a season ticket or they don’t. But “A fan of the Dallas Cowboys” can really mean anything. And also, not all season ticket holders are fans (e.g. a consultant who has tickets to give to clients) and not all fans are season ticket holders. Unfortunately the word “woman” has both an objective (sex-based) and subjective (gender-based) definitions, so there are often these huge conflicts about what is or isn’t a woman. But these conflicts often seem to be because people are trying to make the two definitions into a single definition. If instead you think of the word having two separate definitions, it’s easier to understand woman as a gender versus woman as a sex.
Oh-oh-oh, I wanna be free
Yeah, to feel the way I feel
Man! I feel like a woman!
I doubt it’s what she meant of course.
But a person who identifies as a gender feels that way all the time. That’s how their brain is physically wired. It’s not something they do out of convenience or as a joke or to make a point. They are that gender.
There are also people who are non-binary. They identify as neither. They may fluctuate between the two (genderfluid), they may feel like they have aspects of both, they may feel like they are a third gender entirely, or have no gender (agender). But these are sincerely-held beliefs that are part of their core identity.
The key though is that it is who they are. Not something they pretend to be, or something they do out of convenience. The protagonists of the classic TV show Bosom Buddies masqueraded as women but didn’t truly identify as them, and so they weren’t women.