I worked in primary education somewhat recently, and I regularly get the bus in the morning with kids, and I firmly think you’re wrong here. I still hear it used like that, perhaps not as badly as when I was in school, but it’s still prevalent where I’m from.
Growing up my parents had quite a few gay friends, some who to this day I essentially consider aunts and uncles. One of my mum’s female best friends was married to a trans man. For a kid of the nineties, I probably had far more exposure and understanding of these things than most of my peers did. I didn’t “aggressively” explore these things, I’m straight and have only had hetero sexual experiences. I don’t buy your premise that understanding these things at a young age causes kids to become raging homos. Admittedly I’m being heavily anecdotal there, but who doesn’t find their opinions to be informative of their opinions to some extent?
I think you’re showing a massive misunderstanding of why that kind of ignorance actually persisted, also I don’t consider the late 2000’s “back then” that’s pretty recent in my book in terms of knowledge available to us.
Reading a story say - My two dads, to 7 year olds, sounds like it could be really helpful to kids with gay parents without risking anything to the health of children. Win win.
I clearly acknowledged that my experience was completely atypical. That’s why I’m so well rounded and lovely to people of all descriptions and others aren’t
Fuck man, we can have a discussion without you trying to find contradictions constantly. It doesn’t have to be so adversarial just because we are coming at it from different angles lol
Perhaps these activities can help normalize few things.
However, In my experience, acceptance is not taught.
It is just experienced. If the society around kids is geared in that direction, the kid will automatically pick up the cues and have his behaviour moulded accordingly.
As long as parents can get to decide they want their kids to go through this highly unnecessary activity, I guess I am fine with it.
You can’t mould someone into being gay. It’s a sexual preference. You could potentially encourage a kid to explore their sexuality but there is no harm in that. If you error there are no consequences.
I feel like a lot of the posters here are very progressive and it shows. For me this LGBT acceptance and kids should not be a topic. Kids are not inherently intolorent or exclusionary these are learnt behavior. As a parent I just want my kid to learn how to read, write and learn how to form social bonds/interactions. There no need to confuse forming brains with sexuality and gender it’s not necessary. I would pull my child out of any class that teaches them “you can be a boy or girl it’s up to you”
I would be happy to discuss this later (tomorrow probably), so perhaps this post can be a bit of a prompt to start that…
I’m not entirely clear on what your concerns are. You presented the case of the fourteen year old you know, that seemed to be the main thing you spoke about. I have no idea what the circumstances of that are, it’s an enecdotal example and I’m not sure what I’m meant to say in response to be honest mate. I’ve not been in here advocating kids/teenagers going abroad to transition. It’s a complicated issue, I’m not entirely sure of my own position on the surgery side of things, because I’m not knowledgeable enough about the topic.
I’m more than happy to have a chat and explore the topic, but don’t misunderstand me and think that I necessarily have the most entrenched position on this, beyond thinking that acceptance and understanding is very important.
I’m not arguing either way on kids transitioning, because I have no strong feeling and am really not informed enough. Its a very tricky topic, to be sure.
What about parents who want to opt their kids out of learning about evolution? There are things it’s society’s job to teach the upcoming generations and LGBT is one of those things. The how should be an evolving thing.
An evolution denier would want to forever ban that content from being exposed to the kid,
I am advocating teaching kids when they can contemplate such content, ideally after or around age 10, not 4.
My whole stance in this discussion has been about 4-11 being too soon.
The education should definitely be given but the age group mentioned in the article (which began this discussion) was 4-11.
I would rather I teach my kids these things most 10-11 leave school unable to read. Yet at the top of the list is LGBT tolerance to kids that may not hold perversive/if any views on the subject in the first place. No one is the moral arbiter to lead to more virtuous thought. All the need to do (like I mentioned above) to read, write learn how to form social bonds.And please don’t quote me out of context where everyone can see what is written.
