Inclusivity has become an important concept in American culture. And recently, more and more school districts are moving toward gender-inclusiveness.
Some school districts are requiring teachers to use a student’s preferred name and pronouns instead of their legally given ones, and some schools are trying to stop segregating kids by “boys and girls,” instead splitting them up in different ways.
This is a very important step in society becoming more inclusive to transgender people and people outside the gender binary, but some people are less accepting of the idea.
Several articles written on the subject, such as one by Todd Starnes on the Fox News website, address the subject in a very sarcastic manner, as well as getting many facts wrong in the way they address advocating this change in schools.
Starnes writes, “The documents are chock-full of all sorts of advice for teachers as they deconstruct and reconstruct the notion of what constitutes a boy and what constitutes a girl.”
On it’s own, this would have been an accurate and unbiased account of the documented handed out in a Nebraska school that were meant to educate teachers on gender identities. However, that was ruined when Starnes sarcastically continued to refer to boys as “B-word” and girls as the “G-word.”
It is ignorant thinking like this that makes people view this important subject as a joke.
I don’t particularly care whether or not somebody is for or against this change in schools; by making jokes about it they are disrespecting entire communities of people that did nothing but ask for awareness.
There is no point in trying to hinder this progress. Change will come.
How does the way someone identifies themself affect you specifically? The move towards inclusion in all areas of life is important, and the transgender movement should be no different.
It is not a direct attack on your culture, your religion, your “family and home life”, or you personally. Someone coming out and making their identity known is a choice, and not one that should affect you in any negative way.
People need to stop attacking progressive movements like this when it has no real effect on them.