Originally published at: Virginia school board pays $1.3m to trans student it banned from the boys' bathroom | Boing Boing
…
11 Likes
It’s so much cheaper and easier not to discriminate. But for some people, I guess you just can’t put a price on the power trip you get from being an asshole to a child.
41 Likes
I hope Mr. Grimm puts that money toward a college education and a home far away from Gloucester County, in one of those liberal districts where any talk about “taxpayer dollars” is backed up by actual attempts not to waste them.
25 Likes
Enjoy your much deserved riches good Sir, and move out’a Virginia.
14 Likes
To be fair, northern VA and parts of Richmond aren’t so bad, but yeah, definitely not the rest of the state.
7 Likes
It’s good that the student was given reparations, but the monetary penalties are taken from the schools and it’s the other students who will be paying the price, not the administrators who made the policies. Qualified immunity really needs to go and government employees be held personally liable for misbehavior. At the very least a penalty of mandatory firing of the officials in question, and possibly docking their retirement pensions.
15 Likes
I get the impulse to urge him to leave, but places change. Manassas used to be a very conservative area, but it’s now twice elected Danica Roem to the Virginia House of Delegates.
7 Likes
If only there were some way that they could have avoided spending millions to discriminate illegally.
19 Likes
But wait! I thought the trans panic thing was about cis men faking it and dressing up as women to sneakily use women’s bathrooms, and all of the horrible things they wanted to do to people’s wives and daughters (note: referred to as possessions of the males being addressed).
Assuming that since this young gent started hormone therapy as a freshman, and is not fully grown, that there has been no SRS as of this date (a big assumption, and certainly not a necessary part of being trans). The trans scare risk here is what exactly? That there’s going to be one more stall occupied regardless of whether it’s a #1 or a #2? Certainly their strong strapping young sons aren’t in fear of this student (because they’re so manly that they could kick his ass nine ways from sunday). Hell, even the principal was on board with the bathroom use plan.
I’m betting that the kids are probably fine with it (with a few exceptions), as school age kids seem much better on these issues than my generation was/is, and there’s some asshole parent complaining to the school board that God will punish the evil sinners, or there’s some uber conservative on the board who knows that they’re going to lose, but wasting money meant to educate kids to push your bigoted opinion is serving the man upstairs or some crap like that.
I actually have a ton of ivermectin here (to treat animals, not humans), but I’d gladly pass it along if some school board members want to mainline it…
9 Likes
Seems like it would have just been cheaper to mind their own business in the first place.
14 Likes
Don’t you have anything in the us to make the employees who made those decisions liable after the judiciary rule that the state was wrong?
As a public worker in brazil, i have qualified immunity, because my actions as an employee are considered as a state action and the wronged person has to sue the state to reverse it.
However, it doesn’t exempt me from any responsibility to reimburse the state for any damages and it would trigger other punishments, as being fired.
On the other hand, it protect me against frivolous and SLAPP lawsuits that would make my work much more slow and defensive.
My perception is that it is extremely abused in the us and it seems easier to get rid of all of it instead of fixing it, but it seems like throwing the baby out with the bathwater to me, and it would make the work of good public employees much harder.
1 Like
Good!
I was recently on the phone with a colleague in VA and he, apropos of nothing, said something about, “we don’t even know what bathroom to use anymore! (Chuckle).”
I don’t know why he thought I’d be a sympathetic ear. I responded, “oh, Phil, I didn’t realize you were having a gender identity crisis. (He isn’t) How can I help?”
He shut right up about that.
13 Likes
That seems like a reasonable way the US could do things as well if they wanted to - in the event that a public worker breaks the law, incurring a lawsuit against the municipality or state, then they could be held liable for damages to the state and also, therefore, be out of a job when the state sues them.)
2 Likes
“identifying as a man”, @beschizza, what the heck? Get that transphobic language outta here. Men who are also trans are. men.
1 Like
“Identifies as” is surely OK unless you’re a cynic who interprets it in bad faith. It’s widely used by trans people, activists, resource centers and so on, with good reason: because identification is a precondition of identity. The assumption that the term “identifies as” is instrinsically transphobic really just tells me you’ve internalized transphobic frames of reference. Read one too many nasty helicopter jokes, perhaps?
Cf. the term “performative”, which originally refered to what is made real by performance (a legal verdict, the perception of happiness created by a smile, your gender) but cannot now be used without confusion with its toxified use to mean “posed”.
5 Likes
Nobody is more insistent that you know exactly what gender they are than a cishet man.
5 Likes
Interpreting it as tranphobic isn’t always valid, but the use of “identifies as” is falling out of favor among a lot of us trans folk, specifically for the reason @cole.perry notes . Yes, it may very well be a reaction to those stupid helicopter votes, but it’s also a progress of self-identity. Identification as a given gender is a necessary component of being that gender, but many of us feel it’s more empowering to simply say “I am a …”, if only to remove a potential gap for actual bigots.
7 Likes
