Transgender Teachers Suing Florida Over Pronoun Restrictions
The inevitable pushback against the pushback has begun.
POLITICO (“Teachers sue Florida over pronoun restrictions in schools“):
Three Florida teachers sued state and local officials in federal court Wednesday seeking to overturn a new law forbidding employees from using pronouns in schools that differ from their sex at birth.
The group, represented by the Southern Poverty Law Center, contend that the law passed by state Republicans and lauded by Gov. Ron DeSantis earlier this year amounts to sex discrimination and violates their constitutional rights, putting them at risk of losing their educator credentials — or jobs — for being “who they are.”
[…]
“Plaintiffs are current and former Florida public-school teachers who simply wanted to teach math, science, and their other school subjects of expertise,” attorneys for the educators wrote in the lawsuit. “But earlier this year, Florida enacted a new law that pushed one plaintiff out of their teaching career and threatens to do the same for the other plaintiffs—and for the other transgender and nonbinary teachers like them across Florida.”
The lawsuit disputes a wide-ranging state law that regulates how students and teachers can use pronouns.
Enacted by the Florida Department of Education in August, the legislation stipulated that school employees can’t ask students for their preferred pronouns and restricts school staff from sharing their pronouns with students if they “do not correspond” with their sex. Under this policy, it is considered “false to ascribe” a person with a pronoun that “does not correspond to such person’s sex.”
This new law, according to the complaint, has “stigmatized” transgender and non-binary teachers, “threatened their psychological wellbeing” and “upended the respect that is owed to them as educators.”
As an example, one plaintiff, Katie Wood, who teaches math at a Hillsborough County high school, is a transgender woman who transitioned in 2020 and has since used she/her pronouns, including when she started at the school district two years ago. But under the new rules, Wood this year was told by school administrators that she could no longer use female pronouns and would have to use titles like Mr., teacher, or coach. Further, the lawsuit alleges that Wood is forbidden from correcting students who refer to her as Mr. or by he/him pronouns.
As such, the group argues that Florida’s school pronoun law violates constitutional rights tied to sex discrimination, equal protection clauses and free speech, among others. They insist the policy is part of a larger attack on the LGBTQ+ community by Florida conservatives, who passed other measures such as banning gender-affirming care for minors, restricting drag shows and regulating bathroom use for transgender people.
The law “discriminates against transgender and nonbinary public-school employees and contractors on the basis of sex, by prohibiting them from using the titles and pronouns that express who they are,” the lawsuit alleges. It “requires (the teachers) to shed their titles and pronouns at the schoolhouse gate because they are not the titles and pronouns that Florida prefers for the sex it deems them to be.”
This case would seem to be a slam dunk, given recent Supreme Court interpretations of civil rights laws.
Beyond that, it’s hard to see any legitimate public purpose served by these laws. The absurdity of requiring students to address a teacher presenting as female as “Mr.” (or, for that matter, a math teacher as “coach”) is palpable. To say nothing of the humiliation and degradation of the teacher having to endure this as a condition of employment.
I get that there are substantial numbers of people who, for religious and cultural reasons, find homosexuality and transgenderism icky, if not an abomination before their deity. But it’s not a proper use of state power to erase their existence.
The essence of Dobbs was that unless a right is explicitly specified in a statute, the government doesn’t need a legitimate purpose to restrict it.
So I wouldn’t be too sure that this gets overturned.
By the way, the counterargument to Dobbs was that in the absence of a legitimate public purpose, the right to privacy should prevail. All this, in turn, based on the principle of substantive due process, which is a fancy way of saying that the government must have a valid reason before it interferes with citizens’ private lives.
Dobbs wasn’t just bad because it allowed states to restrict abortions, it was also bad because it opened the door to states restricting a whole bunch of other rights, too.
I think it can’t be stressed enough that Conservatives literally want to make it illegal to acknowledge that LGBTQ+ people exist. They literally (in the old fashioned, literal sense of that word) are pulling books off the shelf because a character has two dads or two moms. I wonder if a lawsuit demanding books be removed if they mention a character’s religion would get anywhere?
@drj: I don’t think that’s right. Even the majorities in Roe, Webster, and Casey acknowledged the legitimate state interest in protecting the rights of the unborn child. The question was simply when that overweighed the rights of the mother. The Roe court said: the third trimester. The Casey court slightly amended that to “fetal viability.”
How in the heck is this supposed to work? For every single teacher FloriDUH has a peek at their medical history and, based on their original assigned-at-birth sex forces everyone to wear a pink or a blue triangle?
I think the people who came up with this think that every transwoman looks like Rudy Giuliani in drag and every transman a Cherubino from Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro. Um…no.
@James Joyner:
Yes, but Dobbs (contrary to Roe and Casey) isn’t about balancing rights anymore.
Protecting the rights of a post-viability fetus can be a legitimate public interest that needs upholding. But if you want to fully ban abortions – including abortions of (literally) brainless blobs of cells – you can no longer argue that someone’s rights are being violated.
Alito’s solution was to abandon the notion that the government needs a legitimate reason to prohibit something.
There’s certainly going to be commenters here who will say that the teachers should just suck it up, and if the Dems support them they will lose all future elections everywhere.
@James Joyner: if there’s really a “legitimate state interest” in the “unborn child” then take it out of the woman and stop using her as a breeding machine with no rights. Stuff the fetus into someone else’s belly, preferably one of those “pro-life” idiots loudly insisting that their ethics be forcibly inflicted on everyone else.
If you can demand I carry a fetus to term against my will I should be able to demand that you be vegan for the rest of your life.
Why bring “legitimate public purpose” into a discussion concerning Ron DeSantis? That’s like talking about your dining room table’s preference in wall colors.
Religious conservatives are obsessed with what other people do with their genitals. Always have, always will. As far as I am concerned, that makes them perverts. They would probably be a whole lot happier if they were more focused on their own private parts.
@James Joyner: Dobbs could have made that argument, but it didn’t. Alito sort of flirts with it, there’s a kind of “you know what I mean”, but he doesn’t say it outright. And that’s because the belief that a fetus has a soul, which makes it equivalent, under the law, to a living person, is a religious belief, and Alito knows it.
Alito’s argument about precedent is also pretty vague and unprincipled. Mostly he doesn’t want to respect precedent in the case of abortion because, again, of his religious beliefs.
There is absolutely nothing conservative, in the Reagan, small government sense, about the assault on gay and trans rights going on in the country now.
-Asa Hutchinson, governor of Arkansas, speaking of the anti-trans law advanced by that state.
Orwell had it wrong. Freedom is not slavery. Freedom is oppression and knuckling under.
@Assad K:
I won’t do that, but I will continue to argue that when you are engaged in a fight, you should use the most effective weapons. And in my personal opinion, for a not-insignificant part of the electorate it is more effective to go after the Republicans based on them being intrusive, nosy, busybodies rather than an appeal for equality and fairness. I’ve long thought that a campaign centered around, “The Republicans are obsessed with following you into your bathroom to check your junk”, and “The Republicans are always getting into a froth about your personal business” could resonate in the square states. I think the Dems are foolish in writing them off.
Republicans literally legislating in favor of discourtesy. Next up: laws requiring you to eat with your mouth open, plane passengers to take off their shoes and clip their toenails and all (natural) males to address each other as ‘bro.’
@Michael Reynolds: And eat your chocolate pudding with your fingers.
Republicans no longer represent people connected to civil society in any real way. And part of the pushback by Republicans is because they are not connected and more importantly nobody is asking for their input. Most chill people with college educations and a decent upper middle-class life get a bit of DEI training once a year and they handle it. It’s the unlikeable freaks who start rocking back and forth like Rain Man because of pronouns…and presto, you have the candidacy of Ron DeSantis.
There’s just a huge degree of social exclusion which is driving this, and I think one of the reasons Biden is flailing in the polls is because he’s not contemporary enough to articulate a reasonable response. As in: if Trump is elected and all of his plans come to fruition, what is going to happen? Nobody actually thinks Harvard is a breeding ground for woke revolutionaries and nobody thinks that DEI is some Maoist consciousness. We have people talking about college-educated professionals under 45 as being the enemy of America and cities being sets for Death Wish 4.
It is absolute nonsense. The only breakdown is happening with ‘normal’ Americans. And Israel has made it worse. There’s no way to talk about cruelty towards Palestinians. The good liberal wife of a famous Harvard prof who used to work for Obama stalking a student wearing a Keffiyeh and calling her a terrorist is not something that happened in public ten years ago.
@Kathy:
Karl Popper does a long discussion of the apparent contradiction between Plato’s advocacy for an authoritarian state and Plato’s believe that this would make men happy. Plato was advocating a return to a paternalistic tribal state. Per Popper, Plato believed that in that state everyone would know their place and be content with it. (Modern research seems to call into question whether Plato’s ideal tribal state ever really existed. And somehow the contentment of the slaves, and women, never seems to enter into these things.)
Shaw was right. Freedom leads to confusion and uncertainty. It makes people uncomfortable. Much better to let a Trump or an Alito tell you what to believe.
Dr. Joyner, and really everyone else, please please please please please think twice about using the term “transgenderism. The whole point of the contemporary use of that term is to suggest that people like me and Stormy are not real people deserving of respect, dignity and healthcare, but a dangerous ideology out to destroy Western Civilization and must be stopped at all costs.
Dr. Joyner, you even point how this is used in your own response to this law:
If we’re an ideology like Communism or Conservativism, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with mocking or degrading the adherents of those ideologies. Maybe the derision is worth it if you can get people to change their ideology. My being trans is not an ideology. It’s an immutable part of who I am. I know this. I tried for YEARS to mute it. Absolutely nothing worked and it made my life and the lives of those around me worse.
Please also check out this article by Julia Serano, regarding the term “transgenderism”. Personally, I’d like to railroad the terms “transgenderism” and “transexual” out of existance, but those are for personal reasons I’d be happy to explain later. My opinion aside, even Serano points out that the term “transgenderism” is weaponized against trans people.
https://juliaserano.medium.com/the-history-of-the-word-transgenderism-55fd9bbf65cc
@Michael Reynolds:
Lol, my son is a 10 year old cis boy. He’s got a new best friend and they adorably constantly refer to each other as “Bro”. When they’re in the basement playing video games all we hear is a constant stream of high pitched pre-teen boy voices deepening to say, “Bro!” “Bro!” “Bro?” “BRO!”
It’s so cute.
@Modulo Myself:
I try to read conservative voices. They do think that, actually. They believe the sole mission of the Harvard administration is to force DEI down the throats of impressionable youth. We hear a University president struggle with explaining that while genocide against Jews is reprehensible their policies don’t explicitly sanction mentioning it. I hear someone awkwardly addressing something entirely peripheral to their responsibilities. They hear an admission Harvard is antisemitic.
@James Joyner: While I agree with your characterizations of Roe and Casey, I also agree w/ @drj that the Dobbs decision has a certain earth-shaking quality to it. If SCOTUS can suddenly find that the existence of a constitutional right that had stood for 49 years was wrongly decided, then anything is fair game. Indeed, it is my earnest hope that some day a future SCOTUS will find that current 2A jurisprudence was wrongly decided.
@DAllenABQ:
The proof of this will be when they use the mifepristone case to overturn Griswald. I’m convinced that’s what they will do.
@gVOR10:
Put it this way. No one has ever believed that a snooty high school girl who says ‘nice sweater’ to a kid with no money and hand-me-down clothes is issuing a compliment. JD Vance wrote a best-selling book about going to Yale and being on the receiving end of these compliments. But replace poor (and most likely white) kid with a black kid or a trans kid and transform ‘nice sweater’ for a different target and the whole common understanding falls apart, and that’s where conservatives and some liberals are.
They have given up on working with others, mostly because they are diminished, intimidated, and terrified of life. They have elected to believe that ‘nice sweater’ exists only for them and nobody else, even though the supposed ‘threats’ are so threatening that some QAnon Karen got out of her car to chase a Palestinian student.
@Beth: Yours is not the first objection to the word “transgenderism” that I’ve seen, but it is the most articulate.
I’ve tried to avoid the terminology, but I struggle to find a word to describe the phenomenon, which is something that has been around at least a couple of millenia, and probably as long as humanity has been around. What word can be used to name that phenomenon?
As regards ‘-ism’ meaning ideology, it certainly can be used that way, but it’s not an exclusive use. For instance, “aneurism” does not describe an ideology. Nor does “autism”. In the area of language, there’s “neologism” and “malapropism”. The famous long word “pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis” is not a belief.
All of which is not to argue that no, ‘transgenerism’ isn’t being weaponized. Everything is being weaponized against trans people.
I don’t think it’s good ground to fight on. I think what we need is to promote stories of real trans people. There’s a strange mix of “Whoa, you have done something that is very special and unusual, and maybe gives you insight that is very rare indeed” mixed with “Well, not a lot to see here, everyday life for a trans person ain’t that different from anybody else” here. We need to make that more visible.
The fat activist I know embraces the word “fat”. She loves it, she says it means “abundance” and “joy” to her. She doesn’t try to fight it, but to relabel it. I don’t know if this would work for trans people, but it’s something to consider.
Meanwhile, I would very much like a word to describe this phenomenon.
@Jay L Gischer:
I think there’s a simpler answer, and that is understanding another person and where they are coming from is not like an objective ruling on what words actually mean.
And honestly any normal person who has been in a relationship should understand this. This is not hard stuff, or at least it’s not hard now. I think there’s a dying ideal of the 50s where men loved their wives and kids and provided for them, and what else was needed? They truly loved their family and gave them money.
In 2023, that doesn’t cut it. Most people with educations understand that intimacy and understanding in life can be difficult and requires work and not just a set of instructions about what words mean and how to treat people. And the thing is you can’t not teach the ideology of understanding to human beings. You just can’t. Life is social and teaching anti-social skills is nuts.
@Modulo Myself: “atomization” is a thing happening these days. Relationships seem harder, and people are maintaining fewer of them. They have pseudorelationships with online figures, streamers, social media influencers, and (ahem) other commenters, where they high-five each other.
The real value in a relationship is less in the good times, though, and more in the bad times. Co-regulation and validation is so significant and valuable. Of course, this cuts both ways. So much of the anti-trans movement, among others consists of validating other people’s feelings of “that’s strange” and “they must be up to something”. And this validation is done within the context of a pseudofriendship with a blogger, influencer, content creator, etc.
I have mentioned here before that I worked with a woman for 10 years before I learned she was trans. To this day I have a hard time believing it because there was absolutely not one iota of even a whiff of her not being a cis woman.
My only point is there are many trans women, and trans men among us that we don’t know (or care) that they are trans. How, exactly, will Florida identify those people?
The public purpose is to drive transgender people from those professions through constant humiliation and degradation at the hands of smug 15 year old boys who they are legally prohibited from correcting, and to create a background where they are abused in other professions.
All to prevent the dangerous trend of transgenderism, the woke mind virus that infects children and makes them N times more likely to commit suicide, M times more likely to eat tide pods and nearly infinitely more likely to cut off parts of their body.
If you believe that bullshit (and a horrifying number of people do), then protecting the children is the legitimate state interest. Just as if you believe that abortion is murder, lots of things become a legitimate state interest.
This is also why the word “transgenderism” is not preferred. It is used to claim that transgender people are a disease.
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*: I expect it is only a matter of time before gay and lesbian teachers are to be addressed as “hey faggot!” and “hey dyke!” respectively.
I would expect that the legitimate state interest in reducing teen pregnancy would require that all students be instructed in same sex sexual practices and encouraged to satisfy their urges that way, as gay sex is a natural contraceptive practice, but apparently that is insane.
@EddieInCA:..”How, exactly, will Florida identify those people?”
The Republican Party in Florida will follow the lead of the Republican Party in Arkansas. Arkansas Republicans have anointed State Senator Matt McKee (a Republican) to be the official State Crotch Inspector.
I suspect that when Republican Governor DeSantis’ lame ass presidential campaign crashes and burns sometime after the Iowa caucusesses he will appoint himself to the job to retain credibility with Florida
pervertsRepublicans.@Beth: I wasn’t aware that some considered this term problematic. As with @Jay L Gischer, I don’t offhand know another word that connotes “the state of being transgender.”
The first dictionary definition I came across supports that use: “-ism is used as a productive suffix in the formation of nouns denoting action or practice, state or condition, principles, doctrines, a usage or characteristic, devotion or adherence, etc. criticism.” The notion that isms are always ideologies is simply untrue.
Regardless, happy to adopt an alternative if a reasonable one exists.
@James Joyner:
The word that connotes “the state of being transgender” is “transgender”. The -ism is completely redundant, same as words like “whitism” or “masculinism” would be.
The function of the word is to allow vagueness when discussing something horrifying. As a modifier, “transgender” requires the speaker to specify what is being modified. Switching to “transgenderism” lets them smudge over that.
So, for example, Michael Knowles can tell a cheering CPAC audience that “Transgenderism must be eradicated” and an maintain plausible deniability in a way he could not with “Transgender X must be eradicated”.
@EddieInCA:
There’s a questionnaire. These are the test questions for suspected cis males:
1) Do words like “TJ Maxx,” “Joann Fabric” or “IKEA”, cause you to experience suicidal thoughts?
2) When you go to Panera and order half a sandwich with an apple, do you hope no one you know sees you with a shortened baguette?
3) After seeing the first 20 minutes of Saving Private Ryan, are you still pretty sure you’d be OK on Omaha Beach?
4) Do the words “Forever 21” make you sad as you recall the day when you found out it’s just a clothing store?
5) Are you able after three drinks to make a case that Hooters really isn’t demeaning?
Answer Yes to four or more and you’re a dude. It’s all science-based.
@Gustopher:
Ayup! I’ve worked in schools where that will happen in the future. And I’ve never even lived in Florida.
@Jay L Gischer:
Thank you I appreciate it. As @Stormy Dragon: exceptionally puts it the proper term would be “Transgender People”.
I’m with you, I think it’s generally pointless to fight over language (more on this below), I try to center my activism on meeting people where they are and showing them that my life is very similar and just as boring. I think it’s a lot harder to hate people when you know them. It’s a lot of what I do here. Being trans is the least interesting part of who I am.
@James Joyner:
I have a lot of respect for you. I think while you have a clearly conservative bent, you don’t allow that to override your curiosity, your humanity and your ability to listen and absorb new information. Especially when that information challenges your beliefs. I’m a long time reader, multiple time, uh, caller? lol, on this blog and it’s honestly the only blog that I started reading in law school that I continue reading today. There was some military blog I used to read (uh, Jimbo something something) and Ann Althouse (is she still blogging). I don’t always agree with you, but I do very much respect your writing (and Dr. Taylor’s).
That’s the insidious thing about the term “transgenderism”. Respectfully, I doubt you would give trans people much of a thought if it wasn’t for me on your blog and the rightwing bigots screaming about us. And that’s totally fine, there’s a lot of stuff in this world and no way to pay attention to everything. I suspect guys like you would be happy to leave us be. I’m certain guys like you might just shake your head and say “eh, I don’t understand that.” and leave it alone. You might even one day witness the happiness and light that comes into someone’s eyes when they transition.
That’s what people like Michael Knowles want to use the term “transgenderism” to interrupt. They need you to not see me as a person, they need you to see me as an ideology that is a threat. Me being trans is not an “action or practice, state or condition”. It is an immutable part of who I am. Think about yourself. Is being a man an action or practice, state or condition for you? Another way of saying man is “masculine person”. I mean, no one says that because it’s kinda dumb, but it’s accurate.
I’ll also let you, and everyone else here, into an intra-community war. As alluded to above, there is a on going fight in the trans community over the terms “transgender” and “transsexual”. I guess they are both theoretically correct terms, but boy to I fucking hate the term “transsexual”. For me that brings up a lot of trauma I experienced as a kid over being taken to Rocky Horror. I internalized people laughing at Dr. Frankenfurter as a threat and I was not wrong about the people around me.
This is an ongoing fight and for the most part is not worth it at all. Personally, please don’t call me a transsexual, I hate it. But I’d rather deal with “transsexual” over “transgenderism.”
@Beth:
This is pretty pointless curiosity, but why “transsexual?”
If I were to describe myself in (current) mainstream terms, I would be a cisgender heterosexual. So why mess with x-gender = identity; and x-sexual = sexual preference?
@Beth:
This is probably a trans enby vs. a trans woman reaction, but I find RHPS rather empowering myself. Although I must admit “transexual” specifically is a bit of a red flag for me as I associate it with the transmed community (subset of the trans community that blames transphobia on it being “too easy” to transition and thus lots of “fake” trans people are out there giving the “real” trans people a bad name)
@drj:
The modern concept of gender identity only came about in the mid 70s. Prior to that, “transexual” was the accepted term for trans people. It was phased out in favor of “transgender” in the 90s. Recently some people have been trying to bring “transexual” back for various reasons.
Pronouns are simply words. Making it illegal to use certain words seems like a pretty obvious violation of the First.
I’m a teacher and work in a school where we are all on a first name basis. I previously worked at schools that were Mr./Mrs. types, even though I abhorred that. “It’s about respect!” I was told. Meanwhile, 75% of the adults couldn’t take the time to learn how to pronounce my last name properly. Respect my ass. It’s about controlling others.
I had a housemate once upon a time that was a huge Rocky Horror fan. I cannot, for the life of me, think of anything but Frank N Furter when I hear the word “transsexual”.
As in “sweet transvestite, transsexual, Transylvania”.
@drj: @drj:
Honestly, I have no idea. “transsexual” is a much older term. I think, but could be wrong, that it was supposed to be an ‘upgrade’ from “transvestite”. Which is also a term I personally hate.
It’s also not x-gender = identity and x-sexual = sexual preference, it would be more accurate to be x-gender = identity and x-sexual = physical bits. I don’t know if that’s quite accurate or not, but it’s close enough.
Also, as Stormy points out, “transsexual” tends to be used by Transmedicalists who have fundamentalist beliefs about being trans. https://translanguageprimer.com/transmedicalist/
Personally, I use transgender to mean everyone who experiences gender/sex in a way that is different that what is assigned at birth. With the exception of fetishists. Nothing wrong with them, they’re just not trans.
@Stormy Dragon:
Yeah, I get that RHPS is important and empowering. It’s important art and Tim Curry is amazing. It’s just hard for me. It’s one of the few things my friends know not to invite me to.
A very gentle linguistic pushback: “transgender people” refers to specifically people, like it says on the tin. Not the phenomenon of “someone has gender dysphoria and changes their gender performance and presentation to conform with their inner sense of gender, thus bringing them significant relief from a host of psychological symptoms including severe depression and anxiety”
Or, alternatively, “someone changes their gender identity, presentation, and performance in order to represent their internal state more authentically and honestly”
I mean, that’s the thing I want a name for. It’s amazing.
Online Etymology Dictionary traces the word “transgender” to 1974, though I don’t think it became widespread in mainstream American culture until about the last decade or so, and “transsexual” was the most commonly used term before then. “Transvestite” was also used on occasion, though it’s inaccurate, as it conflates being transgender with cross-dressing.
@Jay L Gischer:
So much of the anti-trans movement, among others consists of validating other people’s feelings of “that’s strange” and “they must be up to something”. And this validation is done within the context of a pseudofriendship with a blogger, influencer, content creator, etc.
I think there’s a solid correlation between being anti-trans and being obsessed with crime and immigration and having these obsessions validated. It’s the inverse of leftists who are obsessed with identity. In the latter, your interior is an endless plot laid by the outside world against you. The fact that you might be jerk is due to the plots laid by the outside world. In the former, the exterior is an endless plot. And with crime or trans people, the plot thickens because the cities aren’t Death Wish 4 and trans people are not detransitioning, so you have to keep on pointing to plots to explain the lack of plots.
The difference being is that most leftists who think about the world grow up whereas right-wingers don’t. That’s why you have 17-year old woke leftists traumatizing their coequals–58 year-old white guys who are tired of the woke.
@James Joyner:
There really isn’t anything that serves the same grammatical purpose as “homosexuality”.
If you were writing or saying “Homosexuality and trans[something] are more visible in the past few years” you could shift to “homosexual and transgender people are more visible…”, and it wouldn’t change the meaning. But for “I get that there are substantial numbers of people who, for religious and cultural reasons, find homosexuality and transgenderism icky, if not an abomination before their deity” I’ve got nothing that’s not a complete rewrite (using the “people” version shifts the icky from behavior to people in a way that those who find it icky would say doesn’t fit their views.)
Know, however, that “transgenderism” is typically used by people who do not have transgender folks’ best interests at heart, that it’s become a bit of a cultural marker, and that using it will put some people on edge and make them briefly re-evaluate your intent and how safe they feel around you.
Here, on your blog where we know you (or your blogsona) it probably just reminds people that you move in conservative circles and pick up the language, rather than signifying you’re a full fledged bigot*.
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*: I will forever hate the -phobic terminology as it groups people who are uncomfortable in with awful people contemplating or committing hate crimes, and everyone anywhere between. It’s an overly broad category.
People cannot control their initial gut emotional feeling, but they can choose what they do with that feeling — -phobic speaks to the former, while the latter is what ends up mattering.
@Stormy Dragon:
“Masculine” vs. “masculinity”
“White” vs. “whiteness”
They’re related, but not at all the same.
I can work my way to “trans” vs. “transness”, but that’s a much less formal voice than Dr. Joyner tends to use. He also wouldn’t say “gay and transgender stuff.”
@Gustopher: The parallel to “transgenderism” in this case would be “homosexualism.” But you don’t much hear the latter word (Google tells me it’s an archaic British way of saying homosexuality), not even from homophobes, since they don’t feel the need to characterize it as an ideology the way they try to characterize trans people.
@Gustopher:
“Transmentencenessity” or GTFO!