Moms for Liberty is a group of Republican women whose goal is to elect conservatives to school boards around the country. This is nothing new. Republican women did the same thing in the early '60s to fight communism in schools; again in the '80s after Anita Bryant inspired the Moral Majority to fight gays in school; then yet again in the early '90s to elect more conservative Christians to school boards. This is now at least their fourth go-around. Here is Robert Pondiscio in The Free Press:
Moms for Liberty is Teach For America’s dark opposite number. They won’t be talked out of their conviction that malign forces in public schools—gender ideology, critical race theory, Marxism, anti-Americanism—have come for their children, and they’re having exactly none of it.
....The group attracts and frequently abides a lunatic fringe, fueling its critics’ counternarrative that the movement is intolerant, racist even....Members of a local Tennessee chapter last year, for example, sued to remove an outstanding English curriculum, Wit & Wisdom, from their school district, on the grounds that its elementary school texts about civil rights icons Ruby Bridges and Martin Luther King Jr. are too dark and disturbing for children and violate state laws against teaching critical race theory. A New Hampshire chapter offered a $500 bounty “for the person that first successfully catches a public school teacher breaking this [state’s anti-critical race theory] law.” An Arkansas Mom was banned from school grounds after an audio recording captured her saying “if I had any mental issues, [school employees] would all be plowed down by a freaking gun right now.”
Neither are the group’s fanatical elements limited only to local chapters. On Saturday morning at the conference, Moms for Liberty fixture James Lindsay painted a picture of the organization as “war moms” fighting a “Maoist cultural revolution” engineered at the highest levels of government and elite institutions. When Mao came to power, Lindsay claimed, his first step was to close schools and reeducate teachers. “They shut down the schools for two years and came back with a whole new program. Does that sound familiar?”
This is fairly remarkable stuff coming from a basically sympathetic author. But Moms for Liberty is not some kind of brand new force never seen before among conservative women. It's all from a familiar playbook that reappears every decade or two when they suddenly decide that public schools have become too liberal and something must be done. And the result is always the same: a small group of fanatics are tolerated and eventually become the de facto leaders of the movement, inspiring the others with ominous, paranoid tales of what's really going on in their children's classes.
Moms for Liberty is walking a well-trodden path. They will, unfortunately, succeed, just like all the school movements before them. However, they will also fade out within a few years, just like all the school movements before them. Their Achilles heel isn't just fanaticism, it's lack of staying power.
These people may be naive to conflate postmodern gender ideology with materialistic Marxism. But they may be on to something this time. The idea that a young female is in some essential sense really a young male and consequently should cut off her breasts, take testosterone, and reconstruct her sexual organs is bizarre. So the Moms concerned about this might just give the academic gender ideologues a fair contest. At least if they don't get distracted with other issues.
Materialistic Marxism and Mom's for Liberty have something in common. They are both detached from reality.
To be attached to reality, examine the evidence first, and only then draw an evidence-based conclusion. To detach yourself from reality, jump to a conclusion, and only then look for evidence to defend your conclusion. Warning: a child can find evidence that a dog ate their homework.
My suggestion: look for evidence that some people trying to control the behavior of other people has been successful in the long term, then look for evidence that the most basic Christian principle, which is to do unto others as you would have others do unto you, has been successful in the long term.
I could be wrong, but I suspect the evidence will demonstrate that Mom's for Liberty are doing the wrong thing. One thing is for sure, they are not acting like Christians, but they are acting like pseudoscientists.
Wow, sexist gender essentialism on display - sex as destiny. Gross.
Denying their autonomy, denying their identity, denying their pain that would lead them to choose a different path. You consign trans kids to years of torture and abuse and it's disgusting bigotry.
The implicit assumption here is that there is such a thing as a "trans kid" in the sense, for example, of a female who has an intrinsic gender identity (a kind of "gendered soul") that is male.
What happens to such a "trans kid" if she happens to eventually realize that this theory was a mistake, at least in her case. One should also consider the "pain" associated with sterilization and permanent medicalization.
Don't say this never happens.
What a despicable position to take.
Can we try to use reason instead of invective?
OK, that number is around 1%,
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8099405/
Lower than for almost any medical procedure.
So, really trivial.
A contested statistic, of course. See the Letter by Exposito-Campos and D’Angelo.
But one percent regret? For a serious medical procedure?
99% non-regret.
You would throw away the 99 for the 1?
1% is a very low number. The regret rate for serious back surgery is around 21 %, for serious cosmetic surgery more like 65%.
What happens to such a "trans kid" if she happens to eventually realize that this theory was a mistake, at least in her case.
Yes, this can be a problem. Can you concede that it can also be a problem to not provide gender affirming care for someone who is trans? And that there is a balancing act between erring in one direction and erring in the other? And that the data that we have indicates that the percentage of kids that reach the point of socially transitioning who eventually detransition is pretty small?
The implicit assumption you're making here is that you get to decide whether there is any such thing as a "trans kid" as you put, and say, haven't we seen this one before?
But if your argument is that you think surgery is going too far, then surely the answer is to loosen up society's norms about gender roles, right? I assume, therefore, you are strongly in favor of letting "girls" dress as "boys" and compete in "boys" athletics, right? I mean, that would be the bare minimum you would support if your sincere position was that surgery is going too far, yes?
I mean, in another comment above, you show concern about a kid who does something or other and then decides it's a "mistake". Should such a kid feel pressure (for instance if she's a girl), to wear dresses and other clothing traditionally associated with females? Or should she have the freedom to wear whatever she wants?
Of are you a believer that gender roles are eternal and thus should be supported by public policy? Say for instance, pants are only for men? Where do you draw the line on the freedom to choose to wear pants? Anybody can wear them?
I thought we worked out the gender norm problem years ago. The transactivists are bringing back the idea of strict gender norms. If you have a boy that likes dolls and sparkly things, he must be a girl. If you have a girl who likes GI Joe and wants to wear short hair, she must be a boy.
If you have a boy that likes dolls and sparkly things, he must be a girl.
Uh, no. Whether a boy likes dolls and sparkly things has nothing to do with gender identity. If the kid likes dolls and sparkly things and expresses that they think they are a girl, then they might be trans. If they persist in this, it's probably time to start gender affirming care, starting with therapy.
Pants are fine. This is gender expression, very different from innate gender identity.
So you are in favor of loosening up gender expression norms? Is that what you mean by "pants are fine"? Is it your view that the cultural right in America is generally in favor of loosening up gender norms?
These poor naive souls are wrong about everything else, but on this particular issue, where my views (coincidentally) align with theirs, they are on something
The really pressing concern for me is their position on kitty litter boxes in schools.
Or am I months behind on the au currant scandals?
Yes you’re behind. Worrying about the kids being furries is out, replaced by worrying about the kids being transgender. See MartinSerif above for an example of the current lunacy.
Yes, Austin, I am worried about children who are allowed to make the decision (they are children and often make foolish decisions (that is why parents exist)) that they are the opposite sex and are put on puberty-blocking drugs, then cross-hormone drugs, then surgeries before they are 18. It is not health care to cut off the healthy breasts of a 16-year-old girl.
Trans surgery on minors is exceedingly rare, and probably growing rarer as the protocols evolve. The tree or four examples you hear discussed on right wing media are just that, the three or four rare examples that are continually discussed on right wing media.
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Kind of hard to form a durable long lasting movement when your leaders are all paranoid and delusional. Seems to be a consistent problem for the American looney right.
But this time around, there are connections to both Q-anon & the Proud Boys - not a simply grassroots movement, either, but a well-financed one..
It was never a grassroots organization. Neither were the segregationists, not Anita Bryant, or Moral Majority.
+100
I am fully aware that it has never been a grassroots movement, but a well-funded national one & wonder why you thought otherwise. The connections with the other groups' backers are insidious & yet not always noted in news reports, either.
I personally think this is key. The impulse to grift is so deeply embedded in every right wing obsession now -- consider, for instance, that Steve Bannon was scamming Trump fans who wanted to support him in "building the wall", and only escaped the law because Trump pardoned him for this scamming! -- that I'm quite certain these Moms for Liberty will be caught out soon signing up people for a "one-time" donation of $10 that turns out to be a monthly, or maybe even weekly donation, in reality. The lure is just too good, and the people lured just too greedy.
And previously it was the Klan, or in some regions the local militia/gang. You can think of Moms4Facism as the Wimminfolk Auxiliary to them.
The Proud Boys are just a lightly-updated-for-the-kids, slightly more urban version of the Klan.
This still is nothing new.
In the south it was the “Citizen’s Councils”. They got the blue collar locals to do their dirty work for them, then promptly threw them under the bus when the FBI showed up.
Absolutely need to eradicate "grooming" of our children at school. That's the job for the clergy!
Also the job of rich right wing business magnates, although they are restricted to grooming Supreme Court justices.
Ron DeSantis walks into a Dairy Queen in Iowa
--no, that's too obvious.
It was Boone, Iowa.
Ron DeSantis walks into a Dairy Queen in Iowa, massive people skills in full afterburner,
https://old.reddit.com/r/Iowa/comments/14znd2f/was_trying_to_enjoy_my_lunch_with_my_bf_at_diary/
tells employees Kim Reynolds is doing a great job, leaves.
Nailed it!
Just a random day in a random town in Iowa.
I just realized what the issue is with DeSantis.
It's like his underwear are a size too small because his wife buys them like that on purpose because she thinks it keeps him focused, and he doesn't realize that's what the issue is.
Their Achilles heel isn't just fanaticism, it's lack of staying power.
As Oscar Wilde once said about socialism: "It's all well and good but all the meetings.
These "Moms" are political activists, either they're paid to be or they have the time to do so because their husbands have very good jobs. You can tell because most people do not have the time, balancing family and work life (especially single and working class moms) to attend every single meeting of the school board, or the library board or the city council. And not just those meetings but committee meetings too. It's too much unless you're an "activist" and have nothing better to do than fight for the cause in some meeting room on a Wednesday night or are retired and plenty of time on your hands. As former county board supervisor and one who still covers government meetings, take it from me, the drudgery from actually having to "govern" and do the things to make your little government body work, is what kills the "staying power". I try not to be rude and scroll through my cell phone unless I need a weather update or sports score during such meetings. Otherwise, my meeting agenda sheets are full of filled-in "O's", personal; budgets and doodles.
I think you've nailed it here. They go in with the idea that they are going to get elected and find all the secret conspiracies. Reality turns out to be the boring day to day details of running a bureaucracy. Surprisingly there aren't secret cabals of satanic Maoists running the schools.