Tag: gender identity
Here’s How to Actually Talk to Little Kids About Sex
If you ask some (okay, many) conservative pundits, Democrats are “grooming” children. As in, grooming them to be abused by pedophiles. Some Republicans have even accused Democrats of being pedophiles themselves.
The grooming charges lump together concerns that kids are being introduced too early to sexually explicit material, to the existence of transgender people, and to non-heterosexual sexual orientations. In March, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed what critics have dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, a measure that discourages
Why Republicans Are Turning Against Free Speech
The American right has lost the plot on free speech. The passage of Florida’s House Bill 1557, which bans “classroom instruction” on “sexual orientation and gender identity” in kindergarten through third grade and in a manner that isn’t “age appropriate or developmentally appropriate” in all grades, K–12, is merely the latest in a string of what the free-speech-advocacy organization PEN America has called “education gag orders” that have been proposed by Republicans and passed by red-state legislatures from coast to
That’s Not What Grooming Means
This is an edition of Up for Debate, a newsletter by Conor Friedersdorf. On Wednesdays, he rounds up timely conversations and solicits reader responses to one thought-provoking question. Soon after, he publishes some thoughtful replies. Sign up for the newsletter here.
Question of the Week
What, if anything, should minors be taught or told about sexual orientation and gender identity before they hit puberty? Forget the worst arguments you’ve seen in this debate, and detail how you think things ought
20 Reader Views on Transgender People in Competitive Sports
This is an edition of Up for Debate, a newsletter by Conor Friedersdorf. On Wednesdays, he rounds up timely conversations and solicits reader responses to one thought-provoking question. Every Friday, he publishes some thoughtful replies.
Sign up for the newsletter here.
After Lia Thomas became the first transgender athlete to win an NCAA swimming title, intensifying the ongoing debate about transgender athletes at all levels of sports, I asked readers, “What do you think about this, and why? What are
Republicans Are Trying to Suppress More Than Votes
The accelerating red-state offensive to censor what public-school students are taught about racism is emerging as a critical companion measure to proliferating race-based voter restrictions in many of the same states.
The two-pronged fight captures how aggressively Republicans are moving to entrench their current advantages in red states, even as many areas grow significantly more racially and culturally diverse. Voting laws are intended to reconfigure the composition of today’s electorate; the teaching bans aim to shape the attitudes of
If You Don’t Want Sex, It’s Not Always a Problem
For more than half a century, the modern industry of sex therapists, educators, and experts has been eager to tell us whether we’re having enough sex, or the right kind of sex. But this industry is, like any other, shaped by the broader culture—it took for granted that the goal was to “get everybody to the point where they have a type of desire and quality of desire that fits within the cultural norms and values,” the sex therapist and