Seattle teacher allegedly told students identifying as 'straight' is offensive

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[–]xoenix 6 insightful - 2 fun6 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 2 fun -  (6 children)

I seem to recall people trying to turn "straight" into hate speech a few years ago. I thought people had largely given up on that though.

[–]Alienhunter糞大名 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (5 children)

"Because I think language has power and that it shapes the culture that we live in, I did say to the class, in response to a student, that I do not use the term ‘straight’ because it implies that to not be straight is to be ‘crooked’ which could have a negative connotation," the teacher wrote.

I mean, I don't think he's necessarily wrong here. I kinda dislike the term straight in general since it seems like it was made up at some point and forced on everyone.

I identify as normal. If course this raises similar complaints. The problem the teacher is running into here is the inherent contradictory nature of "you can identify with whatever words you want" and sensitivity culture. You clearly can't identify as whatever you want because no matter what you identify as someone somewhere at sometime will find some way to take offense to that. Which isn't even considering that one may choose to identify as something intentionally offensive. What if my preferred identify term is "fag" or "nigger" is your refusal to refer to me by my preferred identity a sign of bigotry on your part?

I just don't really see the point in going much into sexuality and identity and all that in highschool at all beyond simple messaging like "let's not bully the gay kids".

[–]xoenix 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

I think the reason it failed is because too many gay troons couldn't resist calling themselves "straight."

[–]CheeseWizard 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

It is a hundred percent because of this, I bet. Remember when a subsection of the LGBCDEFG+ started fighting misandry... against gay men and trans men 🤡
Only reason they care about anything

[–]fvdcsxaz 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

The opposite of straight isn't necessarily "crooked", it could be "curved", and there's no negative connotation associated with that.

[–]Alienhunter糞大名 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Well there's not necessarily a negative connotation with abnormal either. We could say that someone who is extremely smart is abnormal.

I think the main issue is people get too hung up on the terminology. It's a social failing I think that happens when society runs out of real problems. Personally I've never taken offense at the word straight even if I personally don't really like it. I'm not going to derail a conversation with stupid power games when we all know what we mean.

It's like that old George Carlin bit on "soft language", though I think a lot of it is just done due to people really having no clue on how to fix problems and so instead they pretend that words are magic and by using less nasty language that somehow fixes the problem. Don't say that the kid is retarded, say that the kid is "specially abled", which is funny because both terms are just bearing around the bush to try to sanitize the fact the kid is slow. Sad reality but what's wrong with just accepting that?

[–]UncleWillard56 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Straight is what some people prefer just like trans people don't like tranny and fall to pieces if you misgender them. But society (for the most part) caters to them. The least they can do us STFU about what I call myself. I hate the term cis and prefer heterosexual, because I think it's been rebranded by that same whiny community as a pejorative.

[–]TossEmFar 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

Could you please post the content of the article? Not all of us want to make accounts with every news site that gets posted here.

[–]LordoftheFliesAmeri-kin 2.0. Pronouns: MegaWhite/SuperStraight/UltraPatriarchy 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Here you go.

[–]xoenix 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Whenever you encounter a paywalled article, just go to archive.ph and plug in the url there.

[–]ClassroomPast6178 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

Yeah, some of the things that I see American teachers doing, and by “some” I mean “lots of”, are just creepy as fuck and even more that that it is often really difficult to discern what the learning intention/learning objective was or why that LI/LO existed.

There is no reason to discuss a child’s sexuality or the teacher’s sexuality with the class or even ask it as a task that isn’t shared. And if your LI/LO requires that you do that you either need to revise your LI/LO, alter the task or just come up with a different way of teaching.

Personally, I would not teach a lesson that required that even if I were teaching 17/18 year olds. If I observed a colleague doing that, and I was in a management position, I would be conducting a deep dive into the colleague’s lesson plans and the children’s work and potentially observing more of that teacher’s lessons with a view to starting competency proceedings. At the very least there would be a very serious conversation in the presence of HR and their union rep.

[–]Alienhunter糞大名 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

I just fail to see why you'd want to be eliciting identity statements from the students in general. If the students volunteer it of their own free will that's one thing, but for the teacher to request that information from every student as part of a class assignment seems like it's breech of privacy to me. Would it be appropriate to query the students medical history for a class on health? I don't think so. You don't need to know which students have or are at risk of having cancer to teach the students what cancer is. (It's another matter if a student with cancer experience decides of their own volition to share their experience with the class)

I fail to see how sexuality is any different.

[–]ClassroomPast6178 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

You might ask where a student’s family comes from. I have a big world map on the wall and I put a photo of each child and link it to the UK and where the child or their parents are from with a thread. The children have always loved it and it makes the point that whilst they might all come from different places they have all made the UK their home.

But that’s about it. I don’t ever ask about religion (the Muslim kids always tell you, without fail and repeatedly), or anything else. The stuff we need to know for admin reasons is obviously collected but from the parents and it’s confidential.

It’s remarkable what little children will voluntarily tell you, to the point that I often have to ask them to stop sharing.

[–]OuroborosTheory 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I have noticed that a lot of the gender-churning is about getting male/female-attracted couples into the rainbow community (and finding some pretzel logic to shout down anyone who's caught muttering): you're not a boring CIS COMPHET like your awful parents, your lack of desire to change your biological sex actually makes you genderqueer/fluid/trans/nonbinary/omnimansexual; even "bi" isn't spicy enough

[–]iamonlyoneman 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

not grooming btw

[–]Brewdabier 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

'straight' is offensive.

Well then being offensive is the best way to live, Been straight all my life and proud of it.