From "Florida bill would ban young girls from discussing periods in school" (WaPo).
The GOP lawmaker representing Ocala, Fla., later clarified that it “would not be the intent” of the bill to punish girls if they came to teachers with questions or concerns about their menstrual cycle, adding that he’d be “amenable” to amendments if they were to come up.
The bill ended up passing, 13-5, on Wednesday in a party-line vote....
“I thought it was pretty remarkable that the beginning of a little girl’s menstrual cycle was not contemplated as they drafted this bill,” [said state Rep. Ashley Gantt (D)].
🆘
— Florida Planned Parenthood Action (@PPactionFL) March 15, 2023
Watch Florida State Rep. @StanMcClain tell Rep. @Gantt4Florida that his bill prohibits young people from talking about their period….
WHAT?!?! pic.twitter.com/PoEgRm4sK0
Posts
76 comments:
Somebody is being disingenuous.
Hey, your predecessors could have chosen compromise went for all or nothin' instead. Now you get the messy...
Move to Canada/Ireland is still an option...
I remember when I was young, and I stared my period... I talked to my mom about it. and perhaps a few close pals.
Never felt the need to talk to a teacher. Now that said, if a young girl begins her first period at school, she might want to find a friendly trusted teacher who could help... or a place to go in the school (perhaps the administrative office) where a young girl could find a feminine pad. It's a pretty private matter. geeez.
What ever happened to common sense?
Of course the left will exploit this. As the right do all they can to protect our children from leftist sex-and-gender obsessed predators.
When leftist child abusers in the school system act, this is what you get.
However, this appears to be disingenuous (having scanned the actual bill): it refers to classroom material. As such, any student should have access to a school nurse in the least. Maybe I’m missing something, but this appears to simply (sic) establish that sex education is provided in a very controlled manner, and random teachers cannot just spout their off-topic nonsense.
This is insane. Cue scene in Carrie.
Wait a minute. Does the bill really proscribe what the kids can talk about in school, or just what the school can teach them?
They should talk to their parents about it. Why would they talk to teachers about it?
"They should talk to their parents about it. Why would they talk to teachers about it?"
Tell me you're a male without telling me you're a male.
"Does the bill really proscribe what the kids can talk about in school, or just what the school can teach them?"
The guy sponsoring the bill answered the question "It would."
It took being asked specifically for him to realize they'd written a law that did not take account of the real, physical needs of young girls.
He did not want to have to say "it would," and only said it because he was cornered.
Fascists gotta be fascists! When they win the White House they gonna change the name of Washington, D.C. to Comstock, D.P. (District of Purity) and the White House to the Pure White House.
4th grade. 1965. Boyd Elementary, Springfield, Missouri. No discussion of menstruation. Just think of what could have been!
The law is meant to discourage fighting (see you outside) during home room/recreation period.
Everybody wants to make viral video, it seems.
"I remember when I was young, and I stared my period... I talked to my mom about it. and perhaps a few close pals.
"Never felt the need to talk to a teacher."
Bejeezus! I went to school (from 3rd grade and up all they way through college) in Florida. I remember one day in 6th grade all the boys were sent outside for a special recess while the girls stayed inside to receive special instructions (via a short film and pamphlets) about the blessed blood they were soon to begin discharging each month.
A backward state is stepping back even further!
Oh no a bill that did not anticipate every single possibility.
That's a first.
Seems like an amendment is an easy cure. But not until all the political juice is squeezed.
Worst than "Don't Say Gay"?
The Dems are masters of marketing to their followers.
Florida, taking the lead in regressive anti women/girls laws, or making a valiant effort. Maybe they can find a law from 1849 to hoist upon Florida women and girls.
The problem with some of these elected dorks is they go too far, and they get high off the power they have.
The GOP know how to blow it. They walk into the blow-it stage, all the time.
What exactly is this guys point? And why are his cohorts going along with him?
Is he just posturing for some strange old people (and perhaps some young ones) who think that in the good ole days no one ever talked about things like that and everything was peachy all the time?
Does this sum up the entire Republican ideology? Obviously not. It could be represented as more keep the government's hands off my [medicare|SS|schools|light bulbs|...].
It seems to me that there is practically no substance left in the Republican party. We'll soon see whether they choose to tank the economy in June to further their "messaging" and reenforce the "brand".
The bill's opponents labeled it the "Don't say gay" bill. That was false. You can, indeed, say "gay" at school.
Now they are attempting to claim that you can't say "menstruation", too. It's nonsense and, by design, misleading.
This clown doesn't know what he's talking about. The bill refers to classroom instruction.
"any student should have access to a school nurse in the least"
Florida ranks 48 out of 50 in school nurse per student statistics, most nurses are responsible for over 2000 students and who cover multiple schools over the course of a week. If you had any insight into public schools you would know this, as its been a problem for a decade.
For most students, waiting in the front office for someone to pick up the student is what 'going to the nurse' results in.
There are far more cops in Florida schools than nurses. Perhaps we can train the cops to be able to give lessons on menstruation?
Can't We ALL See?
That it's GOOD to chop off little boys dicks?
That it's GOOD to chop off little girls tits?
That it's GOOD to pump them Full of Drugs?
It's GOOD, i'm Telling You! It's GOOD!!!!
pump 'em Full of Drugs! pump 'em Full of Drugs!
As far as I can tell from looking around, it didn't come up in the discussion either. Does that mean that the bill's opponents also fell down on the job? Land sakes.
This is certainly a poorly thought out over-reaction to the left's groomer tactics, which seek to normalize the mental illness of gender dysphoria and to justify their Mengele-light tactics to sterilize the next generation.
The left's overreach on these issues causes over-reaction in response. Pendulums swing. Nobody sensible wants ignorance to reign, but on the other hand, do we really have to tolerate teachers chatting up little kids about the joys of gender fluidity and queerness, just to be able to deal sensibly with something as prosaic and normal as menstruation?
If parents weren't as worried about teachers secretly promoting LBGTQetc behind their backs, this issue would never have come up. Fix that, and the rest will fix itself.
I’m sure it’s different for everyone, but I never - not once - talked to a single teacher about my period. If a teacher ever tried to have a discussion about it with me, outside of general sex education, I would have been MORTIFIED.
Anyway, if a young girl gets her first period at school or forgot her pads at home and needs one, it shouldn’t be an issue to ask to see the nurse who is guaranteed to have what she needs. If this bill somehow makes that illegal, I would imagine that part will get amended REAL quick
Are boys allowed to discuss their first wet dream?
The bill's opponents labeled it the "Don't say gay" bill. That was false. You can, indeed, say "gay" at school.
Now they are attempting to claim that you can't say "menstruation", too. It's nonsense and, by design, misleading.
Thank you for confirming that...you don't have to be paying attention to know this is how they're doing things but if you're not recognizing this is what they do in these committee things then you do need to start paying attention...
I think the affirmative answer about the law doesn’t sallowing this kind if discussion relates to the teacher responding to a girl, not that the kid would be in trouble for bringing it up.
And yeah, obviously this should be clarified in the law to make an exception and the people mocking the law on that basis ;maybe I should say they’re “pouncing”) are just trying to score gotcha points.
Robert Cook -
Well times have changed. Now - all the girls would be sent outside, because the boys need a safe space for their periods.
The Desantis team wants to focus on this cultural stray voltage stuff because they don't want to talk about the economic issues of open borders and free trade and corporate attacks on freedom.
The people giving Desantis all of the money want people focused on the trans BS for a reason.
The usual left wingers here protesting about what is probably nothing and if a problem could easily be fixed and ignore boys in the girls bathrooms and the trany insanity they support.
He chose the wrong words. The correct response was, “We have to pass it to see what’s in it.”
My mother was the one explained this to me not the school.
I think the school did show us a "film strip" but I don't recall anything about it and had already started.
The school can only get involved if the child having such period is a little boy.
Simple.
Yeah fifth grade girls love talking about their periods openly with friends and teachers....
Common sense:
1. Train teachers to be alert to signs of a girl menstruating in class.
2. Forbid teachers to do or say anything other than necessary to escort the student to the nurse {or have the nurse come to the classroom door to escort the student to the nurse quarters.)
3. Follow standard procedures for the nurse/assistant to contact parents to give them the option to pick up their daughter to go home or to their personal physician.
4. After the girl has left the classroom, have the teacher read a standard message to tell students the event is normal and occur for every girl in their time. Nothing to be frightened or ashamed of. Now back to schoolwork.
Goal: treat the girl with respect, provide needed nursing services, and take the mystery/embarrassment out of the situation.
Any headline you read is suspect. The same liars who push "Don't say Gay" - are still the same liars.
Achilles - you're full of crap.
Carlson asked, “Is opposing Russia in Ukraine a vital American national strategic interest?”
DeSantis replied, “While the U.S. has many vital national interests — securing our borders, addressing the crisis of readiness within our military, achieving energy security and independence, and checking the economic, cultural, and military power of the Chinese Communist Party — becoming further entangled in a territorial dispute between Ukraine and Russia is not one of them. The Biden administration’s virtual blank check funding of this conflict for ‘as long as it takes,’ without any defined objectives or accountability, distracts from our country’s most pressing challenges.”
I just read the bill (House Bill 1069). It doesn't make any provision whatsoever regulating what a student can discuss in school. Not sure why the legislator answered the question the way he did, but his response to the question can't alter the plain meaning of the statute. (At most, a court might look to legislative history to resolve an AMBIGUITY in the text of the statute; but here there's no ambiguity on this point; and it's also a principle of statutory construction that statutes cannot be construed in a way that would render them unconstitutional, which the provision as described in the news accounts would obviously be.)
Verdict: fake news.
“Bejeezus! I went to school (from 3rd grade and up all they way through college) in Florida. I remember one day in 6th grade all the boys were sent outside for a special recess while the girls stayed inside to receive special instructions (via a short film and pamphlets) about the blessed blood they were soon to begin discharging each month.”
I had the same experience, Bob. In California. It was bog standard at the time.
Willfully disingenuous hysterics designed to mask truly loathsome intent has to be the most despicable thing about Progdom.
Small wonder the legislation is problematic. Who could have predicted that legislation would be needed to prevent trannies and their Democrat accomplices from mutilating our children?
It's untraversed ground.
I stopped in the Northbrook, Il public library and was met with large donation box seeking tampons and pads. I wasn't prepared.
Blogger Ann Althouse said...
"They should talk to their parents about it. Why would they talk to teachers about it?"
Tell me you're a male without telling me you're a male.
--
Rawrrr. Tell me you're a..you know the thing!
So she was part of the legislative process and didn't include it, or she was so busy protesting the whole thing that she didn't do her job?
The Desantis team ... they don't want to talk about the economic issues of open borders and free trade and corporate attacks on freedom.
Strongly disagree. DeSantis led the airlift to Martha's Vineyard and the direct attack on Disney. He's tearing pages out of the Trump playbook and running them successfully.
The issue is that young girls are not educated at Planned Parenthood facilities, at Wiki pages, and other anthropophobic entities that exist with states of psychiatric dysphoria, subscribe to the transhumane ethical religion, or advocate social liberalism that places girls and boys at progressive risk.
Porn in school, fine. Grooming elementary school children, fine. Promoting sexual mutilation of children, fine. Preventing parents from having any input into the above, fine. A teacher “supposedly” can’t speak to a young girl in school if she is having her period, OH MY GOD ! IT’S THE END OF THE WORLD WOMEN ARE BEING REPRESSED! FACISM, SEXISM, TOTALITARIANISM, SLAVERY!
“Tell me you're a male without telling me you're a male.”
Teachers are not appropriate for this kind of conversation. Mothers, aunts, older sisters. Not a unionized ideologue who can’t even successfully instruct in the academic subjects for which they were ostensibly hired.
Strongly disagree. DeSantis led the airlift to Martha's Vineyard and the direct attack on Disney. He's tearing pages out of the Trump playbook and running them successfully.
I don't care who does it we need more of it. I'm tired of trying to kill em with kindness...
Reddington, you are missing the point- girls sometimes have to discuss periods with their teachers because they are about to bleed through their pants and that’s awkward for anyone but when you are twelve or thirteen it is mortifying. Most females have had this experience at least once while they’re learning to manage the situation and even if they’ve already learned to be prepared by carrying products, there are also lots of times that teachers won’t let students go to the bathroom so tge urgency of the situation has to be explained.
I can't recall any mention of menstruation in school.
I recall two movies where a girl is surprised by her first period and it's explained to her by some nearby female; and one girl bleeding through white pants and being warned of it by a future boyfriend. So there's some limited screenwriter value in youth menstruation.
For clickbait something bigger has to be added.
"One day the statues will wake up in town with pads of sponge-cloth stuck between their thighs. Then the women will pull off their own pads and throw them into the nettles. Their bodies, which used to be proud of their whiteness and their lack of issue for twenty-five days out of thirty, will show off the blood as it flows down to their ankles: they will show themselves off in beauty.
"Thus, through the display of something real and rather more important than the roundness or firmness of breasts, all will sense the terror that seizes little girls the first time.
"Any idea of pure form will thus be definitively soiled."
Francis Ponge, "The Law and the Prophets" (1930)
Movie, kidnapped lady needs to use the restroom owing to period beginning
"Can't you just hold it?"
"It doesn't work like that."
"any student should have access to a school nurse in the least"
In public school in Florida--elementary school, Junior High, and Senior High--we never had a school nurse on staff or available on call. Ill students would be sent to the Principal's Office in elementary school or the Dean's Offices (for Boys or Girls, respectively) in Jr. and Sr. high. There, if deemed serious enough, the school would call the available parent. If not deemed serious enough, the student would rest in the office for a bit and then be sent back to class. (This was in the 60s and early 70s.)
"Porn in school, fine. Grooming elementary school children, fine. Promoting sexual mutilation of children, fine."
Can you document any of the above?
In sixth grade a girl sat at her desk itching the utter crap out of her crotch. She was obviously mortified and unable to stop. (I assume she had a very bad yeast infection.) We all stared at her; the worst social situation was happening in front of us. Finally the teacher noticed and took her from the room.
In seventh grade a girl had a sudden onset of her period during math class and bled all over her skirt and the desk chair. The teacher led her from the room. The students all had an unscheduled recess.
Shit happens.
Centennial Jr Hich school in Homestead Florida had a school nurse in 1978-1980.
Achilles: "The Desantis team wants to focus on this cultural stray voltage stuff because they don't want to talk about the economic issues of open borders and free trade and corporate attacks on freedom.
The people giving Desantis all of the money want people focused on the trans BS for a reason."
It's been noted previously that DeSantis and his team have, at the least, tentatively touched on each of those subjects.
We've noted the DeSantis team seems particularly aware, unlike most GOPe consultant dunces, that these are real issues and DeSantis + Team have tiptoed up to the talking point position of the more populist base.
Is there tons of wiggle room? Yes.
Do we believe that they (DeSantis and crew) believe strongly in what they've intimated? Not yet as far as I can see.
Do we believe anything fundamental has changed with DeSantis and his advisors/funders? No.
But we do have to note when DeSantis and/or his team mentions those elements we are most concerned with and then assessing what we believe is happening: Is DeSantis following his true heart on these issues or is he calculating just how far he can go to satisfy the policy needs of the 50%+ of the republican populist base without alienating his major funders who oppose ALL of the populist/America First/nationalist economic policies?
It does all appear quite stage managed and non-spontaneous and very slickly coordinated. But again, at least his staff is paying lip service to the grass roots reality.
The other cats in the race are either total buffoons are or simply providing covering fire against Trump in the hopes that DeSantis will select them for VP or other key roles later.
Tom T: "Strongly disagree. DeSantis led the airlift to Martha's Vineyard and the direct attack on Disney. He's tearing pages out of the Trump playbook and running them successfully."
Strongly disagree with your strong disagreement.
But do note that I have been giving the DeSantis team credit for making some rhetorical moves in those areas that are most important to the populist base.
DeSantis has NOT stated how far he would go to shut down illegal immigration.
Nothing about finishing the physical wall in those sectors where it makes sense.
Nothing yet on Fair Trade or reshoring of american jobs in general and for critical to national security tech and mineral/materials development.
Nothing yet on how he would strongly engage the ChiComs economically (yes, basic economic warfare), such as denying the ChiCom's favored trade status, etc.
Nothing yet on how we would go after the weaponized deep state.
Nothing yet about holding NATO "allies" to account for their failure to live up to their basic obligations
---etc.
And since some will be confused as to the background of some of this disagreement, I'll restate what the concern was for the last 18 months regarding DeSantis' strong attacks on the Wokesters which everyone agrees with, and here it is:
The fear was that given who is funding DeSantis (the typical globalists like Ken Griffin for example) were okay with DeSantis going full speed ahead on ALL the culture issue fronts (see the Ken Griffin politico interview article) just as long as DeSantis was going to be on board with the globalist economic agenda and not really attacking the establishment deep state.
So what some of us have been saying for almost 2 years is that its a given DeSantis would be stellar on social issues and that we would be watching closely to see where the other half of the "Trump agenda" would be in a DeSantis campaign.
We're still watching and waiting......
This was entirely avoidable but the teachers in Florida insisted on talking sex to little children against their parents wishes and insisting they had a right to change children’s sex without the parents knowledge or consent. So I don’t care if menstrual talk is off the table. Plenty of girls have made it to adulthood without a teacher involved in their prepubescent private lives.
An actual journalist would have reported this story as the lawmaker mischaracterizing the bill in response to evidently getting caught off guard by a question. Instead it gets reported as the bill actually doing what he mistakenly said it does. The bill (if you read the text) is entirely about instructional materials. It of course does not say that if a 5th grader gets her period she can't approach a teacher about it. In other words, fake news from the WaPo, a day ending in y.
Cookie,
Have you zero awareness of multiple parents getting booted from school board meetings for reading pornographic curriculum imposed on their kids?
The bill says sex ed and sexual health classes start in sixth grade. It has nothing to do with girls talking about their periods ("The Curse") in school.
In the '50s, when I was elementary school, fifth-grade girls were shown a movie about menstruation. In sixth-grade PE, which was all girl, we saw another movie, made by Modess or one of those companies. In 9th grade health, again all female, we watched movies about the dangers of sex (venereal disease and pregnancy). There was no discussion. We were fairly sure the teacher had no more sexual experience than we did.
Why do people think that it is appropriate for a girl to discuss their menstrual cycle with some rando at her school? This is ridiculous, if it is a medical issue she should be directed to the school nurse. If not . . . what the Hell? Just substitute the words "random stranger" for "teacher."
It is hard to believe that the people who write stories like this think that they are strengthening their claim that random public school teachers should be intimately involved in the sexual development of children.
Imagine if these teachers were biological men. Comfortable now? A lot might go in that "unscheduled recess."
Kate said...
In sixth grade a girl sat at her desk itching the utter crap out of her crotch. She was obviously mortified and unable to stop. (I assume she had a very bad yeast infection.) We all stared at her; the worst social situation was happening in front of us. Finally the teacher noticed and took her from the room.
In seventh grade a girl had a sudden onset of her period during math class and bled all over her skirt and the desk chair. The teacher led her from the room. The students all had an unscheduled recess.
Tom T. said...
The Desantis team ... they don't want to talk about the economic issues of open borders and free trade and corporate attacks on freedom.
Strongly disagree. DeSantis led the airlift to Martha's Vineyard and the direct attack on Disney. He's tearing pages out of the Trump playbook and running them successfully.
He moved some future democrat voters farther into the country.
They were promptly removed and processed and signed up to vote.
He sure owned the libs there. The democrats all complain about these antics in public and chortle about all the new voters in private.
Desantis was a Paul Ryan clone in congress. All he has done so far on border issues is talk and pretend to fight. He hasn't said a word about economic issues. He is getting way too much money from Ken Griffen.
Ann Althouse said...
"They should talk to their parents about it. Why would they talk to teachers about it?"
Tell me you're a male without telling me you're a male.
My daughters have a Mom.
I don't want them learning anything from public school teachers on this subject.
Republican men (supposedly)with enlightenment on young girls menstruation periods,chiming in with babbling on nothing they know about! Brilliant. 😞
Discussions about getting one's period (at least for me and my school friends) happened well before the possible event's arrival. That doesn't mean we didn't get surprised. Those early days are unpredictable. You don't have a 28 day cycle right out of the gate. Sometimes it's 27, then 30, then 35 days. But, you have supplies with you so that you're not caught out. When girls started carrying a purse, you knew.
But no girl ever talked to her teacher, no matter how much you liked her. You'd go to your friends first, then the school nurse, if absolutely necessary.
"Cookie,
Have you zero awareness of multiple parents getting booted from school board meetings for reading pornographic curriculum imposed on their kids?"
Yes, I have been unaware of such allegations. If you (or others) say this is happening, is there substantiation? (It is very easy for such inflammatory allegations to be made as a result of hearsay, gossip, misunderstanding, panic, or avarice.)Is it possible fraud is involved? Are the allegations that teachers are knowingly assigning pornographic books as class reading, or merely that porn has been found in the libraries where students may find and obtain this material on their own? Or both? How many instances of such cases have been reported and substantiated? What have been found to be the facts of each case? What have been the responses of the school(s) to these accusations?
I cannot believe school teachers are knowingly assigning pornographic books to their students. I can believe that books with inappropriate content might inadvertently be requisitioned by a school library here or there, without knowledge by the librarians of the sexual content. I am highly skeptical that even such inadvertent occurrences, if true, have occurred more than rarely. But...if such material has appeared in school libraries, to whatever limited extent, it is inappropriate and should be removed. If there is proof such material was knowingly obtained for access by school children, or knowingly assigned to them, those responsible should be disciplined or even fired, depending on the degree to which they were aware of the nature of the material.
There is a miraculous aspect to a woman's body. She bleeds though there is no wound, she bleeds in a cadence that rhymes with the moon's rhythms. It is a holy and precious event.
I want to say it's out of the Cahuilla culture that the ethnography describes one way to approach a child's coming to womanhood. It was honored by the whole group, she would be buried in warm sand up to her armpits for three days, and they would dance and sing around her and tend to her through that time. On the fourth day, she would come out be washed and dressed, and taken to the sacred space of big stones. Using a red clay that had to be brought from way across the other side of the mountains, she would imprint her hand on the anointed boulder, forever honoring the claim, "I am woman".
Holy holy holy.
In my comment above: strike "avarice" and substitute "malevolence."
RE: cf @ 8:37 AM:
It's just biology, Jake.
So now they’re “little girls” who have periods?
It's not good that little girls are having their periods in fourth grade. Their bad diets are speeding up their life cycle.
"It's not good that little girls are having their periods in fourth grade. Their bad diets are speeding up their life cycle."
From the New Yorker Magazine:
"Researchers and physicians hypothesized about possible causes for the increase in early puberty, such as increasing rates of obesity; greater exposure to endocrine-disrupting chemicals found in food, plastics, and personal-care products; and stressful or abusive home environments." Oct 27, 2022
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