Gibraltar Area School District's proposed gender identity guidelines include a derogatory slur which disrespects most students.
At the time this post was originally written, it was only "proposed", but the derogatory slur, along with the rest of the policy, was approved during the final policy reading on May 22, 2023:
https://core-docs.s3.amazonaws.com/documents/asset/uploaded_file/3443/GSD/3039115/05-22-2023_Agenda.pdf#page=2
The slur is listed under "Definitions", term "b"
How is it is a slur? Because few self-identify with it, and it is inherently pejorative. Adam Ellwanger wrote about this: "The ‘Cis-’ Slur and the War on Normality" https://www.theamericanconservative.com/the-cis-slur-and-the-war-on-normality/
The board even touches on the slur's true nature when it claims
the definitions are not intended to label students...students might not use these terms to describe themselves
Why would they add this couching? It seems like they are anticipating critiques or complaints.
Yet the couching is futile, since all of their terms are in fact labels, including term "b". One could write about any other slur in the exact same way, and it would still be just as offensive as it would be without the couching.
Gibraltar didn't come up with the couching. Where does the couching language come from? I found an example from 1972: https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED098000.pdf#page=12
"Categorical Descriptions...These descriptions are not intended to label or point out children with handicaps, but are for administrative use only."
This is a list of the categories:
Mentally Deficient
Educationally Handicapped
Hard of Hearing
Deaf
Speech and Language Handicapped
Blind and Partially Sighted
Emotionally Disturbed
Physically Impaired
Learning Disabilities
Other Health impaired
Homebound
Gifted
What is the difference between these words, and the term "b" slur? None of the terms from 1972 are meant to stigmatize normality or shame a group into compliance or submission. Thinking of the more well-known slurs, as with term "b", they are also about stereotyping and treating others pejoratively in order to get power over them.
School board members may think that if they copy and paste the standard "only a label" couching to it that somehow renders them innocent of slurring. Not so. If you added the same couching to any other slur and added it to school policy, what would happen next? Calls to resign? Immediate recall elections? Of course, because such couching accomplishes nothing in terms of defanging a slur.
Why does the school board use a slur?
Ellwanger's article explains why in the closing part:
Ultimately, their casual, confident judgments of who is “cis-male,” “cis-female,” heterosexual, and et cetera, leave no doubt: Secretly, they do recognize the validity of the norms they want to destroy, and thus, they don’t seriously believe the new norms they want to put in their place. They don’t really believe that the individual has total sovereignty in determining their sexual identity, and they don’t really believe that visual signifiers won’t allow reliable assessments of sex and gender.
The power to police the norms—norms they don’t even believe in—is their real goal. In other words, the gender activists know that their “truths” are false, and our truths are true.
Posts relating to honor or shame:
https://doorcounty.substack.com/t/honor-or-shame