The following remarks were made by parent Stacy Manning to the Highline School Board Directors on September 20th regarding an incident on September 19th at Gregory Heights Elementary School. Link to 2-minute Public Comment here.
Yesterday, my fifth-grade son contacted me just as the school day began. He explained that his substitute “was a man, dressed as a woman with fake boobs and everything.” He left the classroom, located the principal, and explained that his parents wouldn’t want him to stay in class today. He was correct. Thus, Tuesday was filled with errands instead of class time.
My son, because he is growing up in a culture that victimizes children, is well-versed in the difference between gender dysphoria and autogynephilia. A distinction that many, if not most adults, do not comprehend.
According to the NIH, autogynephilia is defined as “a male’s propensity to be sexually aroused by the thought of himself as a female.”
As defined by the Oxford Dictionary, gender dysphoria is defined as “a state of severe distress or unhappiness caused by feeling that one’s gender identity does not match one’s actual sex.”
So, how can my son determine whether he’s in the presence of a man who is suffering real, mentally distressing body dysmorphia or that he’s part of a captive audience of nine to ten-year-olds wantonly, without his or his parents’ consent, being subjected to a man who is sexually aroused, as he mocks femininity by wearing prosthetic breasts to better fill out his dress in the classroom?
The answer is? He cannot. No one can.
So my son, a ten-year-old, made the call to err on the side of caution and not subject himself to a potential fetishistic, opportunistic pervert. It is your job to keep our children safe, and my son did not feel safe at school yesterday.
Parents have the right to opt out of a so-called trans substitute, and it’s appalling to me that my son, at ten, apparently has more courage and wisdom than the adults employed by Highline (Adults that are supposed to have his best interests foremost in mind).
-Stacy Manning, Highline Parent
I hope this does not fall on deaf ears!!!
Wait, so your student didn’t have an issue with their sub, but assumed YOU would take issue, which apparently you did. But he never felt unsafe or sexualized? In fact, it sounds like NOTHING happened (fake breasts and all! *gasp!), and it was all just an assumption that his parents wouldn’t like it? Got it. Sounds like the parents are the issue here and not the school nor the sub.
I’m glad you took the time to address this at the school board meeting and have outted yourself as a complete nut job though. And yes, parents have the right to pull their student from the classroom. You also have the right to homeschool them. Just remember that statistically, your student is more likely to be molested by a family member than any other adult your student will come in contact with – including a non-gender conforming teacher. In fact, I haven’t read of a single instance of a non-binary sub/teacher molesting a student, but please send along any news stories if I’ve missed something. So, putting aside your faux outrage, I ask you which “classroom” is your student truly safer in?
This is utter echo chamber nonsense and I hope someone posts this bigotry to social media. Keep screaming into that echo chamber, Ms. Manning (judging from your insane take on this, it’s safe to assume you’d prefer I use your gender affirming pronoun)…
Mypov has failed to understand the explicit as well as the implicit message in Ms. Manning’s testimony. In paragraph seven, she states explicitly that her son did not feels safe. No where is there any indication that he wanted to remain in the classroom. How does Mypov imagine the principal would have responded had the child said he did not want to remain in class? Our schools have countless multitudes of students who do not want to be in class, but remain because their parents want them to. This child demonstrated training, wisdom and insight remarkable for a fifth grader by making the only case which would have carried weight with the principal: That his parents would not want him to remain. We need more parents like Ms. Manning, and more students like her son.
Alex, don’t normalize this bigotry. We don’t need more parents like this. Although, I would agree with you that we need more students like him. He’s doing exactly what his parent has taught him. And that’s my issue. This teacher did NOTHING but show up to work. From what I understand, nothing unsavory was said or done toward her student – or any student. I’m SURE that if something were said or done, Ms. Manning would’ve shouted it from the hilltops, but she didn’t, so my assumption is that this was her students preconceived bias at play. He felt “unsafe” because he was taught to feel unsafe, and that’s the sad part.
And then to make the leap that staff weren’t protecting him because of it, is asinine. That teacher passed the same background check as everyone else in that building. Now, do staff that have been background checked still prey on students? Absolutely. I don’t know if you’re old enough to remember Mary Kay Letourneau, but she was a local teacher at Shorewood Elementary that repeatedly raped a 6th grade boy just a little bit older than Ms. Manning’s student. She was a child predator. If you’re old enough to remember, you know what she looked like. If you aren’t, Google her. Now, I ask you, if Ms. Letourneau had shown up to sub last week, would her son have felt unsafe? I bet not. That’s the bigotry. Again, it’s not his fault. It’s what he’s been taught. But for Ms. Manning to throw out terms that she’s clearly not qualified to use (she did quote a dictionary, after all, and not her degree) and assume that teacher was a fetishist or a child predator is absolutely wrong, and she should apologize. She was brave enough to throw around those accusations publicly, she should apologize at the next School Board meeting. She owes the school staff, and certainly the teacher, an apology.
And, as far as the School Board goes, I’m disappointed they let her speak for as long as they did. They should have terminated her time mid-speech as she violated nearly every “expectation for testimony” listed on the Highline Public Testimony webpage, but they didn’t. Remarks personally directed to staff? Yep. Defamatory statements? Uh-huh. An unwarranted invasion of privacy? Check. Irrelevant? Absolutely. The list goes on. She should’ve never been able to speak as long as she did, but now that she has, she should apologize on that same stage.
But please, Alex, don’t normalize this bigotry. This teacher did NOTHING wrong. Ms. Manning is entitled to take her student out of any situation that she deems unsafe, but for her to claim that the students were in danger that day because of the way the teacher looked is bigoted and wrong, plain and simple. We can, and should, be better than that. And she should apologize.
My wise mature grandson was also uncomfortable in class that day. He wanted to walk out too but was afraid to get in trouble since his parents were at work. I asked him how his learning went that day and he said “my IQ dropped in half.” So I’d say the subs teaching was below standard. Something that is unacceptable with the Highline School District ‘s hiring policies. And my grandson also said “they couldn’t tell time either since we were late to recess.”
This gender indoctrination of our children does not belong in school. School are for academics: Reading. Writing. Math. Music. PE. Any social/moral issues are for the parents to discuss and monitor with their own kids. Under their control, not the school. Schools are to prepare kids for a job, career, business, etc. as they become adults.
This is a public school. Parents have a say in what is being taught. The schools make almost $20,000 a year per student. And our students are not above average for that amount of money. Not by any means. Stop the insanity! Stop the confusion. Stop throwing adult subjects at the impressionable minds and tender hearts of our children. Get back to the basics. Mrs Manning owes no one an apology I’d say the school owes her one for veering from their purpose as a public school.
https://www.washingtonpolicy.org/publications/detail/at-over-19000-per-student-seattle-public-schools-get-more-money-than-most-private-schools
This parent in North Carolina summarized what schools are supposed to be. Very well said.
https://www.instagram.com/reel/CxqktpTONKW/?igshid=NjZiM2M3MzIxNA==