Yesterday, the West Virginia House of Delegates approved an amendment from Del. J.B. Akers (R) to allow a child’s “treating health care provider” to examine a child’s genitals without the consent of their parents.
The amendment was actually an improvement over a previous version of the bill, which, state Democrats argued, would have allowed teachers to perform the genital examinations.
Akers’ amendment was the Republican response to one proposed by Del. Kayla Young (D), which would have banned child and adult genital examinations altogether.
“It’s unconscionable that Republicans would support legislation that authorizes intrusive visual inspections of minors without parental approval,” Young said. “West Virginians should be alarmed and disgusted by this invasion of privacy.”
It also says that all intersex people are “either male or female” but does not give a basis for assigning a sex to them.
So wait… Couldn’t they just simply request a copy of a child’s yearly physical from their physician? For example, in the 90s/2000s, if we wanted to join a sport we had to get a physical from our GP of choice so the doctor can confirm it was safe for us to play the sport in question. It was a form the doctor and parent filled out, then gave to the school. I would think something like that was already a thing?? I also remember my parents having to submit certain medical records to my schools for other reasons… Why would anyone else need to examine these children???
Ideally, if the politicians actually believed what they told their votes, then yes, they would do it that way. But... Trump was best friends with Jeffry Epstein. Nearly all the Maga billionaires visited Epstein's island. The Republican party is full of pedos, sex traffickers and Nazis.
If anything to go by their Hungarian counterparts, their only problem is "homosexual pedophilia", while celebrate old guys who manage to hook up with actual teens as "real studs", then blame the victims for the pedophilia, because "14 year olds back then played with dolls, not dressed like sluts". And I was the one who felt bad for posting Railgun memes with "You know what are the number one causes of pedophilia? Sexy children" text onto my anime shitposting page...
This is stupid as fuck, right, but who doesn't accompany their child into the doctor's office?
Like there are no circumstances under which I'm leaving my child alone with an adult who may examine their genitals and having had child safety training myself just being alone with a child that isn't yours is a terrible idea altogether.
I think part if the motivation here would be to allow the doctor present at a school to determine whether a child is participating in the correct sex-appropriate placement. Like using the correct locker rooms or bathrooms in case teachers or other students bring up an issue (for example if a boy were to go into a girl's locker room and claim to really be a girl). Since appearance doesn't line up with sex in many cases nowadays, the inspection would be to determine the real sex of the individual. Some school activities will involve nudity (changing before entering a swimming pool, communal showering after a sports match or gym class, etc.) so the authors of this were initially pushing for any teacher (such as the supervisor in a locker room or the teacher of the associated class) to be able to inspect/determine the sex of the individual.
I suppose that hadn't occurred to me because I live in a country where, if that were to happen, I couldn't imagine the level of social unrest it would cause.
You're looking at this problem all wrong, it's not that children cannot consent. Nobody is arguing that. The change here is that now those that would be doing the tests are no longer considered child predators because they didn't do anything illegal. So now it would be totally fine for priests, doctors, senators, neighbors, etc to look at random kids genitals to verify sexuality without any resistance from their parents/guardians. Is this how we finally do away with rapists, by redefining sexual assault.
Oh the irony that the shitheads that couldn't wear a mask, and want to ban books because of "parent rights", now want to ice parents out of the decision of a rando looking at their kids genitals.
It turns out that conservative people believe in specific people, not in ideology. So any claims about reasons for specific policies are basically just pretext.
Former teacher here. Any teacher that would comply with such an order to inspect is also a fucking piece of trash.
Once our assistant principal went on a witch hunt about enforcing uniform compliance. He wanted us all to inspect socks to ensure they were the right color. Turns out the color of my kids' socks doesn't impact the learning environment, so no, we aren't wasting class time on this.
So no, I'm not inspecting genitals. And if there is a move to do such a thing at school, I'd spend the entire class time calling parents letting them know what's going on.
Can someone please point out where this language is because I'm not finding it and it tracking the history of this bill, found here, it appears to me that it was removed.
Yes, however Akers Amendment from 3/6 was superseded by two other ones from Martin on 3/11 and according to local media coverage the bill that was ultimately signed into law doesn't have Akers stuff in it.
That's why I posted the full text of the legislation that was actually signed into law. There's no "amendment" or text that I can find in that legislation that matches the stuff from Akers. It looks to me like Martin successfully killed Aker's amendments on the 11th of March.
An amendment introduced by House Judiciary Chair J.B. Akers on March 6 would have allowed medical professionals to “to visually or physically examine a minor child for purposes of verifying the biological sex of the child without the consent of the child’s parent, guardian, or custodian.”
That amendment was adopted into the bill.
Before officially passing the Senate, Senator Patrick Martin (R - Lewis, 12) proposed two further amendments, one of which clarifies “that the article does not authorize certain examinations of minor children.”
Senator Martin’s amendment nullified Delegate Akers’ amendment, thereby excluding it from the final bill.
SB 456 was passed by the Senate Tuesday 32-1 with one Senator absent for the vote. In the House, 90 delegates voted in favor, eight opposed, and two were absent.
That amendment doesn't nullify shit. It's waffle language. When the court cases eventually come up over this, judges will shrug and say that it doesn't clearly forbid it, so it's fine. Mark my words.
Try reading again. The amendment was removed from the bill and it was specifically clarified that it is illegal to examine someone after birth to determine their sex. If a court case comes up where a doctor is being sued for examining someone after their birth to determine their sex, they would point to this law that says it is clearly forbidden.
I haven't seen a public school with the budget for a dedicated nurse in decades. It's going to be the vice principal or some other shitty non medically trained scum. Not that it would be less invasive from a nurse, but i bet it will be worse with random assholes deciding how it goes. This is truly fucked.