Fox News Flash top headlines for August 5
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Pennsylvanians blasted their state's department of education's new gender identity page which suggested teachers should not make assumptions about students' pronouns, and listed "ne, ve, ze/zie and xe" as some examples.
Fox News Digital spoke with people from Pennsylvania, including mothers, about the education department's webpage.
"In addition to the traditional pronouns (he/him, she/her, they), some people prefer to use gender-neutral pronouns, such as ne, ve, ze/zie and xe. If you don't know a student's preferred personal pronoun, it's always best to ask," the Pennsylvania DOE said.
"This is grooming of our children," said parent, a chair at the PA Economic Growth PAC, Veronica Gemma. "[W]hen it comes to sexuality, whatever they identify as, that's their personal business. And it's not academics. It doesn't belong in the classroom."
A girl holds the Transgender Pride flag during the pride march held in one of the most important streets of Madrid. (Photo by Luis Soto/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
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"They need to focus on the terrible reading scores in this state, the terrible math scores in this state… [Instead,] they're focused on indoctrinating this next generation to change the fabric of our country," she added.
The Pennsylvania website also claimed the concept of two genders, male and female, was a "faulty concept."
"As a Pennsylvania parent, I’d like to know what qualifies them to all the concept of biological gender as faulty?" said a mother named Megan Eileen.
"As a mom, my children know who they are and they were created in God's image. So God created a man and a woman and that's it. There's only two genders," said Gemma.
The Pennsylvania Education Department listed pronouns on its website, including ne, ve, ze/zie and xe as some examples. (Fox News Digital )
"Why do they feel that it’s appropriate to teach this to a third-grader? It’s not appropriate. So many children in Pennsylvania are struggling with grade competencies, particularly after the long COVID-19 mitigation disruptions," Eileen said.
"The [Pennsylvania Department of Education] needs to stop spending money and classroom hours on leftist indoctrination and focus on academics. I think that’s something most parents and teachers, regardless of political affiliation, agree on."
Proponents of teaching gender ideology in schools say that it helps maintain tolerance and an accepting environment for LGBTQ+ youth. According to the Trevor Project, an organization that advocates for the inclusion of LGBTQ+ individuals, "[O]ne in three transgender youth reported attempting suicide, almost one-third reported being a victim of sexual violence, and more than half reported a two-week period of depression."
Pennsylvania's education department had previously told Fox News in a statement that it was crucial to "support all learners" and to help them feel "welcome in their schools and communities."
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One of the web pages included an article written by an activist, who said, "A gender-diverse child’s best predictor of success is whether that child receives support at home and from teachers."
A Pennsylvania mom told Fox News Digital asked why gender identity would considered an appropriate topic for third-grader. (iStock)
Republican. state Rep. Barbara Gleim said, "I think that a lot of this is coming down from the Biden administration through his executive orders."
"I'm not anti-trans, but these discussions have a time and a place. And I don't think that elementary school [and] middle school are the time or the place for these discussions," she added.
Kara Kowalski from York, Pennsylvania, said, "I'm not a parent, but I have three nieces who are young. They're eight, six and three. And I pretty much spend every day and every second that I can with them. I'm gay myself. But I don't align with all of this."
Fox News Digital also spoke with the feminist writer of "The Abolition of Sex," Kara Dansky, who has been a vocal voice against the gender identity movement.
"I think that what we're seeing is a vicious combination of woman hatred and greed," she said. "I absolutely think that our society should be accepting of people who do not wish to conform to sex stereotypes. That's a good thing. We have been saying for decades that women especially, ought to be able to transcend sex stereotypes. And we should champion and accept that," she said.
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"But that's very different for a school or an education department trying to persuade children that they actually are the opposite sex," she added. "That's extremely dangerous."
"It may seem unrelated, but these efforts to use different kinds of pronouns are deliberately designed to make us dissociate our minds from the material reality of biological sex," Dansky said. "It may seem like just a nice thing to do to refer to someone using their ‘preferred pronouns,' but the problem with it is it desensitizes us. And… it dissociates our minds from the material reality of sex."