The law/policy isn’t quite in place yet, but it’s been sent to be rubber-stamped. Nothing ever starts in Florida without DeSantis wanting it finished. But with this policy, the only thing that may be finished (Besides teen girl privacy in what is one of the most difficult times for girls, just such differences in stages of development) is DeSantis’s hope for a victory in the general election.
Fifty-one percent of the nation’s population are women, and they all remember their teen years, with the exception of our proto-women, who we thought would inherit progressive world, women recall their teen years with various levels of horror.
Now, that is for girls who are not undergoing transgender treatment. I’m already on the record that I have some reticence about more developed males dominating games. But there HAS to be a better way of monitoring this than putting cis-gendered girls through submitting something highly intrusive and a huge violation of privacy.
But now, it would seem we’re giving them the 1950s, if not the ’30s, with perhaps a bit more cruelty thrown in.
The Florida High School Athletics Association is standing by its decision to require student athletes to give their schools detailed information about their periods, an unprecedented policy that is raising major concerns about privacy.
Despite widespread public outcry, an FHSAA panel not only decided Tuesday night to stand by that change but also recommended the menstrual history questions be made mandatory.
The recommendation now goes before the FHSAA board of directors, which will meet in late February to make the final decision. While students’ medical history is necessary for doctors, it is entirely unclear why a school needs all of that information—or what it would plan to do with it.
Everyone knows what they plan to do with it. If she missed three periods at 16, it would be a presumed abortion absent an autopsy on a miscarriage, and the abortion would have her disqualified for sports or at least humiliated to the point she wouldn’t go out for sports. If she hasn’t had any periods in 18 months, she’s a “boy” no matter how early she developed.
Everyone is different, but I know this. My 15-year-old is so private that if even asked, she probably would not participate, even if she had nothing to “hide.”
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[email protected], @JasonMiciak, SUBSTACK: PROGRAMS FOR HOUSE INVESTIGATIONS, PRO-WRESTLING SHOW!
ACLU where are you? Like fucking hell they get girls menstrual cycle dates.
Usually, the ACLU waits until something becomes actual policy or law rather than jump the proverbial gun. I imagine the minute the directors approve the policy, THEN the ACLU will be on it.
BIG privacy violation. Where is the ACLU indeed. I don’t know how women in FL do things but in every other state I’ve lived in mothers think this sort of shit is none of anybody’s business but the girl having said period and perhaps the mother purchasing the necessaries. I grew up with a sister and we moved around while we were growing up and nowhere was her period anyone”s fucking business. Today she has a daughter and trust me, if she lived in FL she’d shut this shit down in a fucking heartbeat.
Now here’s one more thing: I remember my sister’s periods being occasional at best. Until she had her daughter she rarely had a period (the reason why she has a kid since she did not want any was because she rarely menstruated and therefore didn’t know until she was too far along in the state she lived in at the time). This is not uncommon but it is actually the norm when girls are athletic and physically fit (i.e. slender). My sister was quite the athlete and despite how such things are put in books and on t.v., not many of the athletes missed games or practice because of menstrual cramps. BTW, we had some pretty good teams in H.S. so kids were in very good shape-fat kids, hell even well-developed girls, were a rarity rather than the norm.
I can’t believe FL moms are so fucking brain-dead that they would allow their daughters to be shamed in such a way. I also do not believe the ACLU is going to let this diamond opportunity go to waste. This one is a losing hand for the state and death sentence and pure gold for attorneys and their clients.
For many of these young women athletics don’t affect their cycles. However, one known effect of prolonged and intense training for females is that it messes with menstrual cycles! In fact, some female athletes go without having periods for months at a time. Not that this matters because I think you hit on the reason driving this new policy. They want to monitor them to see if maybe someone gets pregnant.
They want to make sure none of them are trans. Because of course real girls can’t be real athletes!
This is just sick. As if teen girls don’t have enough pressure and stress during the crazy years of becoming women, athletes, while working on getting good grades, dealing with boys, etc. To load right-wing based insanity on young women is cruel and evil. The clowns running Florida are debased and abusive. Sea-level rise can’t come soon enough for this low-level state.
Well, as I see it, the easiest way around this is for each girl to provide a totally bonkers random string of dates—some early, some late, some months missed, without any pattern— with the explanation that the athletic training has put their cycles all out of whack. I mean, what are they gonna do to challenge that?
Oh, great! These right wing morons want to “preserve” every fetus’s life and bring every little girl into this world. And if they are lucky enough to be absent on the day some assault rifle-toting idgit kills her fourth grade classmates, and she moves on to high school trying to lose her fear and grief by going out for girls’ sports…NOW the men want to know about her most private, personal, sexual life! Florida ought to also hire about a million psychologists and psychiatrists to help these girls with all the issues they are going to have before they are even out of high school! (And by the way, my oldest daughter stopped menstuating for more than a year in high school. She was neither pregnant nor going through a sex change operation. She had an EATING DISORDER!! Put THAT in your file marked “Reasons Not To Mess With Women’s Bodies,” right next to the report entitled, “Ten Year Old Girl Pregnant Following Rape By Baby Sitter,” both stamped with the label “Things We Never Thought Of (Because We’re Dumb Ass MEN!!!!”)
This is cruel, invasive and a huge violation of HIPPA laws. Since R’s don’t believe a woman’s cycles, pregnancies, or birth are actual medical, they think they have a right to know when we bleed. No wonder The Handmaid’s Tale is on their banned book list.