Florida Proposes Devastating Bill to Ban Girls Discussing Periods in School
The next round of anti-speech legislation is underway as the Republicans continue their simultaneous assault on women’s rights and free speech.
I hate to say I told you so, but — I told you so.
In June of last year, 2022, I detailed anti-sex conservatism from the first Puritan settlers through the Comstock laws, up to Roe V. Wade and it’s eventual overturning.
Following the Supreme Court decision that overturned Roe V Wade, I said that Roe V. Wade was just the beginning. I knew they would come for countless other human rights and sexual rights.
Why else would they talk about banning birth control, pornography, undoing marriage equality, banning other contraceptives including IUDs, or limiting contraception to married couples?
Several of these prevent abortion.
Conservative sentiment in America isn’t just anti-abortion—it’s anti-sex. It was never about only saving babies. It was always about policing bodies, especially women’s bodies.
Now, the next batch of sexist, restrictive bills is here.
The Florida GOP introduced a bill prohibiting young girls from talking about their periods in school.
Timothy Bella writes for the Washington Post:
As Florida Republicans are introducing and advancing a wave of bills on gender and diversity that are likely to be signed into law by Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), one GOP lawmaker acknowledged this week that his proposed sexual health bill would ban girls from talking about their menstrual cycles in school.
House Bill 1609 requires schools to notify parents before students are given “information, materials, or presentations regarding reproductive health.” It’s basically a sex-ed ban.
It mandates that such discussion can only take place with the “express written consent” of the student’s parents.
The bill was introduced by Republican Representative Stan McClain. After a spat with Florida State Rep. Ashley Gantt, it’s been dubbed the “period ban,” sparking criticism among many who see it as an attack on women’s health and basic human rights.
McClain defended the bill, saying this wasn’t the bill’s intention, but admitted that it would forbid discussions about periods. He says the bill’s purpose to prevent school staff from talking about inappropriate topics with kids.
This highlights a pervasive problem with the socially conservative approach to sexuality — sex is either explicit or nonexistent, insisting that conversations about health must imply something pornographic.
Let me be perfectly clear, nobody thinks adult staff should be discussing erotic sexual topics with children. Nobody is arguing that should be the norm. That’s already prohibited, and school staff are occasionally fired for it.
How will school nurses treat young girls with the unspoken X factor of menstruation prohibited from speech? Girls can get anemia from heavy periods. Amenorrhea is a sign of hormonal imbalances or other health problems.
Menstruation is a natural and normal bodily function, one that’s not involved in the sexual act itself. Periods aren’t a sexual activity. Young girls should not be made to feel ashamed or embarrassed about it, and we owe our kids proper explanations about the changes their bodies will be going through during puberty.
By prohibiting teachers and school staff from discussing menstruation, we’re intentionally preventing knowledge and practice of basic reproductive health and hygiene. It stigmatizes menstruation. It silences the voices of young women.
Thankfully, some lawmakers in Florida have spoken out in opposition to the bill. I spoke about the bill directly with Orlando House Representative Anna Eskamani, who said:
This is what happens when you legislate culture wars: you get awful policy that makes no sense and censors basic and important conservations for people to have, including those about menstruation. There already exists a great deal of stigma around periods; we should break that stigma not make it worse by passing absurd bills that prohibit conversations about our bodies.
Similar bills have been introduced in other red states, motivated by conservative ideology and a desire to limit access to reproductive healthcare and silence swaths of people.
The bill is part of a larger series of attacks on equality and free speech in Florida. It began with the “don’t say gay” bill signed by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis in 2022, which prohibits “classroom discussion about sexual orientation or gender identity.”
DeSantis subsequently passed the Stop Woke Act, which bans the discussion of racial topics in schools regardless of grade or even if the school is public or private.
What constitutes “woke ideology” has been left undefined. The point is to force people to self-silence in conversations about race because there are no clear guidelines delineating what’s acceptable and what’s not.
MSNBC’s Chris Hayes spoke about the nefarious intricacies of the bill with Jonathan Cox, assistance professor of sociology and race scholar at University of Central Florida here in Orlando.
Florida has also proposed a bill to curb bloggers by forcing them to register with two different state offices and submit ongoing financial reports for every blog post they make that involves state officials.
DeSantis made it easier for Florida residents to get books banned from schools, libraries, and classrooms. He plans to do it again in this legislative session.
In addition, DeSantis has signaled his desire to:
Asked for his own personal military (again).
Ban the use of pronouns in Florida schools (FL HB 1223 and FL SB 1320).
Raise the age range the “don’t say gay” bill applies to up to 12th grade.
Jon Harris Maurer, the Public Policy Director for Equality Florida, was quite unhappy about the bills, saying:
Don’t Say LGBTQ policies have already resulted in sweeping censorship, book banning, rainbow Safe Space stickers being peeled from classroom windows, districts refusing to recognize LGBTQ History Month, and LGBTQ families preparing to leave the state altogether. Governor DeSantis and the lawmakers following him are hellbent on policing language, curriculum, and culture. Free states don’t ban books or people.
While the “period ban” bill has sparked a heated debate about reproductive health, education, and women’s rights, I fear it’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Florida's politicians should shift their focus to more important issues, such as addressing the state’s high rates of poverty and inequality.
But I sense they won’t. I sense they’ll keep going until we’re living through something resembling the Comstock era again.
It’s the false idea from these laws that parents should or want to teach their kids this essentially technical biological stuff that gets me - it comes across as all about not teaching the kids anything, anywhere. Hard to see it as anything other than because they believe ignorance is a form of protection, that it will promote conservative behaviour, but it’s highly regressive, it just promotes unnecessary suffering. Most parents are about as good at teaching their own kids about reproductive health and sex ed as they are at teaching them trigonometry, it’s a relief that the school cover it properly - parents can teach the emotional love, tolerance, respect etc., and can support the practicalities of puberty and keep conversations open and supportive etc., but it’s precisely because some of it needs to be sensitive and appropriate that it’s best done in the formal environment of school.
As Nelson Mandela said, judge a country by how it treats its children
I'm all for government run schools having to get permission from parents to talk about any potentially sensitive issue. And that's from a pastors kid turned atheist libertarian. So I've been on both sides. Banning a government school from doing something isn't banning it in the world, it's just saying school employees aren't the ones who should be having these discussions with kids