I’d suggest that this is precisely what raises doubts as to Ms Ashley Markham’s fitness to be a school principal in charge of 12-year-olds.

This is a school principal. These are the people in charge of your children’s education. pic.twitter.com/kJOZtPhmal

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) August 21, 2023

To boast of abandoning reality at the drop of a hat – and by extension, coercing others to be unrealistic too – and to boast of creating an environment in which manipulative pretension and mental illness thrive – is an odd moral flex.

Readers are welcome to ponder exactly how “safe” an environment is in which such practised affectations are dominant or mandatory, and in which one can expect to be scolded and punished for not wishing to pretend, for not wishing to become dishonest and absurd.

Oh, and by the way, should you ask Ms Markham about the implications of her position – say, as touched on above – she may make a smug and dismissive TikTok video in which she expects you to pay her $100 an hour, plus an extra $250, for an expert “consultation” on why she is right.

Lifted from the comments, which you’re reading of course.

Come, huddle round. Let us poke at the Guardian:

The parenting pages. Let’s start there.

Providing the sperm. A joyous and maternal turn of phrase. Also of note, the idea of wanting a baby, but with only a third or a quarter of the responsibility. A kind of low-commitment parenting. Bodes well.

Eleanor Margolis, the lady keen to redefine the family unit completely – which also bodes well – details some of those implicit obstacles:

Look, when you’re redefining the family, and redefining it completely, website design matters.

It gets worse.

I guess that can happen when you wander off the beaten track, away from the tried and tested. People at the margins tend to meet other marginal people.

I say again, redefining the family. By harnessing the untapped power of unrelatedness, diffused responsibility, and a total lack of attraction. And it’s perhaps worth noting that, throughout the article, the potential child is referred to only in terms suggesting some sort of task.

It turns out that “co-parenting dates” are not without issues:

You see, the person with whom Ms Margolis and her lesbian partner plan to have a child – on what seems to be a time-share basis, via “contact with someone’s sperm” – should at least be tolerable. And not overtly monstrous.

Take that, conventional family structure.

The subject of “queer, platonic, co-parenting meetups” is also raised, along with its complications:

At which point, further comment would seem unkind.

Still, things are not, it has to be said, going entirely to plan:

However, Ms Margolis remains optimistic, her dream of parenting differently – much like sharing a villa in Spain – still intact:

Albeit among people with whom the author doesn’t gel, and who often exude, and I quote, a “distinct creepiness.”

Readers are invited to ponder the appeal, for any gentleman with fatherhood in mind, of effectively becoming a sperm donor who is also expected to perform household chores, for many years, and to pay child maintenance. In a sexless relationship with random lesbians who may find him barely tolerable, a necessary complication. But this, it seems, is how one “redefines the family unit completely.” It’s “the ideal parenting setup.”

Oh, and one final conundrum:

One more time:

I think the word that applies here, to all three groups, and which is nonetheless being danced around, is women.

Ms Margolis lives in London. Pronouns “she/her.”

Update:

As readers may imagine, I do have some sympathy with this view:

I have no problem with my child’s teacher being gay.

I have a problem with them being incredibly strange and narcissistic about it.

It’s not because you’re gay that I don’t want my child around you, it’s because you think this is normal or appropriate behavior for a teacher. pic.twitter.com/3chE6L5Hr3

— Frank McCormick | Chalkboard Heresy (@CBHeresy) July 2, 2023

Note, in the background, the prominent reminder to the class – a countdown to the teacher’s birthday. Because, obviously, it’s all about him and acknowledging his fabulousness.

But then, it so often is.

Update, via the comments:

Mike D adds,

It has to be said, in terms of setting an example – a reference point for children of what a functional adult might look like – needy, narcissistic theatre isn’t exactly what one hopes for.

And yet.

It’s worth noting how rapidly, and seemingly unopposed, it’s become something of a norm for children to be entrusted to emotionally arrested men who think that prancing about in leggings and five-inch heels, and flapping paper fans – and looking “cute” in painted nails and make-up – are part of their job description. As if they were doing us a favour.

And so, we have children being taught by men who, in their thirties, are still buying blue and green hair dye, and who habitually film themselves miming to pop records, before uploading the results to TikTok in search of affirmation, not least from their own students.

Because, it turns out, what the children really need to learn is the importance of continual, flamboyant self-preoccupation, and the round-the-clock foregrounding of one’s “identity” and sexual inclinations, especially in office hours and among children. Along with the conceit that authenticity, being one’s “true self,” entails enacting a caricatured pantomime, a generic cartoon. And of course, the lie that the endless, tedious performance is being done for their benefit.

It is, however, curious how the men mouthing this claim most emphatically – about doing it for the children, to create a “safe space” – just so happen to like parading around the classroom in glitter, stilettos and clownish make-up, and just so happen to already have an extensive collection of rather tarty ladies’ shoes.

A coincidence, I’m sure.

Update 2:

Regarding the paragraph above, and Mr Hey-Kids-Look-At-My-Hooker-Shoes, Clam adds,

What’s remarkable is the obviousness of the lie. If you poke through chappie’s TikTok videos, it’s clearly all about him and what he wants. The children are just a pretext, a rhetorical shield. And it seems that his peers and employers are too cowed and complicit to acknowledge the obvious dishonesty.

Because objecting to narcissistic overreach – and the use of other people’s children as a captive audience – would be “homophobic,” “transphobic,” “right-wing,” etc. And so, our self-imagined hero, our champion of the downtrodden fetishist, is triumphant and boastful: “If we’re not pissing off the homophobes, we’re not doing our jobs,” says he.

And of course, the children are manipulated, dragged into his drama, made to browse his TikTok videos and read the comments, and made to side with him against any parent who might object.

To call it narcissism scarcely covers it.

Consider this an open thread. Share ye links and bicker.

Speaking of educators who say things like this:

Here’s another one for the collection. This time from Mearns Academy, a secondary school in Aberdeenshire:

I’m guessing that the chap speaking means more than two. But hey, he’s a professional educator. We must make allowances.

Because acknowledging reality will, evidently, get you kicked out of class. And then scolded by a man who’s getting remarkably upset – possibly for reasons that aren’t being fully articulated.

And this,

Which seems to translate as “Just sit there in silence while I mouth obvious lies.”

The combination of feeble arguments and peevishness – and the line, “I know what you think and I know what the authority thinks” – does rather suggest that the teacher is aware of the dishonesty in which he participates. Which, I suppose, would explain his irritability.

Update, via the comments:

It’s perhaps worth noting that, despite the drama and agitation, nothing in the video, or in subsequent reports, suggests that the pupil, Murray Allan, was actually rude or mean or gratuitously disruptive. Of the two, he seems the more emotionally restrained, and the more coherent. From what I can make out, he merely responded to the teacher’s own pointed disapproval of website forms that don’t offer umpteen imaginary ‘gender’ categories. Things of this kind.

Rafi adds,

Pretty much. Again, I don’t get the impression that the teacher is a true believer. He strikes me more as someone cornered into an absurd position. Someone who knows where the power and status lie, and the consequences of being realistic, and who doesn’t want to jeopardise his own modest position in the progressive pecking order.

Which is, of course, how petty tyrannies often work.

The dynamic seen above may also be a function of just how rapidly these pretensions have spread throughout the educational system, seemingly untested and all but unopposed. I’d imagine there’s been little time, and possibly little inclination, to devise convincing rebuttals to some obvious objections, and so the response to demurral, to any hint of realism, is to chastise and threaten. As if noticing the obvious were some moral failing, an act of wickedness.

It’s also been my experience that people whose self-image and in-group status depend on mouthing things that aren’t true, or which they suspect may be untrue, even absurd – but which are still mouthed anyway – do often react to disagreement, even polite disagreement, as if it were a personal attack, or some wanton outrage. Which, again, may help explain the farcical intolerance seen above.

Update 2:

The student, it turns out, was subsequently suspended for a month, and then expelled – ostensibly, for recording the teacher without his knowledge. The only other mentioned transgression is his reply to the teacher’s claim that a website dropdown menu with only two sexes is “old-fashioned” and “controversial” – by saying that there are two sexes. A heresy that resulted in being ordered out of the classroom and then berated.

And which may strike some readers as a pretty good reason to be recording teachers.

The school’s anti-bullying policy, by the way – and which I mention for no reason whatsoever – suggests that witnesses “speak to parents” and “record the incident.”

Further to this rather telling incident, a footnote of sorts, via the Telegraph:

Not the Moon, obviously. Just a moon, a generic moon. With a cape.

Readers of a certain age may recall pupils being sent home for wearing trainers or an inappropriate skirt. I remember overhearing a discussion regarding the selective enforcement of dress codes, and the precise shortness of skirt that would escape the disapproval of certain teachers, while resulting in the desired impression of rebellion and sluttiness. It turns out that similar issues remain, albeit with a twist:

At a distance, it is, of course, difficult to tease apart mischief and mentalism. And even up close, it’s not clear to me how a teacher, dutifully observing the Sensitivities Of The Current Year, could dismiss as mere prankery some farcical claim. As opposed to some other farcical claim.

With many secondary schools now teaching children that they “may be born in the wrong body,” with “safeguarding” policies that often exclude parents but include dozens of imaginary identity options, and which are shaped by unhinged activist groups – activist groups suggesting that teachers should “engage in conversation about… the benefits of the furry community” – then farce, and mischief, will ensue. And be difficult to untangle.