Hello - I am an occasional poster, long time lurker on FWR. I love this board and have found the wisdom and eloquence of a number of posters quite inspirational. So I am wondering if you can help me articulate my objections to the following:
DD (yr5) had an assembly yesterday led by an organisation working with LGBT young people. The content was essentially encouraging tolerance and inclusivity (great) and making the simple point that some people are gay/bi and THAT IS FINE (again, great). However the speaker then talked about how some people are trans/gender fluid/non binary etc and that it is perfectly ok for boys to become girls and girls to become boys. DD cheerfully told me that if anyone wants to become the other sex that is perfectly normal, and should be supported. When I told her I thought it might be easier if we extended our ideas of what being a boy and girl means so that 'being a boy' can include stereotypically 'feminine' things and vice versa without changing bodies or biology she looked aghast.
There are so many issues I want to raise with the school but I am concerned they - like DD - will immediately assume that I am anti-trans individuals (which I am not) rather than questioning the wider trans narrative. I am really concerned that by including the issue of trans within the LGB discourse, it is too easy to uncritically assume that the same notions of acceptance apply rather than looking more deeply into issues of socialisation and damaging gender stereotypes.
I am also concerned that the school is allowing organisations to express as fact (and without nuance or debate) the current trans orthodoxy to children - who are clearly not equipped to think critically around these issues themselves and will accept the clunky logic of well meaning but, in my view, damaging ideology.
Another concern is that DDs school currently has a child in yr 3 who 'identifies as a girl' and the advice from the local authority has been similarly unthinking (imo). The school have been told not to out 'her' and treat her as a girl to all intents and purposes. Clearly this will present more issues as puberty approaches, and when the children start going on residential trips (no policy on whether 'she' will share a dorm with the girls, or if the girls parents will be informed). But most of all they have not questioned AT ALL this child's right to self determine, despite the fact that 'she' does not have legal consent for anything else until she is 16. I can't help but find the school's approach collusive, bordering on abusive. It is likely, after all that this child will not transition in adult life and may well have questions about why the significant adults in 'her' life allowed a child to make such an enormous decision without any context or understanding.
So, really what I am asking is how do we begin to talk to schools and other organisations about gender critical approaches to trans issues without being immediately dismissed as transphobes?
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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions
Another trans related one, I'm afraid
168 replies
Monison · 03/02/2016 09:49
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