Autism vs trans - clashing views

Right so as long as the OPs child isn't following the girl around and shouting "you're a girl" at them, which there is no suggestion of, they are all fine then. So its odd to bring the idea of law breaking nto it.

And that is all fine in the adult world with legal cases

you might find even if the school do agree autistic children can use the original pronouns in the playground you can’t then demand how the other teenagers respond to them

adult solutions don’t work in teenage playgrounds

You need to be careful how you phrase things and support an autistic child. Not fostering tolerance, kindness and tact alongside using some of the anti trans ideology on here could lead to an autistic child running away with it, not knowing when to stop or what is acceptable within law, school and the workplace.

Autistic young people can get involved in legal trouble due to a lack of understanding of social boundaries, suggestibility to being manipulated, or hyper-focused interests. Those with ADHD are statistically more likely to come into contact with the police and face criminal charges overall. They are hugely over represented in prisons. This is primarily linked to core symptoms like poor impulse control, risk-taking behavior, and emotional dysregulation coupled with autism it can be a difficult combination.

This young person has both.

Neither @Sc0rched nor @Heronwatcher have said misgendering is always breaking the law, but it can amount to harassment and discrimination in some circumstances, e.g. where it's being done to intentionally upset someone.

It's the difference between calling someone an idiot as a one-off versus following them around shouting idiot at them. The latter is likely to get you in trouble.

Just fight it out then

One the one side a dramatic trans boy family

on the other black and white autistic thinking

there are no superior positions here

spend the whole of year 8 wrapped up in this drama fighting about how one child can think and say what they want and the other child can think and say what they want

one child demanding male pronouns
one child demanding he won’t use them

and round and round you go

it’s the summer holidays the beginning of the summer holidays
so forget about it until September and see what the position is then

Op can you talk to your child's school or are they captured? The new school guidance makes it clear that social transition in not a neutral act and the school should be limiting the extent to which the child is treated as the opposite sex. There are many children being abused here - starting with the child whose parents are insisting they are trans. If allowed to go through normal puberty they are likely to desist soon.

There has been a recent employment tribunal won by an autistic person who was badly treated for "misgendering" someone. It was recognised that autistic people may find it harder to use wrong sex pronouns. So if the school do ever try to make an issue of this you need to look up the recent guidance to schools and the employment tribunal case.

I think if they refused to make any concessions at all that’s one thing, making people call a man “she” is something else. I just wouldn’t use pronouns. Good luck discriminating against me for my belief.

This. If your DS needs to refer to the person (eg to follow up a point they made in class discussion) use their name.

@Sc0rched Again, misgendering is not breaking the law.
Otherwise several leading barristers would have been continually breaking the law through recent high profile tribunals.

I agree with pp’s that the best course of action is to avoid using pronouns. Just keep using the child’s name when referring to her rather than trying to remember the he/him pronouns. Names are easier than pronouns. My eldest has a friend who is a trans boy and whom I have met several times. I really struggle to say ‘he’ because this person is so very obviously a girl. My son is autistic (as is the trans friend) and casually uses he/him pronouns when referring to this friend because he’s used to it. He doesn’t think his friend is really a boy. He also doesn’t get snarky with me when I say ‘she’. I don’t do it deliberately to make a point or anything, I just find it hard to not say what I see. This friend reminds me very much of several girls I went to school with, in the days when we were allowed to have short hair and be interested in trains and aerospace engineering without being told we were in the wrong body.

At the end of the day only the OP knows how autism presents in her son and nobody knows how it will present further along the teenage years but the fact remains many autistic children have black and white thinking and can appear blunt. Teaching tact, tolerance,respectful communication and knowing when to stop to autistic children can take work and is hugely important as the law and many work places do not make allowances for autism. If you break the law you break the law.

You can discriminate against someone in many ways, you could discriminate by only using the word pineapple if you tried. That's a very long way from saying using correct sex pronouns is discrimination. In the current climate where gender ideology is losing both public support and numerous legal battles, I think a school or employer would be bonkers to make a child/employee face "consequences" for doing so.

Agree.

It's rather ironic that so many are going down the routes of "complete adherence or nothing", which is a tactic so beloved of the TRAs they despise.

Meanwhile, in the real-world-middle-ground where not everything is a fight...

I think it’s accepted that transgender feeling has existed for ever

if you talk to older women who have lived before the ideology took hold , many will tell you they think - based on their direct lived experience of “thinking I was a boy really” it’s a form of body dysmorphia, with a healthy dose of reaction to sexism

other forms of body dysmorphia exist and no one would ever agree with an anorexic person that they were fat , yet here we are agreeing with a transgender person that they are actually the other sex

what we can see from previous generations is that transgender girls grow into fully functioning women if supported in the right way - gender none conforming, often autistic, often lesbian - but basically also female

this generation with their medical treatment may not grow so old, will never be as fit and healthy physically

we need to push back not “be kind”

it’s not about being respectful, it’s much more important. It’s preventing harm.

I talk to them about music or birdwatching or particle physics or A level choices (depending on context!).

The trickier bit is talking about them as, like my older lad, I find wrong-sex pronouns feel like a lie; but everyone we know, barring my slightly fanatical younger child, makes multiple default-to-sex pronoun errors in that context anyway, so I probably do better than most.

This thread seems to black and white in its thinking too.

Its being presented as either use chosen pronouns or sex based pronouns.

There is another way!

You don’t need to use either. Use their ‘chosen’ name and avoid pronouns. If you must use ‘they’. You can often use that without it sounding unusual, such as ‘no they didn’t say that’.

Unless this kid is in a very close friendship group it’s unlikely to be a big problem.

Nope.
Nobody gets to demand that somebody else partake in an act of religious observance, nor do they get to compelle anyone else's speach.
You can ask that other people use wrong sexed pronouns but whether they choose to do so or not is entirely their decision especially when 3rd person pronouns are rarely used when speaking to the person.

Nobody should be shamed or ostracised for not participating in somebody else's religion or delusional thinking. The only person who will come across badly with peers will be the girl demanding that others have their speach compelled and practice her religion (gender ideology).

Nobody likes a bully especially one who targets a disabled child.

Having been an autistic child in the lion's den that was secondary school, my advice to any children like me is simple: keep your head down and be quiet. Anything else just is not worth it because you cannot win. You'll find your people who get and understand you but you need to do that as an adult, it's not possible to do it during compulsory schooling.

Now naturally this view is coloured heavily by the particular characteristics of my school, but it's all I've got to go on. And can I say I am so, so glad that trans was not a thing when I was at school because I would have had to have "shut up ansjovis" tattooed on my hand if it had've been.

I mean, he's not wrong.

I think I'd just explain frankly that X is mentally ill and using the wrong pronouns for him will help ease the symptoms until the episode passes/the world gets a bloody grip.

I’d be so tempted to put in the group “We believe in being truthful in this house and do not subscribe to trans ideology, especially because of the harm it causes to children”. Obviously I would be too scared to do that though because of a potential pile on.

You’ve had several offensive posts deleted. Inciting a vulnerable child with autism to behave in the same way as yourself is hugely unhelpful.

Yeah, and if this is the case best to help your son try to find some kind of middle ground, for his sake as much as anything else. Behind the scenes you can (and I think should) have a chat with the school and give him a space to debate with you at home, but I can only see his life being made worse if he gets into an ideological conflict with the school/ family (and there is a real danger of your son becoming the scapegoat here).

Just tell him to never use this child's pronouns. It's easy. Always refer by name. I'm guessing there are loads of kids in class so just avoid talking about that one. Explain that it doesn't matter whether the child believes they are a boy or girl. And you don't have to agree, but it's polite not to upset people

When you meet and work with transgender people you sharp find out that it’s actually quite difficult to prevent others from being incredibly unkind and dismissive of the transgender person - way beyond ignoring pronouns

“she “ snigger “ she said “ and the assumption that they can therefore ignore what is said

that’s disgusting

but bit doesn’t change the fact that no one should be forced to say she for a he

i tend to always refer to the person by name ( which I believe is a personal tag so don’t care. Transmen tend to chose unisex anyway in my limited experiences)