Autism vs trans - clashing views

I have a problem with men dressing in fetish in public, especially in front of children.

I have a problem with public money being used to give these men voice training or to laser off their facial hair (when women with excessive hair to do not get this).

I could go on.

Trans ideology is a sick belief that has corrupted society.

It’s fine to disagree but calling it “cruel” and “abuse”’ is totally disproportionate. They are serious allegations that should be used a bit more carefully. This really is a matter of opinon where people usually have very strong views.

I think this would depend on the school’s policy on gender ideology and their behaviour policy. For example a lot of schools teach tolerance and respect. And again, in most, it’s permitted for children to choose pronouns, and expected for others to try to respect this (a few slip ups allowed of course). If this is the school’s policy and the OP’s son is being seen to go against it repeatedly and deliberately then he’d most likely be dealt with under their normal behaviour rules. That’s why I’ve suggested the OP should check in with the school.

Nothing to do with my ideology, just trying not to have a 12 yr old walk unknowingly in to a complete bin fire.

It’s the same with most workplaces- you can’t be forced to declare pronouns, or ideologically accept that TWAW, but if you are seen to be discriminating against trans people (so refusing to speak to them, work with them, or deliberately mis-gendering them) you may well face action by your employer. That’s just how the (equalities/ employment) law works, whether you like it or not.

You know, if you shove your head far enough up your arse you might find a better personality than the shitty one you currently have.

HTH

I respect all the children I teach as individuals and treat them with care and compassion. That’s my job.

It’s also my job as a human being to give respect and tolerance to my fellow travellers on this earth.

I will always be accommodating to people who are different to me. I don’t walk in their shoes and I don’t know their experiences. It’s not for me to judge anyone else.

I think we need to be careful in schools about what we teach because of the growing understanding of the links between neurodiversity and gender questioning. I think a lot of the resources schools are provided with are too simplistic and can provide children with confusing and unhelpful messaging. This is why I refuse to teach this content. Not because I don’t think trans people exist or deserve respect.

I don’t accept that trans women should be allowed access to female only spaces - but other than that, I don’t have a problem with trans people existing and living in the world. I think people who do are dressing up hate and bigotry as feminism and I don’t agree with that one iota.

Of course it’s English. I understood (and agreed with) it perfectly well, in fact I think transology is an excellent shorterned version of trans ideology.

In society we as individuals accommodate beliefs and situations we might personally think are harmful all the time, and society hasn't collapsed yet.

I believe many religions are harmful for various reasons. I'll still wish my colleagues a happy Christmas / Easter / Ramadan.

I believe being very overweight is actively harmful and that as a society we're far too fat, but if someone obese asks me if they look nice I'm still going to smile and give them a compliment rather than launch into a rant about their health.

I believe trans ideology is also, in most cases, harmful to an individual, but I'm still going to be polite and use their chosen name, and do my best to avoid pronouns.

There are those who believe homosexuality is a sin / unnatural and that gay marriage shouldn't be allowed. They're allowed to hold that belief but they're not allowed to start taking it out on individual gay people.

There are those who - for whatever insane reasons - believe interracial marriage is wrong. Again, they're allowed to have that belief but they're not allowed to start going after individuals.

I don't believe we get to be arseholes to people we don't agree with, basically. Everyone has the right to live their lives - within the law - the way they see fit and if they want to worship a god that says women have to cover their faces or they decide they want to be the opposite sex then they're allowed to crack on and it's none of my business. None of that gives me carte blanche to be a complete twat towards them even if I think they're absolutely mad.

Accommodating other things we don't agree with is how society operates without eating itself and descending into tribal warfare.

Accepting and respecting someone else’s reality is not the same as agreeing with the ideology behind it and this is what the OP’s son needs to understand.

Theory of mind is difficult enough for autistic children, without an entire alternative reality coming into it.

One of mine found it very difficult to navigate school at all because he couldn't get his head round the 'unfairness' that teachers were not to be contradicted or interrupted, while they were entitled to contradict and interrupt him. (I don't miss his school days, but his teachers all became strangely fond of him before he left.)

Learning to deal with that cognitive dissonance and just let things drop when they don’t actually affect you is a skill everyone has to learn at about this age. It doesn’t come easy to kids who are very black and white thinkers but it’s still important. It’s like you have to learn not to go around criticizing other people’s religious beliefs or lack of belief because it does no good to expect everyone to agree with you all the time just because you’re right (at least in your own mind).
So yeah, he needs to learn how to interact with this kid without causing offense constantly, but he absolutely does not have to believe or pretend to believe that she really has become a boy now or that she was a boy all along.

😆

This isn’t even English! You just can’t get the AI these days.

Happy to leave it to the OP to decide what she considers might be helpful to take from this thread, thankfully her and her son seem balanced and measured so I have every confidence that her and her son will find a way though it.

I think the key thing for me @sunshine244 is that it’s great your son is thinking about this critically and can discuss it with you in an open way. It’s possible that his autism is feeding in in that on the one hand he might feel some empathy for this child but as he can see the situation isn’t logical, as he would see it, and he’s conflicted. All the more reason for him to get to a position, with the help of you and the school, where he feels comfortable day-to-day.

I simply mean that the trans boy will be upset if they are referred to as “she”.

Calling a trans boy ‘he’ does not mean that you accept that someone is trans. It just means that you are willing to be polite. I don’t think it is complicated. We all have different views on whether it is OK or not to be trans and I think we have to accept that everyone has different opinions.

I’m not sure if I correctly understand your religion analogy but I have a similar view on religon. Everyone is entitled to be religious or not religious and I don’t mind either way. Believing or not believing is entirely a matter of personal opinion. I’m atheist. I’m happy for people to pray and let them crack on around me. I went to a religious school. I just sat quietly while everyone was praying. I was forced to be present at religious events until y11 but nobody could force me to pray.

My DGD has a trans person in her school. She is going into yr 11, this person has identified as a boy since yr 9. They remain in their all girl friendship group.

Thankfully their is no bullying in my DGDs
school (and before anyone says this is impossible, the school is renowned for this, pastoral care is their overriding ethos and is the reason we chose the school).

My DGD does talk to, let’s call the person Albert. My DGD talks to me about Albert. I think at 12,13,14 and so on, children are forming opinions, they are starting to see the world and some of it’s more stranger things, they are navigating customs, compliance and constructs. We just let her get on with it. She knows that Albert is a girl. She also knows and understands that Albert has had a very difficult home life and my wonderful DGD understands that Albert is the product of that. It is very sad!

I personally feel that we should teach our children the fundamentals of respect, compassion and fairness and bring them up to be good people and they will find their own way.

@sunshine244 your DS may not understand many levels of complexity in human behaviour, but he doesn’t have to be the judge. You must be teaching him on a daily basis the strangeness of life based on his diagnosis. He won’t agree with everything and he will be rigid in his approach to many situations. Keep it simple, he will make mistakes. But to some degree he does have to be given a bit of autonomy to handle this with the support and guidance of the adults around him.

It means he could end up translating not thinking about the feelings of others and not taking care with how he verbalise things to other situations due to his autism. Autism carries a risk of black/ white thinking and bluntness which can get those with autism into trouble.

what is meant then by those who say “it will not go well” mean then for ops son?

I have autism.
Completely agree with your son.
However, even if no autism was present believing in biological reality aka being gender critical is an entirely acceptable view and is the view of the vast majority of people even though gender activists would have you believe otherwise.

@Heronwatcher You understandably don't like your position being described as coercive, but yet you appear to feel that not going along with pronouns would naturally result in "consequences"? What kind of consequences should those be?

So we have to make the trans child happy even though the boy isn’t happy to use those pronouns or go along with it, how is that fair?

But if the other teens in the playground side with trans boy, who knows, and more accept the he/him the OP’s son could end up being isolated by firmly holding on to his beliefs.

That would make the rest of secondary school miserable.

Our teens would get advised “it doesn’t affect your daily life, use he/him/they, he/him/they have enough to be questioning I am sure without you adding to their confusion” and they would shrug and get on with it. Yes they are neurotypical, but teenagers in a secondary school are living in a neurotypical environment. And this is what neurotypical teens would do. Well the nice decent ones who don’t want to make someone’s life harder than it already is.

Our NT teens have a level of shrugging and acceptance, they take other teens on who they are, if they are fun and decent, they have ND friends, I am sure OP wants her son to be accepted for who he is, so it might help if he can do the same and decide if the trans boy is a nice teenager or not.

That’s how we would go about it.

And I don’t know if our teens have firm beliefs on if a boy can be a girl or visa versa, they are teenagers they know fuck all about fuck all really. The conversation about their “firm beliefs” on love languages proved that!

It’s not bullying or abuse.

I agree with this. I also think it is not possible to change sex but I've met a few trans people and they've all been sweet, shy, self-contained people who seemed highly socially unconfident. I just avoid using pronouns entirely. What's the point in constantly pointing out to them that I don't think they can change sex? They're just people trying to live their lives.

In life op's son will come across lots of people who cross his boundaries of what he thinks is right or wrong and it's helpful to be tolerant, remember everyone's shared humanity and rub along together.

Examples I can think of in my life are school friends who took part in illegal hunting, neighbours where the women and girls have to completely hide their faces in public, colleagues who have had affairs, parents who used furber method on their babies and I'm sure many other examples.

Good advice by @Duckagogo

Sad that that’s where we are, but for now, it’s the most practical option.

@EnidSpyton on the face of it what you say is balanced and reasonable. But if you find trans ideology harmful, rather than just not believing in it, then why are you accommodating it?

As a thought experiment have you compare it to Rachel Dolzeal - the woman who pretended to be black? Do you think blackface should be accommodated in school or society more generally?

I do appreciate that a teacher you need to have due regard for guidance and the Equality Act and because of that you just not discriminate against a child with the protected characteristic of gender reassignment. But in your own head/outside of work, if you know it’s harmful then please think about how much accommodating you do.

Avoiding the child of such deeply harmful, abusive and coercive parents is the safest course. It's unsafe to discuss transology in schools as OPs son may find himself further targeted by transologists.

HTH

So to summarise:

Everyone must be tolerant of "trans" people's beliefs.

"Trans" people can have 0 tolerance for people with opposing beliefs.