Brighton primary school admissions - gender identity

This is interesting. Now generally I am not 100% persuaded by assertions that there is no difference between men and women except biological differences. And I would be very upset if someone mistook me for a man. But ....

The gender spectrum is a linear model, ranging from 100% male to 100% female, with various states of androgyny in between. The gender continuum or matrix is an multidimensional extension of the spectrum that includes additional gender identities outside of the spectrum."

"Gender identity is a person's private sense, and subjective experience, of their own gender. This is generally described as one's private sense of being a man or a woman, consisting primarily of the acceptance of membership into a category of people: male or female."

Sorry sunburnt, still didn't understand what that meant because you didn't explain the key terms.

If gender is a spectrum with masculine on one end and feminine on the other, what is meant by masculine and feminine?

I think most of the people on this thread are quite happy to live as humans with male or female sexual organs. You (and Brighton council) are claiming that it is further necessary to identify as having a male or female gender. However you don't seem to want to explain what this means.

I can think of no other human characteristic that cannot be defined.

Things can be vast and expansive and still be defined and have characteristics.

Gender disphoria would not be a problem without the artificial constraints of gender.

HairyLittlePoet Gender is one big stereotype and lucky you, you're the only one who can see it. The human experience of gender is vast and expansive subject and you want me to put some neat little definition of it into some neat little sentence (so you can pick it apart) and tell me I'm wrong and you're right. Whatever.

"The gender spectrum is a linear model, ranging from 100% male to 100% female, with various states of androgyny in between. The gender continuum or matrix is an multidimensional extension of the spectrum that includes additional gender identities outside of the spectrum."

"Gender identity is a person's private sense, and subjective experience, of their own gender. This is generally described as one's private sense of being a man or a woman, consisting primarily of the acceptance of membership into a category of people: male or female."

"The gender binary, also referred to as gender binarism (sometimes shortened to just binarism), is the classification of sex and gender into two distinct, opposite and disconnected forms of masculine and feminine. It is one general type of a gender system."

But whats the point. 'Cos you'll read all that and still say you don't understand. Why? Because either it doesn't fit your politics or you've no lived experience of the parents' despair over the kids who cry themselves to sleep every night wishing they were dead because they...hey, it's just a social construct kid, Get over it. You're just disordered/ A victim of the patriarchy/ Misled by society/ Forced to conform instead of allowed to be free...just be a human without gender...

Four year olds don't need to get a referral to the Tavistock to understand gender. Be serious. Most four year olds, rightly, will never have to think of it. It shouldn't matter to them but you will find that it does. For parents of children (I am on MumsNet right, not "crawling" over her from Reddit) struggling with the agony of gender dysphoria this option around gender identity, inserted by Children's Services into the schools application, is welcome because it is about breaking down the expectations around the gender binary and allowing children to just be. It is precisely about achieving what everyone is arguing it's not about and that is perpetuating binary expectations on children's lives.

After all this discussion of spectrums, tonight I understand polarity. No wonder kids still stay in the closet.

Sunburnt, you answered the question of what gender is by posting a link.

The link says that people should decide their gender identity by deciding how well they fit the societal roles of men and women.

The vast majority of four year olds are never going to go to the Tavistock clinic, so what goes on there is not going to help them answer the Brighton question.

Using the explanation in the link you posted, Four year old children will need to be given a choice of societal roles so they can decide their gender identity. You should have no problem explaining them, as it is your link.

To be fair, the NHS has also funded homeopathy treatments which is a dreadful hoax of ineffective and inert sugar pills passed off to the gullible as if it had actual therapeutic effect, as any doctor who presumably has an understanding of evidence based medicine and scientific method knows well.

Soooooo.......

the gender identity, yes there's that word again

The word you don't seem able to define.

You still haven't actually answered how one defines one's gender, RE Hairylittlecarrots question long ago, other than stating that you can self-identify.

According to your link, you do seem to recognise that people do actually have differences in their sex based biology! Great start. Do you understand the implications of such biology? I'm guessing not.

Oh, but you're kidding right! Good one.

That article is about stereotypes and gender roles - (do you prowl like catwoman, do you grasp your cereal spoon like a viking, do you plead for help with choosing an outfit?) It's a comedy article.

No, let's be serious.

You're insisting I have a gender identity.
I'll agree if you can tell me what that means.
I'm sure you don't mean do I like frilly dresses or power drills. Otherwise gender is a huge joke, right?

Seriously - you haven't explained at all. So far it's been a circular and meaningless argument. You're a woman if you "feel" you're a woman. (What does "feeling like a woman" entail?)
Or you're a woman if you're a non-man. Nice.

I've been engaging with you in good faith, I even enjoyed your little physics tutorial, but you haven't even attempted a definition of gender or gender identity or gender spectrum.

almond pudding Why would I prescribe a societal role to a four year old girl? What are you on about? Im talking about gender dysphoria in very young children and how that relates to them being schooled inclusively rather than excluded from an education.
Why does the Tavistock clinic in the UK provide therapeutic services for kids like this on the NHS? How is it justified? Because children's mental health dramatically proves when the gender identity, yes there's that word again, they assert, even when it is different to their natal sex, is affirmed in their environment and they can congruently express their sense of self without anyone telling them they're disordered or a product of the patriarchy or that their parents won't let them grow up gay.

I read your link sunburnt. It didnt make your point of view any clearer. It just labelled various normal human behaviours as either male or female and claimed that people engaging in those behaviours were 'expressing gender' rather than just being a human being.

So that link specifically says that you work out your gender identity by how well you fit into the societal role of men and women.

I assume in this case we would use boy and girl for the Brighton form.

So what do you think the societal role of a four year old girl is, Sunburnt?

SueTrinder To which American Dad do you refer?

HairyLittlePoet I'm not making it up. Promise. There are millions of references to "gender identity" online. Heres one.
itspronouncedmetrosexual.com/2011/11/breaking-through-the-binary-gender-explained-using-continuums/

No sunburnt, you need to be more specific.

I know I am a woman because of my physical features. If you are proposing that people who don't share these features should also be in the subset of human beings who are women, you need to explain what they have in common with other women.

Love the American Dad who thinks his child with a penis is actually a girl because the child plays football. I think the ridiculousness of gender is absolutely encapsulated in that sentence.

CoteDAzur It's hard to keep up with so many posts. There are a lot in argument to get through to be fair.
And I've been using MumsNet for years actually. And I am a parent. Admittedly this is a new profile I'm posting under as I thought it wise not to reveal my family name here. Good instinct going from your tone. You confuse "gender non conformity" with gender dysphoria. Big difference. The mum who wrote "My Princess Boy" doesn't have a trans kid. She has a gender non-conforming kid. or just a kid. Depending on how you like to regard a boy in a dress. I prefer just a kid.
But you know best.
"Why don't you crawl back to Reddit or wherever else you heard of MN and decided to come and condescend to women here?" Nasty!

Blimey NO!

I don't define myself as a non-man! I don't define myself in reference to men at all. That's a rather sexist approach, wouldn't you say?

Ovaries and vaginas are about body sex, and so they have no bearing on this gender identity, do they?

You've explained that sex and gender are entirely different concepts, and I accept that.

Which brings me back to this: I don't even know what gender means? It doesn't mean sex. So what IS it?

You ask where I am on the spectrum and I'm telling you I don't know because I don't know what this spectrum is! Tell me something - ANYTHING - about the gender spectrum so I can place myself on it. What characteristics does it measure?

Surely the form is asking for the biological gender.

HairyLittlePoet How do YOU place yourself on the gender spectrum? If the presence of ovaries define you, so be it. Or "a big, hairy, smelly vagina" as Greer so poetically puts it. If that defines you as a woman and thats all you need, then lucky you! You've probably never had to think about it too much. What makes you a woman is the fact that you're not a man right? You know that.

"The dysphoria versus dysmorphia argument is well old and has been compared and argued out before in plenty of places....yawn."

You are clearly not interested in discussing this issue with us, in anything resembling good faith. Why don't you crawl back to Reddit or wherever else you heard of MN and decided to come and condescend to women here? We would hate to bore you any further.

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/dec/04/male-female-brains-same-but-people-all-different

A quick Google suggests that there isn't much difference between male and female brains and that there is far greater variety amongst individuals. Even if you disagree with this article, the point is that there hasn't been conclusive research that clearly differentiates between male and female brains, or that people who are transgender clearly have one kind of brain or the other.

Meanwhile, if you leave biology to one side it also isn't clear what it means to 'feel' male or female. You would have thought that amongst all the recent discussion somebody would have been able to express this.

OK. I'm totally knackered tonight, and it seems I'm off to bed without an answer from sunburnt.

I was really open to a decent explanation from someone who believes in gender too. Never mind.

"If a four year old kid is telling everyone around them over and over and over, day in and day out, for months and then years, that they feel like a boy or feel like a girl and that is not the same as their biological sex what should we do?"

Do you have a child, Sunburnt? Have you ever had a 4-year-old son or daughter?

I have. Mine said for about 6 months that he was a girl. Princess-danced and Frozen-sang every waking hour. Should I have started calling him "she" and started him on cross-sex hormones?

These days, he says he is a cat. This has been going on for a good few months. He goes around meoowwwing, crawls, and rubs his head against my legs. Should we surgically sharpen his teeth & slant his eyes? Maybe a tail transplant while we are at it?