School have a trans information session/day

What a load of bollocks. Sex isn’t gender, and what particular social construct they see themselves as is completely irrelevant in this particular case as it’s to do with a residential stay.

Kids are pretty accepting - until you try to tell them that day is night.

I think it’s marvellous that schools are addressing these issues and kids learn acceptance of people who are different from the conventional norms. It’s an important step in averting the bullying of children who don’t conform to the rigid expectations of the more traditional ideas of society.

I usually do but I’m trying to behave for the school...

I oops

I was just about to fill out a form for DS and this cracker caught my eye. This part, the children are supposed to complete.

I will suggest he is creative in his response. This is the school where vile and vomit spoke recently.

You get them to think about what it’s like to be a woman in a country where contraception can’t be accessed, or to be a lesbian in a country where women only have value because they can marry a man, or to be a gay person travelling to a country where homosexuality is illegal, and you ask whether any of these people can ‘identify’ out of their situation.

You also ask them to think about why it’s important to have language that clearly describe people who are really being oppressed, and why it’s so dangerous to lose those words.

Tell them tattoos absolutely fine to be themselves - wear what they want, cut their hair how the want, and play with the toys they like.

It doesn’t make them the opposite sex because they prefer one thing over another. Women aren’t a born with a preference for pink, high heels and glitter ffs.

What about those kids who prefer to identify as the opposite gender (we have trans pupils). How do we help them to feel comfortable with who they are, rather than the bandwaggoners that some of you seem to think they must be?

You tell them they don’t have to identify as anyone except themself. You tell them that gender is a load of bollocks and that nobody owns make-up or skirts or short hair or rugby. You tell them that they are good enough as they are and that they are expressing themselves, not somebody else with a different body.

You are also completely honest and you tell them that while it is possible to make some cosmetic changes, it is not possible to change sex.

Michelle Obama, available for twenty days.

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00017q0

I agree, whilst clearly as they grow older, PSHE is very important but there appears to be too much emphasis, now including exploring sexuality and gender.
My DD1 and her friendship group adopted a books not boys mantra based on their observation that those with boyfriends didn't do so well in exams and the A level results absolutely provided the evidence for this.
I had a discussion with DD2's friends over supper this week about Michelle Obama's autobiography which was aired on radio 4 with her reading from it last week. In the first few minutes she described how she arrived at college, kissed her teen boyfriend goodbye and never saw him again. One of the girls piped up in agreement, citing friends who have delayed going to university because they don't want to separate, and won't commit to future career training because they want to do different things (one was planning on joining the army, Uni for the other).
Schools, especially girls schools, would do far better to have discussions about these sorts of ideas, promoting hard work and keeping an eye on the main goal. And children who are busy with their sport, books, music, jobs, really don't have time for all this navel gazing. The best protection they could have.

You can’t. Conflict between a persons own belief system and outside pressure causes problems - it always comes out somehow/somewhere.

How do you make somebody comfortable with who they are by affirming something they are not?

Sex and gender aren’t the same thing. That’s why a man who says he is a woman (and a lesbian) doesn’t make sense.

Yes, obviously the women posting here, who have variously openly identified themselves as lesbians and bisexual women at various times on the board, a number of whom also have gay and lesbian children, are very keen to suppress anything except heterosexual orientation.

It's the only possible conclusion if you completely ignore our repeated complaints that trans ideology is rampantly homophobic.

You could teach kids that they can present to the world their varied personalities as freely as they like, without needing to conform to restrictive boxes of 'gender traits' or 'gender identity'.

The stunted mindset that cannot even conceive that girls and boys can be whoever they want to be, look however they want to look, love whomever they wish, go through the normal trials of puberty and come out the other side exactly the same sex as they were when they were born, still being whoever they want to be without being medicated or surgically altered, is totally terrifying to me in its mundane evil.

So, can I ask you all - how would YOU explore sexuality as part of a wide-ranging PSHE provision in school? What’s the best way to ensure that those pupils sitting there who know they are lesbian/gay/bi/pan feel comfortable with who they are (because, as you know, there is a diehard section of all communities that is homophobic). How do you educate the homophobic?

What about those kids who prefer to identify as the opposite gender (we have trans pupils). How do we help them to feel comfortable with who they are, rather than the bandwaggoners that some of you seem to think they must be?

Do we all go back to like the 1970s when we all had a gay in the village but it was considered a bit grubby and the local cross-dresser was considered to be bonkers but it was ok because he/she was ‘our’ bonkers?

I don’t remember ever getting taught about homosexuality at school. When did they start doing that?

Of course growing up with 2 close family members who are gay and a friend of my parents who was also gay, there wasn’t much mystery there - and I never ‘caught the gay’ either.

I feel woman-y today. But only my bottom half. I'm wearing a skirt and a man's T-shirt, so my top half feels very man-y. I am hemi-genderal.

that instead of just identifying along one line of (say) gender identity from Woman to Man as on the original, it allows for the fact that someone might feel like both at the same time but to different degrees

Or maybe people just feel like themselves and it has sod all to do with femininity and masculinity.

It encourages pupils to think about the fact that their physical body (sex), gender (how they feel about themselves), how they dress (expression) and who they are attracted to can all be different.

How you feel about yourself doesn't have anything to do with gender at all unless somebody in a school tells you that it should. Why are you linking self expression to concepts of gender?

It also provides a discussion point for the concept of sexual development disorders (congenital) because not everybody’s BODY is born the same either inside or out.

By linking this to ideas of gender you are just endorsing the idea that your body dictates a right or wrong way of expressing yourself.

I really can't understand how we have reached a place where children are being taught that their physical sex is somehow subjective but that they need to define themselves as a feminine or masculine person. It's as though creationism has somehow become 'progressive'.

OP it might be useful for your daughter to hear a different point of view about it, other than yours, so she can make up her own mind.

Schools aren't allowed to teach creationism, even as "a different point of view". It is extremely worrying that some are teaching children it is possible to change sex.

The human brain tends to make human beings believe all manner of stuff. Belief that you are a thing you clearly are not doesn't make it so.