Transgender child at DD’s school. Please help me write to the head?

I'm not sickened by it, but not impressed by it either. There were six points on the OP's list of which two were safeguarding and one or two others might be safeguarding if you really stretched the point. The two clear safeguarding ones were not top of the list and she asked if we could think of any more issues to add.

More broadly I don't believe that the rights, opportunities, equality and mental wellbeing of the OP's DD are any more threatened by the presence of this young trans person than they are threatened by the sexism that the OP has swallowed from the school so far. Her DD is at a school where only boys can play rugby and only girls can play netball and there are separate prizes for boys and girls etc. That alone leads to worse problems with gender identity (does playing rugby make you insufficiently female? does wanting to play rugby make you a boy?) then allowing a trans child to captain the school netball team.

So you think it's okay for male bodied people to compete with girls in sports happygolucky? Are you for real?

The high risk of suicide thing is a myth btw and has been debunked many times.

limpbizkit I'm assuming you are fairly new to this long running debate because I and others can very much assure you that males identifying as lesbians is a very common thing.

There have been some very gut wrenching threads made here by women who have seen their lesbian spaces decimated because of it and have faced a lot of harassment over their unwillingness to accept self id lesbians with penises.

There are many things the school does that I think are sexist - from boys being depicted as superheroes and girls as princesses in the first grade, to girls doing netball while boys do rugby, and the school using James Bond to teach in the primary school years

The school sounds awful. The netball /rugby thing is pretty standard and tbh I don't think most girls are interested in a contact sport , but your other examples are weird.

Like a few others I found the tone of your opening post pretty horrible.

I'm struggling to believe most boys that want to be girls are sexually interested in girls.

I might struggle to believe that someone who devotes their whole life to raising money for charity might actually have been abusing vulnerable people the whole time. Or that someone who enters the priesthood and is a 'man of God' is actually raping young boys.

Luckily we don't do safeguarding on what we 'struggle to believe' but instead on facts. And the facts are that 98% of sexual offences are committed by males. MTF trans people are males, and you haven't yet answered the question of when they come out of the risk category of male and into the category of female.

What you 'struggle to believe' is irrelevant.

I have a son. Am I offended that he isn’t allowed into girls’ changing rooms/loos, and take that as an accusation that he is a potential predator? I don’t because we segregate by sex based on risks that men as a class pose to women.

If he said he was now a girl/woman, nothing has changed with respect to what sex class he belongs to. The risk hasn’t changed but neither is it personal.

limpbizkit part of your issue is you don’t understand much about sexual assault and that you think it’s the only form of assault aex segregation is minimising the risk of. Sexuality is entirely irrelevant to this conversation.

Please edit your list to concerns where sex actually matters. Changing rooms, sleeping quarters, select physical activities are all things where sex segregation matters.

There are also carve-outs for female students designed to compensate for societal discrimination. Things like having separate male and female awards for best math student, winner of the science fair etc. those should be protected for females or if protection is no longer warranted, the sex segregation can be dropped entirely.

excluding the child from playing certain parts in drama has to do with that.

Most people on here felt that that particular point was not the issue she should be focussing on. But you seem to think it's the most important part of her post from the way you keep coming back to it. Why is that?

The real issue here, Glitter, is safeguarding. Do you understand what that means?

@rocky no we don't let gay males into female changing rooms.

Do you think we should? If not, why not?

@blueskies thankyou for your research example. As with any research - source? Bias? Who conducted it? Do they have an agenda? I'm struggling to believe most boys that want to be girls are sexually interested in girls. I'm not saying you or the research is wrong but I wonder how that compares to other research. Whether the statistics differ. I genuinely am shocked by it.

@rocky no we don't let gay males into female changing rooms. They're sexually interested in men. Is it right that they are let into spaces where they can potentially prey on males? Swings and roundabouts. Do open changing facilities still exist? Aren't most changing areas cubicled?

I'm presuming you're a woman ivegonegreyfindingausername? using the old fashioned 'adult human female' definition?

in which case go forth and enjoy your women's only swim

what you are is important, not what you identify as

I'm going to go forward identifying myself as a jelly belly asteroid will I still be allowed to go to the womens only swim? Because obviously I'm not an asteroid and if I identify like this it might automatically mean that I want to be in the female changing rooms and commit a crime that no one thought I was capable of when I identified as female..... But my choice is to be an asteroid not a criminal.

limpbizkit according to www.ustranssurvey.org/ 81% of transwomen (so natal makes who identify as women) describe themselves as lesbian, bisexual, "pan sexual" or queer. In other words attracted to women, either exclusively or as well as men and people who identify as anything else.

Oh I forgot, the answer was upthread. Ladybrain, not logical like men are.

we seem to be in a society where lots of female rights (rights to single sex spaces, the right to privacy, rights to single sex sports) only really exist on the say so of males and that all of it actually depends on how males feel.

^^This, and it's deeply upsetting.

GlitterStick

Theatres have had males playing female parts since forever.

Why do you think that was? Why do you think most doctors were male? Why do you think most lawyers were male? Why do you think women couldn't own property? Why do you think women couldn't vote? Do you actually know nothing about female history?

Thank you. I am aware that women’s contribution to the arts have long been overlooked and that we have a lot fewer opportunities than men. I’m glad we can agree on this.

I am not agreeing with you. To be clear. That you would exclude children at school from taking part in school plays even when there is nothing wrong with males doing female parts (using the word male because that's clearly what you're saying about this child)
Least your post makes it glaringly clear - it's not just about safeguarding concerns, is it? You just seem to want to exclude.
Your last post is sickening, and for those reading I'm NOT agreeing with you.

do you believe gay males are a risk to females?

and in addition, girls deserve privacy from boys

as Datun says, I'm damn sure my father in law is not a threat to me, but I don't want to get undressed in front of him

what should girls have to get undressed in front of someone who up until recently they knew as a boy?

You are asking the head to exclude the child from sports and drama.

No, they’re not. They’re asking if the usual safeguarding and other rules or policies with respect to biological sex, will be observed. Which is entirely reasonable.

do you believe gay males are a risk to females?

What has their sexuality got to do with it? Again, all males are treated as a potential risk. All.

Ffs, I've not RTFT but I hope the OP has softened slightly slightly over the course of the thread

Last post is all about the concern of safeguarding, but I'm still a bit as to how excluding the child from playing certain parts in drama has to do with that.
which was one of the original points.

OK @rocky do you believe gay males are a risk to females?

Do we let gay males into female changing rooms or female prisons? Do you think that we should?

but what are the chances that this 'boy' who feels like a girl is interested sexually in girls? I understand the safeguarding surrounding boys. But isn't he far more likely to be a gay boy If he identifies as a girl? I'm not saying it's impossible but I do think it's unlikely.

Do you understand what 'safeguarding' means? It's not about 'I think it's unlikely'.