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Original poster

How do gender theorists classify those with severe learning difficulties?

42 replies

GrinAndVomit · 25/06/2022 12:28

I have a younger brother with very severe learning difficulties. He is now entering his teens and is becoming a man. He is non-verbal and has absolutely no concept of gender identity.
How do people who buy into gender being self ascribed, define people like my brother? He can’t self ascribe.

OP posts:
Original poster
GrinAndVomit · 25/06/2022 15:52

IcakethereforeIam · 25/06/2022 15:39

I worry about it from the other direction when people can't insist on carers of the same sex.

Yes! Exactly! It’s just fraught with dehumanising and dangerous possibilities when we can’t state a woman is an adult human female regardless of how she presents herself.

OP posts:
IcakethereforeIam · 25/06/2022 15:39

I worry about it from the other direction when people can't insist on carers of the same sex.

Artichokeleaves · 25/06/2022 15:33

FourChimneys · 25/06/2022 13:03

RadicalisedByMumzNet our town centre has pride flags flapping from every available post but the disabled toilet is out of order and hasn't been fixed for weeks.

It is quite amazing the enthusiasm, influence and support a movement for equality can garner, when the core drivers within it are white, straight, able bodied, educated, affluent and male.

Original poster
GrinAndVomit · 25/06/2022 13:11

MishyJDI · 25/06/2022 12:49

They don't. Thats the point. They dont insist on stereotyping others....

Are you saying that they would refuse to describe my brother as a boy/ man because he is unable to say so himself?

OP posts:
NotBadConsidering · 25/06/2022 13:10

MishyJDI · 25/06/2022 12:49

They don't. Thats the point. They dont insist on stereotyping others....

What are you talking about? 🤨 TRAs are always insisting people who say they aren't trans are therefore “cisgender” based on stereotypes. If you say you don’t have a gender identity, TRAs insist that you have. So does a non-verbal intellectually impaired person have a gender identity too?

FourChimneys · 25/06/2022 13:03

RadicalisedByMumzNet our town centre has pride flags flapping from every available post but the disabled toilet is out of order and hasn't been fixed for weeks.

WarriorN · 25/06/2022 12:54

For me this is why I have never believed in any sort of innate gender identity.

Original poster
GrinAndVomit · 25/06/2022 12:52

MishyJDI · 25/06/2022 12:49

They don't. Thats the point. They dont insist on stereotyping others....

So they would revert to relying on the the sex of the individual because that is essentially all that matters in terms of care, needs etc?

OP posts:
Original poster
GrinAndVomit · 25/06/2022 12:50

NotDavidTennant · 25/06/2022 12:46

They would base it on external presentation and behaviour. So if he started showing an interest in wearing dresses or make up, say, than that would be taken as a sign that he is a trans girl.

He wears what his parents buy him and dress him in. He has no interest in clothes. He does love his trampoline though. What gender does that make him?

OP posts:
MishyJDI · 25/06/2022 12:49

They don't. Thats the point. They dont insist on stereotyping others....

Artichokeleaves · 25/06/2022 12:47

There was one teaching resource put forward in Scotland as I remember, written by a TQ+ group, saying that one week you presented stereotypically girly stuff to the child, and then the next week you provided only stereotypically boy stuff to the child, and depending on their reaction you then assigned their gender and acted accordingly.

Words fail. A lot of educationalists went bananas and thankfully it vanished. But that is the level of batshit, yes.

NotDavidTennant · 25/06/2022 12:46

They would base it on external presentation and behaviour. So if he started showing an interest in wearing dresses or make up, say, than that would be taken as a sign that he is a trans girl.

Original poster
GrinAndVomit · 25/06/2022 12:45

It’s women and girls with severe learning difficulties that I really fear for and think of. They are so incredibly vulnerable to rape and pregnancies plus the issues around managing menstruation etc. They don’t know they’re women so are they not women? How can we protect them if we have no language for them?

OP posts:
RadicalisedByMumzNet · 25/06/2022 12:37

Honestly I don't think they care. I don't think they are even thought of. Disability isn't something to desire or celebrate with rainbows, it is mainly an inconvenience.

I've just come back from my local shopping centre which has pride flags and a inspirational quote from Eliot Page but where the disabled spaces were blocked off by building work and the lift to the area I wanted was out of order and the only actually accessible toilets had been vandalised. I'm sorry to say I don't think they think about your brother or my family member at all.

Hoardasurass · 25/06/2022 12:35

Ah well according to certain pro trans drs at the Tavistock and gender gp have no problem with non verbal children with asd and other issues "talking " through parents/guardians who "understand " their non verbal communication.
According to 1 particular US therapist a baby boy who unpops his onesy is telling you that he is a girl and wants to ware a dress🤨

TastefulRainbowUnicorn · 25/06/2022 12:35

They are very selective (and very far from genuinely “intersectional”) in what aspects of reality they pay attention to, so they mostly wouldn’t.

If you asked directly I think they’d mostly refuse to answer, but if they did answer it would be fucking horrific. I seem to remember one of them saying that a woman with dementia isn’t a woman because she doesn’t have an identity. (I wonder why a woman with dementia is significantly more at risk of sexual abuse than a man with dementia, then.)

This ideology is absolutely brutal to the genuinely vulnerable.

WarriorN · 25/06/2022 12:33

Well quite. I teach children in a send school. Some of them are similar to your brother.

gender ideology is phenomenally ableist.