Was anyone else teaching or working with children in the decade 2000-2010?

I will explain my thinking. Based in the understanding of how young children develop early ideas of the world.

Young neurotypical children absorb information about their world via stereotypes very early on. They learn to categorise based on key details. Sorting is an early years and early maths skill. Some notice details more quickly that others. Some are more interested in people and others more interested in cars.

Humans are exceptionally sensitive to visual imagery and we are bombarded from an early age. Most of it is sexist and heterosexual. Kids clothing is v sexist.

Any child who is gay absorbs this information. Some / most children are sensitive to peer and social stereotypes and so learn early on the social conventions and they want to conform. A mix of personality and experiences growing up, both sexist and homophobic may result in an extreme level of internal distress.

It can be more complex if an individual is autistic and has social communication skills that enable them to remain in mainstream schooling or would be in a school classed as MLD. (Roughly 70% of autistic children are currently in mainstream education.)

I taught in schools in UK, mainland Europe, Africa, USA. I had a long career doing so, retired early 2000's. I also coordinated various syllabi and other curriculum matters across many and various schools and developed world-wide contacts in education.

I never heard tell of anything like "gender identity" until long after I retired. I never came across any "trans" children, although I was involved with a few gay teenagers (before the word 'gay' changed its meaning, and indeed even before 1967 when (adult) homosexual acts first became legal in UK).

Of course I knew of Jan Morris and April Ashley ... also of (usually gay, as they and we thought at the time, albeit under different names) men who made up their faces, wore dresses and liked to be referred to as "she". (One particular guy of this ilk ran a bar I frequented as a young man. He talked of himself and his friends as "queens", did the whole camp, limp-wristed schtick, but was as tough a man as you might wish to meet, as some of his customers came to rue if they stepped out of line.)

Children, though, never. Not a one. Not in any school I came across or knew about. "Transgender children": ... a very recent invention, whatever apologist revisionists might claim.

Why? Whence? I am not sure, although I have thought about it. It seems somehow deliberate, say no more than that. (And, of course, "gender identity" as it is purveyed by the current ideology is a complete nonsense; simply and obviously so.)

BTW I am an avid listener to the 'Gender a Wider Lens' podcast in my attempt to grapple with this. I don't know if you listen to this/your thoughts on their material?

@@ChristabelHolloway . This is a really interesting area to discuss and where I feel some confusion and conflict that's hard to get clarity on in the maelstrom of current ideology and debate, and from you post, it seems like you would be able to give some well reasoned explanations.
From your experience and pov, can you explain what it means to the trans children you talk about, to be 'trans'?
I'm genuinely curious and open minded and seeking understanding here.
Apologies if this is detailing the thread at all.

Homosexuality cannot be compared in any way to gender dysphoria. The former is sexual attraction the latter is a mental distress illness. It is lazy and homophobic to do so.

My statement is not transphobic.

I have not come across one trans persons biography that did not include an early experience of homophobia and/ or sexism.

Of course trans people "have always existed" - only since cultural identities, dress and roles became defined for the sexes. They've existed as long as as homophobia and sexism has.

Why is the only answer to medically transition? Why is the individual experiencing deep distress at fault and has to change?

Thank you for your very civil reply, BadSkiingMum.

There were issues that were spoken about in the decades before this and there were those that were not. That was one of the points I made in my post. This was a time before gay marriage, when gay people were still considerably disadvantaged in law and anti-gay rhetoric, including in for example comedy on the BBC, was still rife. As for trans people, we were still at the Les Dawson stage.

As I said, my young clients were much less likely to talk about their sexual orientation with a counsellor than about other issues. I was not alone in this - I was in a supervision group with other counsellors and they found this to be true, too. Parents were embarrassed and ashamed to think they might have a gay, let alone trans, child. And children picked up on that. Society still openly mocked and attacked anyone who wasn't straight. Children know these things - they don't live in a bubble immune from societal pressure, do they.

As for you being GC back then, no, of course the term hadn't been coined yet, but don't you think we all give off a "vibe"? People sense who they can safely talk to aout a particular issue and who they can't.

I'm troubled to hear about these other teachers sharing all this sensitive personal information with you, too. Where was the privacy and protection for the families you worked with?

I agree completely that there's been a massive change. I'm not denying that for a second. My point is simply that trans children existed before, even if we weren't aware of them.

One of the problems I have with some posters here is that they don't seem to believe that being trans actually exists. Yes of course there's been a huge surge in young people claiming to be trans, and many of them may well be latching on to this as a way of framing another issue. For example, the massive rise in girls on the spectrum believing that they are trans is a) extremely troubling and b) almost certainly driven at least in part by fear of what it means to be a woman in today's society - and who can blame them for that, frankly.

I am as concerned as anyone else by the meteoric rise in trans dogma and what it means for children and young people. I am horrified by what's gone on via the Tavistock (I nearly trained there in the 90s btw - lucky escape) and similar institutions. I am vehemently opposed to medical intervention for anyone under 18. Of course biological sex is real. Stonewall is a disgrace, and women's rights are threatened. So far I'm as terfy as anyone else.

But this statement - A "true trans" person has still been badly affected by something growing up. - is just WRONG. And this lies at the heart of many of the posts on here - and it's fundamentally transphobic, in my view. Would you say this about someone who is homosexual? And if not, why not?? This is a real question - if you believe that some people are born homosexual, but nobody is born trans, then please explain the basis for that belief.

Transgender people have always existed. They are rare, certainly well under 1% of the population. But they have not all sufered some hideous trauma. We don't yet know why some people are trans anymore than we really know why some people are gay. But wishing they didn't exist, and expaining them away as victims of some unspecified event in their early lives, is demeaning and antiscientific.

I really wish that some of the posters here would put aside their prejudice, which seems to me to be rooted in fear of something they don't understand, and accept that heterosexuality is the norm but not "normal". The great majority of people are straight, but some are not. This is the reality, and railing against it takes away credibility and energy from the real fight, which should be against the erosion of women's and girls' rights and the propogation of queer ideology.

Excellent riposte, @TheClogLady. Widening it out to the general population, isn't it odd that the huge surge in people identifying as trans comes from teenager girls and middle-aged men? There are some adult females identifying as transmen or nonbinary, but the numbers pale into insignificance alongside the adult males identifying as transwomen, often after building a career, marrying and having children.

Thanks for that post, @WarriorN. Your pupils are very lucky to have you in their corner.

Christabel, it concerns me you seem blind to the reasoning as to why a child develops dysmorphia about their body to the point of extreme surgery. A "true trans" person has still been badly affected by something growing up.

I did know a child in my class in the 80s who wished with all his heart he could be a girl - only because the boys bullied him for playing with us.

I also taught a child who was very frustrated that he wasn't allowed to wear dresses and grow his hair long in a send school. Princesses and long hair were his passion. Interestingly he only started to talk about being "trapped in the wrong body" after older siblings told him, after watching a documentary about a transwoman. However he had no issues with his body. So back then, the Tavistock said he was just gender non conforming.

It arises in children from issues around gender stereotyping. How that's dealt with in the home and in the social structures around them. And significant links to abuse and trauma.

All these teachers commenting had either been teaching in the 80s or more likely grown up in the 80s with boy George and Sinead O'Connor, Alien, reading famous five etc. we were looking at gender stereotyping in schools; I remember challenging ideas around this as well as making books that challenged it priority in the literacy hour. Bills New Frock for example.

stereotypes for boys has never been a well dealt with as for girls; it's always been more acceptable to be a "Tom girl" than a feminine boy, hence why in the past gender dysphoria was mostly within boys and also rare.

No child, whether able bodied or not should feel their body is wrong. I cannot square the body positivity movement with the trans movement. It's absolutely bonkers. It's society not accommodating difference that drives this.

There are now university teacher training courses that have modules on "books that have trans characters" Ffs. People being paid to do phds on trans inclusion in primary. The whole sexist socially driven ideology is generating A LOT of money for A LOT of adults, besides the drugs companies, surgeons, private gps etc. and there's no evidence that transition really helps mental health in the longer term. There's evidence on brain scans that there are similarities with anorexia.

I had severe dysmorphia about an aspect of my body growing up. I know how it started; a skin issue/difference plus teasing and curious children, impact of beauty stereotypes, which I sensitively internalised as me being the issue that had to change. I never told a soul though as I grew to realise in my 20s how and why it came about. It's never gone away, I learnt how to manage it.

So why on earth would you people posting here and saying "Nope, never happened to me (and therefore it didn't exist)" think a school pupil would speak about this to any teacher of an academic subject, presumably not in confidence or even in private?

So that’s your explanation for why 10-15 years ago an academic teacher had never had a trans child in their class…

And what’s your explanation for why now the exact same teacher in the exact same school now has 30-50 trans children in a single year group of 300?

Don’t you think that’s a bit odd?

Because that’s the real question here, not ‘why didn’t I have a single trans child in my class for 10 years’ but what has changed to have gone from having 0 then to 50 now?

And why does ’coming out’ see to happen almost universally at the very end of year 8 or the beginning of year 9? Why isn’t it more spread out amongst year groups across primary and secondary schools?

Worked from the early 80s until 2014 both full and part time (mostly full time in secondary) - nary a peep about it.

Yes, I was working with children aged 5 to 18, and also university students, during this time. I was a school and university counsellor.

Two of my clients spoke to me about feeling uncomfortable being the sex they were. They were both male - one was in the early part of secondary school and one was a student. It was clear that this was a very, very difficult thing for them to talk about. Only because they knew our sessions were confidential were they willing to even mention it. It seems very likely that other clients also had these thoughts and feelings but never brought up the topic with me.

Several more thought they were gay, and again these were difficult topics for them to bring up. More difficult, for example, than clients telling me they were using drugs or being sexually abused. THAT difficult. It was taboo as far as they were concerned.

So why on earth would you people posting here and saying "Nope, never happened to me (and therefore it didn't exist)" think a school pupil would speak about this to any teacher of an academic subject, presumably not in confidence or even in private? The fact that none of the kids you worked with told you they thought they were trans is NOT evidence that none of them were.

"I am resolutely gender critical" says the OP. Don't you think your students could sense this?

I'm not saying there isn't currently an extremely concerning trend for troubled children and young people to consider themselves trans when there may well be another explaination for what they're going through. In my view, that's undoubtedly the case.

But at least the few kids who actually ARE trans are getting a hearing.

TL;DR - the fact that you never heard of a trans kid when you worked with children years ago is NOT proof that they didn't exist.

When I was teaching this was never ever an issue. Never ever mentioned. Only since we’ve had this stuff from America it has become a fashion. It effects a very, very tiny number of people not the sudden surge in numbers that have come forward. In the years ahead the NHS will be faced with monstrous claims for mistreatment.

@BadSkiingMum
I think they used social media - we could email each other in those days, re homework etc. I had an email address posted on the wall for them to use at will. Seems shocking now, it wouldn't be allowed. What were the things around at the time? One began with M - MySpace? Was that so early?

The girls were into anorexia, ana sites and message boards, hints on how to starve yourself. That was the fashion, the social contagion then.

Sorry about the delay in responding, I've been out of the house for days.

Apologies - have just got used to repeating definitions from the GC side! 😁

@AgnestaVipers I did understand your first post regarding ‘leaving’ and ‘returning’ to biological sex, so you were clear and didn’t need to post twice 😉 Just sloppy writing on my part. Nothing to do with not understanding the difference. I am a gender critical feminist and have been since the beginning of the whole debacle 🙂

I've PMd you something.

I was born at the very end of the baby boom and grew up in an atmosphere of 2nd wave feminism/Women’s Lib.

It was a sexist time but we had concrete ways of using back. The sexism was so obvious it was -in a weird way- almost easier then. It was clear what we were fighting. Although things were still pretty shit for working-class women and girls. But things opened up in education & the workplace for middle class women.

And yes, toys were heavily gender stereotypes, but there was an increasing emphasis on girls playing with so-called “boy’s toys” and on trying to get rid of sexism in gender stereotypes.

Although very very rarely we’re boys encouraged to play with “girl’s toys”. Always the way - girls and women were and still are lower status, and femininity seem as something shameful in boys and men.

The first Smart Phones appeared in 2007 and then an explosion of social media followed. Tumblr has always been female dominated and the joke here in the USA was that what emerged on Tumblr became mainstream 5 years later.

$$$ from places like Arcus Jon Strykers foundation and others began to be pumped into Trans issues. 2015 the Supreme Court legalized Gay Marriage Federally. Lawyers funded by Stryker had argued the case. All that attention and funding for Gay issues became refocused on Trans issues (although funding for many initiatives had really stepped up in 2010).

2015 seems to be the year the attention and funding ramped up worldwide and there was a coordinated push to change the law.

That is a very important factor.

@IrisAtwood
Thank you for the correction. Yes, they returned to the biological sex assigned at birth which was also consistent with their gender from birth until they went through a non binary period.

I'm afraid this is not what I was implying. I believe sex is a biological fact, a binary, and gender an imposed social construct which is not an internal feeling or essence. Therefore, they couldn't return to their sex, because they never left it. However, they did experience confusion over their identity.

Sorry to nit-pick. Just wanted to be clear.

Yes to time period. This became a thing in the school I worked in 2019.
In my current school (started Jan 2022) being ‘fluid’ presents in all year groups, seemingly without comment from others. Eg it doesn’t make you a target for bullying.
(Not that I am saying anything should make you a target for bullying).

This is what I was going to say. I was teaching Early Years between 1985 and 2015 and from my initial training kept things as ungendered as possible. Nowadays there is a barrage of sparkly pinkness for girls or macho superhero boys stuff, commercially, before they even reach school. All the Disney Princess type thing.

Particularly supermarkets selling clothes and general expansion of fast fashion has capitalised on using what ever trend is cool at the time to sell with high turn overs. Especially using film franchises, toys etc

Stonewall changed its remit from LGB to LGBT in 2015.