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

I'm in my late 60s and I don't think it has.

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.

A small boy in my family wanted to be a girl until he realised he could be a boy in his own way. Unbelievably, despite everything feminists in the past worked for, there is more pressure to conform now than ever. I'm not surprised some teenagers react by calling themselves by non-gender conforming labels and experimenting with clothing and attitude.

I also get what you say about pathologising normal emotions like sadness or anxiety that are part of the normal human experience.

Yes, toys have always been gendered, but more I think in a reactive than pro scripted way, if that makes sense. Children do tend to imitate their parent and their other role models, so daughters see their mothers being mothers, they imitate that with dolls ( although so do boys in many circumstances).

I don’t have children, but my friends who do tended to admit ( because that’s what it feels like ) that boys have more energy and more agression. Not all boys, not all girls, but most. So boys will pick up a stick and go bang bang, girls will pick up a stick and cradle it.

What is so totally different is that if a girl prefers the bang bang mode people now don’t say ‘ oh she’s a bundle of energy, I bet she’ll grow up to be a insert whatever eminent profession is admired in the household’ , they say ‘ o she’s in the wrong body , let’s cut her breasts off’. A tiny part of my mind suspects that that’s a handy way of neutralising the competition, to coin a phrase.

I was in high school during that period. There wasn't a single trans/gender queer/non binary kid. It just wasn't on the radar whatsoever. The only concept of 'trans' we had was transvestites, like Eddie Izzard. There was a handful of gay kids, and a few gender non-confirming ones. There were a couple of boys who wore nail polish, had long hair, wore skirts etc. But this was done as a kind of grungy rebellion against gender norms: they were still boys.

Incidentally, when I went to university at the end of that period, I joined the LGB club (as it was then), and it was dominated by gay men. There were a couple of lesbians. I was the only bisexual woman, and I was regarded as a bit of a novelty. Not a single trans person in sight. Asexual awareness was beginning to be a thing, but it wasn't seen as part of the LGB at all and was more a label for people who didn't want to have sex at all. Now, unsurprisingly, LGBTQUIP++ events are dominated by trans and non binary students.

How odd, there was something strange looking about the title, but the thread itself opened for me yesterday as I was looking through it to see if I'd posted. There was another linked one, and an earlier one which I believe was deleted, prompting the one in Site Stuff. Six years ago! Makes me feel old.

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.

Sorry to quibble, not getting at you but just wanting to simplify things. They never 'left' their biological sex. They remained the same sex throughout because humans can't change sex. They chose to identify as the opposite sex for a while. There's no need to mention gender at all. As soon as we start mentioning gender we validate the idea that people have an innate gender identity and we make things more complicated than they need to be.

I don't have a gender identity. I've met very few adults who say they do. Only a handful of people did before 2010-ish. Gender's a theoretical concept that means something different to each person who uses the word. If we stick to sex, which is material, unchangeable and can be scientifically proven, we're on firm ground.

@OnTheBrinkOfChange we must be a similar age - I am 61. Apart from a Tiny Tears doll, which I think would have been considered an odd toy for a boy, none of my toys had any gender indicators or implications at all. Lego was primary colours. Others I remember fondly - Spirograph, a push along dog, a pull along phone, red roller skates, KerPlunk, bats and balls, pogo stick, orange spacehopper.

The books I read seemed pretty neutral too - although there was a pony phase where they were very girl-centred.

Most of my clothes were second hand and it didn’t matter which side they did up because they were all brown 🤣.

if I contrast with my DCs (now 18 and 22), everything was much more gendered. I hated the fairy books that seemed to be all that my daughter brought home for a while. There were almost no clothes from my DS that I would have used for my DD. I was less aware then and just went along with it, but I look back now and wish I’d thought harder.

@AgnestaVipers 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 taught social sciences and there was always a question in a section called Gender asking students to explain the difference between sex and gender. Bet that has disappeared from the syllabus!

Teaching since 2001. Primary, then middle and high schools, a lot of sen/semh work and now still in education but with vulnerable young people.

This has only been a thing in any of the provisions I’ve been in in the last 3-5 years.

Is it because we’ve lost the social geoup
labels like goths, neds/chavs, punk, emo, et al. the only one I hear these days is “road man.”

@Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g are there any remaining Spartacus threads? That one is no more

Do you think general kid culture has become more "gendered"? ie majority of toys and clothing falling into overtly pink /sparkly /princess or blue /camo /dinosaur camps?

Personal observation is that TV and films have become more - more of them, more channels, more programmes, US imports, Disney in particular became more stereotypical esp in 1990s and early 2000s, though they've made huge steps to reverse this more recently.

I do think clothing for kids went bonkers in the 2000s.

the 2020s version of being a Goth.

Completely.

The only exception I'd say is that some young boys, possibly who would grow up to be gay and sometimes autistic seem to have always riled against the heavy toxic masculinity stereotype. Over the last 70 years it's become increasingly more acceptable for girls to be gender non conforming, less so for boys in a day to day manner.

It's always been like that! I've just retired and toys right through my life have always been gendered.

As Stella O'Malley and Sascha Ayad say in one of their podcasts ("Gender: a Wider Lens" - bloody brilliant stuff) - social transition as a phase, or a fad, or a stage of youth development would be absolutely fine - Dr Az Hakeem talks about it being the 2020s version of being a Goth.

Yes, strongly recommend this podcast for teachers and anyone else working with young people.

There are a number of detransitioned males and females who cite porn rather than sexism and homophobia as being the influence.

All cite the internet.

Occurrences of questioning gender identity appear to be extremely low prior to social contagion and the advent of cheap handheld devices.

Yes and we also need to consider the import of this and impact on social media content from the US, where gender roles and homophobia can be stronger and it's generally a more binary society.

Information communication technology has sped up how the world's teens access and communicate ideas, created echo chambers, falsehoods, myths, trends, allowed easier access to porn, bullying but also provided friends and networks to lonely, socially anxious teens.

I can't imagine questioning my gender because I don't feel I have one.

Indeed, @FunnyTalks I am very well aware of gender stereotypes and gender roles, and codes and expectations of femininity.

I have an ambivalent relationship with all of those - some things I'm comfortable with, in other aspects I am gender non-conforming. But no 'internal' sense of being feminine. I don't "identify" as a woman; I simply am one.

And about "gender non-conforming." I think we've tended to see this in just the way people dress, their hair, their make-up (or lack of) etc. But I'm "gender non-conforming" in that I am at the top of a largely male-dominated profession, I'm a leader, I manage people, I advise, and I participate in the politics of my profession.

Whether I do this with long or short hair, make-up or bare faced, dress or trousers, is immaterial.

I've taught undergraduates since the 1990s, and ran Women's Studies modules and degrees (remember those?). So transsexualism, and the question of the relationship between transsexual men as women, and women was on my radar.

I also worked in a department with a transsexual member of staff, who had SRS and a GRA etc etc in the 2000s.

I'd not seen the numbers of undergrads saying they're "trans" until around 2015, despite woking in a field where heteronormativity comes under intense intellectual and personal pressure. And a disciplinary field with a preponderance of young female undergrads; and a high proportion of the young male students being homosexual.

Over the 30 years I've been teaching 18 to 21 year olds, I saw young women coming out as lesbians, and young women battling eating disorders. But not the level of "born in the wrong body" dissociation of mind & body that we see now.

I find it really distressing - that some young people (of both sexes) are so alienated from their bodies that they contemplate strong and potentially harmful medications, and complex and painful surgeries.

As Stella O'Malley and Sascha Ayad say in one of their podcasts ("Gender: a Wider Lens" - bloody brilliant stuff) - social transition as a phase, or a fad, or a stage of youth development would be absolutely fine - Dr Az Hakeem talks about it being the 2020s version of being a Goth.

But the current inexorable treadmill from social to full on medical transition of teenagers is what is so scary. Although it's to be hoped that in this country at least (and increasingly in other countries of mainland Europe) that timeline of "affirmative care" is being diverted into "watchful waiting."

Taught secondary 2002-2017. In the last two years, we had one trans-identified-male sixth former, who was completely supported and who, afaik, used single occupancy spaces when necessary.
There wasn’t a sniff of anything else and I was well involved in the pastoral side of things. There were ‘masculine’ girls and ‘feminine’ boys but no sense whatsoever that this impacted on their sex -much more what would have been known as ‘tomboys’ and whatever the male equivalent is.

they returned to the gender assigned at birth

Doctors observe biological sex at birth.

No, I am asking for your personal belief about gender, not what wikipedia says. You should surely be capable of explaining it in your own words?

Susie Green became ceo of mermaids in 2016.

Had first contacted them in 1999.

Tumblr started 2007.

Facebook really took off around or just after then.

Twitter was 2006, apparently became popular 2010.