Man threatened with Prevent for questioning transgender book at nephew's school.

PinkFrogss · Today 07:23
Isn’t the princess boy just about gender stereotypes anyway? I think I read a thread about it, and it’s a boy who likes stereotypically girly items, but there’s no mention of how this makes him a girl.

It is about gender stereotypes, you are right, but it pushes it to an extreme as the little boy is always dressed as a princess girl, it isn’t just dressing up, and he is shown as targeted and a bit of a victim in how other children treat him.

It does not also show how everybody sometimes likes things usually associated with the other sex. His father and brother are shown as typical males and we are told the brother likes baseball. He could have been shown with a little girl friend who likes trousers and a tee shirt and baseball, and he might be shown playing baseball with her too. Does he not like sports because he likes to wear a dress?

The underlying message is that the child is different in an extreme way that could make that child grow up thinking they have another gender from their sex if they are also taught this, which seems likely. It is very binary.

One very good point though is that it never calls the little boy ‘she’.

This

I think this thread is highlighting the tensions between liberal and conservative stances and views about suppression of ideas.

Many people who oppose trans activism are conservative (small c) and want to promote traditional (in my view oppressive) gender roles that they see as inextricably linked to sex. These people can be left or right wing, follow any religion or be atheist. What they tend to share is an objection to different lifestyles to those they advocate being shared/ accepted. My take on this is that this is because it's difficult to justify why different/alternative lifestyles present any problem to society.

The GC crew object to TRA on the basis of rejecting ideas about gender. On this basis alone, we tend to be liberal, but again, vote in very different ways and can be religious or atheist. Due to the liberal leanings, we tend not to object to materials/ information being shared about different lifestyles and ways of living - so long as the material is factually correct and doesn't promote mid truths and misunderstanding.

Wehadabetamax · Today 07:01
Prevent targets all forms of radicalisation, it does not target Muslims. Also he isn't a parent of the school, so shouldn't have been involved. Just from this video there is no reason for Prevent to be used.
I would like to hear the other side of the story, because I'm not convinced by this.

The headteacher could have asked him to return with his sister, the child’s parent.

I am not sure what you are implying about Prevent targeting all forms of radicalism. Is it that he is a bigoted Muslim?

That's my experience too Bellac. I work with young people who are on the Prevent programme and of those who have been referred in relation to religious ideology, Muslims account for approximately 50%. Recently, we have a spate of young people who hold incel beliefs which are very concerning.

You’re not wrong there. Only yesterday on Twitter someone tweeted about an email being sent to all staff in their school telling them to check any resources they use. The email was basically telling them to use gender neutral terms rather than sex based terms. Many many replies from educators thought this was a positive thing. Some were showing photos of their classroom wall with the ‘genderbred’ posters, and a science teacher was boasting about how she’d gone through all her resources to remove reference to sex and replaced it with things like ‘people who menstruate’ as she thought that was inclusive. She taught in an all girls school!
fortunately, there were definitely 2 sides.

I think its fair to say prevent came about as a response to 9/11 and was initially focused on islamic terrorism but that its remit grew/was widened when the terrorism act was redone.

The training i've done for the last 5 to 10 years has focused on case studies on the far right, environmetal , mens rights activism and running off to join isis.

It isnt at all, Ive worked with prevent/made referrals, for a number of different young people, with different ideas and struggles. The support they provided, particularly around belief systems and mental health was very good.

And it is very ineffective as people will not report meaning that radical and scary Islamism goes under the radar.

Bloody hell! I think you need to educate yourself sharpish!

Interesting Wiki entry about My Princess Boy - it's been controversial in the US:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Princess_Boy

Looking at the cover, it says it's about a "young boy who loves to dress up". In other words, not a trans child, but a boy who likes wearing stereotypically female clothes. Which probably most of us wouldn't object to.

Nonetheless, the headteacher's response seems absurdly over the top.

Well obviously the government was hardly going to pass a bill targeting radicalised Muslims but it is effectively what it is.

I am sorry to say this but in education currently you ARE considered to extreme if you query gender ideology in any way. You mark your card as being of the 'far right' and people at all sorts of levels become 'concerned'. This horror show is part of everyday life for many people which is why people keep quiet as they need to pay the bills. Education is a nightmare at the moment for both kids and teachers.

My experience of Prevent training and subsequent application of this training is that of focussing on any kind of grooming / radicalisation linked to ideologies that could lead to high risk behaviours.

I am GC and am not convinced the man's objections are rooted in GC beliefs....more likely conservative beliefs. Talking about 'transgender lifestyles' and having a man stepping in to sort out the issue seems to sit within a different set of beliefs.

Prevent could be applied to GC beliefs, political beliefs, religious beliefs - any where radicalisation that could lead to terrorism is happening. Any set of beliefs can be promoted in a way to whip up aggression. It's not necessarily the belief per ce,

Apologies if I misunderstood your post.

It's remarks like this that lead to Prevent failing so miserably. People are reluctant to report Islamist extremism for fear of being thought to be racist...sound familiar?

I am not sure why the teacher suggested that his views were extreme, she may have disagreed with them but extreme is an over stretch. Obviously he is speaking very calmly in the video and unless you were there you won’t know how it actually played out. We live in a society where we are asked to tolerate others views and if in his opinion a boy being a princess is seen as subject that requires a conversation then a conversation should be had not a referral to Prevent.

In practice Prevent is discrimination against Muslims.

The head teacher did not like being questioned; and threatened someone with the label of terrorist for saying that men can’t change sex on their own say so.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/prevent-peoples-review-islamophobia-concerns-b2015472.html?amp

We had Prevent training at my school and it was made clear that it was about extremism of any kind. We were more likely to experience this from the far right based on the area the school was in.

I’m not buying this at all. Seems more likely someone religious doesn’t want children being taught sex education in school. Trojan Horse I suspect.

pink that's the other thing that gets my spidey senses up; yes it's just about a young boy who likes wearing a dressing up sparkly skirt. The tulle sort many girls wear to parties. Nothing sexualised about it. No pronoun bs.

10,000 dresses however....

Sex obvs, not sure who Alex is!

Well there must be massive inconsistencies in the Prevent training because when I did it, approx 3 years ago, it was talking mainly about the far right, hardly any mention on Muslims. I remember this because I was surprised that about 95% of the focus was on this and it didn't feel balanced.

Anyway, my understanding is that Prevent is not for the area you are discussing, great sunlight though, I mean can you imagine accusing people, in fact most of the population, that it is extreme to believe you can't change Alex 😂

I've been on Prevent training, I can assure you that the trainers provided by Nottingham City Council were very much of the opinion that Prevent was about extremism from muslims. In fact I put a complaint in about their racism at the time.

I agree that Prevent could indeed be rolled out to alot of transactivists as they are fully signed up to extremist behaviour.

This guy though went in not fully up to speed on the issue. Shame.