Finally: Gender questioning children: draft schools and colleges guidance

Sex is the system of scientific knowledge that gives meaning to the anatomical differences concerning the sexual and reproductive functions of bodies (eg sex chromosomes, gonads, gonadcorticoids, reproductive organs, genitals ) .

Gender identity is your own knowledge or understanding of self as a sexed subject (male, female, or otherwise).

I appreciate this may sound complex. Science often is complex. It doesn’t mean it’s “made up”.

We don't all "have a gender". Gender is a set of regressive stereotypes which is imposed on us all because of our sex. We know what sex we are because of what type of body we have. None of us have to comply with gender stereotypes.

@Tandora

If gender is just knowing what sex you are, then my kids both know what sex they are - they refer to their parts by the correct names and say things like "I am a boy because I have a willy and you are a girl because you have a vulva". My kids are 3 and 5, btw. They share a bath often, so they know why they have different bits.

Is this enough to be "their sense of their own sex" to have fixed their gender at their young ages?

If they think they are trans when they are 14, what has happened? Does gender suddenly just change depending on what ideas and stereotypes they get exposed to? In which case, why is it more important than sex, which is a constant through everyone's life and a key determinant of strength, aggression, bone density, propensity for violent crime and risk taking, likelihood of getting pregnant?

So everyone who doesn't want to get naked with random strangers of the opposite sex is a prude?

An interesting viewpoint. But not one which is shared by most of the population.

@Tandora

1. i would be mortified when i was a teenager to be expected to wash change out toilet in the same space as a boy.
2. I still would be as an adult human female
3. you keep mixing up sex and gender. Gender means the social indicators such as clothing, interests and hobbies, occupations and other societal norms we are expected to abide by. Sex is a biological term for a person who is either male or female
4. Trans has no specific meaning.
5. Children are not fully formed and are learning as they develop towards adulthood we should not be assigning or guiding them in one direction or another about their sexuality.

So you believe that boys should be allowed to enter girls' changing rooms so that they can expose themselves and watch the girls undressing.

It's an interesting viewpoint. I assume you're male.

So you don’t like it because it’s “taboo” ? So it’s basic (hetero)sexual prudishness?

I know what sex I am because I have a female body with breasts and a vagina that menstruates and has been pregnant. I don't have a gender. It's made up. It's fake science. It's nonsense.

@Tandora

How can you tell which teens will be permanently trans, given that studies show 80% of such children claiming a trans identity desist if they are just left to work it out without encouragement to change their identity?

Don't you think that if we tell children that if they think they might be trans because they are gender non conforming they are likely to be trans, put a ban on exploring the options ("conversion therapy") and demonise people who might try to explore with the child any factors that might have influenced their decisions before leaping to conclusions (or putting kids on hormones), then you're going to end up with a proportion of people who later regret doing irreversible damage to their bodies?

Don't you think that, if there is a good chance that a child might accept their body in time without surgical intervention then that is a far preferable outcome to sterilisation and a surgically managed future? If not, why not?

How do you explain the fact that such terrifying tyrant states as Finland and Sweden are no longer letting children transition and are abandoning affirmation led models, because the data does not support it leading to positive outcomes?

Do you believe that there would be no harm to women and girls if everything which is currently single-sex were to become mixed sex?

Prisons
Sports
Changing rooms
etc.

I know I shouldn't feed you, but..... it doesn't matter what anyone here thinks. Humans have a pretty well universal taboo against mixed sex nudity, toileting etc. So breaking it will at best result in self-exclusion by some vulnerable people.

Sex is biologically defined. What is gender and what is its relationship to sex?

🤷🏼‍♀️

Everyone has a gender - including you - it’s how you know what sex you are.

Bullshit.

What is your concern exactly? Go on,… please spell it out for me…

just because there’s a growing movement of people who refuse to accept basic science, doesn’t mean that gender doesn’t exist. Everyone has a gender - including you - it’s how you know what sex you are.

What is your concern exactly?

That definition depends on a universally understood and accepted definition of gender. Which doesn't exist. Trans is not an empirically verifiable concept.

What do you mean by "gender"?

Why do you think teenage girls should get undressed in front of teenage boys? Why do you think teenage boys should be allowed to expose themselves to teenage girls?

@Tandora that was for

What is anti-women about guidance that preserves single sex spaces and contact sports?

What is anti-gay about giving children who might be coming to terms with their sexuality freedom from putting themselves on a pathway that involves a lifetime of health issues?

A person whose gender does not match their sex registered at birth.

Have you ever met any teenage boys?

And why wouldn't you use the word transsexual for these children @Tandora ?