Non Binary Teachers

The ‘trusted adult’ is part of the issue

An adult who is in a position of authority shouldn’t falsify biological statements and say they are neither male nor female as it’s not correct

And sex based pronouns should back up that biological reality

A student calling a male Sir should not have reason to feel embarrassment - which was mentioned earlier

But people who are transgender/non-binary ARE part of that child’s empirical reality. Whether you like it or not, they are not going away. Children will come across it- in real life, on social media, on TV. So you trying to ‘protect’ them won’t work forever. Better that they have the issues explained to them by a trusted adult, or maybe that they realise through experience that trans/non-binary people are nothing to fear, normal people going about their day job.

I find your insinuations that there is a link between transgender/non-binary and child abuse very offensive actually.

And as I have said repeatedly, no one is being compelled to do anything. It is not school policy, anywhere, for students to be punished for using the wrong name. As many people have said, kids use the wrong name all the time- I’ve been called ‘mum’, ‘sir’ and all sorts of other things. Nothing wrong with teaching them that it’s ok to have a preferred name.

All of this just makes me think of the madness around Section 28 back when I was at school.

The problem with this is that children tend to ask very pointed questions, not because they're bigoted but because they're curious about how to name and categorise the world around them ("Are you a boy or a girl" would be a classic especially for a young child or one with a cognitive disability). Fascination with categorisation is a normal part of child development starting at about age 6 and leading up to about age 12 (before that is the ontological phase: the 'why' phase which has driven many of us mad with our own children!).

So, to take an example of a man compelling children to call him Mx - some children wouldn't just do that compliantly. They'd want to know why, what Mx is, why a man wants a title that sounds more like a woman's title, whether that makes him a man or in fact a woman, if he is a woman does he have boobies, etc etc...this is how a child, especially a young child, would typically go down that road of exploration.

It's hard to answer those questions in a 'pro-trans' way without bringing one's extremist metaphysical beliefs into play and pushing them onto the children. Especially since these beliefs have no root in empirical reality, so cannot be backed up with empirical evidence, which is the usual and best way for young children to learn.

This is why compelling young children to use inaccurate language risks leading them down a path where they are having age inappropriate conversations and being asked to adopt false realities that risk damaging their neurological development.

It’s not

There is a balance to be struck in giving adolescents confidence to explore their own sexual orientation

Why is this a responsibility of school?

This is very much on topic IMO.

There is a balance to be struck in giving adolescents confidence to explore their own sexual orientation (LGB role models are a key part of this) and not oversharing personal information, irrespective of whether the teacher is straight or LGB.

In the examples from the OP's daughter's experience, oversharing seems to be given free reign under the guise of "inclusivity".

We had a music teacher who was a bit too keen on his sex life - which included sixth form girls. He was ‘encouraged’ to leave - and went to work for a girls boarding school.

I wasn't "trying to argue" anything. I was referring to central tenets of child development theory, which I think are relevant to this very interesting discussion.

Modern pedagogy is about creating a child-centred learning environment. It is not about prioritising the metaphysical beliefs of the teacher. This is Teaching 101 - first week of the PGCE.

Requiring that a child deny his or her empirically observed reality and use language that does not apply to that reality, risks damaging their neurological development, as it disrupts their learning to accurately name and categorise the world around them.

This also has potential safeguarding issues. If a child can be compelled by an adult to call a woman by a man's title/pronouns, or vice versa, then they are more vulnerable to being compelled to deny other forms of accurate categorisation (eg "that naked man you see in the changing room isn't anything to be frightened of - he's actually a lady!" / "This might feel horrible but it's fine, we're just having a cuddle!" etc etc).

It is also potentially discriminatory towards children with ASD or other cognitive/speech disabilities who may struggle more than others with using inaccurate language (although all children prefer accuracy in language and are quite literal, at least until 12 or so).

It is also potentially discriminatory towards children whose first language is not English.

Speaking of English teachers and somewhat off topic - we had a slightly odd one when I was in secondary school.
On the one hand he was a good teacher and definitely well liked, on the other hand he seemed a bit too keen on sex topics, including his own sex life (one comment I remember: “Bit tired today, that’s because I went to bed late last night. Well, actually I went to bed early, but not to sleep, hehehe, if you know what I mean, hehehe.”)

Teachers teach. That the job. When I was at school -primary school teachers didn’t exist outside the class. They didn’t go to the loo, have spouses, go to the supermarket.

In senior school, we didn’t care to imagine their personal life and if you did, oh say for example, bump into your English teacher with his arms around a man in a gay nightclub in town, you both pretended you hadn’t…

Or Grandad!

I've also been asked if I used to live in a cave when teaching the stone age...

There was a trans teacher at kids secondary who shouted at pupils who got it wrong. They were very male looking so it was understandable. It puts pupils under stress so it is harder to learn. Not great for autistic pupils.

Perfect28

I agree that Transgender Trend have a bias, all organisations and people have bias. The question should be:

"Are they actively and malignantly dishonest?"

I'd say not, they resort to the law and explain properly their views, they don't simply state them and they certainly don't dictate to schools and government departments. Instead, they have used the likes of legal reviews to clarify and explain the actual reality of the EQA and how it should be applied.

Stonewall, Mermaids et al have deliberately misrepresented and lied about what the EQA 2010 say and means and have pressured schools and Government departments to implement their demands, in direct contradiction to the law.

No! Nor grooming.

@MNHQ Please explain publicly which rule did I break in my post to justify its deletion? I do not believe I broke any and it's certainly in the interest of all site users to understand why you decided to delete a post which was in no way:

• abusive
• transphobic
• offensive

But it was critical of all teachers doing a rubbish job like OP's daughter's teacher.

Since when are we not permitted to criticise civil and public servants' performance, please explain as there is a legal basis on which are permitted to do so which takes precedent over whatever your or other users' of this site personal opinions might be. Our children deserve to be taught to a high standard and safeguarded.

Thank you.

I would report it. I would also announce that there is a clear bias here, in that any student who shows signs of not supporting the teacher will be marked down or even just treated worse. And the support or lack thereof of a teacher can make a big difference to learning.

If I've understood you correctly, you have been called a range of titles (including sir and mum) and have no strong feeling about the pronouns that are used when describing you (they, she or he).

If all people who identify as non-binary were as relaxed as this about their belief not being "validated" by insisting that others used their preferred titles/pronouns, this would help considerably.

If staff members are actually doing any of the things described in the OP, then a formal complaint should be raised.

Agreed.

While I would still have reservations about non-binary gender identities (specifically where they are used to erase sex-based differences where these are important for clarification e.g. women's sports), I would be comfortable accommodating someone's belief if my children and I were not compelled to use the language related to it e.g. my child could freely talk about men and women, girls and boys, males and females in relation to teachers without being "corrected" by a non-binary or trans-identified teacher. It is never "incorrect" to use sex-based pronouns. Sadly, the excellent examples above show that this middle ground of common sense doesn't really exist in the real world because there is always overreach.

In many ways this reminds me of the Christian chemistry teacher I had. He was a nice man but we students learned early on how to manipulate him to give us answers to quizzes if class veered off topic and we didn't cover what we were supposed to. This was because he'd always stop the lecture if one of us said, "I'm having doubts in my faith." He'd then pull out his Bible and find verses to reassure us. We loved it because we could zone out, sleep or write notes to our friends while he prioritized his proselytizing.

Like all teens, we didn't fully think this through because by the time national college exams came along, we had pretty poor scores in Chemistry.

transgendertrend came about because mermaids and stonewall didn't give a stuff about safeguarding and were building on the back of the quality work that they had done for the LGB community.

Transgender Trend are openly child safeguarding centred which for some reason upsets a lot of transactivists. Some of them even see safeguarding children as (checks notes) "right wing bigotry".

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4954762-pushing-back-against-safeguarding

When being female is associated only with oppression the only people who want to identify in to it are male fetishists with sissisfication and humiliation fantasies.

Rejecting the gender binary is saying "I am a woman," and going against all the stereotypes associated with that, some or a few.

Being non binary is creating a new, confused and controlled binary of them and us. (That often seems very gender conforming tbh.)

And label the thems cis. Which is offensive as millions of thems break the gender binary all the time in all sorts of ways.

So tired of this ‘social construct’ bollocks.

We were making progress as women before this gender nonsense. Now we’re seeing even more regressive sexist stereotypes being used to put people into gender boxes. They may be called fun things like non binary but it’s ultimately someone opting out of sexist stereotypes.

It’s cowardice, instead of saying ‘this is my sex and I’m cool with having a personality’ suddenly we’re seeing non conforming women having mastectomies and trying to hide from their biological truth. Stick some glitter and rainbows on it all you like but it’s more sexist than it’s ever been.

Report me all you like. As a woman in STEM, a tomboy growing up and someone who put two fingers to the world when someone called me ‘boyish’ or too loud I say - protect the kids especially the girls from
this dangerous ideology which seeks to repress the female even further.

@MrsOvertonsWindow thanks, I imagine transgenderttrend are completely unbiased 🙃

We've got Judith Butler to thank for all of this 'gender' business. Gender was simply not a word that was used before except in very specific circumstances or when refering to linguistics ( Masculine/Feminine word endings or forms)