Aberdeen teacher complaining about being blocked from teaching LGBT+ to 7 year olds

We have in the past had people on this board who claimed to be educators, sex educators, who could not actually offer a sentence that explained how pregnancy happens.

Because their adherence to 'gender' ideology meant they couldn't make simple statements of fact.

Agreed. The targeting of schools is deliberate. That's why there's so much emoting and wailing at the prospect of children's social, emotional and learning needs being prioritised over the insistence of transactivists that their views must be prioritised.
There's a lot of "be kind" capture in education enabled by bullying with little critical thinking involved or allowed.
Again, I would refer people to the behaviour of the drag queen deputy in the op who epitomises how adults in schools and parents have been silenced by relentless campaigns to enable the imposition of trans ideology on children too young to understand and critique it.

True.

I think also worth reminding ourselves of the disparate groups that reside under the ‘trans umbrella’

Young women and girls who wish to escape being female or don’t feel that they fit with female stereotypes with a variety of drivers such as trauma, autism, homosexuality etc. Females are vastly over represented in this age group.

Young men and boys who have displayed ‘effeminate’ tendencies, like ‘girls stuff’ and may well turn out to be gay.

Adult men who are homosexual and may have strongly internalised homophobia

Adult heterosexual men who frequently admit that over consumption of porn has led them to their trans identity

People who claim they are neither male or female

Drag queens and kings - yes also under the trans umbrella

Cross dressers

‘Neutrois’ - I think are people who gave all genitalia and sexual features removed

A selection of different ‘genders’ bigender, agender, 3rd gender etc

Transvestites

Midlings (nope no idea either)

We have never received confirmation from the spokestrans that furries and MAPs are not included. MAPs themselves have been keen for a spot under the umbrella and some trans activists have publicly adopted MAP slogans.

How any teacher in their right mind can go anywhere near this absolute shocking mess of an ideology with young children I don’t know. Sorry to be blunt.

It's the T that should not be promoted as it is a load of dangerous gnostic hogwash. LGB and heterosexual are fine.

This is so important - you have articulated perfectly what I was grasping at in my previous post. The foundational knowledge for children being taught this is being corrupted.

Who knows what impact that will have on their understanding if the world in the future.

It is a worry that so many people apparently employed as teachers have such little grasp of this. Or have been persuaded to ignore this by mantras like “It’s just preferred pronouns” “it’s just respecting people’s identity”

Heh. Maybe some parents will realise the stupidity of it all when their little girl tells them, "I wanna be a daddy when I grow up!", and they try to tell her that she can't because she's a girl, and she goes, "But you said girls can become boys! So I can be a daddy!"

Or indeed when they try to teach their son about pregnancy, and he corrects them that sometimes it's the mommy's sperm that goes into the daddy's vagina...

Basically, if a child is taught a man can become a woman and vice versa, that the words are untethered to biology, how do we teach them how pregnancy happens?

'A man and a woman' ceases to mean anything, because either term can include the one with opposite meaning.

Also bear in mind that for anyone who left school prior to around 2015, we are taught the gender tenets as additional, new information that is supplementary to what we were taught early on.

So, we are told that actually, some people change sex.

We apply that to what we already know - that humans are either men or women, one of two sexes. we make what cognitive adjustments or explanations we need to fit with the basic underlying knowledge - some people adopt some characteristics of the opposite sex and present as the opposite sex, so, this man calls himself a woman and wears women's clothing. We pretend he is a female to avoid hurting him.

We rationalise it.

A child doesn't have that foundational knowledge, so a child that has been taught 'this woman has become a man' or vice versa accepts that as the foundational knowledge. Literally and wholly true.

Children are being educated into very sophisticated and complex theory while the very foundational and basic tenets are removed, skewed, and misrepresented.

What will a five year old grasp when he or she is told 'this man lives as a woman'?

Yup.

I mean, the real truth would be, "For some unknown reason, some people believe they should be the opposite sex of what they truly are. So they change their name and ask the rest of us to use opposite-sex pronouns for them. We can accept to do that or not. It is generally considered kind to do it, but it doesn't mean that we actually believe they are the opposite sex."

I can only imagine how that would go down with TRAs...

Because it is using moral imperative as a figleaf to hide the lack of facts backing the assertion?

Why is the statement “some people are trans” almost never taught on its own?
Why does it nearly always come with a moral lesson attached?

Children are not just told: 'this woman has become a man'

They are told: “some people are trans, and they are vulnerable, bullied, at risk, and must not be questioned.”

(Exhibit A: 'some people are trans. Get over it' or - 'trans people exist - no debate'.)

So the claim is not presented as a plain fact, it is asserted and swiftly followed by a moral imperative.

Why does this claim need that protection?

PS On the back of that, and rereading a few posts to check, I do acknowledge it's a fairly nuanced distinction.

My, "We're playing with fire embracing this way of thinking" is fairly emphatic, yes. And many people here with an agenda may say, "Aha! Transphobia!" or (heaven forfend!) equate it to a call for a Christian evangelical ban on goodness knows what. But this is where I hope context makes it clear that by "this way of thinking", I simply mean the (to cheekily steal your words) "certainty and simplicity in this area" that I currently see in many schools and society more widely. The remaining vestiges of "No debate!" (No mention of the impact on women's rights! Sssssh about the detransitioners! This belongs in an affirmative wellbeing lesson only! etc.)

It's like my challenge to the trans umbrella on earlier pages - to me, that in itself represents a reductive certainty and simplicity that's harming even many of those currently sheltering under the big rainbow brollie.

I think my above (and other posters' contributions - especially re. evidence of female children being made more vulnerable by the current teaching) addresses a lot of your last response to me, Pom (and thank you for it).

The last part I think hasn't been addressed is

That is partly why I remain uneasy about both certainty and simplicity in this area.

"Remain" suggests you think I'm arguing that there's certainty (and perhaps simplicity)?! This surprises me somewhat.

Where I think we differ is that I am not yet convinced that the answer to that problem is to avoid the topic altogether until perfect consensus exists.

This definitely misunderstands my posts somewhat. I've made no suggestion we "avoid the topic altogether" in principle. Even as regards the 5-year olds, I've focussed on concerns about current methodologies without hypothesising what could be done about this. And as regards "perfect consensus"... if only! I mean, where do we have that in issues outside eg. the physical sciences (and probably not even then? expert input needed here again!) Regardless, perfect consensus would be a (frankly) rather silly thing to wait for.

Perhaps I expressed something unclearly or badly - please let me know if so. I like my ..., ()s and - s a bit too much for clarity at times! But even then, I hope that context (rest of post / adjacent posts) would usually clarify that, if it's possible to select any single sentence to sum up my lengthy waffle, it would be

"It's bloody complicated, this stuff is!"

What a lovely reminder of how children learn to understand and navigate the world around them.
It's one thing to see politicians beclown themselves with ridiculous claims about TWAW and the female penis. But to know that children are being lied to and gaslit about something so fundamental is very depressing.

To take your example, when an adult hears “some people use different pronouns”, they may immediately connect it to wider debates about self-identification, safeguarding, sex-based rights, language, social norms and competing ideological frameworks. A five-year-old is unlikely to be doing any of those things. They are far more likely to hear something much simpler: “Oh, that’s what that person likes to be called.”

What a 5-year-old does is discussed in the podcast I linked earlier - the interviewee is someone who did a doctoral thesis on this.

Naturally a young child won't be consciously connecting it to "ideological frameworks". However, as Amy Sousa explains, it does have the capacity to influence - quite starkly influence - their developing sense of themselves as an individual, and their relationship to the world and adults around them. Paraphrasing clumsily, as I understood it...

She explains how, in their very early years, children's perception is sense-based as opposed to more conscious or analytical: they touch, and taste, and hear etc.

Then, as they get older, they begin to develop a more meaningful relationship with the world around them which, fundamentally, is mediated by their adult carers. Think of the hundreds of times a day a parent explains the world to their child, from "Oooh! A teddy bear!" at age one to, "Can you see the horses?" at three, to "How many red cars are there?" by five. This guidance is constant, and developmentally necessary.

To illustrate its power, she uses the example of a psych. experiment in which young kids were asked absurd questions: "Which is heavier? Purple, or a bus?" The kids (who knew very well by then what "purple" and "bus" meant) would still, on hearing the adult insistence that they choose, sideline their knowledge to favour the adult - Hm, they say there's a right answer, so there must be. "Er... Purple! Purple is!!!" The adult would then ask, "Purple? Really?! Are you sure?!?" And guess what? Suddenly, the toddler was certain it was the bus that was heavier.

As the child gets older, they begin to develop their own sense of self as distinct from the carer, from "NO!", to "Cutted up pear!" right through to Kevin the Teenager. But it's that early phase that gives them the security in their own perceptions (and, I'd assume, also in having a carer to catch them should they metaphorically fall in this process) that enables them to do this - That early "Is it a doggie?" "Yesss! It's a doggie!!!" - was necessary to formulating a healthy faith in their own perception and judgement, and a wider sense of stability.

One of our earliest, earliest instincts is the ability to differentiate the sexes. Animals do it, babies do it. It's evolutionary, natural and irresistable.

Yet then, around age five, all of a sudden, those trusted adults responsible for labelling the world around you for some reason start to... deny it?!? What?!?!?! Your senses tell you differently, and you're still learning, your brain and language still developing, in the way outlined above.

This is the kind of subtle stuff we're messing with here.

NB. Not an expert on this for a second, just a fascinated layperson - correct me please anyone who is if I've understood it wrongly / there are qualifications to this etc.

"And what does that mean for the other girls? It means that to be a girl is lip-glossed flirtation. It's no longer a preferred or expected option (whatever you may think of this option and its influences) but a definitional necessity: "I gloss, therefore I girl. We're playing with fire, we really are"

This is so true. The only reason we're playing with this fire is because society has been too afraid to say no to a group of some of the most selfish, narcissistic, powerful men who have embarked on a campaign to remove women's rights, language and identity from society along with child safeguarding and the rights of gay men and lesbians to same sex relationships and association.

It's no wonder there's such a massive reaction to the toxic overreach of trans activists. The law, education policy, principles of free speech, LGB & women's rights along with safeguarding children finally being restored - despite the endless whining.

Either it is possible to have a 'woman's brain' in a man's body and to change sex; or some people are deluded, confused, or lying.

Those are the options.

But anyway, do keep asking questions, check sources, etc. We will, no doubt, still be here discussing how to protect women's rights for quite some time.

To take your example, when an adult hears “some people use different pronouns”, they may immediately connect it to wider debates about self-identification, safeguarding, sex-based rights, language, social norms and competing ideological frameworks. A five-year-old is unlikely to be doing any of those things. They are far more likely to hear something much simpler: “Oh, that’s what that person likes to be called.”

What if they hear 'this man has quite literally become a woman'?

I've not read your longer reply yet, Pom - I will do, asap. But...

Re: what it is to be a woman...

I think it's really important not to conflate "woman" and "womanhood".

"Woman"'s a concrete noun - a thing - and "womanhood"'s an abstract noun - a quality. The concrete noun describes the adult human female, or, at least it used to. It may come with other connotations which are fluid and subjective, as do many such nouns (above, I associate "sunlight" with clarity, then feeling uncomfortably hot), but these shouldn't be confused with the meaning of the noun. "Womanhood", meanwhile, as a qualitative state, is much more open to interpretation. And that's good - we need "womanhood" for that reason. But we also need "woman", for its meaning.

I find it frightening that we're losing it to the extent that thoughtful posters as yourself see it as somehow - it seems to me - somehow fair-minded(?) to offer up that precious single word we have to describe 51% of humanity to subjective interpretation:

Some people seem to have a very strong internal sense of gender identity, while others don’t appear to think about it much at all. I don’t assume either experience is universal.

You do seem to acknowledge, below, that accepting "woman" as also signifying "gender identity" can quite an impact on female self-perception, by reassuring us that you, yourself, resist this. Your words here even suggest there are better/worse ways to respond to this recent uncertainty ("importantly... conclude") etc.:

And importantly, I don’t conclude from that that I’m somehow a defective or lesser woman. I simply recognise that the concept itself is difficult for me to grasp and describe.

Women have always been pressured to "conclude" what kind of woman they are (see the Deborah Tannen essay upthread) and feminists have sought to resist this, dismissing archetypes, stereotypes and standards to say that actually, women can be anything they want to be.

Now, though women aren't just being asked to "conclude" what kind of woman they are... instead, they're being asked to conclude, from the very same problematic basis - flawed societal standards - whether or not they actually are a woman! This takes the age-old issue of the association of "woman" with artificial, socially-constructed qualities, and concentrates it into something infinitely more dangerous - the literal melding of "woman" with artificial, socially-constructed qualities.

And you may say, Oh, it's not socially-constructed expectations, but look at the evidence. Look at the outward appearance and behaviours that signify transwomen - the make-up and handbag and, often, cleavage! Then look at that of so-called non-binary girls - the short shaved hair, the baggier trousers. One celebrates woman-as-sexual, at least to a degree. The other rejects the same, at least to a degree. Neither group is any more or less inherently sexual than the other. But society does say that one should be more sexualised, doesn't it?

I struggled with this at school myself. I hated that phase in Year 8-9 when, slowly but surely, almost all the girls shifted from playground chaos to lip-glossed flirtation and hushed attention as the boys began to flex emerging muscles. I genuinely thought, even back then, that there may be something wrong with me because "girl" was associated with behaving like this. But at at least I could tell myself, "Well, it must be that I'm not that kind of a girl." The word "girl" remained open to me.

What are girls like me being taught to think now? They're being taught, I'm not that kind of a girl. I'm non-binary!

And what does that mean for the other girls? It means that to be a girl is lip-glossed flirtation. It's no longer a preferred or expected option (whatever you may think of this option and its influences) but a definitional necessity: "I gloss, therefore I girl".

We're playing with fire in embracing this way of thinking, we really are.

My brain doesn’t work like that, sorry.

This explanation was simple and resonates with me. You don’t have to read my comments if they irritate you. I’ve found this entire debate really quite enlightening, it’s challenged a lot of my assumptions and really helped me see a lot more of the debate and more crucially understand it a lot better. There’s been a couple of people on this thread whose writing I find especially interesting and enlightening, so I am glad for that.

Oh for FFS, you're over thinking this, just pick one of the many, many, many 😴 comments that have explained it clearly to you and think to yourself, oh I see, I must remember that in future and move on.

gender is a social construct and social constructs are often difficult for me to understand as an autistic person

I think that’s probably more because it hasn’t got a real definition and is just refers to an unformed deliberately vague set of stereotypes rather than your autism.

You may be aware that ’gender’ in the context of ‘gender identity’ was coined by John Money in the 60s. This related to his deeply harmful ‘work’ with young twin boys who eventually committed suicide after the abuse they suffered.

Most new words are designed to add or improve meaning to our discourse or understanding. ‘Gender’ was introduced for an entirely different (and sinister) purpose.

When you grow up as an outsider, you just assume that everyone else knows something that you don’t

That's an assumption TRAs specifically prey on. When they go, "If you don't feel like a boy/girl, that means you're some kind of trans," a lot of kids who feel just like you, who feel like outsiders, assume that those TRAs know better, that they know something the kids don't know, and they fall into the trap of thinking they MUST be trans, even though they are very much not.

That's why the idea that there exists some kind of "feeling like a man/woman" feeling is a very pernicious one that must be eradicated: because it leaves too many kids who don't feel it vulnerable to arguments that there must be something different about them, when in fact they are perfectly normal in that regard.

That’s very interesting.
I too can only say what it feels to be me.
I don’t feel any less of a person because I can’t articulate it, it doesn’t bother me at all. I just find other people’s expressions of ‘womanhood’ interesting, as I don’t have one to share. When you grow up as an outsider, you just assume that everyone else knows something that you don’t so I find your perspective enlightening.

My personal answers to this:

'I know I’m female. That’s straightforward.'
That and being an adult human being are all that is required. This is because a woman is an adult human female. No more, no less.

'What I struggle to articulate is the idea of an internal, subjective feeling of “womanhood”. When people ask what it feels like to be a woman beyond biology, I genuinely don’t know how to answer.'
I only know what it feels like to be me. I don't think that there is an internal, subjective feeling of “womanhood” that all adult human females share. We do share experiences based on our biology. Being a woman isn't a spiritual state. How someone feels is not what makes them female or not, and a feeling doesn't change your age or species.

Pronouns are sex-based and based either or direct observation or prior reporting. Upending that is disruptive to children learning English.

This fairly innocuous sounding ‘they just want to use different pronouns’ creates instability in rules and confusion on quite a fundamental item for children.

Children are taught (and deeply absorb through everyday existence) that you use a particular word ‘she’ for a woman and ‘he’ for a man.

They are then told that for some men they should use ‘she’ (or Miss) or some women are ‘he’ or some men and women required the totally ungrammatical and confusing use of ‘they’ but there are no reliable corresponding visual cues for this (other than the blue hair maybe). The children know that this is inconsistent and illogical and there is no good explanation for it.

Older children are sometimes told that if you don’t or can’t use these incorrect words it could have dire consequences for the person requiring them.

I find by general observation there is often an underlying tense atmosphere around trans people as the true believers keen to enforce usage of required words. Some children will pick up on this atmosphere and similarly internalise the stress. I’ve seen it with my (older) DDs who were horrified the first time I pointed out to them that ‘transwomen’ were men. This was in the privacy of our own home.

They had totally absorbed this message that at was a thing that Must Never Be Said.

They were quite relieved when I talked it through with them and explained the truth and that the messages they had received from not a particularly trans activisty school were wrong and harmful to them.

Sometimes I think that teachers immersed in delivering lessons and lesson plans etc forget that children learn so much by the behaviour of adults. There are too many adults in schools who have allowed their activism to get the better of them and they are using their position as an indoctrination channel rather than considering what is best for the children.

I also think that some adults mistake a lack of immediate reaction or pushback from children as evidence of no harm done. I’m sure we are all aware that is not necessarily the case and kids can’t always identify harmful behaviour on them by adults.

It only takes one activist in a school to create a very unhealthy climate.

Thankfully my DDs have thought and listened and understood and are free from the horrible shackles that trans ideology puts on their freedom of thought.