Teacher upset with my child questioning about trans child

The fundamental problem with your argument is your assumption that using the correct sexed pronouns necessarily amounts to being disrespectful. That's not an objective fact. It's your own rigid interpretation of what pronouns mean.

The fundamental problem with your argument is your assumption that respecting someone's pronouns necessarily amounts to telling a lie. That's not an objective fact. It's your own rigid interpretation of what pronouns mean.

You've then constructed an entire argument about deception, psychological harm and safeguarding on the basis of that assumption, without actually establishing that any deception or harm is taking place.

You're confusing your own beliefs about language with reality itself. It's wild.

No, I'm showing how the language flexibility you insist exists is only going one way.

Why can't they respect their own dignity by allowing the language of i.e. 'he' to change in a way that includes transwomen?

Why is the flexibility all about making others change their definition of words but not themselves?

You're confusing someone's wish to have a say in how they acknowledge the reality of world they are presented with with your own insistence on determining how that perception of reality must be described.

Please do also link to what I've described or even hinted at being 'intolerable' or is this another redefinition of language?

So again, how do you think this boy will feel in a few years when he finds out people have been lying to him, he’s not really a girl and needs to use male spaces……. Don’t you think that will upset him?

I don't see why you're assuming it isn't harmful to others! Do you think there are no obvious repercussions from lying to a child and telling them they must adhere to what a gender-confused child says, regardless of whether they believe that child is a boy or a girl? Can you really not see what you are asking of those children? That they ignore their own instincts when it comes to detecting what sex a person is, that they unquestioningly accept a lie and shut down all critical thought. That it is 'unkind' to value their own desire for the truth.

Can you not see the safeguarding issues that might arise from this? How far are they expected to go to accommodate the needs and desires of this boy? Do they have to allow him to play on the girl's team and if they don't, won't that boy be confused on why he's not accepted on the girl's team?

It's extremely damaging to lie to children. It's not fair for any of them. If the boy has gender dysphoria, the far kinder thing to do is to help him with his issues, not lie to him and tell him he was born in the wrong body and then turn everyone's world upside down to collude in the lie.

Changing a word to mean the direct opposite is rather different to, for example, saying that someone prefers Black to Coloured. It would be more like someone saying "Call me Black even though you can see I'm in the category usually known as White".

Words drift over the years - Coloured was acceptable and has survived in some organisation names, but is now not preferred.

But the common meaning of words doesn't change in 20 years to mean the opposite of the original meaning, for everyone. As a PP has said, teens can subvert the meaning of words but they still expect their parents and teachers to know that "I was sick on my shoes" doesn't mean "I was really amazing on my shoes". That meaning of the word has changed now anyway, as will any other teen usage.

Likewise when a child says "three boys and two girls were on the team" the word "girls" has not changed for all speakers of English to mean "someone under 18 who likes dresses". It still means "a juvenile female human".

What you are suggesting is that the teen meaning of "sick", or Rachel Dolezal's meaning of "black", should become the common meaning for everyone and if we don't agree, we are unkind. Anti-racist campaigners, or non teens in the medical world, would have to root around for alternative terms to satisfy RD/teens. We must also use "boy" for all children who don't like dresses, "White" for everyone associated with only White culture (including those from an ethnic minority brought up in White-majority areas, like my mixed ethnicity daughter in a White family), and "well" for boring things teens don't like. Because it's kind.

That we know of. The same as gay people lived a lie and concealed who they were for many, many years. People used to call being gay ‘a delusion’, a ‘phase’, a ‘kink’.

Indeed, why do, for example transwomen interpret the use of 'he' so inflexibly?

They don't. They're asking to be referred to in a way that respects their dignity. They're not demanding the right to refer to other people however they please, regardless of those people's wishes. That's what you're doing.

You're confusing someone's wish to have a say in how they're referred to with your own insistence on determining how other people must be described. The fact that you regard the latter as perfectly reasonable, but the former as an intolerable imposition, is quite extraordinary.

Of course the needs of all the children should be considered in a classroom. But I don't see why you're assuming that accommodating one child's differences must necessarily be harmful to the others.

There is a difference between recognising that a child has a difficulty and then accommodating that with kindness and teaching ( and insisting they believe) scientifically non-facts.

Can you explain how you get from asking a child to refer to another person respectfully to assuming that this must have a negative impact on their mental health? What is the actual harm you're suggesting?

As for this particular story, as I said at the beginning of the thread, it doesn't make a great deal of sense to me, and I'm not convinced we have the full context or details.

We're talking about five-year-olds here. At this age, children's understanding of sex/ gender is still developing, and is shaped by social conventions, such as clothing, hairstyles and appearance. As has been pointed out several times on this thread, children of this age typically haven't yet developed a full understanding of sex/ gender "constancy".

Of course the needs of all the children should be considered in a classroom. But I don't see why you're assuming that accommodating one child's differences must necessarily be harmful to the others.

It’s not “like trans now”, because your comparison doesn’t accurately reflect the genuine and properly held concerns of many women.

Except being "trans" is a delusion that only came to the fore when men first got access to oestrogen & genital surgery 50-60 years ago.

My point was about how gay people USED to be treated, discriminated and discussed - very inaccurately exactly! People expressed similar fears, with very little evidence of those fears being committed. A bit like trans is now.

No, that’s a deliberate distortion of women’s worries. It’s easy to explain an accurate version.

This is such nonsense.

The point being made is that trans identifying people need to be treated as the sex they actually are. To uphold sex based rights, for safeguarding, in medicine - anywhere where sex is actually important.

None of that has anything to do with being gay.

Those saying same sex is entirely different to trans - but it didn’t used to be and in some places it is still seen as ‘choice’ ‘mental health’. Thankfully things have moved on and it has been accepted as a perfectly normal thing. Think about how things used to be for those who were gay. It was horrible, I remember when in the armed forces, and was posted somewhere, we were told ‘make sure you lock your shower door and get dressed in there, or Justine will jump you’. Like gay some. Just ran around looking to sexually assault other women. Absolute bs. But then it’s ok to treat trans they same?

It’s another asymmetry inherent in transthought. Nuance for thee but not for me. I’ll pop it on the list next to the others.

Your insistence that anything other than your preferred interpretation of language constitutes a lie is precisely the kind of absolutism I've been challenging throughout this discussion.
Indeed, why do, for example transwomen interpret the use of 'he' so inflexibly? Why the absolutism from them, why can't they include themselves within that language?

In flexible-land, nobody can hear you when you ask the difficult questions.

'I'm arguing that we should consider the people involved, their needs and the context'

And if we take the particular example in this thread, what about the other kids who are being forced to accept a child as the opposite sex? Do their needs matter

I'd be interested to hear your answer to the question I asked you above in bold. What about the needs of the other children in the class? Do you think it's fair on them that they have to accept a boy as a girl without question? What about their mental health? How would you ideally deal with the situation from the point of view of the parent of the girl who is questioning what her teachers tell her?

So say we do accommodate this boy’s belief he is a girl and affirm him, won’t that be a bigger blow when he is told at the age of 9 or 10 that he’s actually a boy and must use boy’’s spaces? How do you think that will affect him? He will feel he has been lied to by the trusted adults in his life and that could cause major psychological harm. It’s not like telling a child Santa isn’t real.

You’re never willing (or able, perhaps) to explain the nuances you claim, so I’ve given up asking.

Make the case for your “flexibility”; I can make the case for them all being the same thing all day long.

And I think this kind of absolutist thinking, where every accommodation of minority difference is treated as an existential threat to Truth, language and society itself, is deeply concerning.
Your insistence that these things are inextricably linked doesn't establish that they are. It simply demonstrates how rigidly you view them.
It's this absolute refusal to tolerate complexity, nuance or difference that I find so troubling, particularly when it's directed at already marginalised groups.

If parents object to other children having equal rights of expression within school rules and the safeguarding framework, they can withdraw their child and homeschool. Though I hope they don't for the child's sake.

No-one's saying the boy can't call himself whatever he wants, within the rules of a school (curse words not allowed etc), what they're saying is that the adults shouldn't impose that child's wants on other children. Who will then be free to use the language they want too. Equality of expression.

Apart from anything else there will almost certainly be SEN children in that class who can't comply with the cognitive load of a days and weeks long stroop test. It's abusive to force this on kids at any age but particularly in lower primary.