Teacher upset with my child questioning about trans child

I've acknowledge that it seems incomprehensible to many people - and explained how, nonetheless, it's completely compatible with neuroscientific knowledge about how the brain works, with reason and examples.

So, no, I haven't just reiterated that it "just is". You, however, have just continued to insist that it's impossible and a lie, without any justification of those assumptions.

100% applying this to children IS child abuse, it cannot be said enough. Whatever statutory safeguarding document you read, it backs this up. Even before the new, much better KCSIE, the definition of emotional abuse was there.

It's clear, clear emotional abuse to compel an autistic child to use the wrong-sex pronouns for an adult (whose biological sex she or he recognises) with power over him/her on several of the components of the definition of emotional abuse.

I'll say it again: @Lacksie you would fall at the first hurdle during a selection process to work with children in education. You would be asked a range of questions at the beginning of the process about your understanding of KCSIE and how you would follow and implement the guidelines, usually by being given a set of scenarios to ascertain how you would react.

Your views are in complete opposition to the legal and statutory guidelines set out to protect children.

You would not be cleared from a safeguarding perspective to work with children in an educational setting.

Thank God.

Nope.
Applying this to children is child abuse. #nodebate.

The concept of a male recognising themselves to be female is literally incomprehensible to most of us.
The best even you can do is constantly reiterate that we don’t have to believe it, it just is…

No thanks.

It is a lie and the convoluted word salad required to explain why the obvious lie is not a lie and why empirically provable material reality is not material reality is developmentally inappropriate for the children expected to understand it. Educated adults don't accept the 'explanations' even when they have the capcity to understand the drivel being spouted. Doubling down and trying to force those children to believe or pretend to believe something they can't understand - that's emotional abuse according to the definition in KCSIE.

As well as being emotionally abusive, it also is discrimination against that child on the grounds of belief (sex realist belief) under EA 2010, as has already been established in several court cases.

Can you explain to me how it is not a lie? The boy is physically still and always will be a boy. He has XY chromosomes. He has a different muscle mass, lung capacity and strength, different hip shape, different internal organs. I have yet to read any reasonable explanation from you on why this is not a lie to tell him he is a girl.

Compelled speech is abuse of that child by the adults in the school and should be an immediate safeguarding report. It is part of the definition of emotional abuse in KCSIE - any child whose speech is compelled is being emotionally abused.

This is all supported in KCSIE - safeguarding referral immediately. Safeguarding governor and then Ofsted / MP. I'd personally change schools too. Persistent emotional abuse by the school and teachers within it of an autistic child will not be good for that child.

"Self-identifying as someone who has a gender identity" is neither here nor there! 😂

If you recognise yourself to be female, that recognition is your gender identity. That's all the term describes. You don't have to believe in the concept, identify with the terminology or subscribe to any particular ideology.

Perhaps in your very narrow world. The rest of society is very clear that few of us self identify as having a gender identity with the UK government guidance specifying to schools that they "should not teach as fact that all people have a gender identity".

Sad times and all that but children's welfare and wellbeing is far more important than the niche demands of those immersed in queer theory.

“It doesn't try to resolve the discrepancy by repeatedly telling the person that their limb isn't there. That's completely unhelpful - they already know that! Instead, it works with a neurological experience that doesn't correspond to physical anatomy.”

Except the experience is that of a person who understands that humans have two of each limb. And also may even have had one limb or two.

Also, no one is likely to treat that person with one limb as being someone with two working limbs.

plus, no language is being made meaningless in this example.

But almost everyone does have a gender identity. Gender identity is simply the brain's awareness and recognition of oneself as being a particular sex. Almost all children develop this understanding very early, typically by around three or four years of age, and it becomes more stable over time.

There may be particular developmental or neurological circumstances in which this understanding isn't acquired in the usual way, but that certainly isn't the norm.

The idea that "gender identity" is some false ideology promoted by trans activists rests on a fundamental misunderstanding of what gender identity actually is.

This seems to be a very dangerous form of abuse? That young children need the attention of "specially educated adults" to diagnose and support them into their new body with the protests of parents and other responsible adults dismissed as failing to understand?

Fortunately, as highlighted upthread, governments (in the UK and elsewhere) are slowly waking up to this. Children must not be taught that everyone has a gender identity, discussion about this must be age appropriate and factual rather than activist led and that parents must be consulted about groups and materials used in teaching childen about this.

It'll be a long haul but the abuse aspects of such young children being targeted by trans extremists are too evident to be ignored.

But you can't simply point to an entirely different hypothetical and use it to dismiss a recognised clinical phenomenon.

Gender incongruence and racial identity are different phenomena, with different developmental, psychological and social dimensions. Why would you assume they must operate in the same way or be understood in the same terms?

Gender incongruence needs to be understood on its own terms, informed by the relevant clinical and developmental evidence, not dismissed through remote hypotheticals. You can't simply invent a superficially similar scenario — one that isn't even an established clinical phenomenon — and assume it has the same underlying mechanisms or implications. That's not a scientifically meaningful comparison.

Indeed. Even keeping it strictly on a human level, if a white person told a black person that they really understand and identify with their lived experience in an institutionally racist world - in fact, it's the same for them - "we black folk together, eh?" - I don't see that being tolerated or accepted for a second, and very rightly so.

“The child recognises himself as a girl/female, despite knowing that he has a penis and that, as far as others are concerned, this makes him a boy/male. That recognition/ awareness/ understanding of self as a girl/ female, is his experience.”

This is just existential theorising.

The child cannot ‘recognise himself as a girl / female’. At all.

Because the child has no experience as a girl / female to reference himself as a girl / female. He only holds a subjective belief that he is, and that belief is formed from his personally built concept of what a girl / female experiences. Which is not one that he experiences as a male person.

And again, thanks for admitting again there is no science supporting these claims.

“Telling a child "you're a boy, that's it, and you can never be anything else", regardless of how they understand and experience themselves, is neither enlightened nor necessarily "kind".”

And there is the expected emotionally manipulative reasoning based on a twisted representation.

"you're a boy, that's it, and you can never be anything else"

The boy cannot be not male at any time in his future. He can however be any kind of male person he wants to be. He is not limited except that he cannot change sex category.

This highlighted statement is dishonestly presented, particularly when the next part of the statement follows. The one where people are told how unkind and how unenlightened it is to point out that every human being has a reality that they need to accept and part of that is that they have a sex category that is important and the language describing that sex category should not be made meaningless. Particularly in the name of ‘enlightenment’.

A person can experience a rubber hand as belonging to their own body, despite knowing perfectly well that it's made of rubber. Someone who has lost a limb can continue to experience it as present, painful or itching, despite knowing it no longer exists. Conversely, someone can experience a physically intact limb as not belonging to them. People can even experience their bodies as dramatically larger or smaller than they actually are.

Thanks for providing these examples of neurological phenomena. The example of people who think one of their limbs doesn't belong to them has been discussed on here many times and does indeed have many similarities with cross-sex identification.

So similarly, a boy who says he's a girl may be experiencing something which is 'real' to him in his head, but is objectively not real, since he obviously can't 'feel like' a girl which is a state he has no experience of. The kindest thing to do is to help him to be comfortable in his body and accept that his sex can't be changed.

So we can agree. Just in time for the end of the thread.

Actually, that argument doesn't hold. The whole point is that conscious knowledge of our anatomy and our neurological experience of it are not the same thing.

Take phantom limb pain. One approach to treatment is mirror therapy, which creates the visual impression that the missing limb is still present and moving. In effect, it works with the brain's representation of the absent limb, rather than against it. It provides sensory feedback consistent with that representation, with the aim of modifying the experience and relieving pain.

It doesn't try to resolve the discrepancy by repeatedly telling the person that their limb isn't there. That's completely unhelpful - they already know that! Instead, it works with a neurological experience that doesn't correspond to physical anatomy.

There is an important parallel with gender incongruence. The aim isn't to pretend that someone's anatomy is different from what it is, or to convince them of something biologically false. It's to recognise that their experience may not correspond with their physical characteristics, and that simply insisting that they must align doesn't necessarily resolve the discrepancy or alleviate distress.

For some people, social or medical transition can help alleviate distress by bringing aspects of their bodies or social lives into closer alignment with their experienced gender. For a five-year-old, social transition might simply involve changes in language, clothing or presentation. Medical transition isn't at issue at that age.

We don't yet fully understand the underlying neurological mechanisms of gender incongruence. But the wider principle is straightforward: knowing the physical reality of our bodies doesn't mean our brains necessarily experience them in the same way, and responding to that discrepancy doesn't have to involve denying physical reality.

Okay - my take on this as a serious answer @Lacksie, is that you are attributing a very abstract kind of thinking to a 5 year old, something they don’t develop until round about 12. At age 5, thinking you are a girl/boy is more likely some confusion about the concepts of girl/boy and trying to make sense of them, not some innate sense of being born in the wrong body.
Can you give an explanation of what type of cognitive development would be consistent with abstract reasoning at age 5?

“I explained this to you as far as the science enables it”

Thank you. As this is your informed opinion, it obviously is the latest in the paucity of scientific evidence that is available. Meaning, there is no science that supports a male person claiming that he is female in any way that is backed up with any scientific evidence. Therefore it remains a philosophical theory that one person’s subjective belief in their personal reality should be treated as if that subjective reality is material reality.

Good to know. Thank you.

Indeed.
It is a lie that this little boy is a girl. An untruth. A form of emotional abuse.

We must repeatedly go back to motivations - uncomfortable as they are.
Why are any adults arguing that young children - way below the age of consent - are the opposite sex?
Why are they unable to allow children to dress, present, play as they choose.?Why are they so desperate to glue children into a wrong sex persona?
Why do they spend so many hours on a parenting board trying to persuade parents that this is not abuse?

The answers to those questions are revealing in terms of intent and motivation .

But with the rubber hand illusion, people accept it is an illusion.
Someone who still gets the sensation that they have the leg they have lost knows it's not there.
In neither case do they expect everyone else to say 'yes that was your hand that was stabbed' or 'yes you still have 2 legs'.

Your continuing problem is you are using boy and girl to mean something different to their generally understood meaning so you are failing to communicate clearly.

The child recognises himself as a girl/female, despite knowing that he has a penis and that, as far as others are concerned, this makes him a boy/male. That recognition/ awareness/ understanding of self as a girl/ female, is his experience.
This is fantastical nonsense. The child cannot possibly have any recognition of what being a girl feels like, any more than he can understand what being a cat feels like.