Teacher upset with my child questioning about trans child

In many societies in the past gay men were only allowed to live in mainstream society if they "admitted" they were "really" women and they did women's things like wearing saris or weaving.
That's both homophobic (gay men are inferior men, so they can't do manly things) and sexist (women's things are ok for those inferior men).
None of these men, then or now, were actually women. Some of them may have been persuaded they weren't good enough to be proper men, self hatred is a powerful thing. This is what's happening in Iran still.

I'm not sure highly homophobic and sexist societies are really a good model for a forward thinking modern day Europe.

❤️

And five-year-olds are generally considered to be in Piaget’s preoperational stage, not the concrete operational stage. Their understanding of sex and gender constancy is still developing.

Surely in that case it's important not to confuse them with batshit ideas such as "If Jimmy puts on a dress and says that he wants everyone to call him Jenny and pretend he's a girl, we all have to go along with it".

Wait until they're adults before confronting them with adult ideas like transsexualism.

The news report in the Telegraph showed the devastating effect of being lied to about sex for several little girls, and the boy's behaviour suggested that there were problems for him too with all the deception.

All 4 children affected badly by the adult ideology imposed upon them. That's 'lived experience' of it. A child who will never trust adults again.

"A bright, perceptive child, Zoe grew distressed and started making angry accusations. “In assembly, you told us lying is sinful,” she told her teacher, “But the teachers are lying to us about Bobby being a girl.”
The teacher replied, “Yes, Bobby has a penis and testicles but, on the inside, Bobby and her family truly believe she’s supposed to be a girl, so they don’t see it as lying.”
And Zoe looked long and hard at her teacher until, finally, she said: “But Bobby’s a boy. She’s a boy.”

Poor Zoe being left to safeguard herself. She will never, ever forget those adults lying to her.

She will also never be friends with Bobby again. This hasn't really been very 'kind' to either Zoe or Bobby, has it?

They are not threatening. But although you cite times when being homosexual was considered a disease etc, this is very modern. Homosexuality has been known to exist since ancient times and is an objectively observable phenomena. But altering your body to fit an idea of being the opposite sex is new and it is also damaging. Gay rights did not impinge in any way on the rights of others, e.g. women. But trans rights - more properly called privileges - do impinge on others in as much as the demands of trans identified men to access women's spaces removes women's rights. Only see the mess both Canada and Australia are in over this folly.

Again, this entire argument rests on the assumption that acknowledging someone’s gender identity necessarily amounts to telling a lie. But that’s your own interpretation, rooted in a particular set of beliefs about sex and gender, not an objective fact.

In fact, the teacher has been perfectly honest about the child’s physical characteristics. What she’s also explained is that those characteristics don’t necessarily tell us everything about who someone is or how they experience themselves. There’s nothing inherently dishonest about acknowledging that complexity.

And actually, learning that our immediate perceptions don’t always tell us the whole story, that other people can experience the world differently from us, and that reality can be more complex than our initial assumptions is a very important and very healthy part of children’s cognitive and social development.

It’s rather ironic that you’re presenting this as a threat to children’s critical thinking, when the lesson here could be precisely about developing the capacity to recognise different perspectives, tolerate ambiguity and question one’s own assumptions.

Some of the adults on this thread might have benefited from that lesson themselves.

And yet, throughout history there have been many times and contexts in which homosexuality was portrayed as a modern lifestyle choice, a form of social or cultural contagion, a perversion, or a threat to children and society. It was even prohibited from being “promoted” in schools on precisely those grounds. There are striking parallels with the rhetoric surrounding gender diversity today.

Gender incongruence is not a modern invention either. There is a body of historical and anthropological evidence of people who adopted different names, lived permanently in a gender role different from that associated with their sex at birth, were known and addressed by others in that role, and sometimes concealed their birth sex entirely. There are also historical examples of people modifying their bodies/ sex characteristics to bring them into closer alignment with their experienced gender or social identity.

Of course, modern medicine and technology have made possible more sophisticated (and less harmful) physical interventions that weren’t previously available. But that’s true across medicine. The development of new treatments doesn’t mean the conditions or human experiences they address didn’t previously exist.

The idea that gender diversity is some entirely modern phenomenon, invented by contemporary medicine or ideology, is historically indefensible

And there is the positioning issue.

A group of people who have an identity acquired the use of language that was already well established and some of the most commonly used words for themselves as well.

By demanding use of those words as reference terms for their personal use it means that those words not only have the established meaning, but the additional meaning where they also mean the opposite to the established meaning. Thereby rendering the terms to be meaningless.

As well as acquiring commonly used terms that are also vital to describe people, including where safeguarding is concerned, they also then demand that their identity must be supported and fully respected. Including the language use. It is an identity that is not reflective of material reality. Sure, it is material reality that the person claims an identity but the identity is based on the person’s belief that does not reflect of the material reality of their body’s sex category.

The question also remains though, what other group’s belief in UK has society agreed that the entire population must act as if they support that belief by using that group’s reference language whether they share that belief or not. Thereby acting as if they support that belief, when that belief doesn’t reflect the material reality.

All while that group also has acquired and repurposed common use words.

Being gender incongruent isn’t a belief system. It’s a genuine aspect of human experience, not an ideological position that people are demanding everyone else subscribe to.

furthermore, it's misleading to that that trans people have somehow “acquired” or appropriated language. They’re asking that the use of certain words accommodate minority differences and diversity. This is perfectly normal. Language evolves and accommodates different meanings and uses across social contexts all the time, without its existing meanings somehow collapsing.
The idea that accommodating an additional use of a word renders it meaningless is simply absurd. Words routinely have multiple meanings, and context allows us to distinguish between them.

Asking someone to refer to you in a way that respects your experience isn’t the same as demanding that they adopt your beliefs about biological sex. You can acknowledge another person’s experience without sharing their understanding of it.

You’re turning an ordinary question of interpersonal respect and linguistic flexibility into an extraordinary claim about people being forced to deny material reality. That leap is entirely your own

You are blurring the distinction between sex and gender identity throughout this screed.

This is what gender ideologists do all the time. Switch frames of reference, use language interchangeably. Pretend that we are discussing “gender identity” when we are discussing sex. Use “sex” in one sentence and “gender” in the next. Keep obfuscating what you are really talking about.

This is what comes of pretending to yourselves that the words “boy” “ girl” “man” “woman” are understood by normal people as “gender identities.”

They are not. They are sex words. They are the words that have evolved in English to describe the male and female of our species.

To a child they are sex words. To a child who has passed through the stage of understanding sex permanence around age 7, they refer to the unalterable sex of another person.

To this child, it is a lie to be required to call a male child anything other than a boy, because that is what the word means.

You want to use the same words for “gender identity” and pretend by sleight of hand that you are talking about the same thing, but you are using the same words to mean something different.

You do this because there are male people who are desperate to gain access to female spaces, and it is in their interests to keep the conversation blurred, unclear and not rooted in material reality.

Leave children alone; they are still developing and trying to make sense of the material reality of the world, and do not need this muddled set of ideas to get in the way of that essential development.

Being gender incongruent isn’t a belief system. It’s a psychological symptom.

The belief system that has been built around it demands that:

1. we must use the normal sex words to mean gender identity instead.
2. we must organise the world using gender identity as the organising principle instead of sex.
3. we must pretend not to see the sex of others at all.
4. we must pretend that gender identity is much more important than sex for everyone (and not just those who identify as trans)
5. we must pretend that non-trans people also have a “gender identity” that somehow “matches their sex” despite most people saying they don’t have a “gender identity”.
6. we must pretend to believe someone has changed sex by using the wrong sexed pronouns.
7. we must allow male people use female spaces set up specifically for female safety because they believe that they are really “women” in some undefined way.

You are a believer, so you are swimming in this and can’t see the belief system for what it is.

But most people don’t share a belief in these theories which have been pieced together to explain the feelings experienced by people with gender dysphoria. It look like a religion from the outside, but one that you expect us all to pay lip service to.

Great posts - alongside that from Helle.

Fortunately schools are now told that they must not teach as fact that all people have a gender identity. Thus knocking on the head the gaslighting of children that some of them could be born in the wrong body and that facts are changeable if you wish hard enough.

Again, this entire argument rests on the assumption that acknowledging someone’s gender identity necessarily amounts to telling a lie. But that’s your own interpretation, rooted in a particular set of beliefs about sex and gender, not an objective fact.

It's not telling a lie to say that someone believes they have a gender identity, but it is telling a lie to say that a boy who believes he has a feminine gender identity is a girl. "People can't change sex" is an objective fact, not an interpretation or a belief.

In fact, the teacher has been perfectly honest about the child’s physical characteristics. What she’s also explained is that those characteristics don’t necessarily tell us everything about who someone is or how they experience themselves. There’s nothing inherently dishonest about acknowledging that complexity.

Of course physical characteristics don't tell us everything about who someone is. People's personalities aren't based solely on whether they are male or female.

the lesson here could be precisely about developing the capacity to recognise different perspectives, tolerate ambiguity and question one’s own assumptions.

Well, quite. Have you ever considered that it might be useful to engage with people who have a different perspective and challenge your own assumptions, instead of just berating those who disagree with you for being wrong?

There is a body of historical and anthropological evidence of people who adopted different names, lived permanently in a gender role different from that associated with their sex at birth, were known and addressed by others in that role, and sometimes concealed their birth sex entirely.

I assume you're referring here to women who adopted a male role, since a man pretending to be a woman would never have been convincing.

Do you understand why those women did that? Women's lives were often so restricted that in order to fulfil an ambition, such as becoming a doctor or a soldier, for example, women were forced to pretend to be men. This had nothing to do with 'gender identity'.

Some women also pretended to be men as cover for a lesbian relationship in a homophobic society. Again, nothing to do with modern ideas about gender identity.

Being gender incongruent isn’t a belief system. It’s a genuine aspect of human experience, not an ideological position that people are demanding everyone else subscribe to.

What do you mean by 'gender incongruent'? If you just mean not complying with gender stereotypes, then I agree with you. And just about everyone is gender incongruent to some degree.

Asking someone to refer to you in a way that respects your experience isn’t the same as demanding that they adopt your beliefs about biological sex. You can acknowledge another person’s experience without sharing their understanding of it.

Yes, I can acknowledge that a man might want me to refer to him as though he's a woman. But as he's not demanding that I share his belief that he's changed sex, he will presumably understand why I feel uncomfortable in referring to him as though he has.

You’re turning an ordinary question of interpersonal respect and linguistic flexibility into an extraordinary claim about people being forced to deny material reality.

I find it interesting that although you talk about interpersonal respect, it seems that the respect should only go one way.

We're expected to respect a man's belief in his gender identity, but he's not expected to respect our belief in the immutability of sex.

We're expected to show enough linguistic flexibility to use 'she' to refer to a male, but he's not expected to show enough linguistic flexibility to accept that 'he' can refer to a male with a feminine gender identity.

This is an excellent summary, thanks Nutmeg

Implicit in this is the key question that I’ve asked time and time again, perhaps @Lacksiecan take a stab at it.

What am I, a so-called ‘cis’ woman supposed to have in common with a trans identifying man that makes us a coherent category?

Because I can’t think of a single thing.

And as Nutmeg’s post outlines above, according to the gender ideologues, this is a more important classification for me that what I have in common with my actual sex.

This makes zero sense to me, so why on earth would I go along with it?

Ahh. I think there's a fairly common and understandable misunderstanding here about the relationship between sex and gender.

Sex and gender aren't separate phenomena. Gender is precisely the social and psychological meaning we attach to sex and perceived sexual differences — how we understand, interpret and organise those differences in society.

Words such as "man", "woman", "boy" and "girl" aren't simply neutral, scientific descriptions of the body. They're also social categories, carrying a huge weight of cultural, historical, psychological, political and legal meaning.

Children develop an understanding of these social meanings from an early age. Helping them recognise and understand that complexity isn't lying to them — it's giving them the tools to think about these categories more critically and comprehensively.

We can describe someone's biological characteristics accurately and honestly — their chromosomes, reproductive anatomy and so on — while recognising that calling someone a "girl" conveys more than a description of their biology.

Importantly, that doesn't mean the word "girl" must imply any particular set of gender stereotypes. But neither can we strip it of social meaning altogether. The idea that we could somehow eliminate all the social significance attached to sex categories is unrealistic. Rejecting stereotypes doesn't make gender meaningless.

And ironically, the gender-critical position itself illustrates this. It places enormous social, political and legal significance on sex categories, while insisting that these categories are simply neutral descriptions of biological reality. In doing so, it reinforces precisely the social meanings attached to sex — which is what gender is/ describes — that it claims to reject!

In sum, recognising that sex and gender are intertwined isn't denying biological reality. It's recognising that the language we use to describe human beings is never simply a neutral inventory of their biological characteristics.

4 year old trans child??? WTF

So according to you @Lacksie if we DO reject being put into stereotyped boxes and see gender as a system of oppression, with no redeeming characteristics, we are... What? Inadequate women, failing to acknowledge that we have a gender imposed on us by society?
No thanks.

Though I wonder why your daughter questioning this poor "trans" child every day. Children this young normally accept something new and move on, this sounds like some sort of obsession.

I would teach your daughter to accept that some children are different, in terms of race, culture and mental health. And would also ask the teacher to drop the propaganda.

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with rejecting being put into stereotyped boxes — I certainly do! And I agree that gender can (and does!) operate as a system of oppression, particularly in a patriarchal society.

But this is where I think your logic loses its way. When you say gender has “no redeeming characteristics”, that doesn’t really make sense, because gender isn’t a "thing" that has inherently good or bad qualities. It’s the social and psychological meaning we attach to sex and bodily differences — how we understand those differences and what significance we give them.

We can absolutely reject particular meanings being imposed on us. For example, being female shouldn’t mean that someone is expected to be nurturing, feminine or submissive. But we can’t somehow strip sex categories of all social meaning. The moment we categorise people as men and women, those categories have some significance in how we understand and relate to one another.

The point is to challenge oppressive meanings and expectations, not to imagine that we can eliminate social meaning altogether.

And ironically, the gender-critical position itself illustrates this. It places enormous social, political and legal significance on sex categories,

Thats not correct. It places enormous significance on the fact that in certain circumstances sex categories require the acknowledgment of the physical distinctions between the sexed bodies of men and women. Regardless of what “gender” they think they are or whether they think they have a gender at all.

The social and legal significance only and entirely exists because you are trying to override those physical distinctions in the circumstances where they matter, and we won’t have that.

If you hadn’t taken us down this path there would be no social or legal significance at all; in fact the GC “position” wouldn’t exist.

Lacksie

You're flogging a dead horse. The ship has sailed.

You can't ask women to be respectful, when transactivists have threatened them, punched them, battered them, got them fired, arrested and ostracised.

Your argument holds zero water, when it's riding on the coattails of the relentless, insane violence directed at women for not being, in your words, respectful.

Ffs. There is literally no end to the self entitlement of some people

The "trans " child speaks most days about having been born a boy but is now a girl. This is when OP's daughter is asking questions. This was confirmed by the teacher to OP at their meeting.