Teacher upset with my child questioning about trans child

As above

So please can you answer my question on the psychological harm in store for this child when the adults have to admit they lied to him and he is not actually a girl, and must use male spaces? Won’t that upset him?

You posted this in amongst a whole of advice you gave to a parent of a trans person. You last night assumed the role of some kind of counsellor, in my opinion.

However, you wrote this.

“for what it's worth (im sure very little) I would be happy to keep talking through the substantive issues with you - what it is to be trans, what is gender, etc. As a non gender critical, but informed voice.”

You claim to be an

‘informed voice’

Where does your expertise come from that you can speak for people with transgender identities?

In light of your very own posts, it is not unreasonable to ask this.

Of course, it doesn’t require giving away personal details. However, you have placed yourself in the position of expertise on this board. You claim to be an ‘informed voice’ yet provide no evidence to support your posts.

I'm not here to justify myself personally to you or anyone else, nor am I going to do so.

Translation..."I have no expertise & am just spouting my own personal opinion."

Fair enough if you won't engage. I'll just let you get on with shouting into the void.

This is a whole new conversation - can of worms and we are on page 35!

And I wonder if there is any point in having it, when you are still stuck on the idea that recognising and respecting someone's gender/ trans experience is "a lie"?

I see.

So you are an ‘informed voice’ because you say you are. And no evidence is provided to support your claims.

I must admit, there have been several previous posters who did exactly the same thing. They also never once provided anything but incoherent ideological soundbite style answers.

Déjà vu and plus ca change

As above, I'm not going to provide evidence of my personal credentials, no, as I am not here to justify myself and see no value in doing so.

My arguments can be challenged on their own merits. Or not, as you chose, of course.

What I'm not going to do is answer personal questions.

well yes, these adults have lied to this boy abd told him he can be a girl. He’s in for a very big shock when he’s told he is in fact a boy and always was. Don’t you think this will damage him? If his parents and teachers, the adults he is supposed to trust, have lied to him about something so fundamental, how can he trust them in any other way?
so what benefit to the child is “affirming” his (or sometime else’s) belief that he is a girl? What long term material benefit does it provide for him?

Well, ‘expertise’ might include a masters dissertation on gender studies for all we know.

And yet the advice being given to you was done so from a self identified ‘informed voice’

It has been a remarkable current iteration of a dynamic we have seen before.

"Nobody is asking you to believe otherwise".
You really need to try harder to appear up to date with your social knowledge.

I don't accept that it is clear from this scenario that anyone has lied to this child.

Accepting a person's, including a child's, trans experience and recognising their gender is not a lie.

This is the circle we are going round in and why it is impossible to move the conversation forward.

Then you should not put yourself in the central role of being a spokesperson for trans people as you have on this and other threads.

You were the one using the term ‘informed voice”.

You have been the person who has put themselves in the position of speaking on behalf of trans people.

Perhaps you should be clearer when you post that you are not an informed voice the way you did last night.

But they have. They have told him they believe he is a girl. So how will he feel in a couple of years when they have to tell him that he is really a boy, they knew he was a boy but lied to him? That will be a huge shock and may affect his whole life. So why is it “kinder” to affirm him now, knowing he will be very hurt and upset? What long term gain will he have from this?

And again we are back into the cycle that is denying that a child using terms that have an established meaning referring to biological sexual categories for themselves when the child is not that biological sex is misusing language and causing harm.

All because some people want to gaslight others that words that have specific and well established meanings where there are only two states of being being referred to, can now refer to both states of being at the same time.

But why not engage with the arguments on their merits? It's a rather hierarchical view of knowledge and expertise that you seem to have.

When I described myself as informed, that was simply a description of my knowledge of the subject. Anyone is, of course, free to make their own judgement. I'm not suggesting that my views should be accepted without question. Nor am I claiming to speak for anyone else.

What if I were someone with no formal qualifications who happened to have read widely and thought deeply about these issues? Would that make my arguments any less worthy of consideration? And what if I were a well-known theorist? Would you dismiss my arguments on the grounds that I had an agenda? What if I were trans? Would that automatically give me the authority to speak on behalf of other trans people?

Surely what matters is the substance of an argument, not the personal credentials of whoever is making it. Yet you seem determined to shift the discussion away from the arguments themselves and onto me personally. I can only draw my own conclusions about why that might be.

But you do seem to be avoiding all the difficult questions…. I think people are engaging with you on the merits of your arguments, but you seem to be avoiding the challenging aspects of them.

But they have. They have told him they believe he is a girl.

Yes, and I've repeatedly explained, in considerable detail, why that isn't the same as telling a lie. But you simply keep restating your original premise as though it were an established fact, then building all your subsequent arguments upon it.

There's little point engaging with your broader questions about harm, safeguarding and deception when they all rest on the very assumption I'm challenging. Repeating that assumption doesn't establish its truth, no matter how many arguments you construct around it.

I notice this also implies that there are ‘personal credentials’.

These are your own posts and you are now the person on this thread who is implying that you hold an expertise that others do not have. That could be for many reasons, however it might also be said that a person doing so is attempting to portray their posts as having greater credibility than other posters. Whether it is intentional or not, this is the outcome.

Perhaps you should take more care about what you post if you do not wish others to ask why you describe yourself as an informed voice.

Perhaps you should spend less time subtly trying to undermine me personally and more time engaging with the substantive arguments.

So they do actually and sincerely believe this child is a girl? Because if they were saying he was a girl when they knew he wasn’t, that would be a lie wouldn’t it?

Motivated reasoning in full display again. 🙄

'Expertise' would involve arguing from first principles, not careful selection of points to dispute.

They are your words.

You have so put yourself in a position of speaking for trans people. You make statements that you then cannot support accurately.

You also keep using the term substantive yet I don’t believe you have argued anything that has been anything more than an ideological and superficial position because you have provide no evidence to support your arguments that you double down on, while you repeat superficial theoretical points of view.

We can recognise, respect and understand what being trans is, without " the whole world changing".

Yes. We can recognise, respect and understand that some people believe they're the opposite sex. We don't have to believe that they're the opposite sex or treat them as though we believe it.

It's the demand that we all participate in this belief or pretend that we also believe it that's the problem.

I accept that some people hold incorrect and irrational beliefs about themselves, and that those people should have human rights and not be discriminated against because of their beliefs.

If girl/woman is no longer a sex based term according to you @Lacksie , then what term should now be used to define the group of people previously known as girls/women?

And a follow up question. Why couldn't trans people invent their own word for the group that they now consider to be girls/women rather than co-opting the sex based ones?

It is the co-opting of language to unilaterally redefine it, leaving the group covered by the original meaning without a word that has caused so much confusion and upset.
It has been downright sneaky. Co-opt the word then use the new definition to gain access to things set up for the original well understood definition.

Yes, they're sincerely referring to the child as a girl. And I've repeatedly explained, in considerable detail, why doing so isn't the same as making a false statement about the child's physical anatomy, let alone deliberately lying.

You keep assuming that calling someone a girl can only mean one thing, and then treating any other usage as a lie. But that's precisely the assumption I've been challenging throughout this discussion.