AIBU to think that this has gone way too far?

[dorade]

The Alberta Government in Canada has issued guidelines to schools that essentially allows kids to 'identify' however they want, use whichever toilet/changing room they want and play on whichever sport team they want.

I can't help feeling this is bad for girls.

(PS I'm a long time mumsnetter (2004), just have not posted for ages)

How can school sports competitions be fair in the sexes are mixed Elsa?

Crazypetlady
As a general rule, just because you are unaware of something does not make it OK.

I am confused by the phrase 'living in the gender'. What does this really mean? My son likes sparkly things, hates football and likes to crochet. Why are any of those things incompatible with being a boy? Just because they are traditionally more associated with girls.

Seriously, when I was growing up in the seventies, it was perfectly fine for me as a girl to like things generally associated with boys.

But now some kids who show a preference for things culturally associated with the opposite sex risk being pushed down a path of puberty blockers, hormones for life and sterility. It is nothing short of child abuse, frankly.

But Crazypetlady, how do you live the 'gender you feel you belong to'.
A bit of multi tasking? Not being very good at maths?
And it is schools they are talking about, I would be surprised if the students are sharing with trans students and be 'unaware'.

It's not trans people I am worried about, not many of them, and anyway most just want to get on with things and not cause a fuss etc. Out and out pervs, quite a few of them, but hopefully we can avoid them crossing our path.

It's young lads acting the fool, a few drunk students say, having a larf. Do want them to hit on the hilarious prank of identifying as female to get into the Primark changing rooms where your 14 yr old is spending her pocket money? The assistants won't have any authority to remove them. The only answer is to stop your young teen going into town with her mates of a Saturday afternoon. But likely she won't want to anyway, with lads leering and making comments. A simple pleasure gone, a little rite of passage.

You can extraploate a hundred other situations like that, not dramatic, not newsworthy but restrictive and confining all the same.

On one of the Cologne threads I read how certain swimming places and saunas etc in Sweden have decided to become single sex only because of inappropriate behaviour by men.

There is a reason single sex facilities were invented in the first place, no it's not because of hysterical Victorian ladies and their prudish dislike of perfectly respectable gentlemen.

I do feel sorry for tg people, must be shit. But this inclusiveness seems to be merely validation for them. Validation is important I know but not at the expense of other people's safety and dignity. There must be another solution to this, and no, it's not women's job to provide it for them

Themouse there is no way to do things that will be 100% fair for everyone.

No, but you can do your best to make things as fair as you can.

It is mad, political correctness gone mad. It is about the fear of saying no to or offending anyone incase someone shouts discrimination.
Stupid, ill-thought out and poorly judged rubbish.

Well, you get "out and out pervs" in every walk of society sadly.

And obviously, the safety of young women (and all men and women for that matter) is paramount.

It's such a complex subject but you can't ignore the latest medical facts. I know nothing about this but I just happened to catch this programme the other night on Radio 5 Live concerning Dr Imran Mushtaq, a consultant paediatric urologist who works with children with differences in sex development (DDS) at Great Ormond Street Hospital in London.

He said that round 1 in 1500 babies are born with DDS but up to 1 in 100 people have less obvious differences.

"Absolutely sex is a spectrum. It's not binary in any way and we are slowly coming to understand this.

"As a specialist working in this area for the last 12 years, I've seen us transitioning so much in the way we think about sex and the way we treat children in whom the sex is not clear, and we are increasingly becoming aware how complex the issue is.

"How do you define what sex a child is? Is it the physical characteristics, the genitalia - do they have testicles, do they have ovaries or do they have both? Is it their chromosomes, is it their hormones?

"You can have a child whose chromosomes are XX, typical of what you'd associate with being female, yet their genitalia looks like a boy."

I had no idea about all of the above (especially about the 1 in 1, 500 statistic). We are obviously going to have to confront and accommodate these issues at some point in a practical manner, and in a way that protects (as far as humanly possible) everyone's safety.

Exactly. There are just widely differing views as to what being fair is.

Aye, LuluJakey1, tis bonkers.

They give a very few people the freedom 'to'
They remove the freedom from the many 'to'

they protect no ones freedom 'from'

Slimmingcrackers,
Up to 1% of people are born as intersex. But that does not stop humans being sexually dimorphic any more than some people being born with missing limbs stops us being bipeds.

Maryz as far as I am aware transgender people can compete in the Olympics so that can of worms is already open.

Only if they have had reassignment surgery and taken at least 2 years worth of the appropriate hormones. Which is vastly different from someone who is identifying as transgender but has no intention of undertaking surgery.

the Nebraska School Activities Association Board of Directors approved, by a vote of 6-2, a policy that allows transgender high school students to play sports according to their gender identity

Ridiculous. Those born female use female loo, those born male use male loo. If they decide to have a sex change later on in adulthood? I suppose they should use whatever loo their new genitals dictate... It's getting stupid now.

I am sure most on here would support spaces for those who feel they are not the sex they are

what I object to is girls/women and it will be us having to accommodate males who feel they are not male

because we always have to, we always have to think of others first and it is expected of us

did anyone ask girls and women how they feel about this no I doubt it because it can be decide for us

Some girls identify as male to and I'm sure they will welcome this move.

If this decision is implemented with common sense then it will be fine.

The only trans person at my DC secondary school is female to male. They have been treated respectfully and I think that the school's attitude of understanding and tolerance is something to be applauded.

If a male to female trans person wants to be able to use the same bathrooms and changing rooms as my DDs, I wouldn't have a problem with it at all. They are just trying to live and be treated as women. They are not trying to hurt or displace women.

So much of the anger at the way women are treated as second class citizens appears to be directed at transgender people. As they are a small minority who already so vulnerable to hatred and violence, I find this pretty shocking.

Dorade I understand your point (although I don't pretend to understand this subject properly). Pls correct me if I am wrong but won't sexual dimorphism become less defined as these issues become more understand and accepted? Or have I got that wrong?

And at an entirely mundane level, those with dds still need somewhere to change their clothes.

Agree with others on here who say this has to be dealt with using common sense and respect.

Absolutely sex is binary. Ask any farmer. Sure intersex exists and as medical knowledge advances we can see loads more examples of it that would have gone unnoticed years ago. Doesn't mean the entire world of animal biology needs to undergo a rethink.

Anyway gender has nothing to do with sex. Sex recognised -> socialisation begins ---> femininity/masculinity achieved. Most people 'fit into' their genders boxes to a greater or lesser extent. Humans are adaptable and sociable in the main and learn and bond with their cohorts, whoever that is. In a gendered society those social groupings are men/women. In a sectarian society it could be Protestant/Catholic etc etc.

It's a complex process and for some people it doesn't happen that way. At the moment, however there is no evidence for a biological gender, whereas there is loads of evidence for socialisation into gender.

MizK what do you think of people's concerns about opportunists using the loophole in this policy?

mizK

So you would be totally happy with a fully functioning adolescent male - no hormones, no surgery, who simply announces 'I am a woman' to share a changing room with adolescent girls. because that is the way it is already in places in the US and we will not be far behind.

I am sick of this topic being stuffed in our faces at every opportunity and people trying to make anyone who is uninterested feel guilty. It is a non-issue, unimportant. There are huge issues in the world and we are obsessed by political correctness.

Our parliament has risen up against the pathetic idiot Donald Trump and his lunatic laughable ideas, they are callng for him to be banned from entering Britain. Yet not a single person of the 1200 known who have gone to fight for or support ISIS has been banned from returning to live here - and parliament appear uninterested in that issue.

Let's have a really good idea instead, focus on something important and legislate to allow men to use the same toilets as girls if they feel like it. That'll change the world.

Our priorities are bonkers; ill-judged and badly considered.

slimmimgcrackers
How can a scientific fact become 'less defined'?

As I say, if the policy is implemented using common sense it will be fine.

Does anybody seriously envision a school knowing or caring so little about its pupils that it allows a bunch of teenage boys to blag their way into the girls changing rooms so they can stare at the girls?

Not a chance.

Hold on though. I'm gender-sceptic, for want of a better word, but I can actually imagine this having a positive outcome longer term.

Think about it: you allow little kids to identify as whatever gender they want and change their minds any time they like. So you get a situation where little Billy is Mary for a week until s/he changes zher mind and decides that actually, playing with lego is more fun and skirts are rubbish for climbing trees, at which point little Alfie decides s/he wants a go with the Barbie dolls and moves over to the girls' end, while little Esmerelda decides s/he wants to play football so must be a boy. They're all prepubescent so there shouldn't be any safeguarding concerns, and by the time they hit adolescence they've got it all out of their system.

I can actually see a case for a gender-neutral upbringing of young kids, and I can imagine this leading that way. Think about it: you could have a situation where Billy and all zher mates are playing with the barbie dolls, so Esmerelda's lot all play football... they can't ALL be trans, otherwise the human race wouldn't survive. Oh wait - they're all just kids playing games. So maybe ultimately everyone would relax and you'd have a generation of biological males who were comfortable with nurturing roles and saw girls as equals, and a generation of biological females who were used to interacting with and standing up to boys.

I am an incurable optimist, admittedly. But I think where we are now is peak weird and one way or another it will have to shake down into something more sensible.