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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

To wonder, where will a Trans pupil sleep on my DS's Europe trip?

1001 replies

VioletVaccine · 06/03/2016 21:11

In DS's form, there is a M2F trans pupil, aged 14. For the purpose of this, I'll call her Jenny, who used to be Jack.
Jack now identifies as Jenny, and is accepted as the gender she identifies as.
I don't know (it's none of my business) whether she takes hormones or not, but she dresses, lives, and wants to be considered as a female.
The vast majority of people have been accepting and understanding of the difficulties faced.
Jenny uses the disabled or staff bathrooms, and has a separate area to change after (girls) PE.
However, when the school year travel to Europe this year, I want to make a polite enquiry as to the sleeping arrangements.
This is a 6 day trip, 6 days 5 nights.
Boys are generally in one area of the hotel during school overnight excursions, and girls in the other, with respective form tutors overseeing the pupils when lights go out.
Jenny, according to DS, will be sleeping with her female best friends.
However, despite how she feels, she still has a Penis.
Should she really be in a dorm with three other girls?
Whatever Jenny identifies as her gender, her sexuality is not necessarily geared towards the opposite sex. Maybe she could be a M2F lesbian, who is attracted to girls?

Would you want your 14 year old daughter to share a room with an anatomically correct male for a week? I wouldn't.

And similarly, should someone who believes they are female, be forced to share a dorm with 3 teenage boys she isn't friends with?

Im hoping for some thoughts on how you'd handle this, and also, how to actually broach it with DS's school without being labelled a transphobic woman, a bigot, or any of the other terms that are so commonly used when you question the logistics of a situation like this?

Thank you.

OP posts:
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ArcheryAnnie · 09/03/2016 15:50

silverbirch this has already arisen at my DS's school, which is a new build with unisex facilities.

I don't actually object to these - they aren't the usual model of standard bog just made unisex, but very short, open corridors off the main corridor with individual cubicles on one side of that short corridor, and a bank of sinks and towels on the other side. The only reason this works is that:

  • they are in lots of about 5 cubicles, and the short corridor doesn't have a door closing off the bank of cubicles, so the whole thing is visisble from the main corridor;
  • they are cleaned really, really often, so you don't have the boy-puddle-and-stink issue for the girls to deal with;
  • every single cubicle contains a sanitary bin.

I think they are primarily designed to be anti-bullying loos - nobody can shut the loo door and duff you up behind it, unless they wrestle you into an individual cubicle, and that wrestling would be fairly public. It does mean when you do go into the loo, everyone knows about it (as they can see you standing their washing your hands afterwards), but they all seem to cope. This is in contrast to the usual loo model, which has one - or more often two - closable doors before you get into a private space which includes cubicles, and which is a much more attractive space for an attacker to trap a woman in.

Having said that, the demographic of DS's school mean that about 70% of the pupils come from practicing Muslim families, and I have had quite a few other mums tell me how much they hate having their daughters share loos with boys. The only reason they haven't withdrawn their daughters from the school is that the individual cubicles thing means they can (just about) live with it, and there aren't really any alternative schools around here for them to send their kids to.

I'd be really interested if anyone on this thread is Muslim and could comment on this, too?

(This is not to say only people with religious grounds are entitled to object to unisex facilities - I think everyone is entitled to single-sex facilities where there are intimate functions carried out, if they want them.)

PosieReturningParker · 09/03/2016 16:02

Muslim rights v trans rights will see those lib lefties (I'm a leftie) run in very very fast circles.

What about removing a headscarf for a trans doctor?
What about female only swimming nights?

I will be making pop corn and munching with great delight as this unfolds.

AuntGertrude · 09/03/2016 16:08

Female-only sauna sessions
The first trans students applying for (or being at) Eton or Cheltenham Ladies College
Scouts/Guides/Brownies etc (yes, I know that some of these are already catering for males/females but as per above, considering the "sleeping arrangements" for scout-camp etc...)

Maryz · 09/03/2016 16:10

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

PosieReturningParker · 09/03/2016 16:11

I agree Marys.

BunnyTyler · 09/03/2016 16:13

I would hate unisex toilets that are just an open corridor!
I have Crohn's - it's embarrassing enough having to do my business in female only toilets, I would be mortified in unisex and it would finish me off completely if they were open to a corridor.

I have actual nightmares about loos being that public.

Netflixandchill · 09/03/2016 16:15

She should sleep in the girls room with the girls because she's a girl.

How about this curveball, any of them could be secret hermaphrodites, what then? How do you tackle that one?

Maryz · 09/03/2016 16:16

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

Maryz · 09/03/2016 16:17

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

Netflixandchill · 09/03/2016 16:19

No that isn't the point is it, that's your opinion.

Biologically she's male, emotionally she's female, mentally female, could already be undergoing male to female transition who knows?

Alisvolatpropiis · 09/03/2016 16:22

Posie

Ah yes, things really will get interesting soon. Care to share your popcorn?

Maryz · 09/03/2016 16:23

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

DinosaursRoar · 09/03/2016 16:28

Netflix - no, nobody knows, the point is what the school does know for 100% fact is that "Jenny" was born male and with a male body.

PosieReturningParker · 09/03/2016 16:28

Of course. Alis Although I like sweet and salted mixed, I don't like to gender my popcorn into salt or sweet.

BunnyTyler · 09/03/2016 16:30

Netflix, what are typical indicators of being emotionally female or mentally female?

Just for reference, obvs, as I am unsure.

MrsTerryPratchett · 09/03/2016 16:31

Biologically she's male, emotionally she's female, mentally female This kind of thinking is a sexist wet dream.

cleaty · 09/03/2016 16:33

Biologically I am female, emotionally I am a dolphin

Maryz · 09/03/2016 16:37

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

Peyia · 09/03/2016 16:37

What I have suggested has been taken out of context. The OP is about friends that appear to want to share, that's what I am responding to.

Part of a solution is that parents respond confidentially to any requests made by the school. This definitely needs a wider discussion.i certainly don't have a fits all answer but pointed out several times there are school policies that mention case by case wih careful consideration. This suggests to me that it's happening now in Schools. If you and other strongly disagree perhaps write to you governors (or your MP) because if there are policies that I can see it will encourage other schools to adopt the same. I work in education and we benchmark our policies on others that are being used.

Maryz · 09/03/2016 16:40

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

multivac · 09/03/2016 16:41

The OP is about friends that appear to want to share

Yes, but presumably other friends are not being permitted to share, if one or more has a penis and the others don't... even if they want to, and all of them and their parents are ok with it.

greyselegy · 09/03/2016 16:46

MN started me thinking about this issue; I've read this thread and other 'trans' threads with interest. Learned a lot. Thanks MN. Some of my thoughts, written to clarify for myself as much as anything. It does seem important.

I have pre-school grandchildren, boys and girls. The older ones among them know some important and interesting (to them) differences between boys and girls, men and women; to wit, boys/men have penises, girls/women have vulvas. The older ones among them know something about how sex works; to start children you need grown-up vulvas and penises, hence women and men. All that is part of satisfying childish curiosity - part of development, if you like. (They don't all call them 'penises', btw.)

My children and their partners (these grandchildren's parents) are sufficiently sensible (my judgement!) to have made some attempts to shield their children from societal pressures to gender things like toys, clothes, behaviour etc. These attempts are based on the view (partly gained from their parents, we pride ourselves) of gender in that sense as likely being detrimental to proper human fulfillment ... to be more specific, perhaps, as being a mechanism for patriarchal control of, and discrimination against, girls/women by boys/men.

As a result of this shielding, my grandchildren could not possibly make any sense of the idea of 'transgender'. OP's 'Jenny', should they come across this older child, would simply be a big boy.

Now, of course, these my grandchildren can't be isolated from society as they grow and develop further. And our society, in the large, has notions of gender that my children (and their parents) think of as a pathology. It's a bad thing, we think, that girls/women are so often and so ingrainedly treated badly by boys/men ... and 'gender' being a constructed notion that helps enable such bad treatment, the very idea of 'gender' in this sense is also a bad thing.

So what's happening now in society at large? Here's where it gets tricky. There's a move afoot to reify (or possibly hypostatise) gender, so as to try to give sense to the idea that my grandchildren have some innate aspect to themselves that is independent of their boy/girl status as they currently understand it. And, lo and behold, this thing or substance that is their 'gender' aligns itself with 'gender' in the pathological sense outlined above.

(Notice in passing the similarity to religious myths about souls and suchlike. Some - though not all - such myths fall to the same analysis.)

This reification/hypostatization move is essential if we're to try to go along with the currently fashionable societal narrative. ('Born in the wrong body' gives the game away if nothing else.) It's essential if we are to make sense of 'transgender', in particular. But like most such reification/hypostatization, it doesn't - because it can't - supply meaning where there was none. People (lots on MN) who say they can make no sense of being born in the wrong body, or of 'feeling like a woman' although being born a boy aren't lacking in imagination or empathy - they're just plumb right; there is no sense to such notions.

OP's Jenny thinks she's a girl in a boy's body. She's not wrong to think that; it doesn't make sense. (It's not even false, some would say.) Of course that's not a reason to treat such a child unsympathetically or in any way badly. There's no justification for treating people so. But what's wrong (apart from the intellectual crime of treating nonsense as sense) with allowing the currently fashionable trans narrative to guide our behaviour wrt this child or others is the succour this latter narrative - and behaviour - gives to the societal pathology of mistreatment of women/girls.

That's what I (terfishly?) think. Probably a bit long. But it's complicated.

VinceNoirLovesHowardMoon · 09/03/2016 16:51

She should sleep in the girls room with the girls because she's a girl

Define girl? Seriously, define it.

How about this curveball, any of them could be secret hermaphrodites, what then? How do you tackle that one?

Hermaphrodite is an offensive and inaccurate term. Intersex people usually have a chromosomal sex and ambiguous genitalia. They are usually raised as one sex or the other. A female intersex person raised as a girl is a girl. Nothing like a male person raised as a boy who feels like a girl.

Peyia · 09/03/2016 16:52

I do understand both your point of view but I am not looking at it black and white. I am responding to the OP of Jonny (boy) now wants to be treated as Jenny (girl). I'm not suggesting segregation be abolished. I choose to recognise that Jonny now wants to be Jenny. Not everyone is uncomfortable with that.

GruntledOne · 09/03/2016 16:56

grayselegy, the problem with your analysis is the fact that it rests on the assumption that a person feeling they have been born in the wrong body is automatically wrong and that the concept is nonsense. It simply isn't as easy as that; there are very complex psychological issues involved, and quite possibly some physiological issues as well.

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