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

[VioletVaccine]

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.

Turtles.
Biggest load of misogynist bullcrap.

Girls are girls. Women are women. Transwomen are not women. They need their own spaces. Wake up.

Catching

Plenty of people feel like a "round peg on a square board", trans people are hardly unique in that. How arrogant to state otherwise.

I think the bullying issue depends on the culture of the school. My kids go to a bog standard comp in the north west. Many kids are openly "out" and in relationships. My kids have many friends who are gay or bi; anti gay prejudice is seen as extremely uncool and doesn't really happen. A couple of years ago a Sir Ian McKellan came in and gave them a chat about tolerance, but as my DD said, he was pretty much preaching to the converted.

By not putting Jenny in with the boys they are recognising that the boys might pose a threat to Jenny, but by doing that are not passing judgement on those particular boys, if the school is making safe guarding decisions based on biological sex and not on the individual child's personality, then Jenny should be judged the same way as all the other children on the trip

But surely Jenny's vulnerability in that situation comes from there being a group of boys? The analogous situation to Jenny bunking up with 5 boys would be one cis girl bunking up with 5 trans girls. That situation I think is less obviously alright, and I think the cis girl might be vulnerable. A single trans girl in a group of cis girls raises a different question.

I also don't believe Jenny is at risk of being raped, as I don't believe the girls are at risk of being raped by Jenny. As I don't think 14 year old are rapists given the chance to be in a room with someone of the opposite sex. This isn't a rape issue.

I think no matter the sleeping arrangements rape and the children's safety isn't an issue so it makes sense to make the decision based on preferences, the children's choices and what would be more comfortable for all.

None of us on here can really know what that is and the OP to be fair doesn't even have any reason to be involved in this decision. I would trust the school to make the decision they felt suitable using the information they had to hand.

Cotton ceiling ffs. People really need to stop wheeling this one out. This was used by one single mad transwoman on a blog. It is not a mainstream opinion in the transcommunity. It's the equivalent of men's rights people quoting the SCUM manifesto to prove the feminists are all man-haters.

I don't know if I can say this right, but I'll have a go.

I think Jenny has every right to be in the girls room you can't condem someone for something without giving them the chance because if that was the case then no one would trust anyone.

For me, this goes to the heart of it all. I think the poster here seems to be saying that Jenny's right to have 'the benefit of the doubt' is more important than the rights of the girls in the dorm. It is fine to ignore any doubts or anxieties they may have about sharing a bedroom with someone who is biologically male, as those doubts and anxieties are less important than the feelings of that biological male.

Females must be required to put their feelings aside in order to accommodate others.

But this whole thread seems like a bit of a storm in a teacup anyway as it doesn't seem that anyone actually knows what Jenny wants, or how the school intends to handle the situation? Maybe Jenny was booked a private room weeks ago, and none of this is actually a real issue at all.

Biological why would they want to? I've been gay my entire life and when I went on school trips I was so board because my mates were lads and I. The girls room they talked about make up hair and I used to just go sleep but then the next day hear from my mate how much fun they has play righting playing jokes on each other it's about where you feel comfortable and if a lad was feminine but was straight and identified himself as completely male but had all his mates as girls and enjoyed there company more I don't see a problem with at all him staying in the girls room or vise verser a girl who likes football and is a tomboy we just need to stop and think about there feelings and ask them and think oh I don't agree so I'll put a stop to it. Let's just hope the next generation is nothing like ours

But the majority of trans people don't have surgery Catching. Many have neither surgery nor hormone treatment. Prostate cancer could very well become an issue for self-declared MTT who do not undergo surgery.

And then further propagated by Owen Jones, theycallme. Is he not mainstream?

Because that's what I said Alis? You stated yourself you have not had this issue with your daughter, I stated you may feel differently if you had. I did not say that was unique to trans.

If you need to twist my words and demand answers to ridiculous questions to get your point across then it's senseless continuing to debate with you really.

Females must be required to put their feelings aside in order to accommodate others.

Since Jenny isn't using the girls' toilets or changing rooms at school, this doesn't appear to be what's happening. She's not forcing herself into women's spaces.

She is, however, apparently going to be in a women's dorm - sharing with a group of girls who are her friends and who must be assumed to have consented to this situation. This is very different to her being allowed to use the women's changing rooms and so on.

In fact, it's the OP who wants the girls to put their feelings aside - even though they feel they are fine sharing with their trans friend, the OP feels this is wrong and somehow threatens her son (in a way that has not been explained).

This has to be a wind up surely? As written, the OP doesn't mention a daughter who might be in a position of sharing with Jenny, I'm at a loss to understand why and on what grounds she would raise the issue.

But FWIW, if you trust the school enough to send your teen abroad with them, then presumably you trust them to make appropriate decisions for the welfare of the young people on the trip. If you don't trust them, don't send your child. For me it really is that simple.

In this case the OP suggests that the school has made sensible and sensitive arrangements so there's no reason to think that these issues haven't been thought through.

I'm not sure my questions are ridiculous, rather you can't answer re Thomas Beattie and the fact the overwhelming magpies of transwomen keep their functioning penis.

Have a nice evening, Catching.

Owen Jones is a sexist prick. But he's also not trans... Not seeing the point her. Unless it's that some people are sexists and hold objectionable views, which is something I agree with.

For clarity magpies was intended to be majority. Not sure what is the bigger gift, autocorrect or my failure to proof read.

Alternatively Drummer, why can't society just accept that boys can like dresses and sparkles and make up, and girls can like cars and football, without forcing them into the idea that they must be born into the wrong body? Why can't we just allow people to refuse to conform to gender stereotypes?

Plasticusername

That is not what I was trying to say if one of the girls genuinely had anxiety and it's not a girl who didn't want them there because she disagreed or didn't like them then ye she has every right they all have the right to a voice I'm just trying to stand up for Jenny because she doesn't seemed to have many people doing that if it was up to they would all be happy and they will have an amazing school trip I wouldn't like any of them feeling left out or uncomfortable. So please don't I was saying they should feelings aside because it's not what I was getting at.

OP, I really don't want to cause any offence, but how would you feel if your DS was prevented from sharing with his friends because of his ASD, because "he could present some hypothetical risk to his DFs"?

It's othering and ridiculous.

I actually identify as a bit of a TERF sometimes; I do have serious concerns that transgender rights are problematic in some cases and I find some transwomen have highly stereotyped and misogynositic attitude to what 'being a woman' is about which makes me feel very uncomfortable. For forty years I have believed that gender is, in the main, a social construct, and find it depressing to see this threatened.

However it is all too easy to become very reactionary about any specific transgender question using it to hypothetically argue about all transgender issues. And we mustn't forget there are real people with specific needs that we need to consider sensitively.

In this scenario, it is really nothing to do with you. Jenny, her parents, the children who she will share with and their parents are the only people who have a right to be involved in the decision.

Surely the main reason they can't put Jenny in with the boys is because that would be a rejection of her identity, and not primarily because her male friends represent some sort of threat to her.

Goldenapples appears to be pretending to be hard of thinking, as PP have said ad nauseum, this is not about the fear of rape (a very real fear none the less, 1 in 4, we believe you, but still not about) rape. This is about mixed sex bedrooms, I can remember my mother spending most of a night patrolling the landing in best sensible mother mode to keep my brother and his two female mates separate on an impromptu 'I've said they can stay here is that okay mum?'
14 yo's are not known for their maturity and considered decisions.
No matter how this person identifies we and the op, know nothing about their sexual orientation, or that of those s/he will be expected to share with.
I don't want to get changed or share a room with a workmate of the opposite sex, now, at 50, certainly not at 14.
Presumably some of these kids will be expecting to pass GCSE Biology and will therefore be aware that you can't identify out of your SEX.
And from what I have read intersex people are heartily sick of being coopted by trans allies to prove a point. Intersex is a medical condition often resulting in infertility, it has nothing to do with deciding your body is wrong, this I believe, has more in common with anorexia.

As the mother of a MtF trans teenager I've found many of the views on this discussion horrifying. My daughter has been through hell over the last 8yrs trying to come to terms with being trans and has various mental health issues as a result.

It's not relevant whether my daughter is attracted to males, females or both. She is a normal teenager that can control her urges and doesn't feel the need to jump on anyone.

She's been on hormones for many years and would love the op. But do you know how long it will take on the NHS before she can have it? There's so little NHS provision for trans that even the wait for hormones is many years long. We were "lucky" that we were fast-tracked because of my daughter's suicide attempts.

So please spare some thoughts for these children and what they're going through.

Yes exactly Inertia! The whole concept of transgenderism hinges on a very rigid view of gender norms, which I strongly reject.

Inertia

Thank you so much that has hit the nail on the head. Very well said.

Drummer fair enough, sorry for misinterpreting. I think I was sort of answering something that's just been spinning around in my head for too long, rather than something you actually said or meant, if that makes sense!