AIBU to wonder what Brighton council are playing at asking 3 and 4 year olds their gender?

[SwearyKnickers]

Ds 4 identifies as a sausage. Although he sometimes goes by squish and cuddlemonkey. He hasn't sorted his pronouns yet. We better get on with it.. he's starting school in Sept...

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-sussex-36092812

Has anyone actually looked at the OP's link?

You don't have to tick any box. It is allowing the parent to leave the male/female box blank if they wish and to "discuss with the teacher".

I don't see anything at all wrong with that.

I personally am very grateful that I grew up in the 80s and with parents who just let me get on with messing around with gender. I guarantee I'd've have been put into the 'trans' box as a child (especially if both parents and school we're seeing who could be more right on) and the consequences of that wou,d have been extremely damaging. As it was, my parents just let me do what I want because I was still a female child (i.e. girl) whatever length my hair was or what I wore or what I chose to do.

If you'd asked me as an 8 year old I'd have said, 'yes, I'll be a boy'. I wasn't suffering from gender dysphoria; it was just my childish way of processing the realisation that being a boy offered possibilities being a girl didn't, and that maybe I didn't want to settle for the expectations associated with my sex. So I grew up to be a feminist.

My dd at that age self identified as Tinkerbell, even now she giggles and says I genuinely thought I was Tinkerbell.

This is actually on the governments agenda as a Yougov survey asked a question on this today.

Agreed mrskcastle and stepaway

The message that we should be sending is:
'We can't change your biology. If you were born a boy, you can't ever be pregnant. If you were born a girl, you can't ever become biologically male. But no matter what biological sex you are, you can choose what to wear, what to play with, what job to do and no one should EVER discriminate against you, bully you or prevent you from making your own choices. And if this ever happens, others will stand up with you and fight for your rights.'

This this this!

Of course there are genuine trans kids and of course they should be supported as much as possible. However, of all the children who experience gender confusion at a young age, 80% of the turn out not to be trans at all (they are usually gay and the confusion comes about from the disconnect between their sexuality and their gender).

For the purposes of the form, I think Brighton should have stuck with the old style 'sex' definition of male/female (as I'm pretty sure that this is what they actually need to know). Gender identity is entirely separate from biological sex and at age 4, all the school need to know is if they are male or female for planning/demographic purposes.

It is the unfortunate (in my opinion) conflation of sex and gender that is leading to this as people treat them as one and the same. Of course some children may experience gender identity issues, but I would be astonished at the age of 4 if this was in any way meaningful to them.

Instead of pigeonholing them at a time when their understanding of sex is tenuous to say the least, let them develop in ther own time. The idea of a parent meaningfully asking a 4 year old to define their own gender is laughable.

why can't they just put on the form 'what is your child's biological sex' problem solved. The kids get treated the same surely?!

I'm not sure what it means to 'feel like a girl' or 'feel like a boy' and if as an adult I don't understand what that means (someone feel free to explain though!) so how are small kids supposed to understand

Very sound comment from RiverTam

This is coming from adults with an agenda

It's fucking outrageous.

I really want to know how the school intend to deal with the child. Will they be treating them differently? Oh hes a girl now. Bound to be shit at math.

I don't think 4 year olds even totally understand what gender is. DS has just turned 4 and has just noticed that I have different bits and started asking questions about what the different bits are. I'm also pregnant so he's just started asking questions about whether boys and girls have babies and how they get out.

He just really is only beginning to even understand what the concept is, so how can he be expected to select one gender or another?

I'm really reluctant at that age to impose anything on them or label them as anything, and this just seems another way of imposing a label on them without them being really conscience of what that label is or able to make an informed decision. Because at that age you could ask them one day what gender they want to be and they'd say the opposite of what they were born, and you'd tick that box and they'd be labelled, but then the next day they might change their mind.

There's a reason why we don't ask children that age to make decisions for themselves they don't properly understand the decision or its consequences so it's not fair to ask them to make it.

Mrs KCastle, I totally agree. Whyisshe - I agree with you too. I am a woman because I biologically am. I don't understand how you 'feel' like a gender. You just are what you are and like what you like.

Maybe it is to help teachers understand which kids to let dominate the classroom (thats the boys) or tell off for being too chatty (thats the girls)

Yes so that they know who to call 'bossy'

MrsKCastle- well said. It IS harmful to reinforce to people, especially children, that if they don't conform to societal gender stereotypes then they must be in the 'wrong' body. We don't yet know the full impact (physiological or psychological) of blocking puberty in children not yet mature enough to fully understand the long-term implications of these decisions. As someone more astute than me has pointed out, grown adults often have a battle on their hands to undergo sterilisation, even when they're happy that they don't want any / more children. Yet children are making these life-changing decisions at 8.

We should be allowing children to be children, not rigidly forcing them into stereotypical 'girl stuff' and 'boy stuff' boxes.

It's absolute bollocks isn't it.

Brilliant thank you STEPHANIEDA

And my child also identified as a pony at the age of 3.

At that age, children often have a tenuous grasp of the differences between make-believe and reality, they are rarely fully in control of their emotions, and they often lack the language to describe their feelings. Adults should not be using stereotypical gender constrictions to dictate the course of a child's life based on what they like or wear aged 3.

I thought it was a recognised normal stage of development at that age to be confused between meaning of boy and girl?

Heard this on the radio and immediately thought of my friends little girl aged 4. She is for all intents and purposes a dinosaur. That is what she identifies with. She doesn't wish she was born a tyranasaurus rex she knows she is one.

Wheres the box for that.

Oh somebody please put that your child identifies as a Labrador. It's a wholly suitable response to such an outrageously ridiculous question.

This was on the Jeremy Kyle show today and there were a couple of trans people who came on saying they absolutely knew at that age and that if this had existed at that age, they would have had a much easier time of it.

Also, Brighton council haven't received any complaints. The only complaint was sent to the Sun, which proceeded to put it on their front page!

"What is the harm in trying to identify the tiny, tiny percentage of children who are already experiencing gender dysphoria at a young age?"

The harm is

a) you are validating their misapprehension about themselves; agreeing that a child who thinks they are a pony, or a child of the other sex, or fat when they are thin, is harmful to them.

b) you are entrenching their misapprehension instead of allowing them to grow out of it as would be a normal trajectory

c) you are setting them on a path of alienation from their body, potentially harmful unnecessary medical treatment which renders them infertile and a lifetime of reliance on hormones and other unnecessary medication

d) you are homophobic; the majority of children who claim to be the opposite sex to the one they actually are and play with toys designated by our sexist culture for the opposite sex, grow up to be gay or lesbian people.

This is basically a bizarre, unethical way of "curing" homesexuality by changing future gay people's bodies to make them look like a different sex to what they are, instead of allowing them to be ordinary gay people in their own bodies.

That's harmful to the whole of society IMO but the most harmed of all, will be the children sacrificed to this insane fashion for pretending that biological sex means nothing.

"Cis" is used as a slur, unless you intend to be offensive don't use it.

This is absolutely ridiculous. If my child's school began to operate this I'd complain in a lengthy letter.

Just let children be children. Looking at photographs of me aged 9, I was quite clearly unbothered by gender norms. These days I'd be a "transboy", had short hair and wore "boys" clothes. It was just hair and clothes in 1997. I am grateful I'm not a young child now and worry for my baby daughter.

Is it going to harm anybody's cis kid? Is it fuck.

Referring to kids as "Cis kids" is pretty harmful in my opinion. Since when did we have to redefine children because trans exists?