LGBT+ at summer camp?

[TreeSqueak]

My dc are at a summer camp this week. It's a day camp run by a youth movement. The leaders are aged from 17/18 to mid-20s, the children 6-11. I can't fault the care, my dc have come home every day burbling with happiness, exhausted, loving the leaders and the activities.

Every day has a different theme. Yesterday it was LGBT+. I noticed the flags and facepaint when I dropped them off.

Dc told me last night that they had learned about every letter, what each one meant, including that you may not be the sex that you look like, how people were different and should change if they wanted to, and we should love and respect everyone, etc etc etc.

AIBU that this is not an appropriate theme for the setting?

Teaching children about respect and tolerance for everyone regardless of how they look or dress - yes absolutely.

Teaching children about same sex relationships - likewise, assuming it's done in an age appropriate way.

Teaching children about gender stereotyping - absolutely not ok. Regressive nonsense that we spent half the 20th century trying to dismantle.

Teaching children that sex is a feeling and that you can change it if you're not happy - absolute lie and I would be beyond livid.

Penny it depends on the context. In a school, where staff are trained and have good knowledge of the children's backgrounds, discussing that families come in different forms is OK. Any issues arising from them can be addressed sensitively. A bunch of young adults without any training potentially and with limited knowledge of the children, might be lucky and not cause any issues or might cause major ones.

How do they know if any of the children are in this situation or have close family who are? How do they know if little Jessica's dad has just come out as trans and she's really struggling with it, might feel mad, confused, scared? Would happy clappy young adults know how do deal with that?

Just as an example. Let's say in my class I have a child called Betty who has two dads and a child called Lotty who comes from a fairly right wing family who don't like 'the gays'. I know that a lesson about different families is likely to produce comments from Lotty (whether intentionally or innocently) that will probably upset Betty. So, because I know this, I can do lessons beforehand discussing respect and how we treat our friends in class. I can say ground rules. Then I can slowly lead into the main focus over weeks so it is a positive experience.

A summer club can't know those things. That information isn't usually available to them.

.Some little boys want to change into girls and some girls want to change into boys.

And we need to ask why. Why have referrals of girls gone up 2000%? What’s the influence of the toxic hypersexualised society we live in? What’s the influence of social media? What’s the influence of things like ASD (v high proportion of ASD kids in these cohorts). What’s the influence of our narrow gender stereotypes?

Children naturally explore during childhood and puberty. A child who says they’re the opposite sex cannot ever become the opposite sex. To tell them they can and to put them on a medical pathway that will leave them physically and mentally damaged and sterile is not OK.

Those children are perfect as they are. They are not in the wrong bodies - society is giving them the wrong messages about sex and gender.

Have a look at the allsorts training stuff. It’s really eye opening. Not in a good way.*

Is there a link, please @Bowlofbabelfish ? Thank you!

www.allsortsyouth.org.uk/resources/toolkits-booklets-guides

But it’s not that cut and dried for families. No parent would use blockers unless desperate. The family in said book finally came to the decision not to use them but they considered it as there were advantages. The toilet issue and it was heart breaking from the child’s point of view. It must be incredibly hard for parents going through this. You can’t just say you’ll never be a girl, to these children they are girls. You can’t just tell them to switch that off.

And re prior training for bigoted children. Surely the assumption is no kid has an issue with LGBT, if they do, it gets dealt with after in the same way racism would. Bit that kids need support discussing LGBT issues.

Look up the paradox of intolerance to see why tolerating intolerance is a bad idea. Mnhq is tolerating intolerance in FWR.

In FWR threads you'll find plenty of posters telling others exactly how they should post and what they should post, and where they should post it, and oodles of suppression of dissenting voices. And those rallying calls.

I don’t recognise those posters as FWR regulars

What would you do if your son felt he was a girl and insisted on wearing dresses? Talk him/ her out of it? Deny his/ her feelings? What do you say? He/ she is him/herself, they don’t fit into a tidy box. Highly recommend the book, it’s beautifully written.

Penny children come from all backgrounds. Racist, homophobic people have children too. It's entirely irresponsible to put a child in a situation where they could receive abuse because they have gay parents when it is avoidable. Humans in general aren't particularly good at being respectful of others, why do you think 7 year olds can do it without any direction?

Some TRAs advocate that any parent who is not fully on the transgender bandwagon should be viewed as a risk to their own gender questioning child. No sensible discussion about blockers or surgery. No wait and see. Either agree or you're a bigot.

My gay child is put in that position every day he goes to school.Kids access all kinds of stuff online themselves. It would be better for him if discussing LGBT issues were seen as the norm.

Witchita

Did you see my question? What is your definition of trans?

Why can't you say to children that they'll never be a girl if they're a boy Penny? I have told one of my children he can't be a dog.

It's far crueller to lie to children and tell them they can change sex when it's untrue

OK thanks @Bowlofbabelfish . Not all good.

A good starter thread, should anyone wish to pop over to feminism chat and say hello. Contrary to popular belief we are not all man hating cauldron stirring whateverophobes.
Maybe not, but you can only post if you have the same view as a majority.
Been called a man on there several times and piled in on, gets really tiresome after a while.

Penny

What would you do if your son felt he was a girl and insisted on wearing dresses? Talk him/ her out of it? Deny his/ her feelings? What do you say? He/ she is him/herself, they don’t fit into a tidy box. Highly recommend the book, it’s beautifully written.
i would say this you may feel your a girl deeply but you can never be one I would say you can be a gay man or a feminine one but you cannot chance your biology just as you can’t change race

I would also say no you can’t we’re a skirt to school just like I wouldn’t let you were jeans to your aunt Lunas wedding because you are a child and I am the parent when your older pay for your own clothing then you get 100% of the say.

I would if he persisted book him in with CHAMs because I would just as worried about a boy saying they wanted to be a girl as a i was when my black daughter said she wanted to be white

Penny we are talking about primary age children who will be taking far more direction from their parents attitudes then articles online. We do not live in a society that uniformly treats homosexuality as a norm. Therefore discussions must be constructed so that they are positive experiences. Hopefully if this kind of pattern is followed throughout school, topics such as LGBT will be common place and natural.

However, a group of people who know nothing about the kids don't know what they don't know. They cannot create that over a short number of weeks.

But then again we’re black and working class and this trans horse shit tend to be

The reserve of the white middle classes at the moment

The only thing close to trans is studs In the black community they dress like men date women the difference is they are biologically are women and don’t try and tell you otherwise they understand the way they have their hair and dress is outward and you can’t actually be a man because you think it

penny being gay is not the same as the issues I have over the trans rights activists.

They have piggybacked this onto gay rights because they know that most decent people support gay rights completely and they do t want to look like bigots.

My son HAS worn dresses. His preschool have loads of dressing up stuff. Sometimes he’s a witch and sometimes he’s a pumpkin. It’s fine. If he played with girls toys? I’d say there’s no such things as a girls toy. A toy is a toy.

If he said he was a girl I’d tell him he can’t be a girl. Because he can’t. We cover sex Ed as an age appropriate thing (I’m about to have a baby, he’s been told how it got there in an age appropriate way.)

If he insisted he was a girl - he can’t be. Humans can’t change sex. He can only be a boy. He can be a boy anyway he likes - as masculine or as feminine as he wants, gay or bibor straight as he is. He can dress how he likes and present how he likes. But he cannot change sex.

If that made him unhappy then I would seek specialist help to explore why he feels like that. But he cannot change sex.

My son HAS worn dresses. His preschool have loads of dressing up stuff. Sometimes he’s a witch and sometimes he’s a pumpkin. It’s fine. If he played with girls toys? I’d say there’s no such things as a girls toy. A toy is a toy

Yes but there you describe it as him dressing up in dressing up stuff. It's OK if he plays at it? What if he wanted to do it for real and not just as "dressing up as a pumpkin or a witch?"

If I may rainbowsandsmiles

What you’ve described is gender expression, nothing to do with sex or sexuality.

Bowlof, sorry, just seen you've answered that. You'd tell him he can't be and get him psychological help.
I have two boys. Can't imagine them coming out as trans, but if they did I hope I'd be more tolerant and less dismissive of their feelings.
How is that any different to doing that if they come out as gay if someone doesn't believe in that either?
You are who you are.

Then he’d be in a dress. It’s fine. Loads of little boys run around in dresses (dont they? Are my friends just an odd sample..?)

If he is gay, feminine, bi, masculine or whatever then that’s who he is. Also fine. Friend of mine’s little lad has worn all the princess frocks his big sister refuses to for about three years now. He’s just starting to decide he is in fact a boy. Kids do that. It’s fine.

He cannot change sex. No one can. What possible good can come from telling a Child that they’re in the wrong body? That they can change sex, putting them on horrifically harmful drugs and sending them down a route that will result in surgery and sterilisation?

He’s a boy. He cannot be a girl any more than he can fly. He can be a boy any way he wants to - I’ll be right next to him if he’s dismantling gender stereotypes, but he cannot change sex.

And back to the OP - if anyone at school started telling him he could change sex I’d be having words.

Personally I think this is healthy. When parents talk to their kids about this stuff, the message is likely to be tinged by personal opinion. It doesn't hurt for kids to have some objective info to balance out any prejudices parents may unknowingly (or not-so unknowingly) instil. Would people really want us to go back to the days of section 28?

It’s hugely different to being gay - there’s no comparison.

If he’s gay, he’s gay. 10% of people (or whatever the figure is) are. All fine, no denial of reality needed. He can be gay, and have a happy healthy life. No surgery is needed. No sterilisation is needed. No blockers are needed.

To tell a child they can change sex is just incorrect. They can’t. There’s no comparison with being gay at all.

However there’s a big push to associate the two, so that this pushing of children down medicalised pathways is sanitised.