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?

Hey, no one called you an extremist Bobf. Get over yourself a little maybe?

I can see what you're saying about the online grooming, but still without confidential disclosure you have a kid who hasnt told their parents and hasn't told a professional either, so less oversight and protection. This I should why confidential disclosure exists for minors - because it's better that one person knows and supports than none.

Thoughts on that? Bearing in mind the normal average professional recipient of disclosure will be following the guidance of supporting the kid to tell their family unless there are strong reasons that would be unsafe.

There's is not going to be any support for the line that the mere fact of the child disclosing as trans is a child protection safeguarding concern.

So far all governmental and official guidance is saying explicitly that it is not. Given that a child can disclose pregnancy or hiv status and still have the right to confidentiality, the fact of declaring trans is not going to be enough.

Certainly there are plenty of places online where children can get "advice" from (whoever) and the line that is common is

Don't trust your parents they don't understand
We are the only ones who understand
We will be your new family
+
Advice on
Using suicide as a threat to get what you what
This is what you tell the doc to get blockers/ and further

There was a person on here the other day on a thread about a child who had gender questions. The mum did they didn't really know what to do but were worried + had had a couple chats about sex/ gender. I can't remember the details but I don't remember the mum being awful to the child. Poster told her that she was a clear test to the child's wellbeing, and that as child was in summer holidays so unable to get support from school there was a clear child protection issue, they hinted at very dark things happening.

No one looked for that on extreme sites - someone came here and said it.

Personally I think the idea that the words woman/ girl should be redefined to mean "any human who says that is what they are" is extreme but that's just me.

If anyone is interested then try googling detransitioners, some very interesting stories.

"Bearing in mind the normal average professional recipient of disclosure will be following the guidance of supporting the kid to tell their family unless there are strong reasons that would be unsafe."

I don't think that's what the groups going into schools are telling them though.

They have also told schools that a child must be accommodated in the facilities that match their gender which goes against the law for schools and that any child who feels uncomfortable needs to change elsewhere.

Same as swim England where the advice was changed to changing rooms by gender self ID and any who felt uncomfortable needed educating... They also said dicks in with the girls was fine but tits in the pool were not which was very illogical (and interesting). The logical fails around this always go in one direction which is telling.

This I should why confidential disclosure exists for minors - because it's better that one person knows and supports than none.

That’s not how it works here. We are t talking about one medical professional knowing a 15 year old is getting the pill for a consensual relationship and doesn’t wantvtheor conservative parents aware. We have a vulnerable child expressing disconnect from their physical body.

When one non family member ‘knows’, the child is vulnerable. Read what people like Jessica Eaton are saying. This can lead to grooming because the child is then exposed entirely to that one adult - people are seeing things like parental alienation, leverage etc. That’s why all safeguarding for children in such vulnerable situations advocates full disclosure and why multi agency working is so important - it spreads and thus reduces the risk. this is what child safety professionals with many years experience and direct knowledge are telling us.

Some random youth counsellor at a camp? 99% chance they’re a decent person, but what if they’re totally clueless about all this, and suggest going online to look at trans resources and the child has no filter? or what’s the protection if that worker isn’t so benign?

We don’t have safeguarding for a laugh, or to curtail anyone’s fun. Or to be bigoted. We have it because every bloody time something awful happens and a child is harmed and it’s in the news, there’s a call for lessons to be learned.

Every single bit of that safeguarding legislation was a response to crimes against kids. Nationwide DBS checks? We have that because of the soham murders. Huntley had previous convictions but there was no nations network of checks.

Loophole. Exploited by predator.

I don’t care how uncool, or unwoke you find me. I don’t care if you find this eye rollingly dull and boring. I care about keeping kids safe. And right now people are trying to drive holes through safeguarding and I will continue to ask why and say it’s not OK.

I think it's great they are doing this. The argument that parents should teach their kids about it just doesn't work. Not all parents will give a fair and objective view on what it is to be LGBT+. I think the camp giving the information and letting children learn without a potential parental bias is a good thing and I hope it happens more and more. My son is nearly 5 and fully aware. The MN obsession with trans just doesn't relate to real life.

I keep reading about the 'MN obsession with trans".

Why are people so obtuse? It doesn't take more than a moment's thought to work out what's actually happening.

Which is more likely:

a) a massive group of (predominantly) women, who routinely show compassion and tolerance towards society and individuals in their discussions randomly decide on mass to take against trans people for no reason

or

b) a website that is one of the few female-dominated spaces on the internet takes threats to women and children seriously and becomes the one place where legitimate concerns can be aired

Hmmm. Which could it be?

Anxious

I know. I mean we're nice, but just not nice enough with all our worrying about women's and children's rights and welfare

Not all parents will give a fair and objective view on what it is to be LGBT+

Oh FFS. Hopefully, most will tell their DC that they can't change sex, that they should not have to share intimate spaces with people of the opposite sex if they do not want to and that bullying under any circumstances is bad the latter is terribly important if DC looks like growing up to be a TRA.

I actively teach mine to be tolerant

Actually I don't, not for everything. I also teach critical thinking, and I don't think people should be tolerant of ideas that hurt people or are based on pseudo science. So DD knows that climate change is real, that homeopathy is bullshit, and that humans cannot change sex. She also knows that of something doesn't sound right she should do some independent research to corroborate it, and that she shouldn't blindly trust what adults (including parents and teachers say).

Oh believe me itsall - they get a massive dose of critical thinking as well.

Your son is nearly 5 and fully aware of what Haribo?

Oh believe me itsall - they get a massive dose of critical thinking as well

I knew they would

I just think it's important to let children know they are allowed to have boundaries, and they allowed to be uneasy about things without being steamrollered in the name of tolerance and being nice.

They don't have to believe in made up stuff.

So I would be asking:

What content was taught?
Who provided the materials for the content that was taught?
Who was teaching it? What’s their background/affiliation?

And I’d check that good safeguarding practice was followed.

All this would allow me to field follow up questions from my kids appropriately and follow up with the camp on anything I felt was inappropriate.

I honestly don’t care if anyone thinks that’s overkill. I’ve seen what happens when safeguarding is broken and it’s not good.

This!! x infinity. Check out what they've said, by whom. Who's funding the organisation and their camps? What are their professional credentials? Summer camps are for play. Mixing play with sex education has all my spidery long honed instincts on high alert.

I have been very unbiased when this subject has come up with my DC. Stick to the facts is always best when discussing this sort of thing with littlies I find. They aren't daft after all!

Placemarking, as Bowl has said all I would want to, and far better.

This kind of content is wholly inappropriate for a camp.

Love and tolerance = great.

But, teaching kids that they can identify out of their sex is indoctrinating them with an unproven, anti-science ideology. Giving them a list of ever smaller categories to label themselves with is not freeing in my opinion - quite the reverse.

Anecdotally (and unsurprisingly) the evidence seems to be that vulnerable children are being influenced by peers / the internet into IDing as trans.

This desistor's story is powerful IMO. She IDed as trans between 16 & 19:

"It’s difficult to explain ... exactly how pervasive and focused the brainwashing is, how perverse and suffocating and addictive it can be. The convoluted and illogical discourse, the constant shifting of goalposts so you are always on your toes to know what can I say? What am I allowed to think? What does this word mean today? So many lies were told to me about gender, sex, oppression, people, love, health, and happiness. I didn’t get better, and neither did anyone else I spoke to, but we were assured that this way–with our made-up pronouns and our made-up genders and our self-diagnosed illnesses–was the right way. It was a real crabs-in-a-bucket mentality, where any criticism, even of downright abusive behaviour, was transphobic and/or ableist and/or racist. To suggest improving oneself, sorting out your life, was cruelty of the highest order; we were perfect as we were, they cooed, and anyone saying otherwise hated us and everyone like us. Narcissism ruled supreme."

"We copied the writing style everyone else used, and we copied what they said too. They said and then we said we were beautiful. They and then we said we were against the world, the cis world, the hateful world, the world that wasn’t ideologically pure like we were ideologically pure. Nobody suffered like us. We were martyrs, floating high above reproach and deserving, more than anyone, of every good thing in the world: comfort, other people’s money. We deserved to have every rule bent for us, because we were right and they were wrong."

"I could go on, describing every argument they used to justify this attitude, but I doubt they’d work on you. A lot of us were young teens, vulnerable in some way, whether abused or ostracised from society or just weak-willed. They gave us a new self, and all the power in the world. We thought so ruthlessly, that people against us didn’t deserve to live, reasoned it out in our mad non-reason –horrible, horrible, icy, inhumanly mechanical thinking that I have never encountered anywhere else since. We didn’t think about what we said, we just repeated what we knew we were supposed to say, and really, truly thought we were expressing our own thoughts."

"They told us that we could choose a gender, any gender, out of countless, that we could make up our own and they would be taken seriously; they were, but only ever by others on there. Words on Tumblr ceased to mean the same as in the real world. Words were made up. They said if we wanted to wear make-up, or pink, or feminine clothes, we had to have a label for that, and if we wanted to have short hair, and wear masculine clothes, we had to have a label for that too."

"The time I wasted! Years on this! The energy! They say “agender” means I don’t have a gender. Do I feel like that? How do I know? How can you “feel” that? They said this was freeing for us, to finally know what to call ourselves, but the boxes they said we had to choose from were so tiny we couldn’t fit, unless we had a hundred, and even then we didn’t feel satisfied. We were forcing ourselves apart into splinters until we weren’t people any more, just words, and words that didn’t mean anything."

"Why on earth weren’t we happy? We were children who knew so little about the world, and we believed everything everyone on Tumblr said. They–and then we–all spoke with such perfect arrogance, like we knew everything. We knew we did. There was also an awareness we had–although never, ever voiced, even to ourselves –that if we were just a white, normal, “cis” kid, we couldn’t be part of this club. We were part of it because we were special, and we were special because we were part of the club."

Read the whole article here

OP, did you find out what was actually said at the camp?

Raisins, that's a really scary read.

Haribo with regard to your comment

MN obsession with trans

I suggest you read AnxiousPeg's comments. Which you probably won't. But you should.

Which is more likely:

a) a massive group of (predominantly) women, who routinely show compassion and tolerance towards society and individuals in their discussions randomly decide on mass to take against trans people for no reason

or

b) a website that is one of the few female-dominated spaces on the internet takes threats to women and children seriously and becomes the one place where legitimate concerns can be aired

Hmmm. Which could it be?

raisins that is really interesting.

I don't mind my kids being taught to be tolerant of others, or think that if they hear about the gays or the trans then it might make them want to be one.

I can't understand how someone can write this when there has been a 2000% increase in girls seeking help for gender dysphoria in recent years. There is supposed to be a girls school where 10 girls in one year have come out as trans. It seems to be a highly contagious identity.

There are definitely people actively grooming vulnerable teens online and encouraging them to go down a path of hating their own bodies and their 'gender identities'. They push them to take Testosterone and give them instructions on how to say the right things so as to get hormone blockers. I've seen it with my own eyes. It's absolutely insidious.

If you don't think this is going on you are unfortunately naïve.

I think it's good children are getting information earlier, because take it from me, until they hear about however they feel, they WILL feel like the 'broken freak'. I identify within the LGBTQ+ banner, and wish I'd known more earlier, didn't realise there was a name for my orientation until I joined the LGBTQ+ club at school at around 14/15. It sounds great, wish I'd been to somewhere like that at 6-11! Not surprised the T part seems to be the biggest issue on here, but anything involving trans people seems to be hated on here :(

Telling kids between 6-11 that they can change sex is mad, dangerous and irresponsible. A teacher recently posted her shock after a not unusually stupid teenager revealed that he honestly believed people could change sex. I'm not talking about a trans person getting a GRC. I mean this kid thought biological sex could be changed.

Since that post I have become aware how little the average person knows about the human body. I wonder what percentage of people think literal sex changes are possible. I fear it may be an astonishing number. The average reading age is 9.