To think we’ve got it wrong about gender identity in children

[Itsmyshadow]

I have a 9 year old daughter who doesn’t fit the typical gender stereotype for a girl. She loves football, gaming and Pokémon. From a very young age she’s liked “boys” things, has always gravitated towards friendships with boys, and between the ages of 4 and 7 was quite adamant that she was a boy not a girl.

As her mum I’ve therefore taken a keener interest in gender discussions and what children are told about gender than I otherwise would have. Being completely transparent for this thread, I would very much prefer she remains a girl as her life will be so much more straightforward if that is the case.

As parents we have therefore done everything we can to help her get comfortable in who she is as a girl. We focus on the success of women in sport as much as men, watch lots of women’s football and will be watching the women compete in the olympics and paraolympics and celebrating how well they all do (we will watch the men too). DD now plays for a girl’s football team and boy’s football team (having only previously played for the boys team), and through sport has has met and made friends with girls who are much more like her.

At present she is happily identifying as a girl. I know this is a very fragile status however.

This is why I am so annoyed that in schools, primary schools, children are being taught that people can change their gender. Last year at DD’s school they had a “Pride Day” and invited an external pressure group in to do workshops with the kids, in which they were told sex is “assigned at birth according to what a doctor observes” and were shown pictures of the man presenting in dresses and told people can change their gender. We opted DD out of this workshop, but another child told her afterwards that she was a boy and should change her gender.

Why are we telling school kids this who are too young to understand? I feel this does so much damage to kids like my DD.

Shouldn’t we stop promoting a trans ideology and instead be telling children that they can be whoever they want to be regardless of their biological sex?

I feel so much good could be done by overtly celebrating women’s achievements (including those who have excelled in sport or in the army) both overtly on International Women’s Day and more subtly e.g. setting a passage to read and answer questions on about Rosa Parks or the England Women’s Football team. Same for men, schools could really celebrate the successes of men who do not meet a traditional male stereotype.

If schools really focused on driving home the message that men and women can be whoever they want to be and that their sex does not constrain them, I really feel most of the gender uncertainty in young people would go away, and we could save young people a whole load of mental and potentially physical trauma.

As a related aside, there will be some parents here who may not be aware that a consultation on whether gender identity should be taught in primary and secondary schools (in RHSE lessons) closed at midnight last night. It was opened by the Tories and... strangely... the new Education Secretary, Bridget Phillipson, forgot to mention it.

Even more strangely, lots of organisations have signed an open letter, published on the day that the consultation closed, asking the new Labour government to scrap the guidance and start again. There is a thread about it here:

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5117718-100-organisations-ask-labour-to-abandon-tory-revised-guidelines-on-rshe

The bulk of the concerns are around age-limits for when to teach children specific subjects within sex education. Personally I thought the proposed age limits were sensible and well thought through but the bigger concern would be, that by starting again, we bring in the risk that gender identity belief will continue to be taught in schools as if it's factually true.

For anyone who hasn't seen it, this is what had been proposed by the DfE under the Tory-initiated consultation for teaching in schools:

https://educationhub.blog.gov.uk/2024/05/16/new-rshe-guidance-what-it-means-for-sex-education-lessons-in-schools/

I do think greed is driving a lot of this. The drug companies, the organisations being bankrolled to promote these messages - it's big business. No-one can make money when children and families are left alone to work it out for themselves.

Schools are teaching how we shouldn't be sexist on the one hand, then teaching entrenched sexism as an identity which should be imposed on everyone.

Ditto homophobia and religious tolerance.

I was born in the 1940s, brought up mostly in the 1950s. I played with boys, ran about incessantly, played football, climbed trees and found dolls boring. My Dad bought me a huge second-hand meccano set (5 shillings, I think). No-one ever suggested that I should "identify" as a boy - it just wasn't an issue then - and it never occurred to me that I was anything other than a girl. I've lived happily ever since as a wife, mother and grandmother, with a career in science - mainly a male world when I joined it with a PhD in 1971, but now very much also a female world.

Stereotypes have always existed, of course. I have my father to thank for encouraging me to go to university; certainly many of my contemporaries also did, but there was still the expectation in many quarters that girls would marry, have children, and therefore would not/should not commit seriously to a career. It was certainly more difficult then to be a working mother than it is now for my daughter-in-law, for example.

It's interesting that women have less difficulty and opposition now than my contemporaries did to achieving senior roles in business, law, academia, science, medicine etc, yet have to deal with this absurd misogynistic, stereotype-obsessed gender ideology, which is doing so much harm to women and children.

But what is "identifying as a girl"? I work in an environment where I encounter more trans people than most. Those "identifying as a girl" have longer hair than me, wear skirts more often than I do, wear more floral fabrics, wear more make-up than I ever have. Does that make me less of a girl?

Those who have transitioned, or are in the process of transitioning still have many problems. Why do people say "wrong body"? Is it not "wrong feelings"? Is that not something to work on instead?

I never identified as a girl.

I refused to wear pink (or black!) after age 8.
I wouldn't wear dresses.
I liked football.
I didn't do makeup.

Still didn't stop me BEING a girl though did it?

Quite!

What people (trans identifying males) are truly conflicting is not that they’re ‘identifying as a girl’, they’re wanting to live by a male idealisation of what it is to be a girl. What it is to be female and what it is to be a man’s idea of being female are chasms apart.

I think we actually need to re define what these phobias and tolerance actually are.

It used to be ok to quietly disagree with some thing and just co exist without incidence. It's ok to think something is just not for you.

Not ok obviously to bully, make someone's life miserable , yell insults and physically hurt people over something.

We seem to have gotten to a point where unless you outwardly cheer things on, participate In everything and anything and wear some kind of badge or band or whatever that makes you a bigot/phobe of some kind.

I mean when it comes to homophobia there’s a difference between saying ‘being gay isn’t for me’ (obviously, if you’re straight) and saying you ‘disagree’ with homosexuality in general, however quietly you believe you do so. Sexuality, unlike gender, isn’t a lifestyle choice or difference in beliefs - no one is expecting you to ‘participate’ in some way if you’re not gay or bisexual.

We seem to have gotten to a point where unless you outwardly cheer things on, participate In everything and anything and wear some kind of badge or band or whatever that makes you a bigot/phobe of some kind.

Absolutely - principles of toleration and freedom of conscience emerged precisely as a way of living together is a divided society after years of religious persecution and war. We seem to have forgotten this - and dissent has been rebadged as "hate".

Part of it must be that so many groups live in self-selecting - often but not exclusively online - bubbles and those wider community anchors, which exposed people to different viewpoints and experiences are easier to avoid.

This is a great thread OP, thank you to you and almost all the other posters.

I see that #OperationLetThemSpeak have also weighed in with their sermons lectures deep and clearly well-thought out words of wisdom that definitely don't consist entirely of scripted thought-terminating cliches, gross twisting of definitions and nasty emotional blackmail <sarcasm>.

I totally get where you’re coming from. I don’t really understand gender fluidity myself (have no problem with anyone who is trans, fluid etc), I just don’t understand why you have to identify as a different gender depending on whether one day you want to wear dresses and do ‘girly’ things and other days trousers and ‘boy’ things

Yes.

Some of them are motivated by feelings of sexual desire, some genuinely do believe that they are "in the wrong body". Either way, they are living "as a woman" from an outside in viewpoint. They've never had to navigate life as an adolesent girl, facing the reality of periods and boys/men starting to see them through the lens of sex objectification etc etc.

The latter are similar in many ways to the girls who are identifying out of girlhood: many will be autistic and/or likely to grow up gay and are confused and distressed about what "being a girl/woman" or "being a boy/man" means. If feelings of sexuality come in to it, it's more likely to be a desire to repress an emerging same-sex attraction because they are scared that this is "not normal" (i.e. an internalised homophobia). The prevalent use of "gay" as a slur in primary and secondary schools perpetuates this. Some will have experienced some kind of trauma (bullying, sexual assault) or mental health issues relating to trauma which mean that identifying as something new or different is an attractive proposition. Particularly if their new identity is celebrated by others.

The former are completely different and probably not a topic for this MN board.

I'm part way through the film Wrong Bodies, which is linked on this thread.
It's a great exploration of everything that falls under the "trans umbrella" and the power of belief. Unfortunately some will say that it's hateful propaganda but IMO, it's important to be open-minded and look at this from lots of different angles, so that society can support and safeguard those who do believe in gender identity and those who don't.

@mnhq I've thought really carefully about my wording here. Especially as there are believers in/supporters of gender identity on this thread.
If I have overstepped the guidelines for this board that was not my intention. If my post needs to be deleted I will contact you to understand how I could approach it again in a different way. Thanks.

I would be asking how women’s rights are being taught in secondary schools. As far as I know they cover the suffragette movement and that general era, but beyond that what else is being taught? What current affairs are being discussed when it comes to feminism? I doubt much at all, although if anyone knows more do let me know.

One term I particularly loathe is ‘cisgender’.

I know. It's so bizarre. It feels like progress was finally being made and then we have taken so many steps back it's unbelievable. I talk to my kids about the differences between sex and gender and they don't get it as nobody else refers to biological sex anymore.

Spent my teens surrounded by a load of very sexist boys who couldn’t cope with me being cleverer than them, who insisted it was “unnatural” for a girl to be competent at anything. I had a female classmate tell me that “I’d never get a boyfriend if I kept answering questions in class, I should giggle more and pretend I didn’t know”. This girl wasn’t stupid (we had some single-sex lessons), but she knew she had to pretend to be if she wanted the boys to accept her.

Luckily I was aware of feminism, and knew this was all patriarchal rubbish. I worry that feminism is now seen as a dirty word, and girls are encouraged to think they might be transgender if they are too practical and not prepared to simper enough. We have gone back to the Roman concept of “unnatural” behaviour for a woman.

I’m also not a huge fan of the trend for posters on here to suggest that any girl with good maths or visuospatial skills, or who just likes playing football FFS, has autism. It is yet another way of saying girls who excel at non-girly things aren’t “normal”.

I’m also not a huge fan of the trend for posters on here to suggest that any girl with good maths or visuospatial skills, or who just likes playing football FFS, has autism. It is yet another way of saying girls who excel at non-girly things aren’t “normal”.

?

Obviously not every girl who likes football or is good at maths etc has autism. And not every autistic girl excels at either of these. It's a false equivalence.

A bit of that, yes. There are various things driving it.

I'm amazed we got as far down the thread as we did before a TRA came galumphing in to "educate" us and berate us for not "being kind" (which, lest we forget is "the first rule of life" )

Just in case our new friend comes back with their hearts and flags, it is not "kind" to allow a child to think they're in the wrong body, no-one is. It is not "kind" to allow a child to think they can change sex, no-one can. And it is not "kind" to demand that others go along with this Emperor's New Clothes bullshit.

Sometimes the kindest thing is to say "no".

I do know what you mean that it can seem harder for a boy to be gender non conforming. A boy with long hair, who likes wearing princess dresses on occasion, or plays with a doll, should be unremarkable. But I sometimes wonder if our fears of what others might say are justified. Our school had a dressing up box for all kids, and the boys wore frocks and literally nobody cared.

The latter are similar in many ways to the girls who are identifying out of girlhood: many will be autistic and/or likely to grow up gay and are confused and distressed about what "being a girl/woman" or "being a boy/man" means. If feelings of sexuality come in to it, it's more likely to be a desire to repress an emerging same-sex attraction because they are scared that this is "not normal" (i.e. an internalised homophobia). The prevalent use of "gay" as a slur in primary and secondary schools perpetuates this. Some will have experienced some kind of trauma (bullying, sexual assault) or mental health issues relating to trauma which mean that identifying as something new or different is an attractive proposition. Particularly if their new identity is celebrated by others.

This by @BonfireLady - and I'd add that ableism added to the difficulties my ND kids faced, not just external but also internalised ableism. Its no wonder my autistic daughter was tempted by by a new and alternative way of identifying. She's now comfortable and self accepting as an autistic young woman but adolescence was difficult.

I haven't read the full thread - so sorry if someone has also mentioned this, but I also worry about abuse going unnoticed due to this (in a wider sense, not your DD).

I was very much a tomboy, but on top of that I also refused to wear dresses, look 'pretty' I'd cut my own hair so it wasn't long, wear baggy clothes and try and supress my breast - not because I was trans (I'm the most girly girl as a grown up now I feel safe) or a tomboy - there were times I was desperate to wear a dress but didn't as I didn't feel safe. And this stemmed from being sexually abused by my father.

Sadly it wasn't picked up (long story) - but I'd be even more worred that behaviours that can be a sign of abuse, would be brushed aside as being 'trans' now.

Absolutely agree OP. And would add that it sounds like you are an absolutely amazing parent. Your daughter is lucky to have you x