Husband upset about teachers saying ' boys can wear make up ' and taking about transgender people to our DD

[chocolatehu]

Before I start, this isn't meant to be inflammatory in any way.

I very much belief in ' live and let live '.

My husband also generally believes that but he also believes that our DD is very young and that talk around the kinds of things mentioned in my title - is too soon.

We have a son too and sometimes when he wants to put on makeup etc, my DH will say ' boys don't wear makeup '. My DD has come home several times, correcting us saying that her teacher told her that boys do wear makeup.

Yesterday my son was trying to wear hair clips and again, someone said ' those are for girls '. My DD answered that her teacher had told her that it was ok for boys to do those things and that her friend ( who's a boy ) is now getting married as a girl.

My husband feels it's too soon and confusing for a 4 year old to be told about this.

I think it's a sign we need to have some conversations with my DD, so she hears from us about this stuff.

My in laws and parents think it's completely inappropriate for teachers to be saying this sort of stuff and are wondering if the same sort of things would be said in a catholic school setting.

I think we should buy a book which explains homosexuality/ transgender issues in a child friendly way.

Please can someone who's been here, help me navigate ? Thank you. Again, I don't want to offend anyone.

Your daughter is four?
Let her be a child without talking to her about homosexuality and transgender ideology.
I agree with your husband on this- the teacher is out of line and shouldn’t be pushing this stuff on young children, especially four year olds!

My dc loved the Babette Cole book "My mummy never told me". Very age appropriate to address men and women can and do dress how they wish.

I’m not convinced. Yes bullying has to be challenged but I am not sure a lessons on transgenderism should follow. It’s not up to the teachers to teach the children how to think about this issue. Too many teachers are over keen to educate what they think of children brought up by parents with “wrong think”. It’s a bit chilling.

Agreed.

Don’t they teach biology in school? Teachers shouldn’t be confusing children - contradicting biology by peddling transgender ideology.
It’s impossible for a human male to become a female or a human female to become a male. Facts should mean something at school.

Boys can wear make up, dresses, jewellery etc =correct

Boys can turn into girls = incorrect

This.

You've seen that boys and consequently men can have long hair? That they tie that long hair back in some way?

There are plenty of "boys" (men) who are world renowned make up artists, who practice on them selves to perfect the techniques. Actors wear make up, as do the SFX models, there are many reason for boys to wear make up.

Your husband is being quite bigoted, not all boys who wear make up and hair clips want to be girls, they don't end up raging homosexual. They don't end up transgender or want to be girls. That's how it'd come across if I was hearing "that's for girls son, be a man! leave it alone"

Your husband sounds really daft.

Male TV presenters and actors on TV wear make-up, so do male ballet dancers not to mention that male punks, goths and New Romantics also wore make-up.

Make up does not equal to gay or transgender.

Regardless there is nothing wrong either with kids learning about the LGBTQ+ community.

Your husband's issues and hangups about what is and isn't masculine should not be passed on to your kids...

As for the 'catholic school setting'. Leave religion out of this.

We leave in a diverse society and kids should not be raised with dogmatic views.

The teacher shouldn’t be sharing private family information about these type of issues with children this young. I’d be speaking to the school. It’s borderline grooming behaviour

'@NinaPersson · Today 10:41

The teacher shouldn’t be sharing private family information about these type of issues with children this young. I’d be speaking to the school. It’s borderline grooming behaviour'

What a lot of nonsense...

Nothing ‘borderline’ about it. The grooming of young children in schools is a direct purpose of many private organisations purporting to be specialists in RHSE provision. Not just in schools either, they are in teacher training colleges too.

I agree with all of this. I would not want my four year old being taught about trans issues. Far too young. And if my child pushed back and told a teacher that a boy can’t become a girl and was ‘corrected’, then I would make a huge issue out of this with the school.

The gender stereotyping is a major issue that your DH needs to face up to, though. My DNephew went out several times as a 3 year old dressed in his older sister’s Disney princess dresses and hair clips. It’s what he had on when SIL needed to pick my niece up from school and why would she have made him take it off?

Boys can wear makeup. Boys can paint their nails. Boys can wear hair clips.

Teaching children that only girls can do this and only Boys can do that is so damaging.

The teacher isn't teaching her about trans issues etc, she's teaching her about the mere existence of a trans person. Learning from a young age about how different we all are will not be a bad thing. Just like learning that uncle dave married uncle Tony won't make your child gay.

You need to google and show your DH the pictures of Harry Styles wearing couture dresses. He still looks every inch a gorgeous bloke with muscles and tattoos. The dresses don’t mean jack shit about who he is or who he has sex with. Similarly in the 80s gender bending was very cool - Robert Smith the lead singer of the goth band The Cult, still wears lippy and eye liner despite being a hulking middle aged married man with a family.

So it’s not about clothes or make up or hair clips. It’s about messages. Instead of seeing these as just external adornments that many children and teenagers play and experiment with, we start talking about ‘trans’ and ‘boys becoming girls’ and that is a dangerous slippery slope of fucked upness.

Our son used to sometimes play with our daughter’s dressing up and make up. We regularly painted his nails and let him experiment with whatever he wanted. He’s now a 6 foot hulking bloke who couldn’t be more alpha. But he’s also someone who doesn't succumb to stereotypes about what ‘men’ and ‘women’ are. As a parent, that’s the best thing to teach and model to your child.

In my view, the most dangerous dogmatic view is that people can change sex.

I don’t see anyone in modern British society being hounded out of their job for questioning the doctrine of the resurrection.

If it happened, I’m sure their union would support them.

If I made GC views public in my job, I would probably face some level of inquiry/be sent on DEI retraining, and the relevant union, UCU, would hang me out to dry.

What do you think the teacher should be forcing her beliefs on to young children? Deluded!

Go over to the feminism board. There's lots of good info about how to navigate trans through a sex based perspective. It sounds like you need to know what the fact based reality is regarding trans issues. It's not about who wears make up or hair ornaments, it's about erosion of sex based women's rights by men. As a Catholic, you might find some of the issues challenging.

what does he mean by this though?

if he means in general young boys don't wear make up but neither do young girls, so it's fine for him to play with around the house but neither he nor his sister can wear it to school, fair enough.

If he's saying boys shouldn't play with make up full stop, at any time, and if he wants to wear make up when he's older his dad can't stop him and will still love him, but he won't exactly be happy with it, would prefer he wouldn't, will consider it outside the norm and probably be embarrassed to be seen with him, which tbh is what it sounds like, then that is an old fashioned view and is as "indoctrinating" in its way as someone with very left leaning values.

The teacher talking about her brother, for example, marrying another man would also be appropriate. chances are at least a few parents in the school or even class will be same sex families, so it shouldn't be confusing or weird. Teachers are allowed to talk about their private lives and kids love hearing about it, so if she said 'I went to my brother's wedding on the weekend,' if anyone asked about, for example, the bride's dress, it would be fine for her to say 'actually he married another man, they both looked very smart,' or whatever. Same as if the teacher married another woman herself, presumably neither you nor your DH would want her to hide this and never talk about her family to her class?

However I agree her brother 'getting married as a girl' is confusing an a concept for very young kids, and tbh for me as well. If the teacher accepts her brother is now a transwoman then shouldn't she just say 'my sister is getting married?'

I wouldn't go as far as saying it is indoctrination because all of these things are technically fact - boys can wear make up and people can legally get married as a different sex to the one they were registered at at birth. Regardless of the GC position on it, if her brother has a GRC he will legally be registered as a woman.

It's your husband forcing gender stereotypes on your little boy, who is just playing and having fun.

I'm glad your DD has an alternative viewpoint to consider.

There's nothing political or controversial about saying boys can wear make-up, unless you would get equally weird about a teacher saying girls can wear trousers.

Of course boys can wear make up, play with dolls etc, just like girls can play football and have short hair etc. It doesn't make them less of a boy (or more of a girl) to conform or not conform to restrictive gender stereotypes. And it absolutely doesn't mean they're trans or 'born in the wrong body'. Please don't reinforce this idea by buying your children books about being trans or gay just because your son likes wearing hair clips!

This is very little to do with religion and everything to do with your DHs rigid views. Catholic school is generally no different. The whole message of the church is tolerance and acceptance and while it's still got work to do in this area, it is generally improving. This old fashioned, unaccepting 'catholicism' is what gives Catholics such a bad image in society.

Boys can wear hair clips, nail varnish and makeup. I can assure you it's fine. My DS has never gone up in flames when going to mass even when he turned up in a princess dress.

There is nothing wrong with the teacher saying that boys can wear dresses etc because they can. It's good for children to play freely and explore all types of toys before external gender stereotypes force them to conform in society.

The worrying thing here is that the homophobia/transphobia runs so deep you are willing to enforce strict stereotypes upon your children. The teacher is right. Anyone with a face can wear make up.

@chocolatehu Sounds like you are making your way navigating through all this after reading this thread. It can be tricky to work out what your children are being told at school and what they in turn tell their teachers.

Dear god.

I would not be letting any 4 year old wear makeup. Hair clips are for girls and I would be saying so.

The amount of people on here who think that it's acceptable for teachers to be having these conversations with YOUR CHILDREN is wild.