9 yr old told off for calling non-binary teacher Sir

[Nowherecitizen]

My friend’s son was told off by a teacher at his school for referring to them as ‘Sir’. The teacher is male but identifies as non-binary.

Their title is Mx which the children are aware of. But the little boy simply looked at an adult who is visibly male and used the term Sir.

I have seen this teacher and they are 'masculine' looking but will sometimes wear a skirt and heels.

Friend’s DS felt bad and can’t recall exactly what was said to them but said the teacher was ‘very cross’.

AIBU to think this was mishandled? Surely the child should be reminded gently of the preferred identity of this adult but should not face a telling off?

What is the non-binary version of Sir anyway?

That article does the classic bait and switch whereby it is sometimes talking about gender and sometimes talking about sex.

So it argues that our ideas about gender are not fixed, but have evolved through history. Fine, that's true. It does not however really argue against the essentialism of sex. It tries to let gender do the heavy lifting instead.

So basically, it tries to get round the materiality/immutabiluty m sex by arguing for our inner sense of gender being more important. But why wouldn't that apply to the other examples. Our 'inner' sense of species. Our 'inner' sense of age. Our 'inner' sense of ability, race?

Children usually adapt to this sort of stuff pretty easily

Adults shouldn't ask them to adapt to this stuff. Children should not be taught to deny the evidence of their eyes or have to remember that an adult wants them to support their internal belief that they are not the sex they actually are.

its wrong to require children to support their teachers personal belief systems, especially when it requires the children to lie to adults about who they can clearly see the teacher is.

Yes because they are young! I mean if remembering on what to call a teacher is mental load something is very wrong!

Things can usually be summarised however.

It shouldnt be so complicated as to require thousands of words to express it.

Anyway, my thoughts above.

I'll add that it works the other way.

In my time, I've had four trans pupils. (One was while I was on supply and was still 'questioning' so I never did find out what her preferred pronouns were.)

All 4 were born girls. I've no idea what happened to the questioning girl, but the other three all identified as trans boys. (All three later detransitioned: one at school; two after they left.)

Staff did make an effort to call the pupils by their new names and pronouns, but - inevitably - slip-ups did happen. This is particularly the case where staff had known the pupils by their previous identity.

I've had staff mucking up both my forename and my surname - no one died as a result. My maiden forename was Eastern European - think of something like 'Jankovic'. That was mangled fairly frequently. My married name is a traditional Scottish surname, but people often have even more difficulty with it - think of something like 'Menzies'.

No misgendering, mispronunciation or mis-title has ever made me question my own identity.

The one time that I came across the situation where a teacher wanted to be 'Mx', the kids coped with the 'Mx' - it was the pronouns that defeated them. However, the male teachers there were all 'Sir', so I've not idea what happened when they were trying to catch the attention of the N-B teacher. As I've said in a previous post, he eventually went off with stress after repeated 'misgendering'.

Modelling such a lack of mental resilience over a normal and instinctive part of language doesn't seem great for the children but also being a teacher is probably the wrong job to do. One of the things that's really awful about gender ideology is the way it encourages people to see normal human behaviour as 'hate' to see conflict everywhere and to have a paranoid attitude towards other human beings. It's encouraging mental ill health.

And if he couldn't cope with 'misgendering' goodness only knows how he coped with all the other rubbish kids say about their teachers. I've overheard my DD talking with her friends about them! You need resilience and an ability to not take the things children/ teenagers say personally if you're going to be a teacher!

Quite. In the 1800s women were regarded as old by the age of 30 and wealthy women would often retire from active society at this age. Perhaps the current government should provide pensions to 30+ women who also identify as old at 30 , given this precedent of the fluidity and changeability of definitions of ageing?

I've never witnessed that. I did have a colleague who swore that she had a girl identifying as a cat in her previous school. Staff ignored it; the mum bought the girl a cat collar.

Mind you, my best pall wore a collar in 1978. She was a punk rocker.

It's not possible to be sexist when sex is binary, there are only two sexes and you referred to both of them.
Gender nonsense on the other hand is just that - complete and utter nonsense. Poor kid OP.

I could behind this. 😂

Screw material reality

Most schools have 'honesty' as a school value. You can't call an obvious male she/her and also be honest.

Sex matters for safeguarding. Children should not be taught to lie about obvious biological sex.

I used to roll my eyes at "Ms". Now, it seems modern and I wonder why women ever felt obliged to disclose their marital status to strangers

I guess the same might happen with "Mx". If I'm eg buying theatre tickets online, why do the theatre need to know whether I'm male or female?

In the past, people thought it unseemly for women to wear trousers. Now, it's no big deal

I see no reason why men couldn't wear skirts if they want

But, non binary / transwomen? I can't get on board with that. You're male or female. End of

It really goes to the argument that if you believe that race and gender are social constructs or not. And when you start your thought process from there it will lead you to different outcomes in thinking.
you and I won’t agree - I won’t persuade you and you won’t persuade me. And I’m ok with that.

Out of the mouths of babes.

The king is in the altogether.

Etc.

Small boy knows exactly what he's looking at, as do we all, and says so.

A bloke trying to get a child punished for saying it like it is?

Hope she bought her son a treat.

How ridiculous, should I have got upset everything a child called me miss instead of Mrs? Teachers get called all sorts of names, the teacher needs to just accept, correct and move on

I have been invigilating in a secondary school with loads of pupils, loads of adults some of whom are teachers, but also support staff, admin staff, invigilators.

Everyone is either "miss" or "sir". I am "miss" even though I am in my 50s. The kids don't know my name and my badge says "invigilator" not my name. How are they supposed to address people in that situation? Excuse me Mrs I don't know your surname? Excuse me Miss Invigilator?

Miss/Sir is shorthand in every school I've ever been in. There is no "non-binary" equivalent.

But there you are, simply ignoring sex, which the author also does.

I, for the record, have no issue how people want to express their 'gender identity', they can call themselves whatever they want, dress however they like.

So long as this is not used as some Trojan horse or bait and switch technique to argue that their gender identity should give them access to same sex spaces/services or disrupt other conventions based around sex recognition.

Sex is binary and immutable. This teacher is a man, he'll never be anything else (regardless of how he wants to express his 'gender') and it unconscionable to call out a child for recognising that basic fact.

All teachers get called mum dad whatever at some point… we are all on autopilot at times.

forms of address should be polite but can’t be unreasonable / complex.

he a man - sir is fine

he may want something else but sir is reasonable and polite.

i may want to be called “queen of the galaxy supreme ruler of the school canteen and chief of the hockey pitch” but that also will not happen either.

Just for clarity - I’m going to bow out of this debate - I keep saying we won’t be able to agree but you keep pushing.

you are conflating 2 things - sex and gender. I can’t speak for the author - only for myself. I am not ignoring sex. Sex and gender are two different things. Biologically there are obviously differences between men and women - there is no denying this. I don’t think trans people are saying I was born biologically a woman/man. At least not the ones I know. But one thing does not preclude the other. You can be biologically a man and your gender be female. Gender is a social construct in my opinion - and to call out a child for any mistake is unconscionable regardless of the issue.

Because it isn’t. Their silence is answer enough.

If a child is trying to attract the attention of a teacher then Miss and Sir are the norm, if the child were to be addressing the woman by her name then Ms Smith would be correct if that was what she wanted, it's not rocket science to understand the difference. Maybe you would like the child to say 'Oi, you' to attract attention, nice and gender neutral, no-one could feign upset then.

Yes the child was aware of the title but when you call out it’s normally ‘Sir’ or ‘Miss’ rather than ‘Mix’ so it’s a force of habit rather than a deliberate intent to disrespect. The child apologised but was left feeling guilty.

You don't need to 'remember' what to call most teachers, because you call them by whichever sex they obviously are. Which is what this child did, but that wasn't acceptable to this particular teacher. Which is a problem.

EDITED as I'm using voice recognition software and it went berserk!

But you are making an argument that gender is socially constructed.

My argument is that sex is not. It is biologically based.

Do you agree with that? Because the article you posted skirts that issoe to only talk about the social construction of gender. You seemed to agree with that position.

So I'm confused. Is sex socially constructed or not? What do you believe.