Non-binary teacher?

[Thompson198]

Name change.
I’ve got a 5 year old daughter due to go into year 2 in September. We’ve just been told that the teacher for next year is a non-binary/‘non-gender-conforming’ man who wants to be referred to by ‘Mx’ (pronounced mix) and they/them pronouns.
Quite a few of the parents have already complained and started looking for other places at local schools because of this.
what do you think?
My daughter has SEN and is one of the youngest in her class, I worry how she’s going to be able to keep up with the pronouns and understand this without us having to teach her about gender ideology at her age. My husband is extremely against teaching her gender ideology, especially so young, I’m not the most positive about it either but don’t feel as strongly as him. He also doesn’t want her being at the school in September but they have been very supportive for her so far and I’m concerned it might not be the same elsewhere.
Thoughts? How would you feel if this was your child’s teacher?

Yes you've got it, human being covers us all.

@Thompson198have you been told if they will be presenting as a woman by clothing choices?

Teach your child.

Keep up the messaging that whatever is going on in people's heads, nobody can change sex. Or opt out of being either sex. And that some people are unhappy with that and try to live with it as best they can, but that you believe what they say and do may be a mistake / wrong / not true etc (whatever you prefer.)

Send her in with a clear understanding of your point of view on this.

It will mean that she will start school with the realisation that some of what teachers tell us is so ... is not so. And questioning and reasoning can start very young.

(I remember my O level biology textbook with diagrams of genitals where the clitoris was completely missed off. Just a blank space and no description or explanation. Cue a room full of girls thinking 'I must be deformed'. Also the RE teacher telling us God made the earth in seven days, the same week as the geography teacher had told us it had taken billions of years).

She can avoid pronouns when talking to him.

And encourage her to share whatever he may have told the class or is asking them to do.

If you refer to them as Mx and everyone else refers to them as Mx then your daughter will be just fine using Mx. It doesn't need to lead to a massive talk on gender ideology, IMO.

"Is Mx a boy or a girl?" "I'm not sure, sweetheart. Let's just use Mx and or 'they' because we don't know."

They might even have a talk with the class themselves to clarify.

My kids have had a few NB friends over the years. I don't get it but I don't need to. It doesn't harm me to use they instead of he or she so I just do it.

The unwillingness to accept basic biological facts doesn’t make them disappear, you know?

But you are sure! He’s a man! Why lie and pretend anything else?

This would be my concern. A 6yo is going to ask the question - is Mx Teacher a man or a woman? so you need to think how you are going to answer that.

Are you happy with telling your 6yo that Mx Teacher is a bit confused and hasn't decided. Which may allow a young impressionable kid to think that this is a perfectly reasonable thing which people can do.

Or would you prefer your child to not think that's an OK thing to do in which case you'll need to tell your child that the teacher is a man who wears dresses and doesn't understand the rules of grammar when it comes to pronouns. Or tell your child their teacher has mental health issues. Or move schools.

None of which are great options.

She's in town.
She's getting her hair done.

Jenny and Steve - They're in town

It doesn't serve the needs of children to pretend that you can choose your sex, or choose not have a sex.

It also doesn't serve the needs of the many vulnerable people who are being persuaded that the answer to their emotional problems is to permanently damage their bodies.

It does serve the needs of a lot of men with a fetish, so I guess that's why so many people are going along with this change in language.

“You're risking your job if you take that bias into work with you.“

I’m not. Luckily for me, there’s Supreme Court ruling.

There’s no bias either - just biological reality and scientific facts.

If they are having to have a chat with the class to explain what they are, then in this case they are wrong and possibly in breach of the education guidelines.

Um, if someone says 'Jenny' (assuming no known desire on Jenny's part to be referred to with no mention of sex), no one would respond with 'They're in town.', as you claim.

A right example is
'What's that person over there [in the far distance, impossible to tell sex] doing?'
'I don't know, maybe they're looking for their dog.'

If only avoiding sex discrimination for women at work was as simple as calling yourself Mx.

Mx - see that glass ceiling shatter, you know where the dustpan is don’t you Janice , sorry Mx

Mx - equal pay? Certainly madam, sorry Mx.

Mx - missed promotion due to pregnancy, here you are mum, I mean Mx

Mx - only female in the boardroom, I take milk and no sugar dear, sorry Mx.

Mx - poorer pension outcome due to part time years/ family responsibility , we would all have loved time at home with our kids wouldn’t we chaps, sorry can’t remember your name because you aren’t really a proper member of staff are you, oh Mx, I’ll try to remember that.

@FrippEnos My experience of Non-binary teachers has not been good, they have been loud, brash and politically motivated to push their own agenda. But this has been in secondary schools.

Do you say the same thing about gay teachers? Teachers of colour? Teachers who have English as a 2nd language? Teachers with disabilities?

Apart from those issues arising for women where they are assumed to be men, because the titles are still - even now - construed to be male.

Well, yes, biologically that's a man and I don't get the thought process behind thinking otherwise but that's my whole point.

My children know I don't understand it. They don't identify as anything other than their sex, so they don't really understand it, either. But it is what it is.

I don't have to believe it. I don't have to make my kids believe it. But I can explain that unless it's harming us (which it's not) we can just use 'they/them' because that is what they choose and it doesn't really impact us either way.

That’s a poor example.

We only use the singular ‘they’ when we don’t know the sex of a person.

Jenny is a name given to females and we clearly know Jenny well enough to have an interest in where she is going. Therefore you know she is female (or I guess it could be a man calling himself Jenny and you may be uncomfortable using ‘she’ to refer to a man so dance around the truth and use ‘they’ unnecessarily)

When I hear the unnecessary use of a singular ‘they’ I tend to assume someone’s trying to avoid using sex based pronoun because the person is asking for a pronoun that doesn’t correspond to their sex.

It's not that hard though. There are other gender neutral titles out there - doctor and professor for example. There are gender neutral names like Alex or Sam. Is it a detriment not to think about or refer to sex when speaking about or to someone? Is that necessary and important? I don't think so.

I also think it's quite funny that both the teacher and lots of people on this site think that gender is bollocks, just expressing that in different ways. The teacher doesn't like/want gender and doesn't want it to be linked to their sex. It's really two sides of a coin in a way.

I’ve noticed on tiktok that there are a lot of younger people who don’t seem to recognise the sex of other people, and rely on announced pronouns and gender stereotypes.

This is a very new thing, and something that goes against everything we know about raising children. Grooming children to not be able to recognise sexes is frightening. It’s so important that there is absolute clarity for children, and less confusing feelings-based gaslighting.

I would not have my child in any school that did anything that taught children anything but humans are male or female, but either sexes can (to an extent) do whatever the fuck they want.

Gender stereotypes bring nothing to the table but harm. There is no place for them anywhere.

They is also used when someone doesn't know or doesn't want to say what sex someone is.

E.g. discussing what a new and as yet unappointed staff member might do. "They will work W/Th/F.

A young friend of mine telling me about something he'd done with a new friend who is clearly female 🤣 "They came with me to see xyz."

Well then, they probably won't. I'm not a teacher. I assume the new teachers knows enough about educational guidelines not to do that if it's not allowed.

@MissScarletInTheBallroom totally agree about the danger of gender stereotypes and how trans buys into this. I'd have no problem with my dd having a male teacher who wore dresses sometimes but said "I'm a man and men can wear dresses". I'd prefer that over someone saying they were non binary.

This is patently nuts. Of course they know. They've been told the teacher is a man

The biggest difference in the classroom will presumably be that there won't be any "boys line up first"; if the teacher wants to split them into two halves they will have to come up with some other division!

Why on earth would they do that?

The teacher has every right to identify as whatever they want - as others have the option to accept it or not - but I'm not sure how they'd be entitled to choose designations for others?

Re the endless singular 'they' debate:

The authority that is the Oxford English Dictionary is quite happy with it.

https://www.oed.com/discover/a-brief-history-of-singular-they/?tl=true

And it's not new. I heard it in a film made in the 1940s; The Perfect Woman.

Also the OED notes that its first recorded use is in a 14th century poem (so likely to have been used in speech for much longer).

So bellowing on about it only being plural is very very not so.