Autism vs trans - clashing views

[sunshine244]

I'm in a tricky position with my AuDHD 12 year old. There is a trans boy in their class who recently started using a new name and pronouns he/him.

My son is very black and white thinking and very scientific. He is a bit grumpy at having to learn a new name as he struggles when e.g. teachers or family/friends get married and change name. But he has accepted that pretty quickly. But he flat out refuses to use the new pronouns as he says a girl can't just decide to be a boy unless they have surgery (which at this age of course isn't going to happen).

I sympathise with his as personally I don't think social transitioning this young is sensible. But I am also aware that the child's parents are very pushy about the situation and have already posted in the parents group about children bullying by not using the right pronouns/name. They got a lot of support from other parents.

I suppose my aibu is should i be forcing my son to use the child's preferred pronouns?

Yabu - I need to push my son to use preferred he/him pronouns

Yanbu - let child decide which pronouns to use or try to avoid pronouns

There is an extremely high chance that the trans child is also autistic. They are probably quite a vulnerable individual who obviously has a lot going on in their head. They will inevitably be a target for bullying. Most will misgender them because they will be entertained by the reaction they get. Do you want your child to join in with that bullying behaviour? If not, tell him to use the preferred pronouns or don't use pronouns and get on with his life. He isn't that scientific if he thinks surgery can change your sex.

Just because you and your son don't agree with a child wanting to transition, it doesn't mean that the child shouldn't be treated with compassion.

Support your child to continue believing in reality and tell the parents they cannot police other people's speech.

Fortunately it's not bullying to refuse to be coercively bullied into lying about reality. So nothing to worry about there.

Why is he not allowed to debate or question gender change? Has he been told that by school?

Apologies for not reading the whole thread, but if you haven’t already, I would get knowledgeable on the latest Keeping Children Safe In Education document, as well as the latest RSHE guidance. Both are statutory from 1 September.

Your son’s sex realist beliefs are protected under Equality Act.

No one in school should be forced to pretend children (or teachers) are the opposite sex.

So much unpleasantness and intolerance on this thread.

I am a teacher who doesn’t buy into the trans ideology in schools and finds it harmful. I have refused to teach it in PSHE. This is not because I don’t think trans people should exist, it’s because I know that most children who express a desire to change gender are neurodivergent, and I don’t think it’s responsible for us to teach these children that their feeling of not belonging in the world can be fixed by them changing gender.

That being said, I think that respect and tolerance for others’ differences is central to us being human. If people want to live as if they are the opposite gender and wish to adopt a new name, then I will respect that and call them by whatever they want. Trans people do exist and they deserve dignity and respect just as much as anyone else. Accepting and respecting someone else’s reality is not the same as agreeing with the ideology behind it and this is what the OP’s son needs to understand.

At the same time, the school and the child in question need to understand that for a neurodivergent person, it is a struggle to wrap their head around the cognitive dissonance, so respect and tolerance of that need to go both ways. If there are issues around this at school, OP, then you need to be letting them know that your son is really struggling because he can’t understand the logic and you expect him to be supported and protected from this student if there are claims of bullying. At the same time, he needs to learn to live in the world and this won’t be the first gender questioning person he comes across, so giving him the tools to manage the situation rather than just agreeing with him that he doesn’t have to try to use the child’s
preferred mode of address is going to be most helpful to him in the long run.

Maybe he just needs to avoid this person, he can't be compelled to speak to or be friends with another child if he doesn't want to.

Could it help to explain that he very much is allowed to debate gender change just not in a way that would seem to target this one child?

I don’t know whether you could have a safe space at home to have a debate with him, maybe look through a few articles from
both sides, and maybe try to help him see that thinking something and manifesting it in a way which upsets people are different? And that no one is trying to change how he thinks, or make the choice for him, but this could have consequences for him at school.

I would say let him see this thread but unless you want “abusive and coercive” thrown at you every 5 minutes and all communication ending with “HTH” I’d probably avoid it…

Yes it's deeply unpleasant, harmful and intolerant to coercively abuse children into participating in a fantasy and gaslight them into pretending reality isn't real.

Thankfully OPs son can't be forced to tolerate such bullying and abuse.

It's unreasonable to conflate bullying with just not pretending to go along with someone elses belief system.

Running up to an overweight kid and calling them fat is bullying, declining to use their chosen nicknane of "Skinny Tom" isn't.

So to summarise:

Everyone must be tolerant of "trans" people's beliefs.

"Trans" people can have 0 tolerance for people with opposing beliefs.

Avoiding the child of such deeply harmful, abusive and coercive parents is the safest course. It's unsafe to discuss transology in schools as OPs son may find himself further targeted by transologists.

HTH

@EnidSpyton on the face of it what you say is balanced and reasonable. But if you find trans ideology harmful, rather than just not believing in it, then why are you accommodating it?

As a thought experiment have you compare it to Rachel Dolzeal - the woman who pretended to be black? Do you think blackface should be accommodated in school or society more generally?

I do appreciate that a teacher you need to have due regard for guidance and the Equality Act and because of that you just not discriminate against a child with the protected characteristic of gender reassignment. But in your own head/outside of work, if you know it’s harmful then please think about how much accommodating you do.

Good advice by @Duckagogo

Sad that that’s where we are, but for now, it’s the most practical option.

I agree with this. I also think it is not possible to change sex but I've met a few trans people and they've all been sweet, shy, self-contained people who seemed highly socially unconfident. I just avoid using pronouns entirely. What's the point in constantly pointing out to them that I don't think they can change sex? They're just people trying to live their lives.

In life op's son will come across lots of people who cross his boundaries of what he thinks is right or wrong and it's helpful to be tolerant, remember everyone's shared humanity and rub along together.

Examples I can think of in my life are school friends who took part in illegal hunting, neighbours where the women and girls have to completely hide their faces in public, colleagues who have had affairs, parents who used furber method on their babies and I'm sure many other examples.

It’s not bullying or abuse.

But if the other teens in the playground side with trans boy, who knows, and more accept the he/him the OP’s son could end up being isolated by firmly holding on to his beliefs.

That would make the rest of secondary school miserable.

Our teens would get advised “it doesn’t affect your daily life, use he/him/they, he/him/they have enough to be questioning I am sure without you adding to their confusion” and they would shrug and get on with it. Yes they are neurotypical, but teenagers in a secondary school are living in a neurotypical environment. And this is what neurotypical teens would do. Well the nice decent ones who don’t want to make someone’s life harder than it already is.

Our NT teens have a level of shrugging and acceptance, they take other teens on who they are, if they are fun and decent, they have ND friends, I am sure OP wants her son to be accepted for who he is, so it might help if he can do the same and decide if the trans boy is a nice teenager or not.

That’s how we would go about it.

And I don’t know if our teens have firm beliefs on if a boy can be a girl or visa versa, they are teenagers they know fuck all about fuck all really. The conversation about their “firm beliefs” on love languages proved that!

So we have to make the trans child happy even though the boy isn’t happy to use those pronouns or go along with it, how is that fair?

@Heronwatcher You understandably don't like your position being described as coercive, but yet you appear to feel that not going along with pronouns would naturally result in "consequences"? What kind of consequences should those be?

I have autism.
Completely agree with your son.
However, even if no autism was present believing in biological reality aka being gender critical is an entirely acceptable view and is the view of the vast majority of people even though gender activists would have you believe otherwise.

what is meant then by those who say “it will not go well” mean then for ops son?

It means he could end up translating not thinking about the feelings of others and not taking care with how he verbalise things to other situations due to his autism. Autism carries a risk of black/ white thinking and bluntness which can get those with autism into trouble.

My DGD has a trans person in her school. She is going into yr 11, this person has identified as a boy since yr 9. They remain in their all girl friendship group.

Thankfully their is no bullying in my DGDs
school (and before anyone says this is impossible, the school is renowned for this, pastoral care is their overriding ethos and is the reason we chose the school).

My DGD does talk to, let’s call the person Albert. My DGD talks to me about Albert. I think at 12,13,14 and so on, children are forming opinions, they are starting to see the world and some of it’s more stranger things, they are navigating customs, compliance and constructs. We just let her get on with it. She knows that Albert is a girl. She also knows and understands that Albert has had a very difficult home life and my wonderful DGD understands that Albert is the product of that. It is very sad!

I personally feel that we should teach our children the fundamentals of respect, compassion and fairness and bring them up to be good people and they will find their own way.

@sunshine244 your DS may not understand many levels of complexity in human behaviour, but he doesn’t have to be the judge. You must be teaching him on a daily basis the strangeness of life based on his diagnosis. He won’t agree with everything and he will be rigid in his approach to many situations. Keep it simple, he will make mistakes. But to some degree he does have to be given a bit of autonomy to handle this with the support and guidance of the adults around him.

I simply mean that the trans boy will be upset if they are referred to as “she”.

Calling a trans boy ‘he’ does not mean that you accept that someone is trans. It just means that you are willing to be polite. I don’t think it is complicated. We all have different views on whether it is OK or not to be trans and I think we have to accept that everyone has different opinions.

I’m not sure if I correctly understand your religion analogy but I have a similar view on religon. Everyone is entitled to be religious or not religious and I don’t mind either way. Believing or not believing is entirely a matter of personal opinion. I’m atheist. I’m happy for people to pray and let them crack on around me. I went to a religious school. I just sat quietly while everyone was praying. I was forced to be present at religious events until y11 but nobody could force me to pray.

😆

This isn’t even English! You just can’t get the AI these days.

Happy to leave it to the OP to decide what she considers might be helpful to take from this thread, thankfully her and her son seem balanced and measured so I have every confidence that her and her son will find a way though it.

I think the key thing for me @sunshine244 is that it’s great your son is thinking about this critically and can discuss it with you in an open way. It’s possible that his autism is feeding in in that on the one hand he might feel some empathy for this child but as he can see the situation isn’t logical, as he would see it, and he’s conflicted. All the more reason for him to get to a position, with the help of you and the school, where he feels comfortable day-to-day.

Learning to deal with that cognitive dissonance and just let things drop when they don’t actually affect you is a skill everyone has to learn at about this age. It doesn’t come easy to kids who are very black and white thinkers but it’s still important. It’s like you have to learn not to go around criticizing other people’s religious beliefs or lack of belief because it does no good to expect everyone to agree with you all the time just because you’re right (at least in your own mind).
So yeah, he needs to learn how to interact with this kid without causing offense constantly, but he absolutely does not have to believe or pretend to believe that she really has become a boy now or that she was a boy all along.