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

Can't find the post to quote but someone commented my son can't be very scientific if he believes someone can change their sex via surgery.

I think he sees an adult making a permanent choice via surgery etc as a different thing than a kid his age choosing a different gender that could change tomorrow.

The child in question is from a very turbulent background and has quite severe mental health issues. The parents are notorious for picking fights and trying to make their child centre of attention. It's the drama of the situation that doesn't help.

Sorry but it has, it would depend on whether the mid-gendering is intentional and the overall factual matrix, but in the case of Forstater v Centre for Global Development Europe the Employment Tribunal said:

“This judgment does not mean that those with gender-critical beliefs can ‘misgender’ trans persons with impunity. The Claimant, like everyone else, will continue to be subject to the prohibitions on discrimination and harassment that apply to everyone else. Whether or not conduct in a given situation does amount to harassment or discrimination within the meaning of [the Equality Act] will be for a tribunal to determine in a given case.”

Ironically this case established that "gender-critical beliefs" (the view that sex is immutable and distinct from gender identity) also qualify as a philosophical belief protected under the Equality Act 2010. But even in doing so the tribunal confirmed that this belief cannot be used to discriminate against others- and that deliberate misgendering could amount to this.

Interesting to see an employment tribunal debating the very same point as a 12 yr old boy!

I don’t believe it’s possible for a boy to live as a girl, and I would not be teaching a child that. A boy will never have to live with periods, with on the whole being weaker and vulnerable to aggressive men, have to worry about getting pregnant, or have concerns for their health if they don’t have period/get pregnant. All things that I would say are intrinsic to being a girl.

However the example here is a girl wanting to be a boy. I think a girl does have a better chance of living like a boy/man, except she will still have those fundamental aspects of being female I mention above and so again, won’t ever be able to truly live like a boy.

So no, I don’t think that is the answer.

My suggestion would be to avoid using pronouns at all, use the preferred name where required and I’d go literally as far as saying “I don’t talk about [name] when they’re not here” to avoid any situation where pronouns may arise.

I feel I could boil this down, in layman's terms, to: "you can believe whatever you want but you don't get to be an arse to people" which is pretty much what I've said on the previous pages.

I think half the issues here are from people who’ve never met a single trans person

Good grief, no, it's literally half my younger child's friendship group (mostly the girls being transboys or NB, but one or two transgirls or male NB as well); plus a schoolteacher; plus multiple family and friends' kids; plus hobby groups; plus, historically, one of my school staff and a university lecturer or two. Why would you assume that to meet is to be convinced of the importance of gender?

There's never been any doubt about the real sex of any of them, though, and that does make their preferred gendered pronouns hard to bear in mind.

Yes exactly, and ignoring them/ refusing to work or socialise with them, or even repeatedly refusing to say their name, could potentially be just as bad as a matter of law depending on the overall facts/ effect on the individual.

Yes exactly.

There are a lot of very ill informed people on this thread throwing around the Equality Act as if it gives people carte blanche to say and do what they like to others.

Reading a few headlines and social media posts does not equate to a thorough understanding of a legal judgement.

Your beliefs on gender identity may be protected under the Equality Act but that doesn’t give you the right to discriminate or be abusive towards others in the name of those beliefs.

Hence why the implementation of the Equality Act when it comes to gender critical views is difficult in practice. An employee might hold gender critical views and be allowed to refuse to participate in a training course on gender transitioning, for example, but they may not be allowed to refuse to refer to a colleague by their preferred pronouns if that was considered to be an act of wilful discrimination against that person.

Advising a parent that their child doesn’t have to call another child at school
by their preferred pronouns and will be protected from any consequences by the Equality Act is therefore inaccurate and unhelpful. As with most things in life, it’s really not as simple as that.

So I wasn’t really meaning you, but when you meet these people do you either ignore them completely or consider them as “coercive abusive fantasists” which is what some people on this thread appear to be advising a 12 yr old to do!

Don’t be an arse to people to me means that others should not try to force their beliefs on others, they should not try to force a language change on others

because it is a language change - from sex to gender

I do not believe that gender should be encouraged as a concept, I would prefer pronouns to be they /them at all times for all people , I think it helps train our minds to to stereotype people based on their sex

but I don’t insist that others must do this or scream “bully” if they don’t because I am tolerant and accepting of others

unlike a large proportion of the trans and trans supporting communities who insist that it’s disrespectful and bullying if YOU don’t do what they want irrespective of YOUR preferences

When you meet and work with transgender people you sharp find out that it’s actually quite difficult to prevent others from being incredibly unkind and dismissive of the transgender person - way beyond ignoring pronouns

“she “ snigger “ she said “ and the assumption that they can therefore ignore what is said

that’s disgusting

but bit doesn’t change the fact that no one should be forced to say she for a he

i tend to always refer to the person by name ( which I believe is a personal tag so don’t care. Transmen tend to chose unisex anyway in my limited experiences)

Just tell him to never use this child's pronouns. It's easy. Always refer by name. I'm guessing there are loads of kids in class so just avoid talking about that one. Explain that it doesn't matter whether the child believes they are a boy or girl. And you don't have to agree, but it's polite not to upset people

Yeah, and if this is the case best to help your son try to find some kind of middle ground, for his sake as much as anything else. Behind the scenes you can (and I think should) have a chat with the school and give him a space to debate with you at home, but I can only see his life being made worse if he gets into an ideological conflict with the school/ family (and there is a real danger of your son becoming the scapegoat here).

You’ve had several offensive posts deleted. Inciting a vulnerable child with autism to behave in the same way as yourself is hugely unhelpful.

I’d be so tempted to put in the group “We believe in being truthful in this house and do not subscribe to trans ideology, especially because of the harm it causes to children”. Obviously I would be too scared to do that though because of a potential pile on.

I mean, he's not wrong.

I think I'd just explain frankly that X is mentally ill and using the wrong pronouns for him will help ease the symptoms until the episode passes/the world gets a bloody grip.

Having been an autistic child in the lion's den that was secondary school, my advice to any children like me is simple: keep your head down and be quiet. Anything else just is not worth it because you cannot win. You'll find your people who get and understand you but you need to do that as an adult, it's not possible to do it during compulsory schooling.

Now naturally this view is coloured heavily by the particular characteristics of my school, but it's all I've got to go on. And can I say I am so, so glad that trans was not a thing when I was at school because I would have had to have "shut up ansjovis" tattooed on my hand if it had've been.

Nope.
Nobody gets to demand that somebody else partake in an act of religious observance, nor do they get to compelle anyone else's speach.
You can ask that other people use wrong sexed pronouns but whether they choose to do so or not is entirely their decision especially when 3rd person pronouns are rarely used when speaking to the person.

Nobody should be shamed or ostracised for not participating in somebody else's religion or delusional thinking. The only person who will come across badly with peers will be the girl demanding that others have their speach compelled and practice her religion (gender ideology).

Nobody likes a bully especially one who targets a disabled child.

This thread seems to black and white in its thinking too.

Its being presented as either use chosen pronouns or sex based pronouns.

There is another way!

You don’t need to use either. Use their ‘chosen’ name and avoid pronouns. If you must use ‘they’. You can often use that without it sounding unusual, such as ‘no they didn’t say that’.

Unless this kid is in a very close friendship group it’s unlikely to be a big problem.

I talk to them about music or birdwatching or particle physics or A level choices (depending on context!).

The trickier bit is talking about them as, like my older lad, I find wrong-sex pronouns feel like a lie; but everyone we know, barring my slightly fanatical younger child, makes multiple default-to-sex pronoun errors in that context anyway, so I probably do better than most.

I think it’s accepted that transgender feeling has existed for ever

if you talk to older women who have lived before the ideology took hold , many will tell you they think - based on their direct lived experience of “thinking I was a boy really” it’s a form of body dysmorphia, with a healthy dose of reaction to sexism

other forms of body dysmorphia exist and no one would ever agree with an anorexic person that they were fat , yet here we are agreeing with a transgender person that they are actually the other sex

what we can see from previous generations is that transgender girls grow into fully functioning women if supported in the right way - gender none conforming, often autistic, often lesbian - but basically also female

this generation with their medical treatment may not grow so old, will never be as fit and healthy physically

we need to push back not “be kind”

it’s not about being respectful, it’s much more important. It’s preventing harm.

Agree.

It's rather ironic that so many are going down the routes of "complete adherence or nothing", which is a tactic so beloved of the TRAs they despise.

Meanwhile, in the real-world-middle-ground where not everything is a fight...

You can discriminate against someone in many ways, you could discriminate by only using the word pineapple if you tried. That's a very long way from saying using correct sex pronouns is discrimination. In the current climate where gender ideology is losing both public support and numerous legal battles, I think a school or employer would be bonkers to make a child/employee face "consequences" for doing so.

At the end of the day only the OP knows how autism presents in her son and nobody knows how it will present further along the teenage years but the fact remains many autistic children have black and white thinking and can appear blunt. Teaching tact, tolerance,respectful communication and knowing when to stop to autistic children can take work and is hugely important as the law and many work places do not make allowances for autism. If you break the law you break the law.

I agree with pp’s that the best course of action is to avoid using pronouns. Just keep using the child’s name when referring to her rather than trying to remember the he/him pronouns. Names are easier than pronouns. My eldest has a friend who is a trans boy and whom I have met several times. I really struggle to say ‘he’ because this person is so very obviously a girl. My son is autistic (as is the trans friend) and casually uses he/him pronouns when referring to this friend because he’s used to it. He doesn’t think his friend is really a boy. He also doesn’t get snarky with me when I say ‘she’. I don’t do it deliberately to make a point or anything, I just find it hard to not say what I see. This friend reminds me very much of several girls I went to school with, in the days when we were allowed to have short hair and be interested in trains and aerospace engineering without being told we were in the wrong body.