Daughter is due to go to an all girls secondary and now thinks she may be bigender - help!

[Caro382]

My DD age 11 is due to start at an all girls secondary school in September. It isn't our closest school, but she had her heart set on so I was very relieved when she was offered a place. It seems like a lovely school and she still really wants to go. However, I got a phone call from one of her teachers the other day to say my daughter had told her that she thinks she's bi-gender.

Spoke to my daughter and she says that she sometimes feels like a girl and sometimes like a boy. She doesn't feel she wants to change her pronouns or dress differently. She's aware that the school she's going to everyone wears skirts etc and she's ok with that. I don't think it had even occurred to her that identifying as anything other than female might be a problem at an all girls school - in all honesty I don't really know how it would work myself as this has come a bit out of the blue.

As background, my daughter has been very interested in LGBTQ+ questions and rights for several years and has said she'd rather marry a girl than a boy since she was 3. I'd often thought she might come out as gay at some point, but she's never given the impression of not feeling she herself is a girl before. She's also hit puberty in the past year and her body has changed a lot and fast which I know she feels qute awkward about, but I've always previously had the impression of this being about not feeling ready to 'grow up' more than necessarily gender related.

I've obviously told her that I love her whatever, and have contacted a local charity for LGBTQ+ people of all ages and their families to ask if there are options for her to talk to someone who might 'get it' a bit better than me. But how on earth do I handle the question of how to talk to the school she's not even at yet about this? Or would it be better to wait until she's had a chance to talk it through with someone from the charity?

Also she wants to do a talk to her class about being bigender before they finish school in July. I don't think this is a good idea at all until she's had more time to explore what it means to her, as she'll probably get asked a load of questions she can't answer and end up feeling worse than if she'd given herself more time. I'm a bit pissed off with the teacher for letting her think a presentation to the whole class was a good idea to be honest.

School allocations have happened for her year/ our area now so if she can't go to the all girls school she's chosen then our only option is to go to the school admissions people and see what spaces are left at schools which are under subscribed, and then scrambled to figure out new transport arrangements by September as I'm a single parent and work full time.

Does anyone have any advice or has been in a similar position? WTF do I do?

This.

My son happens to be at an all girls school

Mmm, no.

Either your son is at a mixed sex school or your daughter is at an all girls school.

My son has wanted to be a cat since he was 3. He made up his own catty language, said he was a cat for years, and was completely obsessed with our cat, still is.
He's 15 now and has come to terms that when he grows up he won't be able to be a cat. However, he still often wistfully says - wouldn't it be great if I could be a cat. He said it today (in an attempt to distract from his English homework 😄)

We all know full well he can't become a cat.

My daughter went through a gender exploration phase age 11-13. She is now almost 16 and we haven't heard anything about it for about it for a couple of years. It is likely to be a phase but even if it isn't, your child won't be the only one exploring gender and I'm sure they'll have policies in place. If you are worried you could ask the school she is going to. I think the presentation is a bad idea.

I read that as "big-ender". Does my ender look big is this? 😁

FFS

I suspect they are at a school that is all girls 11-16 and opens up as mixed st sixth form. DD is moving from her all girls school to the all boys school in sixth form that opens up a 1/3 of its intake for girls. The boys grammars do the same - still seen as an all boys school even if 2 years have girls!

DD is at an all girls secondary school.

There are many students there who appear to be non-binary and some who look like boys.

I think for kids going through those stages it’s a much nicer environment than they’d experience in our local mixed schools.

My daughter is very laid back and accepting, and lots of support for each other throughout the school.

Can’t help but envisage this child being a little disappointed when she gets to secondary and realises this isn’t the big special “sets her apart” thing she thinks it is!

Eh? So why is it called a girls' school?

A lot of single sex schools admit both secs to sixth form. They are single sex for years 7 to 11.

100% don't change school choice. You have a place at what sounds like the best school for her. Plus changing could make her feel as though this gender thing is 'real' and fixed, rather than a passing feeling on the journey to adulthood.

100% this.

As a later poster suggested, it is Co Ed in Yr 12 and 13.

The A Level choices are good and it's a very good grammar school, also his girlfriend goes there so that was also a deciding factor. There are a few boys there since it's Co Ed in sixth form. Most sixth forms are mixed sex. I only mentioned it because it also happens to be a very inclusive school with lots of young people who are still unsure about their sexualities.
Why do you say FFS??

😂

It’s really hard to navigate because you don’t want to push her away but fundamentally there is no such thing as being bigender. She is a biological female who may also like stereotypically male things and that is fine. If there is some body dysmorphia going on, I would take her to see a counsellor. If there isn’t I would pretty much smile and ignore until it passes.

It is so sad our children now think like this! She’s putting herself into a box and applying labels at such a young age.

I’d be strongly talking her out of doing any sort of talk or presentation to her classmates. That’s vanishingly unlikely to go well.
Aside from that, there’s no way for her to “feel like a boy” some of the time, because she has no way of conceptualising that outside of gendered stereotypes of what boys are into or like to do. She is a female in a female body. In your case, I’d be strongly reinforcing that women and girls are not limited by regressive stereotypes and she can do anything that the boys can.
How does an 11 year old even become aware of a term like “bigender”? I’d be cautious about the online spaces she’s in to be honest. I’d also be encouraging more time spent offline doing things which allow her to engage with her body - sports, walks in nature, physical activities so she can embody the full experience of what her body is capable of.
But absolutely do not encourage the presentation to her peers, she’ll never be allowed to forget it and not for any positive reasons.

Tell her that what she’s doing is becoming aware of the social stereotyping of males and females, and that’s healthy. However, she’s female and always will be. Do not go along with the this genderwoo nonsense and I certainly wouldn’t allow her to present to the class. Does she has plenty of hobbies and interests? If not, steer her into ones that don’t have this unhealthy level of introspection - keep her busy and away from her phone where she’s probably looking at all sorts of stuff that feeds this.

I have a 10.5 year old daughter and if she told me she felt like this I wouldn’t change any plans for secondary school, a girls school is probably the best place for her as they hopefully will be promoting the idea that girls can do anything they want.
I think you need to explore what she means when she says she sometimes “feels like a boy” because that idea has to have come from somewhere; if not the internet then from the other girls or even school if they’re teaching about “gender”. Feeling like a boy is complete nonsense, she can’t know what it feels like to be a boy, she’s probably confusing not being keen on some stereotypical girl stuff with being a boy. She might be starting to have feelings that she might be a lesbian and feeling confused about that.
Reinforce the idea that girls aren’t all the same and can be who they want and like what they want. There’s an awful lot of pushing “girly” stuff going on at the moment like skincare routines and makeup for preteens, it’s all based on misogynistic ideas of what girls should be.
Oh and the presentation sounds like a terrible idea, put her off if you possibly can, you could tell her doing it in the future when she’s more sure of things would be a better idea (and hopefully that day will never come!)

Yep and they don’t actually change from being seen as single sex. The one DD will go to actually takes on more girls than others (hoping to have 1/3 this year) but it is definitely still seen as a boy’s school. The Sutton Boys Grammars take girls as well but are still seen as boys!

what I would say is that age tend to be quite accepting of these things often a name change is pretty much all that is done something to reflect them a bit more and then that is it. DD can’t remember why a couple of them changed names just that they did

She can be at a girls school and bigender. Just crack on.

She’s 11 ignore it.

This. Why on earth has a kid of this age has been exposed to this for years already?

I would be very concerned about who is feeding her this nonsense.