Assault/suspension/trans child

[Stressedgiraffe]

I need some outside views.
My ds was suspended.
These care the facts

Incident 1 - AM T and two of his friends were taking shelter from the rain during morning break.

They were accosted by a large group of year 7 girls who were making derogatory slurs, being intimidating and making threats.

A girl said "Why are you wearing that hat, you freak". T replied, "It's raining".

At this point t took out his phone. The girl then said words along the lines of "why are you taking photos of me T**y" and other threats and slurs

The girl then punched down on to T's collar bone leaving a mark and broken skin while using hate speech term for a protected characteristic Ty

T's responded defensively with a partially closed hand push to the girls lower left jaw.

At this point friends took T to Ace, where he had to wait 10 minutes or more to be seen by a teacher She appeared to be already aware of the incident and sent T to ISR.

There appears to be little attempt to corroborate the incident from T and friends Rather relying on the words of a much larger group who were being intimidating to a marginalised and minority protected characteristic.

Incident 2 - PM
On attempting to leave at the end of the school day , T And friends were accosted again just prior to the school gate. A mixed age group of girls with what appears to be a sixth former participating.

One girl lunged at T pulling his hat and hair. The hat fell into a muddy puddle. This hat is very new and a comfort gift to T from his mother.

As T went to retrieve the hat from the puddle, the girl attempted to grab it as well, this action of her's caused her to hit into T's left hand where he was holding his phone.

The girl then proceeded to shout. "Did you see that SHE hit me" repeatedly.

The group then broke into two, with the Sixth Former and several other following T and his friends making threats and using derogatory hate speech.

His friends took him to where his mother was parked and asked that T get a lift as he was afraid for tanks safety and this group as around 5 meters from hid friends mothers car.

Friend's mother then drove him home.

As you can see from the two incidents, these were NOT initiated by T also there appears to be little in the way of quizzing his friends about their version of events, rather relying on others words.

This is deeply concerning, especially as T is physically small and continues to receive hate speech and intimidation whilst at High School as well as receiving harassment and threats whilst on school grounds.

They are threatening to exclude him. Wtf do we do?

I have an autistic teen so I know it’s not easy for an ASD child in secondary school.
I have two choices I can either prepare him for the world the way it is or the world I wished we live in. I choose to prepare him for the real world while ensuring our home is a place where he can just be himself.

Life isn’t fair. Your child should be able to go to school without being bullied. The bullies were in the wrong, but hitting back in a group environment was a massive risk to your child and things could have gotten out of hand very fast.

Getting caught up about misgendering is not preparing a teen for real world. People subconsciously determine the sex of others you then have to consciously make the effort to use the other person’s preferred pronouns. Some will make mistakes and others will do it on purpose. If your child was capable of making decision that they are a boy then they also need to prepare themselves that misgendering is going to happen. If all your self worth is arising because your identity has been externally validated by another person using your preferred pronoun then being misgendered will obviously have a huge negative impact. We cannot rely on external validation to boost our self esteem. This situation where when pronouns can actually make things worse for a vulnerable young person.

The teenage years can be brutal for autistic people. I really wish it wasn’t so.

Great comment and sums it up brilliantly.

ultimately the bullies were in the wrong, and we can teach our kids to “fight back” all we want. But that’s not what is the smart option, the smart option a lot of the time is backing down and dealing with the situation after the fact. Too many kids carry weapons/have violent upbringings etc to risk teaching them to fight back.

Although I disagree with everyone on the post saying the OPs child was in the wrong due to age.

OP if you're still reading I think it would help you to try and guide your child through the concept of misgendering especially as their autism may affect how they perceive others intentions. Sometimes people who misgender do it out of malice but I suspect most of the time it will simply be a case of people saying what they see, a petite female, and just going on autopilot.

Whatever we here believe about changing sex your child will not have a happy life if they react badly every time someone sees them as female. Its something they need to work out how to manage, it won't do you or them any favours to put your head in the sand and tell yourself transition will make everything ok.

OP, you can find useful resources at TransgenderTrend.com and https://safeschoolsallianceuk.net

Best of luck.

Ultimately the OPs daughter is going to have to deal with the reality of the fact that being a 5'2" petite girl means she is NEVER EVER going to pass as male and that her expectations that she will never be misgendered are utterly ridicilous in the real world.

Setting up kids to believe it is realistic is the biggest con out there and its utterly shameful. No amount of hormones and surgery is going to do anything to change their height and at 15, theres no chance shes suddenly going to grow.

There are no petite short men in the world? Really?!

Being 5'2" short is very unusual.

isnt the hat a comfort hat in the way a comfort blanket is a comfort blanket: ie; it works to provide warmth in the normal way but for it’s owner it has an additional value of being comforting to have with them?

Either way, I now want one. It sounds lovely.

Actually even smaller than that (I misread "5ft size 2" as 5ft 2, as I think you must have).

Presumably he can identify as 5'10" though?

Well if that's the case it even worse.

I'm 5'2" and very petite. I get spoken to differently than other women never mind men.

It's only when I've pointed it out to DH and other women that others have noticed it too and have been surprised by it.

Even a real 5'2" bloke, is going to be treated in a different (emasculated) way to other blokes or seen as an easy target because of pecking orders.

Again it shouldn't be like that, but it is. I did actually know a guy who ended up killing himself, in part because of some of those reasons. He wasn't as short as 5'2" but he was under 5'6".

Actually if she’s genuinely a size 2 she must be virtually skeletal.

Disagree with that.

I was a size 4/6 in my mid twenties. I was smaller as a teen. It was in proportion to my height and age. And sizing is getting bigger.

Talk about victim blaming. OPs child was assaulted, gender irrelevant.

For all those saying ‘teach your kid resilience if they’re weird’ would you also say ‘teach your pretty, feminine, balayage daughter to deal with sexual harassment and assault’? After all, you can’t control other people and sometimes other people are just mean if you put yourself out there’.

Well... yeah. Of course I fucking would. Who doesn't do that, starting with "stranger danger" and "private parts" when they are tiny children.

I've been sexually harassed and assaulted by people (men) multiple times since I was young, as has every single woman I've ever met. Of course I prepare my children for the evil things that people do and how to respond.

What part of that post mentioned that it was ok to be assaulted?

This child is being bullied for being trans and you think he's trans because it's trendy?

The girl punched first.

If you punch someone you should be prepared they might punch back.

Older child was punched first and called a hate slur.

So to continue the parallel, if in spite of all of that your daughter is assaulted and she pushes someone away or punches them, is it your daughter who’s done something wrong by not being resilient enough to ignore them?

Meanwhile in the real world as grown ups, what would you do?

A bloke gets hit first and gets called a slur.

Bloke doesn't know if they are going to get staabbed if they punch back.
People get called hate slurs but this isn't an excuse to punch back.

I'm sorry, but life isn't fair nor nice.

You learn when its wise to remove yourself from a situation even if you are a victim because otherwise you risk escalating the situation or putting yourself at various other risks.

This.is.not.that.hard.to.understand.

Even eight year olds get it.

Yes, of course. We have to accept that some of the people we meet will be wrong, idiots, or arseholes. We can try to correct them if they're wrong, ask them not to if they're idiots, ignore or laugh at them if they're arseholes. At the end of the day, it's a battle of words - the appropriate weapons are words.

And we can usually opt out of battles. The scenario you've painted isn't unusual at all, and is getting much more common now genderism's everywhere. I'm one of millions of women this has happened to. It didn't shatter my identity, ffs.

Yes, that’s exactly what it is. Surely you can see that? It may feel real to that child but would never have been a thing had it not been promoted online as a possible reason for feeling odd, weird or like a misfit. It’s this generation’s emo.

That's good I understood it. But I have a teen who won't leave the house without either a hat on or his hood up because he feels safer that way.