gender fluidity in primary schools -- parents beware!

[xennophon]

There is a huge danger here for every parent with a child in primary school. Justine Greening, herself a member of LGBT, is trying to indoctrinate children compulsorily with relationship classes, which will include the 'information' that changing gender is normal and easy so why don't you try it? She is caving in to every demand from the trans activists. If a child shows any interest in the toys or games or clothes usually associated with the other sex they will be invited to 'transition', which will probably lead in due course to hormone drug therapy and possible surgery. Sane medical voices urging restraint and therapy are to be silenced as 'transphobic'.I have told her that she will brainwash my 4-year-old daughter over my dead body. Parents, beware! Some schools are already inviting students to dress as for whatever gender, or one , they choose. This is the madness of 'true gender', a lunatic concept invented by the trans lobby whereby gender is no longer a biological fact but a notion in the head. Compassion and respect for trans people, yes, definitely, but at the same time recognise that rejecting one's body and saying 'I am really the opposite gender to what I was born with' is dysfunctional (that is why the pathology is called 'gender identity disorder'). Greening, in a fog of horrid 'political correctness' is determined, ISIL-like, to push her pernicious ideas into the head of every child, regardless of parents' wishes or feelings. All this to make trans people feel a little better about themselves, and to hell with the lives of our children. Be on guard. Make your voice heard.

Alfie the big deal is that if he was 4 now, they'd be telling him he was really a girl.

Who is 'they'?

I am a primary school teacher and this is total bollocks. And paranoid total bollocks at that.

School staff who want to promote this shit.

And I have an adult transgender child.

'Gender was never a biological fact. It's a social construct.'

Can anyone tell me what this means? I can't tell if it is on the side of sanity or not.

Sex is whether you are male or female, so whether you produce sperm or ova and become pregnant.

Gender was from the 1960s what society expected of you from the above eg if you are female you are nurturing and wear frocks and cook and clean, and if you are male you are aggressive and dominating and provide for your family and go fishing.

Now it is some sort of mysterious inner feeling through which you know you are male/female/masculine/feminine/and a whole host of other things. Although this comes from within, those without have to recognise it and treat you accordingly.

Although the words gender and sex both have the sense 'the state of being male or female', they are typically used in different ways:
sex tends to refer to biological differences, while gender tends to refer to cultural or social ones.

From Oxford English Dictionary.

Sex is a biological fact. It cannot be altered.

Gender is a social construct. It constant changes. Roman gender norms were different from Victorian ones, for example.

*constantly

FFS.

Gender is a social construct

That is harmful and false.

Gender is the word that some people use to describe the way you behave and appear such that strangers decide what pronouns should be used when referring to you. This is something that comes out of society. Some people dispute this as a suitable definition of the word (M4Dad seemingly)

I suggest people who have doubts and just don't swallow the line "it's a social contstruct" read "As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who Was Raised as a Girl by John Colapinto (New York, Harper Collins, 2000).

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Reimer

Gender is the word that some people use to describe the way you behave and appear such that strangers decide what pronouns should be used when referring to you

I'll refer to you in any way you like, tell me what you want me to call you and I will, that's because I'm polite and don't want to hurt your feelings.

It doesn't mean that internally I agree with you.

Personally I think it's great that children are taught from an early age that not everyone is the same and can be put into neat little binary boxes.

Exactly, girls and boys are equal, but different.

M4Dad so which pronouns do you use if I don't tell you, would you use the ones that go along with your social beliefs? And if you would, what word do you use to describe why you chose a particular pronoun over another? Everyone I've met, and the dictionaries have recorded gender as the word, I would love to know of another one, that gets away from the many problems of that word.

Choosing pronouns and other sex discriminatory words is more often got wrong in children, partly because of lack of primary sex characteristics, but also because so many children present differently from common societal description (girls weak and shy, boys strong and aggressive) As brilliotic says above, The way forward has got to be to step back from gendering everything.

Then a five year old girl in the park struggling on the monkey bars and a little upset when another child whistles through like a gibbon, won't be told by a kindly grandparent "don't worry, girls aren't really strong enough to do that." The kids at that age are only learning the differences, the grandson watching all this immediately replied "Other child is a girl", but just not one that presented as a girl to the grandparent. (Despite the long hair, which is an interesting way in which gender presentation has even changed in that grandparents live I'm sure)

M4Dad so which pronouns do you use if I don't tell you

I'd actually ask you your name or would hope I would be introduced to you.

M4Dad so you're specifically avoiding the question, when referring to another child in the park, would you say "watch out for that boy/girl when talking to your child" or when asking the parent "how does he/she manage to do the monkey bars", because that is what I'm asking you. What word do you use for the decision people make when choosing the pronoun?

I acknowledge you would go through hoops to avoid using any gendered language until you know, but that is very, very unusual. Most people take a guess, particularly as in children there's little social taboo in getting it wrong. People are certainly not choosing the pronoun based on anything but their social constructs on how the child presents.

I'm struggling to understand why it's so important for you, or anyone, to care what pronoun I'm using for small children in the park and difference would it actually really make if I got it wrong.

My son is "pretty" or so I've been told and lot's of older people refer to him as a she, probably due to the fact that he has longish curly hair too.

To be frank, I don't even understand your point at this stage.

M4Dad, I don't understand your point either, I really apologise if I am being dense but I find the trans thing confusing still.

Are you okay with transing of children - by which I mean, encouraging them to say "I am a girl" if they want to play with toys and wear dresses?

Your reference to David Reimer confused me.

My point is that I don't believe that gender is a social construct. Not a popular belief but there you go.

Are you okay with transing of children - by which I mean, encouraging them to say "I am a girl" if they want to play with toys and wear dresses

My DS is a boy, he acts like a boy and he does boy stuff (sorry if that offends anyone) if he wanted to wear dresses and play I wouldn't encourage him to say "I am a girl" because he isn't a girl.

If you are arguing that gender is the way people view you and the way society views you, how is that not a social construct?

I'm baffled.

A social construct is constructed by people in society.

Your DS is male. He has XY chromosomes. He has male genitalia. His sex is male. Biological fact.

Sex is a biological fact.

M4 "if he wanted to wear dresses and play I wouldn't encourage him to say "I am a girl" because he isn't a girl."

so you wouldn't think he is a girl?

no offence, but I think you might have misinterpreted "social construct" a little. You think your boy does boy things because socially that's what society associates with boys - but you wouldn't think he was trans if he wanted to wear dresses, right?

and if you had a girl who liked science and maths you wouldn't think she was a boy?

If you heard about the "Science" Museum quiz disaster, I have a "boy" brain allegedly.

My 6yo came home from school a few days ago saying she had boy genes. She's female. On questioning, it turned out that because she likes football, she must have boy genes.

Possibly coincidentally, she's just started to wear trousers and trainer ('boy' style) school shoes.

I tried to explain about genes and how she can like whatever she likes with no reference to her genes. But I am really quite worried that some authority figure is telling her that liking football makes her a boy. Which is a very confusing message. I wish they'd just be ok with her being a girl who likes football.

David Reimer was a child whose parents had him circumcised but it was botched. His penis was badly damaged, so the Canadian doctors tried to turn him into a girl instead (as we all know, girls are a boy with no penis ) This went badly, he went back to being a boy, he eventually married and had surgery to alter his genitals again, made a film about it, and sadly committed suicide.

This is a lesson in not cutting bits off perfectly healthy bodies.

Not sure what it has to do with anything either.