Head teacher's 'not sexist' comment

[susannahmoodie]

We are in the process of visiting prospective schools for my 3yo ds.

When we went to one today the ht was discussing 'freeflow' in reception, saying (prefaced with 'this is not a sexist comment') that in theory the govt encourage it but in practice it would mean 'all the boys would be outside running around and all the girls would stay inside'....

In the school we visited last week we saw free flow working well with no apparent gender divide!

Is this a harmless comment or would it make you think twice about sending a ds there? I'd a good mind to give him a copy of my Cordelia Fine!!

The mistake he made was in prefacing his comment - it was unnecessary imo because what he said wasnt sexist.

In a free-flow environment I would imagine that to be pretty much the case just like at a school disco where the girls tend to huddle in a corner and the boys tend to slide around on their knees

Isn't is ok to admit that boys and girls can have differences?

Yeah, send him Cordelia fine.

Father, do you think those differences are innate or are socialised?

I think it'd worry me more than he didn't see it as part of his job not to reinforcing social conditioning. If he thinks little boys would just tend to go and run around outside, and he doesn't get that - just possibly - schools that provide them with that option also take responsibility for making sure it doesn't stay gendered - then no wonder some boys struggle so much to get an education.

If that had happened to me I would not want to send DD to that school if there were other options.

Because he is applying strong gender stereotypes to 4yo FGS.

Apart from anything else, it is patently untrue that all 4yo boys want to run around and all 4yo girls want to sit quietly.

If in his school that is what is happening then I would suggest that something has gone very wrong indeed. And I bet if he was able to do an experiment where he had just the boys for a month, and then just the girls for a month, they would merrily divide into running around / sitting quietly depending on their shock personality and even might do one thing sometimes and the other at other times gasp.

Honestly I would have been really utterly unimpressed (and depending on my mood, I might have said something).

The problem is with labelling behaviour as 'what girls do' and vice versa because this reinforces a gender divide that serves no useful purpose, makes children who don't conform feel as though they don't fit and reinforces those differences so that they are perpetuated when they don't need to be.

How does the idea that gender is an artificial concept allow children or adults with gender dysphoria to feel like they fit?

Think you need to expand on your question there, robert. Can you explain what you mean, maybe give an example?

I have been thinking about your point Robert and I'm still lost.

We have a class full of 4yo boys and girls, playing. Can you give an example of what you mean in your question, to make it easier to understand?

That would be a red flag for me susannah as I would be concerned about the school's approach to gender roles in general. I would have a big problem with the school labelling things as "what girls do" or "what boys do". If I was making a choice of schools, this would be a factor for me.

That's a really odd comment. My DD is out all the time in her freeflow nursery. Is she really going to change that much in a year? I'd expect a head teacher to be able to review evidence rather than make assumptions.

How does the idea that gender is an artificial concept allow children or adults with gender dysphoria to feel like they fit?

Making people feel like they should "fit" is part of the problem.

We have a class full of 4yo boys and girls, playing. Can you give an example of what you mean in your question, to make it easier to understand?

The example that I recently heard about was a (now) boy, I forget their name but it was on Hjernevask.

A baby was born with unclear physical gender, and surgically altered to be a girl. The child was never told any of this but very quickly became seriously depressed and unhappy with identifying as a girl rather than a boy when they were old enough to express themselves. Ultimately they were suicidal before having an operation to become a boy in their mid\late teens and they were happy again after that.

Was this just a big coincidence? If gender is a social construct, then this child who knew nothing of their biological origin surely would have been no more likely to have gender dysphoria than any other person. The programme mentioned this wasn't the only case in the institute concerned although didn't cite any other examples.

Thank you for your replies. I've done a lot of reading on gender recently thanks in no small part to this board and it raised my hackles immediately. I was already cross after listening to the scudamore story on the radio all morning!!

robertswan - are you thinking of the David Reimer case? If you are, you have the facts very wrong.

What you have said is not enough information to draw any conclusions from. We don't know how the parents raised this child. Perhaps if the child had been allowed to express himself as "himself" rather than as a girl or a boy, he would have been happier. We also don't know what his actual sex was although presumably intersex, not gender dysphoric. I don't see how this adds anything to anything.

Yes I certainly agree that surgically altering babies to have a determinate binary gender is a very questionable practice, but leaving that aside the story is interesting as a case study on this subject.

In terms of roles vs physiology, they showed one of a number of drawings the child drew aged 6 while having treatment for their depression (I think), where the child explained it as them as a boy, where their penis is cut off and the boy dies (I may have not have got the details exactly right, but it was along those lines), to me that suggests the physiology is at least part of the equation.

We have no way of knowing what that child went through or how the child's parents explained his situation. Growing up with surgically altered genitals must be very traumatic.

How would enforcing gender roles help children fit in? Why should children need to fit in?

robertswan - are you thinking of the David Reimer case?

No I have a feeling it was a Colombian child, its on the documentary which is freely available online, I would check but the internet connection here is terrible.

I would be concerned because I would see this as meaning the same ht was likely to think troubling 'not sexist, just how things are' things generally about what boys just do and what girls are just like.

I don't like the sound of the guy, to be honest!

robert - are you suggesting that transgender people only ever feel that way because they were born intersex or with ambiguous genitals? Because that is a really common misconception.

It's also not true that every person who is transgender wants to conform to a narrow stereotype of 'what boys do' or 'what girls do'.

IMO letting everyone behave as they choose, and not slapping labels on them, would be a start.

I'm not suggesting that at all (I also didn't realise anybody actually thought that either!) it was simply the case in the example I saw, which I suppose makes the case more interesting in that nobody could have known the child was, "innately" male, making it more of an unbiased case study.

Surely the parents knew their child had had surgery?

But yes: basically, I believe, some people have a strong sense 'I am male' or 'I am female' and others don't. It doesn't have anything to do with intersex conditions so far as I am aware. In fact, I would guess those complicate the picture hugely, because of course as a child, you would soon work out there was something 'not like everyone else' because either your parents would know, or - sadly - you would realize you didn't seem physically like other people. There is a really horrible history (thankfully I believe long gone) of 'correcting' girls with unusually large clitorises that looked like small penises, by removing them. That's going to make it very hard for a child not to be traumatised.