LGBT Talks in School

[GerbilHeaven]

I've posted this here because I'm aware that many MN'ers are fed-up of the Trans threads popping up everywhere, and frankly, I need someone to put some sense into the way I feel. I've NC - I've been on MN a few years. I am not goading nor trolling.

DD(11) returned from school earlier and announced that they'd had a group of people into an hour long assembly to discuss anti-bullying. She then announced that the biggest thing they spoke about was "Trans- something" (DD's words - please remember she's 11) and that they'd told her that men can have vaginas. One of the speakers said that they were now a man despite being born as a woman and that she encouraged the children to encourage trans and not discourage trans. I asked DD what she'd learnt and she said that she'd found the whole event to be less on anti-bullying and more on "Trans". The speaker also told them that they (the children) should now educate their parents and teachers and challenge anything that they said.

I have to admit I'm a bit baffled and pissed off about the whole thing. I don't consider Year 7 to be ready for anything like this and considering that they send home sex-ed permission slips, I'm wondering where the hell they didn't warn parents about this in advance. I would have like the chance to discuss this issue with my daughter before she's met with a large powerpoint proclaiming that Men also have vaginas.

I'm not expressing myself correctly here, and there's no doubt I'd cause an almighty shit storm if I posted this elsewhere, but I truly, truly don't feel comfortable with this aspect of education.

I "keep asking you to explain what it is" because you are teaching your pupils it exists so must have an explanation for them.

Sorry, datun, I was using that quote to illustrate a point about the role of teachers when it comes to educating children on moral / opinion based matters.

To be play devils advocate, there are parents who seem to think that red bull is fine for breakfast, and I can always tell when a new and popular game has come out because loads of kids come in half asleep after staying up til all hours playing. Again, there is nothing teachers can do because to do anything or express the serious disapproval many teachers feel would be undermining parental choice.

Enid I agree. That's what I find so worrying and potentially damaging, children being taught there's such a thing as a "girl's personality and mind" and a "boy's personality and mind". Could lead to ones who hear this starting to think they're the wrong sex because they're into things culture decrees as for the other. Really concerns me.

Amy and Enid, I can give a reasonable explanation of what a teacher might say to a child who asked what the mind or personality of a girl is. "I don't know because I don't feel like a girl on the inside, but some people do have strong internal feeling of having the mind and personality of a girl."

Amelia thank you but I'm no less worried by that and that would/could well be questioned further too. It doesn't explain what "the mind and personality of a girl" is. It also claims it exists which suggests there are such things as a "girl mind" and a "boy mind" so we're inherently different which has worrying connotations.

That I am genuinely unable to answer that question because I have no personal experience of it. But that doesn't mean that nobody else feels it.

But you must believe such a thing as "a girl mind" exists if you'd teach children that it does? So if girls don't have it and you as a woman don't have it then who does?

There are such a range of personalities and interesting minds at school, which of us has a "girl mind" and which of us have "boy minds"? All the ones like me doing Maths A Level? The ones who play rugby? The ones who have short hair and no interest in make up? Baffling.

Amy, on a personal level I agree. But when I'm teaching, I'm not ever fully myself. I have to be the teacher version of me, not the version who has strong opinions on things. The Brexit referendum really stretched my self control!

If pushed further I'd reiterate that I don't have definitive answers to the question. That there is a range of opinions but we don't have time to go in to each possibility.

But then, I'm quite comfortable saying 'I don't know' to students if they ask questions which are beyond my understanding. It is a good thing, I think, for students to realise that teachers don't have all the answers and they need to work some things out for themselves or with their parents.

Which is why I think that laws around freedom of religious belief and practice are a better analogy for trans rights than, for instance, gay rights. I completely defend people's right to say "I feel as though I am the opposite gender from the one I was 'assigned at birth'," I defend their right to wear what they want, ask to be addressed as they want, not to be discriminated against in employment, housing etc., just as I would someone who, for instance, chose to dress a certain way because their religion dictated it. But that doesn't mean I have to share their beliefs. And it also means that where our belief systems clash (for instance, my desire to get changed in a communal changing area without the presence of penises, versus their desire to change in whichever area they feel is more appropriate to their internal sense of gender) some sort of accommodation or compromise has to be found. And that might mean a gender neutral, private area for trans people - it shouldn't automatically mean that their desires trump mine (any more than, say, the Free Church of Scotland's desire to have the Sabbath observed should have trumped my sister's desire to let her children let off steam on a Sunday by running around in the park - the Wee Frees used to padlock the kids' swings!)

Amelia I agree, we often have great discussions with teachers on a range of subjects and it's nice they don't always claim to have all the answers. I can only imagine how difficult it was when discussing the referendum

I really do find the idea of "a girl mind"/"a boy mind" very worrying though, and think it's such a potentially dangerous and regressive thing to be teaching children.

M0stlyHet another great post. All people should be supported to be who they want, dress as they want, have the interests they want and pursue the lifestyle they want and not be judged for it. Outdated gender stereotypes which still persist potentially making people feel they're "in the wrong body" are damaging for all and not least those who feel they have to change themselves to live as they want.

Boy / girl minds does seem very regressive to some of us (I used to be an engineer before I switched to teaching physics), but there are loads of people who disagree. Even people I know who describe themselves as feminists argue that men and women are wired differently. If I hear "that's what boys are like" one more time as an excuse for disorganisation I might actually scream.

I think that is part of what is so depressing about the whole thing - the number of people who are blindingly accepting of "male vaginas" shows just how many people really believe that there is such a thing as boy / girl minds and personalities.

I agree with that analysis het, and would make it far easier to deal with in schools. When it comes to religion everything is prefixed with 'some people believe' so there is no room for doubt in the childrens' minds that that they are being told is not an objective fact.

Amelia I think it's so dangerously regressive. Get the feminists you know to read Delusions of Gender by Cordelia Fine which exposes the nonsense about men and women being "wired differently" and how completely lacking in any scientific basis it is! You may well have already read it and having been an engineer and now teaching Physics know better than many how ridiculous the idea we're "wired differently" is.

Enid unfortunately I think it's becoming quite accepted. As I've posted, at my school's Fem Soc any challenge to the statement that anyone who identifies as a woman is one is considered unacceptable.

It is hard, but it these things don't come up that often. And I don't like to over estimate the influences of teachers compared to home and friends. If we were that important no teenager would ever drink, swear, smoke or have unprotected sex. And they would all do their homework.

Boy brain

Girl brain

Obv

Thing is, Amelia these things are going to come up more and more often now. And I think if you started down the line that there are no such things as girls brains and boys brains, if there is anyone remotely trans-savvy there you'll get called transphobic. And sent on another diversity course.

I have to say Amelia I would have much less issues if you were saying,
Some people feel they have a boy/girl body and feel like a girl/boy AND some people feel like they are who they are, not feeling particularly boy or girl.

Just as you would say
Some people feel that God exists and some people feels that it doesnt.

Because otherwise yu are giving only one side of the equation to children and therefore only one part of the answer.
No one woud dare telling children (in a on faith school) that God exists wo also saying that some people dont think its the case.
So why are we (you) happy to tell children about only type opf stories that tell tell themselves (or feel)?

Or is the issue here the fact that actually the 'instances high up' make it impossible for you to actually say 'some people dont feel they male or female. They are just who they are.'?
Does it mean that there is a strong need of lobbying from 'cis' people (men and women) so that their stories and their feelings arent eradicated by the stories and feelings of trans, so much so that they become the only way to look at the worl (you have male/female body and you can feel male/female, not just who you are).

Amy, on a personal level I agree. But when I'm teaching, I'm not ever fully myself. I have to be the teacher version of me, not the version who has strong opinions on things. The Brexit referendum really stretched my self control!

I so totally agree with this. What really irritates me is that those buying the TRA discourse don't have this dilemma. When I am in an instructor role I struggle with regard to how to phrase and say things sometimes because I feel that my very language (of sex and gender) has been stolen and censored. At times I feel like muttering Eppur si muove ...

When I teach it is to adults ... but what I was thinking here is that we could actually do something constructive and work towards a gender-critical friendly, biologically accurate way of explaining trans to children that would pass the political correctness police. Of course, people take their own meanings from conversations anyway, but if we could get some basic wording nutted out other teachers could also use it and parents could use it at home to de-program after children hear transactivist propoganda at school?

YetAnotherSpartacus

That's a good idea. If kids are 'bandwaggoning' but just basing it on a spot of gender non conformity, it might be useful to talk about gender dysphoria?

Obviously you don't want loads of kids suddenly decide they hate their 'bits', but on the other hand I don't think it sounds like quite as trendy a position to take?

Gender dysphoria is something to be taken very seriously but it isn't 'glamorous' and nor is it as appealing as a way of rebellion.

I'm probably not expressing myself well, but with all the attention surrounding transgenderism, I can almost see kids seeing it as something to 'aspire to'.

When you hear stories from parents whose children truly are going through a crisis, it's dreadful for all concerned (Elsa - on another thread).