This morning - parents questioning gender identity stuff

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Two parents taking school to industrial tribunal for allowing a boy to attend school in a dress just got fairly slated by Phil & Holly. I found it the most frustrating 5 minutes of tv I've seen in a while. I'm short on time... but wondered if anyone else saw it & what you thought?

Don't know enough about the parents/situation to say I fully agree with their stance. But they seemed reasonable. It was frustrating to get caught up on the dress issue. Wear a dress all you like but It is unreasonable to expect children to understand and accept you as a girl one day and a boy the next boy a daily basis. It was the shutting down of debate that was stark to me...

It's not Christian to be expected to be tolerant of lies and BS User

The other depressing thing is that this shores up the idea that anyone who opposes the TRA agenda is a right wing bigot, religious nutter etc. I was looking at some of Janice Turner's tweets the other day on the Penis News deadnaming horror, and she and some other women got into it with a gay man who was so ignorant it was painful: he just couldn't move beyond the whole "trans rights are about equality and progress so anyone who opposes them must be a vile bigot" viewpoint.

He actually used the check your privilege line and in the same sentence talked about irony!!!

No concept of his own misogyny. No concept of the misogyny and homophobia implicit in the TRA movement. Just no understanding - and so proud of his ignorance.

And then you get this stuff just backing it all up. Bugger.

That didn't come across at all on the radio 4 interview, jiggly.

It all seemed about the dress. They seemed to argue boys and girls are innately different etc. And therefore should dress differently.

Assigned why is it BS and lies?

Because you can't change sex.

Countess yes, this enforced denial is the really worrying issue here, to any rational person, not whether a boy is wearing a dress or not.

My DS (6) wears a dress. He has never expressed any desire to be a girl, he just likes wearing a dress. However, I've had intelligent people say in my presence that he is transgender or will grow up to be a drag queen. It's like they can't possibly fathom the idea that someone likes wearing a certain type of clothing just because they like it and not because of some identity thing. From a psychological point of view I find it fascinating how difficult people find it to get their heads around the idea of a boy in a dress - they have attached so much meaning to dresses and to the divide between boys and girls that they simply can't find any way to square the idea that a dress is simply a piece of fabric and doesn't a person doesn't have to have a particular identity to wear it.

IME children don't even notice he's wearing a dress.

Does the legislation mean that children use the toilets/changing rooms of the gender they identify with that day?

What would be the procedure in a boarding school where children are segregared into boy/girl houses and dormitories. Could a 16 year old boy who identifies as a girl insist on being housed in a girls house? Girls dorm? Could they identify differently on different days?

user the terms female and male are biological descriptors. A male child cannot become female. It is a literal, physical impossibility, despite what the TRAs say.

I agree that interview wasn't great. They did say though that a six year old is far too young to make decisions about what gender they are which is absolutely true.

They might be Christian crackpots for all I know but I would also object to this.

Good question, Dumbledore. I wonder if that's arisen yet, or if not, how long till the issue does arise.

What would be the procedure in a boarding school where children are segregared into boy/girl houses and dormitories. Could a 16 year old boy who identifies as a girl insist on being housed in a girls house? Girls dorm? Could they identify differently on different days?

He could get into a girls dorm. I haven't read about it happening, but since they are happy to inflict male rapists on female prisoners, I don't see how they wouldn't house a 16 year old boy with no criminal record with girls.

But it is an interesting question whether he could demand that they accommodate his "gender fluid" identity by housing him somewhere different depending on how he feels that day.

It's a shame that they didn't invite someone like Stephanie Davis-Arai on to give them the facts eg:

Across 11 studies conducted on this topic, 60 percent to 90 percent of transgender youth will desist, or outgrow their gender dysphoria, by puberty, growing up to be gay adults. Statistically speaking, a little boy who identifies as a girl is more likely to grow up to be a gay man than a trans woman.

On average, most gay boys and girls come out around the ages of 15 and 18, respectively. In contrast, gender dysphoric children undergoing early transitioning typically begin puberty inhibitors around age 12, and research has shown that even a non-medical social transition, such as changing one’s name and clothing, leads to higher rates of gender dysphoria persisting.

Now that's scary and something to be worried about.

Ttbb: Young children cannot be expected to understand the biological and psychological science

How can you say this in the same paragraph as saying a child is making a transition? If he can't understand it why is it being supported?

Isn't this just a case of the child in the Emperor's New clothes? Safeguards should be in place, it's damaging other children's mental health, to gaslighted them instead of making it OK for a boy to wear a dress.

I heard them on Radio 4, and I thought they came across very badly.

Me too. Glad someone started a thread about it.

I saw it and thought that at first they seemed concerned about the consequences both of children being encouraged to set too much store in a fixed 'gender' and of other children becoming confused as to why their friend was now a girl. I did think they were avoiding saying what level of influence their faith had on the matter. I thought Phil was on attack mode a bit but I also thought the woman from the couple seemed a bit of a nutter.
All in all, too short of a piece to judge the situation fully. I enjoyed Phils snoring dog though

I thought it was a shame the parents didn't or couldn't articulate better why it was a problem for them.

If my 6 y.o had a boy in his class who was trans, there is no way he would accept they were now really a girl.

It would be obvious to him they were still a boy, I would then have to convince him it's possible to change sex even though it isn't or he could unwittingly bully the other child.

I'm not a Christian but I get why the parents are upset!

Why can't the little boy just wear a dress, nobody has to start worrying about pronouns and name changes at 6 surely.

What would be the procedure in a boarding school where children are segregared into boy/girl houses and dormitories. Could a 16 year old boy who identifies as a girl insist on being housed in a girls house? Girls dorm? Could they identify differently on different days?

He could get into a girls dorm. I haven't read about it happening, but since they are happy to inflict male rapists on female prisoners, I don't see how they wouldn't house a 16 year old boy with no criminal record with girls.

The difference being that almost all parents of boarders are paying an eye watering amount of money in fees, and thus have a level of financial clout that prisoners can only dream of. I imagine most parents of boarders would withdraw their daughters pronto if the school expected them to share with a male-bodied peer. Sooner or later no doubt there will be a law suit testing exactly this, ie. balancing the right of a school to maintain sex-segregated facilities (which I'm sure is what virtually all parents would want, however liberal they claim to be) vs the right of a trans student to get their own way in respect of their self-identification.

The two couples are just ordinary people, not well versed in the arguments, who feel strongly that their child is unsettled by the school's handling of a gender non conforming child. They aren't necessarily well placed to make fluent arguments in the media.

I read that their elder son was very unsettled when a boy in his class transitioned, and now it was happening in the second son's class too and they decided to take the children out.

I think I would struggle, at that age, to be told that Bill who is a boy and would get told off for being in the girls' toilets is now Sarah and will wear a dress and will use the girls' toilets.

I struggle with it now and I'm an old git

The difference being that almost all parents of boarders are paying an eye watering amount of money in fees, and thus have a level of financial clout that prisoners can only dream of. I imagine most parents of boarders would withdraw their daughters pronto if the school expected them to share with a male-bodied peer.

Hmm, money does indeed change a lot. But I'm not sure. The parents themselves might be caught up in transideology.

For some, their willingness to throw women under the bus might stop at their own daughters, but I fear for many, it won't.

Hmm, money does indeed change a lot. But I'm not sure. The parents themselves might be caught up in transideology. For some, their willingness to throw women under the bus might stop at their own daughters, but I fear for many, it won't.

Mm, not sure. I think most parents who blather liberal-minded waffle about tolerance and oppression would be viscerally unhappy about a situation where their own daughter was being made to feel uncomfortable or threatened by sharing a bedroom or bathroom with a male-bodied peer. And the population of parents who can afford to pay northwards of £35k for the privilege will be those who are used to getting their own way. Also a large proportion of pupils in UK boarding schools are not British in origin - there are lots of Russian, Nigerian and Chinese pupils in UK boarding schools, and I imagine their cultural take on it will be less liberal-tolerant than mainstream UK parents.

This whole shitstorm is going to keep the courts very busy over the next few years, I imagine, whichever way the self-identification proposal goes.

Today 12:21 TalkingintheDark

I saw this in the ST. How's this for thought crime:

The school said it had policies to tackle transphobic behaviour, which included an inability to believe a transgender person was a “real” female or male; refusing to use the person’s adopted name, or using “gender inappropriate pronouns”; and feelings of discomfort and an inability to trust or connect with someone based on their transgender status.

Enforced denial of reality. Could it be any more regressive?

Unbelievable. This needs a test case. It's the very definition of free speech. A government mandate telling you you can't say something.

And yes, we have hate speech, which does violate the principle of free speech. Nonetheless, that is something of a benign censoring and, most importantly, it is not asking a person to deny biology.

Unless there is a government mandate to change the literal definition of words, how can you force someone to say a male is a female? Unless you change the definition of the word female.

I know they have done it, already. In Canada and many states in the US.

The general feeling is that what happens there, will eventually happen here. But the laws and protocols are different. The (female) governor of Virginia, for instance publically calling Michelle Obama a monkey in a dress. It would not be tolerated here.

Forcing people to not only verbally deny reality, but to stop thinking in those terms, legally surely, honest to God, could never wash?

The fact that I'm even doubting it, tells you everything.

I think the right wing element will eventually rebel against it all, especially in the US. There are some of the right wing commentators who are getting v vocal about this. Ben Shapiro recently had a good rant that he would take violent action if the state were to take action against him and his wife, re their children's 'identity'. The context of this was from a media item saying that children could be taken into care if the parents did not accept the the 7 year old child's chosen identity. This is on a podcast that offers insurance to people who are 'forced' to shoot burglars.