Asking for advice on how to work with young people

[DisillusionsOfGender]

Hello,

I've been on and off Mumsnet for around 8 years and I'm a regular lurker of these boards. I'm involved in quite a bit of radfem activism for the last 18 months or so. I am conscious that I've been spending quite a bit of time on here and on the GoFundMe page and on twitter pages relating to the Labour Party (which I've now left) and so this might be affecting my feelings and anxiety towards this situation but maybe I'm as right to be as bothered as I am. Anyway - I'd really appreciate your advice.

I work with young people across a number of sites (I hope you don't mind if I leave it as vague as that) and the new trans agenda has a huge impact on my role. I've been able to cope with it up to now because I've been able to keep it quite general and I haven't had to show my hand. My work with individual children has been more about them as individuals than having to consider the implications for wider organisations.

I have a nice group of KS4 aged children in one setting. None of them (in this group) have come out as trans but I do have a very 'woke' group of very clever girls who have friend who is trans who is most definitely the leader of their friendship group. They have to do a design project. They submitted their plan to me today and it is to promote the trans agenda. Their project report contains the word 'cis' on multiple occasions and was about the education of cis people as to trans issues such as pronouns.

My job is to support children so I accept them exactly as they are of course and try to make their lives as safe and comfortable as possible in terms of their backgrounds and identity. But this is so offensive to me - not the promoting of the rights of a minority group etc, but the use of cis in work that I have to mark and the promoting of these views with the wider organisation.

Please can you advise me as to what you think I should do, if anything, or even if you think I should just get a grip. Thanks in advance.

Guide them into asking questions. I certainly would not plan to squash or in any way diminish their plan, but you could ask questions in a non threatening way which might encourage reflection.

Their project is coming from kindness so it's a good trait in them that they care and are trying to improve the world. We may not agree with their views, but it's from a good place.

How ironic: their project concerns the use of preferred pronouns, to avoid upsetting trans people. No awareness that the use of 'cis' might upset others just as much though. Perhaps you could mention that?

Thanks for your replies. The irony isn't lost on me. I'm not sure what I'm allowed to do, to be honest. Staff members who make genuine mistakes seem to get away with it but I don't think I'd be supported if I was openly gender critical.

Would it help you to think of their project strictly in terms of how effective is the design work, not how good is the message?

Imagine if a group of, say, evangelical Christian students chose as their design project a set of posters for use in their church Sunday school. If you as a teacher were an atheist, you might well think they were mistaken in their belief in God. You might be uncomfortable feeling that since the posters were intended for use in a Sunday School there was an element of indoctrinating children going on. But presumably as a design teacher, you could mark the project purely on how effective it was as a piece of design - i.e., mark the medium, not the message.

(You could maybe throw a bit in about "how would you try to tailor your message to persuade people who don't share your underlying beliefs?" to try to get them to at least think about the other side of the argument.)

You're quite right, Pricklyball. Thanks for replying. I don't really have to engage with the content. I'm just so attuned to the bollocks now.

I know, it's bloody infuriating. Sometimes I just want to scream. But as you say, these students are coming from a good place, with good intentions, even if their reasoning is muddled.

PS I do find the religious analogy is the only thing keeping me sane - "you're entitled to your beliefs, but not to indoctrinate me, I'm entitled to mine without persecution - and only where the beliefs have practical, real-world consequences do we have to argue about it..."

I'd approach it in the same way I would if it were older kids or adults who wanted to 'educate' people about trans issues. I'd insist that they define terms. I'd ask for clear definitions of any sexed or gendered terms that they use in the project ('woman', 'man', 'girl', 'boy', 'cis', 'gender') in order to make clear the ideas that they are presenting to their audience.

E.g., "When you say someone 'identifies' as a girl, what do you mean? What's a 'girl'? What are they 'identifying' with?" Similarly, "assigned female/male at birth. What's 'female and 'male'?" "If 'cis' means that you identify with your 'assigned' gender, what does 'gender' mean?" "If 'gender identity' means 'one's personal experience of one's own gender', again, what does 'gender' mean?"

No really, keep pressing them to define 'gender', because trans ideology uses it in a completely incoherent way to mean both 'sex' and 'sex -role stereotypes', in order to conflate the two (And psst, try to introduce them to the term 'sex-role stereotypes', it might blow their minds). Don't accept circular or meaningless definitions - insist that they come up with coherent ones that the audience will understand.

They won't be able to do it, of course. Trans ideology collapses completely once you start asking people to define terms. And that should hopefully make them think and you might be able to drop in some gender-critical guidance and maybe even nudge them towards a presentation that shows how sex-role stereotypes limit everyone. Although they'll possibly get quite annoyed with you in the process