Am I right to cross out "gender" on my child's school form and change it to "sex?"

[PerverseConverse]

I have a form for my child's new school which asks me my child's gender. I feel it should say "sex" seeing as gender is a social construct. Would I be wrong to cross out gender and write sex?

"Why would they not wish to know gender? It's absolutely the right question. If a child born Male identifies as female, the school should know that and treat them as female.

Why is there an objection to that?"

Because it's shite?

I suppose it depends on the options given as to whether they want to know sex or gender. If they want gender I assume they will have 'non-binary' and 'other' as options.

I think that if a male child identical as a girl, there needs to be more of a discussion with the teacher than just ticking the female box on a form

Of cOurse. But this does not mean the form is wrong. It's not. It's correct. Gender is what's important and that's what the child should be registered with. This does not preclude any further discussions.

Because it's shite?

Very articulate.

The Equity Act 2010 disagrees with you. Single sex provision needs to be made in a school setting and knowing the sex of the pupils is part of providing the correct facilities. Say, for instance, a school has a small cohort one year that was predominately male or female - there might need to be a shift in how the girls and boys toilets are laid out or labelled.

Do it op. I was all ready to do this in my school starter's paperwork, luckily (for them :-D) they had it right. What happened to the good old days of forms asking 'sex', options m or f and you just wrote 'yes please' underneath?

With a username like Bluntness100 I thought you'd appreciate it...

Bluntness100 - WHY is gender important? Children can and should partake in a range of activities irrespective of gender. Are you saying boys should only be able to do rock climbing but not baking, and girls should play with dolls? How on earth does gender have any relevance here?

Sex is relevant. Gender is not.

Why? Why would you change it? Do you not believe children can identify as a different gender to their sex? Do you feel the school should only go with the sex of the child? That any child who does not identify as the same gender as their sex should be ignored ?

If they had asked for both sex and gender that might make sense.

If the options had been:
Cis Boy
Trans Girl
Cis girl
Trans boy
NB
Etc
Etc
Etc
That might have made sense.

As it was, I’m presuming the options given were boy/girl or male/female. (and potentially a ‘prefer not to say’ option)...as is the norm on most official documents and indeed throughout most of the real world (except on Twitter).

So your assertion that the school could deduce anything about how the child “identifies” from this question is wrong. Without something to identify with/away from, the question about gender is pointless. as is gender itself

Single sex provision needs to be made in a school setting and knowing the sex of the pupils is part of providing the correct facilities

Then you're moving to a different discussion. Are you saying legally you believe a child who identifies as female but was born Male should not be permitted to use th female facilities? And you feel that's what the act is saying?

What about intersex children?

I'm not going to get into a trans debate on mumsnet, because it just leads to horrific abuse of you disagree. However the school form is correct, gender is the right question.

Changing it is erroneous petty point scoring.

What a first world problem to be getting cross about! If you have to ask people about whether or not to change it then it indicates you don't feel strongly enough in your own mind about it, that you have to have your actions validated by others. It's the same as when people ask whether or not they should be offended by something. You either are or aren't, you shouldn't need to think about it in this much detail.

Bluntness100 Why would they not wish to know gender? It's absolutely the right question. If a child born Male identifies as female, the school should know that and treat them as female.

But how will school know 'male identifies as female' if they haven't asked about sex as well as gender?
And what would the school need to do to treat them as female?

I do it. They need to know sex for equality monitoring.
If they were genuinely interested in gender, and not under the impression that gender is an alternative word for sex, then they should have a masculine box, feminine box and a "gender is harmful bullshit" box. As there isn't, and they use male and female, I correct the heading so there can be no confusion.

As soon as you bring intersex into a transgender conversation your credibility sinks to zero. I'll not be engaging with you further.

As a pp said, there needs clearly to be discussion with the school. This is just a form to register the child as identifying as female and to be treated as such.

What does the school need to do? refer to them as she, let them wear skirts if part of the uniform, use their chosen name, to name but a few.

This shouldn't be a transgender discussion and if it is, I'm out, it's not a discussion as everyone knows that can be taken on here. You just get abused if you don't agree.

The question was should the op change it to sex. The point is for school registration on a form the answer is no, the school should ask gender. If there is a trans child then clearly further discussion needs to be taken, but the child needs to be treated as the gender they identify with. Not their sex.

If you put one of these, the school would seriously know a) what the heck it meant and b) have a productive purpose for using the information? ageofshitlords.com/list-of-all-tumblr-genders-so-far

If there's two boxes to tick, m and f (or maybe three, with 'other' or 'prefer not to say' etc) then that means 'sex' not 'gender'. male/female is sex. Conflating the words 'sex' and 'gender' helps nobody, that's the point here.

there needs clearly to be discussion with the school
I agree, every time you get a form to fill in asking for gender we should phone the school to discuss/ask what is is they are wanting to know.
If 300 parents phoned up every time they would soon make the form very clear.

Yep because that’s what being a girl is all about. Wearing a skirt.
A male child identifying as a boy should also be allowed to wear a skirt if he wanted to imo. (Ps, this wouldn’t make him a girl!!!)

^ that was aimed at bluntness btw.

Yup, here we go. That's what I said, it's all about wearing a skirt.

At no point did I say the form was complete. The op has not told us if the form has drop down selections or you manually write the gender.

Stating the gender of a child is correct.

I'm out. I really can't be arsed with thr abuse you get on these threads if you dare to not follow thr party line.

And if the child has no gender? I didn't at that age (and still don't) assuming we are talking secondary school. But then again I was brought up with the belief that there was no such things as 'boys stuff' and 'girls stuff' and that your favouite colour was not the most important thing about you.
I did however have a sex (female) which I would have wanted recording by the school.

Abuse =/= robust questioning of a fallacy

Sorry I just can't stop myself, I think I'd better ignore the thread before I cause literal violence with my words.

Gender isn’t correct because there no such bloody thing. What the school want to know if if the child has a penis or not. Gender has just seemed to become the PC way of asking for sex.
I very highly doubt that the person writing the form had transgender children in mind at all.

Someone having a different opinion to you really isn't abusing you.