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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

Feminism: chat

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Original poster

So this happened today in DC’s school

31 replies

zen1 · 08/10/2018 18:58

DS told me this when he came in from school (no real names used):

12 year old DS was lining up outside maths class and the teacher told the class to go in. One of the boys (Josh) walked into the class in an ‘affected’ manner. Teacher asked Josh why he’s walking like that and Josh replies that he’s changed gender and his name’s not Josh, it’s Sarah. Teacher says, “Go and sit down and stop being ridiculous”. Josh replies, “actually you have to call me Sarah because it’s the law” (paraphrasing from DS). For the rest of the lesson, the teacher referred to Josh as Sarah (with an eye-roll according to DS). When the bell went at the end of the lesson, Josh informed the teacher that he was no longer a girl and he had changed his name back to Josh.

DS knows my feelings on self-id, which I think is why he told me, but it just sums up the whole ludicrousness of the situation. I think this boy was just having a laugh, but potentially this kind of shit could really happen, with kids just deciding they’re going to identify as the opposite sex for a couple of hours. My concern is that staff will be too worried to challenge them.

OP posts:

Mumfun · 08/10/2018 19:00

God, controlling behaviour of young men being facilitated. FFS

PerspicaciaTick · 08/10/2018 19:03

It sounds like the teacher handled it calmly, however it sounds like the sort of behaviour which used to be labelled as homophobic bullying when done front of boys the other children had decided were gay (regardless of whether it was true).

VickyEadie · 08/10/2018 19:05

Tip of the iceberg, I think.

Micaela64 · 08/10/2018 19:13

Although his aim was probably just to be cheeky this young man did a good job of inadvertently highlighting the absurdity of the situation to his peers and teachers.

VickyEadie · 08/10/2018 19:15

Although his aim was probably just to be cheeky this young man did a good job of inadvertently highlighting the absurdity of the situation to his peers and teachers.

Didn't he just? Also, do you think this belongs in the 'this will never happen' file?

Original poster

zen1 · 08/10/2018 19:19

Agree it’s just the tip of the iceberg. All the stuff I read on here peak transes me every day, but in the back of my mind, I always thought ‘I can’t imagine any of this actually happening in my DCs schools’. Yet here we are.

OP posts:

ItsAllGoingToBeFine · 08/10/2018 19:29

This is a real genuine issue though. An accusation of transphobic could have a real impact on a teacher - a teacher really shouldn't be saying "don't be ridiculous" (although I am glad they did!) because they are putting themselves at risk.

ScipioAfricanus · 08/10/2018 19:35

Does not surprise me. Pupils have started to tell me (as a joke) that I’m misgendering things (language lessons). Kids are quick to take advantage of trends in culture for good and bad and there will be all sorts of power plays by pupils using this kind of stuff going forwards. Some will be harmless enough and some will be using protected terms to disrupt and to put teachers in an impossible situation. Even with the misgendering joke I realised it would only take one pupil seeing me laughing and deliberately/mistakenly misinterpreting it and I could be in trouble for disrespecting a vulnerable group!

Original poster

zen1 · 08/10/2018 19:39

Yes, I think that after his original “don’t be ridiculous comment’ , the students response, “but it’s the law” was probably the only reason why this teacher erred on the side of caution and referred to the boy as ‘Sarah’ for the duration of the lesson, even though I bet he knew the boy was taking the piss.

OP posts:

ScipioAfricanus · 08/10/2018 19:46

In this circumstance I’d probably try not to call on the child during the lesson and avoid using a name. However if they persisted eventually you’d be at risk of being accused of prejudicial treatment of them!

In a vaguely sensible school I’d be inclined to say to the pupil that since this hasn’t been communicated to me by their Head if Year yet I won’t be using their new name/pronoun in this lesson. It would be mostly attention seeking behaviour by this child and so dealing with it in a boring, procedural manner would often shut them down enough. However, some would not let it drop and I do worry about my career in terms of my unwillingness to go along with a lot of the new mores. I’m on a break and considering a change of things, which is partly why I am being more overtly GC.

rosablue · 08/10/2018 20:19

Think after that I would be straight down to the SLT to discuss it and get them to issue some edict along the lines that while they wish to treat all gender dysphoric students with all due pastoral care, it is a serious issue and you are aware that some students are being childish and making a mockery of the situation by pretending to be trans for a short while.
Going forward, students will be known by their registered name until alternative arrangements are discussed and agreed with the students, parents and school and communicated to the rest of the community.

Anything to cut down on this sort of behaviour and more importantly knock on effects on the staff!

ItsalmostSummer · 08/10/2018 20:25

At least it might start showing people how ridiculous this all is. The problem is some of these cheeky young kids might end up with puberty blockers. I suppose a few public examples of that actually happening might wake us up to what we have unleashed. Am I even allowed to say that on here? It seems the internet and Mumsnet don’t want us saying anything that goes against transgenderism (even truth and facts) because it’s regarded as being phobic. Right. Sure. It’s all getting tiresome. Will this post or thread be removed. Counting down again ....

jgrobinson · 08/10/2018 20:33

Is there a Financial Times award for which we could nominate Sarah / Josh? She is truly an inspiration for young girls!

ScipioAfricanus · 08/10/2018 20:36

Is there a Financial Times award for which we could nominate Sarah / Josh? She is truly an inspiration for young girls!

I hope Young Enterprise are working on it as we speak!

Datun · 08/10/2018 20:37

I can't believe we are even having to discuss it.

Gender dysphoria is, out of the ballpark rare.

Quite apart from giving children the power to make their teachers lives in absolute misery (71 genders, all different pronouns?), this is why the law needs to change. The protected characteristic and the GRA, all need to be ripped up and started from scratch.

I disagree that a diagnosis of gender dysphoria should allow men/males to intimidate women, but, at the very least, it's something.

At the moment, any disruptive, irritating kid can fuck their teachers over.

FermatsTheorem · 08/10/2018 20:39

I'll be interested to see what Josh/Sarah's next move is. Identifying as a girl for the duration of the PE lesson, perhaps?

ItsalmostSummer · 08/10/2018 20:41

I agree Datun. The problem is even discussing the pros and cons around this issue is not even allowed. What is even happening? Waiting for this to be closed ...or is this a secret page where it’s “allowed”? I was going to try the garden section to discuss this but it might cause a riot so probably not.

Mamaryllis · 08/10/2018 20:43

I hear it's swimming on Fridays. Easy enough to be handled in a maths class, perhaps, less easy in a pool changing room. Wait until Josh's brain catches up with those larks.

Mamaryllis · 08/10/2018 20:45

Don't be silly Summer, there's nothing on here to make it deletable. MN is one of the few places you CAN discuss the ideology. Please don't make it more difficult by pretending this thread is problematic.

FermatsTheorem · 08/10/2018 20:46

But we are back to the central issue of self-ID which I've been harping on about for what, five years now?

Proponents of self ID always say (a) there won't be any cases of people abusing the system ("this never happens") and (b) if they did, then it would all be okay because it could be illegal to make a false declaration.

But they never say what would count as evidence that someone had made a false declaration. You'd literally need a mind-reading device to sort out the "genuinely if erroneously believes themselves to be a woman on the inside" brigade from the "taking the piss for the shitz 'n' gigglz (and to get one over on teacher)" brigade.

You would have a law on the statute books without any legal criterion to assess who was covered by the law and who was not.

So Josh/Sarah would be entirely right. So long as xie wasn't ever daft enough to admit xie was doing it for the shits and giggles, all authority figures would have to take zem at xir word.

ItsalmostSummer · 08/10/2018 20:52

Mamaryllis are you being sarcastic? A thread like this was deleted yesterday. So your comment to me doesn’t add up. I’m not being difficult or problematic. My conclusion would be this is probably a wind up, and I don’t want to get involved in those. I do want to protect kids from being sucked into believing they need puberty blockers or surgery because no one has the nerve to tell them it’s normal to want to be different. We all feel that way. Sometimes we need help with that, but I don’t believe help looks like changing genders for every kid that’s suggests this sort of thing. I believe there are a small select few who actually believe they need to change gender. That’s for them to work out, but not for children to act like this in school. The scary thing is kids like this might end up on puberty blockers. That’s where we are going and that’s the part I disagree with. Kids aren’t a science experiment. So I’m out of this discussion. All the best.

ItsAllGoingToBeFine · 08/10/2018 20:56

Going forward, students will be known by their registered name until alternative arrangements are discussed and agreed with the students, parents and school and communicated to the rest of the community.

Can't do this. Guidelines say the students trans status must be kept confidential, parents must not be told without the consent of the trans child, ditto anyone else in the school. It's all on the individual teacher.

Original poster

zen1 · 08/10/2018 20:59

This school is fairly conservative, which has pissed me off in the past, but quite a few of the teachers there are known for not mincing their words so they will probably engage their mouths before considering that what they say may be in contravention of the GRA.

With regard to gender dysphoria, what I have noticed recently from the twitter accounts of young trans people is a re-tweeting of a statement which says “you don’t have to hate your body to be transgender”. Can’t really get my head around that one.

OP posts:

Deux · 08/10/2018 21:05

I was discussing self-Id with my 15 yo DS today and he says they all talk about gender at school but basically making fun of it and they all think it's ludicrous. And no way is a trans woman a woman. He and his friends think it's total nonsense.

I’m not sure how mainstream their attitude is, but DS did say that he was appalled that the law could be changed to allow a male body in a female space. Plus they’re doing gametes in biology, dimorphic species.

DS's profound solution is that spaces should be split according to “what's in your pants”. . And that a third space should be found for non-conformers.

So Sarah/Josh sounds like they’ve found an attention seeking way to wind up the class and the teacher.

WomaninBoots · 08/10/2018 21:24

I'm so glad I'm not teaching any more. I'm autistic as well so I'd be screwed. It was hard enough once some kids realise Miss was an easy wind up previously. (There are many many reasons I couldn't hack it... would never have gone into it if I'd had a diagnosis but that's another story)

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