School have a trans information session/day

[PerverseConverse]

My year 7 DD is upset as they have been told they are covering transgender issues in the new year. She doesn't know when exactly it is but has said she doesn't want to go to school that day. I don't know any details at the moment and she's not been told much either.

I've pointed out that it's a good opportunity for her to raise questions and challenge the trend but at 11 it's a big ask of her. If it's too big an ask for her to challenge at that age then as far as I'm concerned it's inappropriate for her to be taught indoctrinated about this in school. She is well aware of trans issues and the wider debate and issues facing women and I'm proud that she's gender critical and thinks it's all bollocks However she's worried that speaking up will get her in trouble

I do not want her exposed to any nonsense in school so will find out when it is and tell them she will not be attending and why.

It makes me so angry that they are peddling this nonsense to children who are in the midst of puberty, adjusting to life at high school, freaking out at mixed sex toilets (previous thread on that), and are generally st a very impressionable age.

What's the best way to tackle the school? I've already sent the headmaster the Trans Trend school resources link in connection with the toilet situation. I told them we weren't supporting CIN and why. And now this!

cleared

It's education not indoctrination.

Some of these sessions are definitely indoctrination not education. I guess the OP doesn't have any details yet. But you don't know any more about it than she does.

Piece so no actual women then to talk about lgbt.

In the q and a session yes. There are 200 kids in the year and this was just the way my group fell. To be honest they were both really good and I never felt uncomfortable (and I have in previous years when delivered by very PC women).

PieceOfPurpleSky, You did not have a woman delivering the trans part of that lesson. There was no "she" present.
What would have happened if one of the children had pointed that out at the time? What what have been said and how would they have been treated if they made it clear that they refused to buy the lie that a man can turn into a woman or a woman can turn into a man?

No I don't know anything about the OPs situation but I just wanted to say that they are not all bad sessions. Informative and non judgemental. One of the questions by the children was about the trans woman still being a man and it was the answer was that people had different opinions and that should be respected by all

Piece, everyone can have different opinions but it is dangerous to confuse the word opinion with fact.

Martini just to add that was the overriding feeling from the students after the event - that they could make their own minds up and had been given information to process their own opinions. They understood some of the terminology such as pan sexual that they hadn't previously and had the opportunity to question a trans woman. And they did

But pink it's a fact that people have different opinions .... like religion (we have a citizenship day on that too) - the message was to be tolerant of other even if you don't share their opinion.
I only came on to say that the OP's Dd may find it interesting.

Most treatments offered at this stage are psychological, rather than medical or surgical.

this is what the NHS does at the few Gender Identity clinics. Private doctors in the UK can and do prescribe and recommend differently including for younger kids and cross-sex hormones (or god knows what, but purporting to be cross-sex hormones ..) can be bought online by anyone. Parents who are being told their kids are in danger unless immediately ‘affirmed’ may not want to wait for the NHS waiting lists for NHS GICs if they can afford to avoid that by going private.

So it’s not really the case for a lot of young people that the medicalised and surgical route is gatekept away from them until adulthood. Nor that they will be able to access high quality NHS professional psychological support in adolescence and as they approach adulthood.

This makes it very urgent that people are allowed to talk about this ideology which as a belief system revolves around forcing gendered stereotypes onto everyone (trans or not) and is homophobic, and potentially supports making irreversible physical changes at an age where full understanding of consent is not possible.

It does need to be explored in schools, but in a supportive, gender critical way that encourages critical thinking and good scientific understanding about sex and gender on the part of the school students.

Where school students are confused or emotionally distressed or anxious about gender or dysphoric about their sexed bodies there needs to be greater specialist professional support including from NHS CAMHS who are massively oversubscribed.

We know that professional psychological support is really lacking for young people in all kinds of bad states and situations, not just those young people who (understandably) might want to reject the restrictions of gender and are attracted to the trans dogma as offering them something tangible towards achieving that end.

Piece thank you for your answer.
I would be highly unhappy with my child being given the response that it's a matter of differences of opinion because it's not.
One stance is the truth , that the person being called "she" and "woman" is neither a she nor a woman. The other stance is that the person is a woman and a she.

Saying it's all just different opinions and that the lie (which is ultimately a danger to women and girls) must be regarded with "respect " is saying that the truth is unimportant and is belittling the person who is speaking the truth.
If I say opera is the best and you say ballet is the best that is a difference of opinion. If I say Theresa May is the Prime Minister and you say Jeremy Corbyn is the Prime Minister only one of us is speaking the truth.

Trans ideology is horrifically homophobic and I cannot believe anyone would think having this taught in schools would be supportive to LGBTQ students.

^But pink it's a fact that people have different opinions .... like religion (we have a citizenship day on that too) - the message was to be tolerant of other even if you don't share their opinion.
I only came on to say that the OP's Dd may find it interesting.^

The trouble is piece, that it needs to be made clear that by transing (as it is generally pitched for children - with puberty blockers followed by cross-sex hormones), you're not actually becoming the opposite sex, no matter how hard you believe you are, so you are sterilising yourself if you do it and becoming a life-long medical patient.

Similarly, if you don't go down the drugs route and just socially transition, you still need to be aware of your sex, because no matter what, when it comes down to it, if a male and a female bump uglies, it's the female that gets pregnant.

I worry that this isn't being made clear, that we're not being truthful with kids and instead just offering 'opinion'

Plus the engineer in me is very annoyed at the mis-use of the word 'spectrum' and the word 'bimodal' would definitely come up in the after-discussion.

All this education on trans issues. Never challenging sexism,never talking about autism or children with disabilities. These are political lobby groups in our schools "educating" our children. The children most affected will be autistic or gay.

I'd keep her off school that day. And if my DC school have one of these educational cult sessions they will be kept off too. Every time.

You need to see the materials they will be using first before you do anything. We had a trans session at our school (not a whole day though) and I was preparing for some awkward conversations but actually the material was all about differences and being nice to each other. There wasn’t anything controversial, it was all quite basic.

Biological sex is also important to note in other (non trans) healthcare matters too (both in diagnostics and treatments) and in relation to the sexual orientation of others.

Being trans/presenting as the opposite sex isn’t something that anyone should be made to feel ashamed of, but it must be explained in realistic (age apppropriate!) terms, especially to those children who are gender questioning/might grow up to be trans. Concluding that you ‘identify as’ something is not the same as actually being something.

Frankly, the world is mostly shit for women and girls, so any girl with a bit of nouse about her will probably see some appeal in being a boy instead (higher wages! Less unwaged caring work for kids and elders! No stigma for visible body hair! No need to worry about your ‘bikini body’ - boys don’t do bikinis! And that’s just the western world edition).

I would keep my dd off that day.

It's nothing but lies. Teaches kids to ignore their own boundries and they the very essence of every thing that happens to then is little more than a feeling inside someone's head.

Not to mention the homophobia.

I would communicate with the school and ensure I informed them just who these people are, and then take my dd out for a coffee somewhere or something.

Nobody can say what it will be like unless we know what the school approach is.

We teach diversity and LGBT issues as part of PSHE. It's nothing like the emotive nonsense from lobby groups. I'm not posting too much in case the vultures circle. I would imagine our approach would annoy the more vocal 'I don't accept fully medicallu transitioned trans people' group and would annoy the TRA lobby, so we've probably got the right line.

Someone on twitter yesterday was saying that these groups going in to schools is political and as such is disallowed I see the education act. I can't fk d the info but I was going to use this argument at dds school.

I agree with the poster who said something along the line of "it was all about being nice to each other about differences"

It's like when I used to teach drugs to year 4. I didn't go in with "And now today kids we learn how to shoot up"
It's basic stuff about alcohol, cigarettes, even medicine.

I would imagine that they would tell you more, you could definitely asked what's going to be taught.

My daughter's BF is trans and my daughter still knows you can't really change your sex, only your gender stereotype.

Schools need to teach about gender stereotypes I think.

It's like when homosexuality was first discussed in schools, so many pearl clutchers thought thatd 'turn their kids gay'. That is obviously a load of rubbish, and it seems to be happening again with trans issues by a minority of people who are anti trans activists today.

Nah, mate. It's more like inviting Scientologists to hold an introductory fair at the school, complete with a session explaining why being forced to clean toilets with a toothbrush is a perfectly reasonable and appropriate way of curing members of their worrying tendency towards independent thought and a slide show presentation on the scientific support for the existence of thetans.

Well Piece, I mean, there are different opinions in the sense as there being different opinions about Creationism, the Earth being flat and our elites being lizard people. I was not aware that schools in the West are now in the business of discussing different opinions irrespective of their connections to science and logic.

This is what materials genderintel used recently with year 9 girls in a school at St Albans

Imagine the following in a class at primary school.

"Did humans ride dinosaurs? Well, there are a variety of opinions on that."

(Triceratops with a saddle at the Creation Museum will never get old.)