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!

AssasinatedBeauty has kind of put her finger on it for me - rather than challenging the societal expectations that tell young people they should behave and dress a certain way this approach is encouraging the idea that it is the young person at fault, that somehow their body is 'wrong' and needs surgery and drugs to 'correct'. I think this is quite a long way from the issues that people with real gender dysphoria face but there is an extremely worrying blurring of issues going on.

OP I'm not sure it always is 'education' and not 'indoctrination'. I mean, who decides that?

Some may feel this use of the infamous Gingerbread person at a school this week was just education, rather than a regressive enforcement of gender stereotypes on girls.

St Albans High School (@STAHS) Tweeted:
Dex from ⁦*@Genderintell*⁩ joined us this morning to talk about gender identity with Year 9 students. Enormous thanks for leading such an informative and open discussion. #STAHSSenior #STAHSPSHEE t.co/7csT5CpVZK twitter.com/STAHS/status/1065987063995084801?s=17

This is hugely different to homosexuality being taught in schools.

Homosexuality, once it was allowed to be taught, was included in sex education classes.

There was never a specific "Homosexual Group" coming in to talk just about that to schools.

There were "Sex Ed" groups, we had an awful group come in to talk to us about sex. I really hope that has improved in the 30 odd years since I was that age at school.

It's the nature of how it is being taught or introduced in school that is the problem. It's being spoon fed. It's not a discussion or introduction of an idea. It's a lecture.

I am soooo happy I am not raising my kids in the UK!

The trouble is that the training materials for schools used by trans groups reach way beyond an interesting discussion about personal pathways and bullying. They always include regressive stereotypes, they 'normalise' breast binding and use of puberty blockers and they - as we have seen - advocate adults keeping a child's secrets (including from parents). And I bet every presentation will be framed with a definition of 'transphobia' that effectively silences critical thinking / questions.

It is not surprising that parents are now objecting to this.

If you can OP, read the many many scathing replies to that Gingerbread Person tweet.

Here's one of the slides shown to that all girls school

Genderbread. Silly me.

The trouble with the "different beliefs", "be kind" message is do they then go on to tell girls they should "be kind" and let boys who believe they're girls share their changing spaces and take places on their (girls') sports teams? Being kind and respectful has to cut both ways.

The risk is that by pushing for affirmation (by calling anything else conversion therapy), children who may be struggling with their sexuality, may be on the autistic spectrum or may be facing other mental health challenges could be affirmed into a medical pathway that has serious consequences, not all of which are known as there hasn’t been any research. Research which has been shut down or prevented as it has been seen as transphobic.

When this is coupled by parents being told they must affirm their child or they might end up with a suicidal or dead child, there isn’t much room given to explore other issues and that’s what’s I find concerning.

Then there’s the fact that teaching children that they’re adherence to sex stereotypes is a reflection of whether they are actually of that sex means that we are regressing back to fixed ideas about what girls and boys can and can’t do, which I think is very restrictive.

This was a good article written by a trans person on how the ideology can be dangerous for vulnerable children

www.thepostmillennial.com/the-pied-pipers-of-gender-ideology-a-different-transgender-perspective/amp/

I would also send them Michele Moore's video, which explains why we are so deeply concerned about teaching gender ideology as fact and the social contagion that is sweeping across schools.

20 grand a year fees doesn’t seem to buy the poor pupils any factual accuracy!

itspronouncedmetrosexual.com/2015/03/the-genderbread-person-v3/

This is a girls school, for cripes sake! Why aren’t they teaching them that gender is a bunch of largely arbitrary rules designed by men to try and keep women in second place?

They used to have a terrible problem with anorexia back in my day* so you would hope they had learned a lesson or two in preventing social contagion by now. Sadly not, if they are inviting Gendered Intelligence in.

*I went to a comp a couple of miles down the road 😂

The trouble with this is drawing false parallels. The gender lobby do this a lot. The gender bread person uses sexual attraction, expression that know and understand, shoe-horns in sex as a spectrum and then slips in being a man or a woman as another spectrum, that we tend to believe having gone through the previous process of thought arrangement.

It is the same with the phse listed above. Cover consent, porn, contraception, lgb and the t effortly added.
Mention the emotive topic of Section 28, then having hooked your audience who will give you their all, you move onto trans acceptance.

Understand:

A>B>C, therefore

X>Y>Z!

I would like to see a bit more evidence based research behind classes that are supposed to alter people's perceptions.

The problem is, a large proportion put through this process of indoctrination will grow up and react against it and probably use it against those it was intended to help. It is also unlikely to have the desired effect in the people who most need to learn how not to single out others, and probably preaching to the converted.

^ what Dastardly says - I will be doing exactly the same.
No one came into schools to talk about trans ideology when I was at school and I managed to survive.

Children have enough on their shoulders - puberty is such a confusing and often stressful time for them to go through. All this does is to add an extra layer of confusion.

Did anyone see the issue being discussed on This Morning yesterday? Munroe Bergdorf was on the show peddling the usual nonsense. The opposing guest described it as a movement which is exactly what it is. These people have an agenda. They are determined and will not stop. Anyone who opposes their view is told they are bigoted (as Piers was yesterday).

One of my Facebook friends recently came out as gender critical and said she didn’t care what anyone else thought and to go ahead and unfriend her if they wanted to. I wish I could do the same but sadly my list of friends includes some work colleagues and so I would potentially be putting my job at risk. I work in a public serving role. Our manager has even told us not to use gendered terms when talking to people on the phone in case they identify as something other than their actual sex! It’s all getting ridiculous

www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1996/56/section/407

Children do indeed have enough on their shoulders with puberty and exams and expectations of their future.

Acceptance should not involve the burden of dealing with other people's confused feelings and changing their boundaries to accommodate them.

NotZen Just coming on to post that.
I hope the school is giving equal weight to the GC point of view...

good to see St Alban's High School and GI getting their arses handed to them on Twitter for this sexist garbage.

Well the response to that bit of virtue signalling was truly heart warming. I hope they cannot move for angry parents clogging up reception this morning. I await reading further in the papers. Idiots.

I'd try contacting the school see what they are doing then make a decision.

At least you get a heads up.

It got shoved in with no warning into yr 6 sex education lessons for one of my children and I've heard from my children it's in their PSHE lessons quite a bit. I had a child who understood sexual reproduction come out of those sex education lessons very confused.

Funny Creationism mentioned - same primary school manged to do confusing sex education lessons sent one of our other children to a creationist zoo - we'd paid before realising and were reassured no talks would be taken no confusion non facts given - our child later said they'd had the talks and was very confused about timings as a result.

I think the problem is, it introduces a totally false “choice” into children’s heads. You cannot “choose” to “change sex”. You are born either male or female. If you feel you are in the wrong body, you can choose a life of hormone treatment, possibly surgery and life long issues concerning relationships and sex, in the effort to change your body and present as someone of the opposite sex.
The analogy with being gay is wrong. If you are gay, you are attracted to someone of the same sex. Fact. If you are trans, you say you “feel” like you are really a man or a woman. But what does that mean? How does a boy know what it feels like to be a girl? And vice versa.

When a girl wishes to become a boy, and AS A RESULT of transition, her family throw out “all her dresses”, or re decorate her “girly” purple bedroom, or she then feels able to cut her hair short and pursue “boy’s sports”, it is inevitable that anyone with an ounce of common sense would wonder if that girl’s thinking was stuck in such rigid stereotypes developed by society and/or those around her, that she was unable to reconcile her non pink princess identity with being a girl.
We should be teaching girls that having short hair, playing football, and rejecting the online media stereotyped representations of women is fine. They can do what they want and look how they want. And hating the way your body develops, well, Ive lost count of the number of women who hated this in adolescence. The transformation into a being that society sees as intrinsically sexual, and becoming the object of a predatory gaze. Hardly surprising. As for boys, they don’t have to be “tough” or play sports. They can be who they want too.

I would want to know exactly what was being said. On that basis, I would either pull my child out, or brief them beforehand. I don’t think it’s fair for them to feel they have to confront the speakers - it’s too much for a child. I might encourage an older child to ask “But what does it mean to feel like a girl?” My DD would certainly be able to point out that as a girl she never played with dolls, never wears dresses, hates pink, thinks make up is daft.

OP, I would be writing a long, long email to the school making all the above points, asking how they intend to address them, as this will decide whether your DD will attend, and if not I would expect her absence to be authorised.

Personally I have always viewed body/gender dysphoria as a mental illness. Gender reassignment as a final resort for desperately unhappy people. What is now happening is it’s being presented as a lifestyle choice. It’s not. It’s simply not. Because it requires potentially dangerous experimental life time hormone treatment But educating children along the lines of the genderbread indicates that they have all these choices to make as they grow up. Puberty is a hugely difficult time for young people. Sexuality, hormones kicking in, vast changes to deal with. Wrong choices can be made by 14 year olds. In fact it’s pretty much programmed in that they will make wrong choices. What other huge decisions do we give our 14 yr olds to make?

I wonder what the fee paying parents of St Albans High School think of this.

twitter.com/stahs/status/1065987063995084801?s=21

It isn't just St Albans. Gendered intelligence were at Sydenham High earlier this week and seem to have spoken at quite a few of the other schools in the GDST group in the past.

@CaptainShark
The issue falls under the fundamental british values that all schools must adhere to and falls under the citizenship curriculum.
Do you have a link to what is under that curriculum?

Personally I have always viewed body/gender dysphoria as a mental illness.
You've got psychiatrists and the DSM on your side then...