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!

So melamin to what would you attribute the growth in homosexuality in teens?
I made an observation about the difference in my teen experience and my dc’s experience and there is a big one in terms of teens exploring their sexuality.
FWIW I am not for trans rights taking away women’s rights, encouraging transgender in children etc etc but I have heard a few times people say homosexuality hasn’t grown since it became accepted, but it has. Not that that is a bad thing might I add.

to what would you attribute the growth in homosexuality in teens?

There's a growth in gay or lesbian teens? Really? Statistics?

From a quick google www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/uk-41498713

just because a teen identifies as gay or lesbian doesn't mean any more than them identifying as a goth or emo - it doesn't mean that they are actually gay.

There's certainly a growth in out teens compared to my school of 1500 pupils where there was apparently not one gay child (1980s). OK I didn't know them all but it would have caused enough of a scandal for there even to have been the remotest hint of a gay pupil. Or my year at university (late 80s early 90s) where there was not one gay student (small college but still, ludicrously unlikely outcome).

I'm assuming this masks a horrible amount of hiding that was going on in my youth which is not happening today rather than an increase in numbers. All good. But I still would rather DD wasn't having to fend off invitations to learn about intersex from her 11 year old friend who knows bugger all about anything because she is 11.

But I still would rather DD wasn't having to fend off invitations to learn about intersex from her 11 year old friend who knows bugger all about anything because she is 11.

I assume you mean 'transgender' here, because intersex is not a thing you can 'identify' as - it's a specific biological state into which a person is born (and that person is - nonetheless - definitely male or female, I might add).

rightreckoner

I’m with you, obviously it’s good that LGB teens are more able to be ‘out’ these days, but there is a difference between LGB teens being out and pan/trans bandwagon jumpers.

There are also some highly dubious people running ‘pride’ clubs in schools these days.

Before anyone jumps on me, I say that as the mother of an out gay teen who gives the pride club an extremely wide berth.

I think that stats can only tell you so much really. Anecdata is obviously limited, but stats are no better in many ways.

Obviously it's a good thing that young people seem to be losing the massive stigma that being LGB had when I was a teenager wrestling with my sexual feelings and the shame that seemed to come with it. This is a good thing.

But losing a stigma does mean it is an awful lot easier to adopt an 'identity', in the way that young people have always done, that isn't really the right one, and statistics can't really drill down into those complicated motivations.

I guess what I am trying to say is that in the days when homosexuality was still hugely taboo, it was the case that those who said they were, were much more likely to be damned sure about it. That's not the case now, and that's great, but it does mean you can't necessarily base any argument about 'growth' on it in a straight forward way - in exactly the same way that massive increase in trans-identifying girls cannot be used bluntly as proof that there are actually more people with gender dysphoria.

These things are really nuanced and complicated, and frankly the difference between the consequences of thinking you are gay in error and thinking you are trans is so marked I can't see why anyone is persisting with the conflation.

If you think you are gay and you are wrong, the 'worst' that can happen is you have a sexual experience that you don't actually like at all and you feel rather embarrassed. If you think you are trans, the pathway to medical and surgical intervention is nothing like that. It's a different order altogether.

It matters what a school says about this. It really bloody does.

If you think you are gay and you are wrong, the 'worst' that can happen is you have a sexual experience that you don't actually like at all and you feel rather embarrassed. If you think you are trans, the pathway to medical and surgical intervention is nothing like that. It's a different order altogether.

It matters what a school says about this. It really bloody does.

Correct. And I speak as someone who only came to terms with being gay aged 41, after a series of relationships with men (and one marriage, to a lovely man). I might have wasted a bit of time - though I was not unhappy (just much happier with a woman, with whom I've been ever since) and I haven't taken body and life-changing drugs or carved up my body.

No vicky it was actually a talk given by school girls about intersex. But since they are 11 and are still on the very basics of reproductive biology they won’t have a clue.

It sent my spidey senses tingling because I know how intersex is being used by TRAs and since it was via the school’s Pride society I’m assuming (perhaps wrongly) that the material was courtesy of one of the many Gendered Intelligence type groups who are using Pride in schools as a vector for their BS.

To give an unbiased, informative lesson with an idea to help create a society of people who have mutual respect and understanding

Its not unbiased though is it. Its the complete opposite. No way will my children be peddled that shit.

rightreckoner

Fair enough, thanks for that clarification.

I find the notion that teens are being taught about an incredibly rare condition as part of this trans-peddling to be extremely sinister.

OP it might be useful for your daughter to hear a different point of view about it, other than yours, so she can make up her own mind.

there's no other point of view to 'it's impossible to change sex', though, is there? I mean, that's not a point of view, that's a fact.

conatusnews.com/stephanie-davies-arai-transgender-trend-john-maddox-prize/

Interesting article about the scientific community. Interesting to note this event was hosted by Nature magazine, source of the op ed much quoted as proof of something or other going on in the brain......

The human brain tends to make human beings believe all manner of stuff. Belief that you are a thing you clearly are not doesn't make it so.

Exactly RiverTam.
PurpleAndTurquoise my daughter loves science and is fact based in her thinking. She doesn't entertain bullshit.

OP it might be useful for your daughter to hear a different point of view about it, other than yours, so she can make up her own mind.

Schools aren't allowed to teach creationism, even as "a different point of view". It is extremely worrying that some are teaching children it is possible to change sex.

It encourages pupils to think about the fact that their physical body (sex), gender (how they feel about themselves), how they dress (expression) and who they are attracted to can all be different.

How you feel about yourself doesn't have anything to do with gender at all unless somebody in a school tells you that it should. Why are you linking self expression to concepts of gender?

It also provides a discussion point for the concept of sexual development disorders (congenital) because not everybody’s BODY is born the same either inside or out.

By linking this to ideas of gender you are just endorsing the idea that your body dictates a right or wrong way of expressing yourself.

I really can't understand how we have reached a place where children are being taught that their physical sex is somehow subjective but that they need to define themselves as a feminine or masculine person. It's as though creationism has somehow become 'progressive'.

that instead of just identifying along one line of (say) gender identity from Woman to Man as on the original, it allows for the fact that someone might feel like both at the same time but to different degrees

Or maybe people just feel like themselves and it has sod all to do with femininity and masculinity.

I feel woman-y today. But only my bottom half. I'm wearing a skirt and a man's T-shirt, so my top half feels very man-y. I am hemi-genderal.

I don’t remember ever getting taught about homosexuality at school. When did they start doing that?

Of course growing up with 2 close family members who are gay and a friend of my parents who was also gay, there wasn’t much mystery there - and I never ‘caught the gay’ either.

So, can I ask you all - how would YOU explore sexuality as part of a wide-ranging PSHE provision in school? What’s the best way to ensure that those pupils sitting there who know they are lesbian/gay/bi/pan feel comfortable with who they are (because, as you know, there is a diehard section of all communities that is homophobic). How do you educate the homophobic?

What about those kids who prefer to identify as the opposite gender (we have trans pupils). How do we help them to feel comfortable with who they are, rather than the bandwaggoners that some of you seem to think they must be?

Do we all go back to like the 1970s when we all had a gay in the village but it was considered a bit grubby and the local cross-dresser was considered to be bonkers but it was ok because he/she was ‘our’ bonkers?

Yes, obviously the women posting here, who have variously openly identified themselves as lesbians and bisexual women at various times on the board, a number of whom also have gay and lesbian children, are very keen to suppress anything except heterosexual orientation.

It's the only possible conclusion if you completely ignore our repeated complaints that trans ideology is rampantly homophobic.

You could teach kids that they can present to the world their varied personalities as freely as they like, without needing to conform to restrictive boxes of 'gender traits' or 'gender identity'.

The stunted mindset that cannot even conceive that girls and boys can be whoever they want to be, look however they want to look, love whomever they wish, go through the normal trials of puberty and come out the other side exactly the same sex as they were when they were born, still being whoever they want to be without being medicated or surgically altered, is totally terrifying to me in its mundane evil.

Sex and gender aren’t the same thing. That’s why a man who says he is a woman (and a lesbian) doesn’t make sense.