Disgusted with myself that I am having this thought

[sandpitsausage]

I was raised by an OG 60s feminist mum, who tried to shield me from gender crap as much as possible. I know an alarming number of (happy) grown up women think this about themselves as kids, but if I was a kid now I would probably be labelled as a “boy” due to my hobbies, interests and self expression. I am now, of course, a very happy-in-my-own-skin woman.
I am trying to do the same for my 3 kids. I really try to keep stuff gender neutral, because you know, gender is oppressive shite for both girls and for boys. My son (3) loves pink and sometimes tells me he is a (actually, the only) female character from his favourite tv show (he also loves a lot of typically ”boys stuff” too).
What has just stuck me is that, he could be labelled as trans by his school for things like liking pink or saying “I’m a lady”. I mean, I doubt it would be just this. But if I constantly hide from my kids the seemingly now widely accepted view that pink and lipstick and glitter are actually the very definition of what it is to be a woman, and that men are defined by all that boyish bloke-stuff (rather than my preference of this is your biological reality but like whatever and whoever you want, wear whatever you want etc), then could I actually be putting them at risk of being told they are in the wrong body, and potentially being medicalised/ being made sterile etc?
I feel physically sick at the thought of this.

I talk about this stuff all the time.

I have a dd at high school who shaves her head, wears the boys' uniform and is utterly GNC and quite able to talk about being a GC feminist herself. She is all woman. She has encountered some suggestion that she's trans but she shuts that down immediately. She is lucky to have excellent self esteem and a friend's dd who is GNC has struggled far more and has worried about being trans (friend is 99% sure she is gay and on the spectrum). Neither girl is pushed by any agenda in school. Yet.

DS is 7 and wears a lot of pink, often to school on non uniform day and he wears a girls' cardigan as uniform (because he wears his sister's hand me downs actually, not a conscious GC decision). Nobody has said a word to him yet. He currently wants his ears pierced as his female friends have theirs done and while it's a no for now (no earrings at primary was the rule for dd), I will reconsider when he is 11.

Who knows what the future holds? I have 4 years before DS starts high school and I am determined that he will be as free to express his own style choices as his sister is without fear of an ideology being imposed upon him.

Similar boat here. In fact when DS was young I had not yet discovered quite how full of koolaid the transcult was, nor how sexist the trans philosophy was, nor how much misogyny there still is in the world. DS has always been brought up as close to gender-neutral as possible and likes pink (though he is aware of the judginess of some of his contemporaries and is cautious about wearing favourite pink clothes if classmates might see). Back before I reached peak trans I did even say to him once (as part of ensuring that he knew that there's nothing wrong with different lifestyles) that some people do feel like they are a girl inside despite having a boy body, or vice versa (and he firmly replied, age 4 or 5 that he is definitely a boy inside and out).

Back then I told him about sexism as if it was all in the past - "people used to think..." as I honestly thought that was true. Nowadays I have changed that narrative and warn him about how much sexism there still is out there. He has got really good at spotting sexism himself -especially all the kids TV programs which have one female character and she is dressed in pink and stereotyped to the nines. We had a really good conversation recently about the song " I'm not my fathers son" from the musical " kinky boots" - its about a man whose parents were sexists and thought that there were some clothes that were only for girls and some were only for boys so when he realised how much he liked wearing sparkly clothes and high heels his parents didn't like that. Aren't sexists ridiculous!

I do worry that he is in danger of being sucked into the trans cult but I hope he will be able to spot the inherent sexism a mile away when he sees it.

Show that is wonderful, you are clearly doing a wonderful job. But do you ever worry that if your kids weren't so bright and strong-willed and that if their school teacher had been on a mermaids course, things might be different?

All the others who've commented about their kids - they all sound fantastic, as do you as parents.

I've told my son and daughter that girls and boys wear what they like, do what they like, love whom they like, since they were old enough to pick up on the stereotypes. They are pretty clear that one's sex/body/genitals has no bearing on those choices.

I think kids are pretty sophisticated in awareness of nuance and social pressure. So my son knows that boys can choose to wear pink dresses - he also knows how many people will unfortunately give you stick for that.

We can't protect our kids from everything, all I think we can do is listen and be open to questions and as honest as possible (without overloading a kid with too much detailed information) and try not burden them with our fears and worries.

As well as maintaining comms with schools and docs regarding the policies, of course.

I worry about this for my ds. He has asd and while on the one hand, his impeccable logical mind grasps why the trans cult is insane when explained in terms of scientific facts he understands I worry about outside influence. His current school is very gendered - he came home the other day and told me how a teacher told him girls were better at multi tasking than boys FFS. He takes this all very literally and he thinks everyone tells the truth, because he always does.

Oh yes I worry. Of course. You might say I am more than worried. I am angry. I'm out talking to people, campaigning etc specifically because I worry about where we're going with all this. But I am lucky that the school is sensible right now and my eldest in particular is able to grow up GNC.

This blue/pink nonsense is like a mental epidemic.

I sincerely hold the view that it is driven by homophobic parents.

That is, idiots who don't want a gay child and actually think that allowing a boy to wear pink (say) will "turn" him gay.

Stupid arseholes.

stillathing unfortunately, in my opinion it was, to borrow your words a thoughtless inclusion of a harmful stereotype by someone who wasn't thinking? I felt that whole bit of the book was pretty misogynistic. And likely to lead to difficult conversations for parents with their children.

There have been a few things in David Walliams books I've been uncomfortable with and always because of a lack of empathy / understanding / thought about the female characters. It's a real shame because there's lots to like in his books, but I don't think he understands the female viewpoint very well.