Compulsory trans awareness training

[invinoveritaserum]

Apparently all staff (public sector role) have to go on compulsory trans awareness training. We have already had to do online training, but this is a half day training course. It is NOT being run by in-house training, which makes me wary of who will be running it. (I should find out later this week).
I'm worried by this. I simply cannot sit there and swallow the usual woke bs. I refuse to lie about biological fact. I refuse to be called a cis woman. And yet I know I risk being called a transphobe.
Any advice as to what to do/how to get through this?

This girl and my daughter played in the same girls' football team. On several occasions, the ref or coach of the opposing team, came over to check that the team wasn't fielding a boy. That's how boy-like she looked

Pre-puberty, there’s very little physical differences between the sexes.

I was fairly often asked to leave women’s toilets up to the age of about 11. Simply because I had short hair and was therefore a boy.

Society makes assumptions on sex based on social norms until secondary sex characteristics develop. I have had arguments many times with people who insist my female child is a boy, so why have I put him in a girls swimming costume/his sisters clothes/pink.

Generally adults who need to check the sex of a prepubescent girl are showing their own biases towards stereotype than the reality that the child really “looks like” a boy. No wonder she was so unhappy.

Why does it make me angry?

1. Women's hard won rights to sex-segregated spaces have been given away without consultation and the safety, dignity and privacy of women and girls is now at risk as a result.

1. Children, teenagers and vulnerable young adults are having irreversible medical treatments which will leave them as lifelong medical patients, sterile and unable to have a normal sex life. The justification for this is that otherwise a high proportion of them would commit suicide or otherwise self-harm. That appears not to be backed up by data. This isn't an evidence-based policy. This is disproportionately affecting people on the autistic spectrum, survivors of abuse, people with mental health problems and same-sex attracted people.

1. Attacks on freedom of speech and academic freedoms. People who disagree with gender ideology are being threatened and attacked (physically in some cases), losing jobs, deplatformed, libelled. This is being ignored because for some reason many politicians and journalists have decided critical thinking stops when it comes to this issue.

That's a start.

Chances are you won't be the only one with serious misgivings. Maybe you'll give others thr confidence to ask difficult questions too.

I guess I'm angry because I can't say women don't have penises except on an anonymous forum. And that's fucking insane.

Maybe the 12 year old grew up to be a brave lesbian

I certainly don't recall seeing her have a conversation with anyone.

Perhaps she did it when you, umm, weren’t around her? I mean you didn’t have a camera on her 24/7 did you?

@bluebluezoo this was different in that she actually chose to look like a boy.
It's very hard to explain unless you met her. But while gender dysphoria really wasn't discussed back then, in hindsight, it's very clear that she had issues regarding this.

Anyway, I'm starting to feel a little bit as though I shouldn't be discussing her specifically, even if it is anonymously. I only stepped into this thread because I thought of her and how sad it must be for people like her, and her parents, when they read very negative and bigoted things, and when people set out to be awkward rather than listen to training that might help them understand people llike her.

That's not to say that there are legitimate causes for concern when it comes to practical issues. But I've clearly stepped into a hornet's nest, and won't be discussing her further, out of respect for her.

What does a boy look like?

@ILoveMaxiBondi as I mentioned, I taught this girl. My observation wasn't confined to the touchline at football.

All I know is that I once taught a kid (aged 12) who was biologically a girl, yet dressed, and clearly thought and acted, as a boy. She was also probably the most unhappy child I ever taught.

This could have been me (not actually, I'm a bit older and wasn't allowed to play football though I wanted to). I "presented as a boy" I desperately wanted to be a boy because I liked doing "boy" things better than"girl" things, and I was generally traumatised due to growing up with a parent with a personality disorder and very weird ideas about "females". Thank God I was just left to it and not pathologised. I'm now a mother very happy in my own body (though I still like "boys" things and am not very feminine). If I was that kid now I'd hope I would be saved from a future of medicalisation and losing the opportunity to be a mother by GC feminists.

@saraclara but she didn’t do anything at all to suggest she was in any way not female. Playing football, havingshort hair, preferring Male company, these are all things girls do. Instead of being accepted as the individual she was she had people assuming there was something wrong with her brain(!) because she wasn’t adequately socialised into the feminine stereotype. How utterly depressing.

when they read very negative and bigoted things

Bigotry: the intolerance of other opinion.

The issue, is the indoctrination of a belief system.

Nobody here has been negative or bigoted towards people purely because they’re trans.

We are discussing training, specifically, and with knowledge of how trans training usually goes down. You didn’t answer my previous questions.

If she never spoke to girls she doesn’t sound like any teenage boy I know!

It's so hard to stop contributing

@BogglesGoggles she was absolutely accepted for who she was. She was neither bullied nor did anyone try to change her. She had great parents who in no way failed to socialise her. But she was not just a tomboy, like my daughter was.

this was different in that she actually chose to look like a boy

So shevregetic harmful stereotypes if girls and boys things?

I hope Sara this girl grew up to be a strong feminist who didn't have any synthetic hormones injected into to her or any surgery. I hope she's happy as she is. Sadly, many many children now will not be so lucky, if indeed she was and escaped this ideology.

This training has no place in the work place. Just like PPs have said, it's like indoctrinating someone into a religion or a cult.

OP, can you do some digging and find out who has constructed the training? It would be interesting to know what approach they take as its online I doubt there is much of a process for questions.

So she referred harmful stereotypes of girls and boys things?

Second time lucky.

She had her hair cut like a boy and always wore boy style uniform and hung out with boys exclusively.

This could've been my best friend. We didn't hang out in school, only outside of school. She was (and I believe still is) a lesbian. Only now, she's ultra feminine, wears loads of makeup and has her now long hair done perfectly.
Just cause someone dresses a certain way doesn't mean that they want to be a man.

Saraclara you received training about Muslims and Christian Africans because you worked in a school that had a high percentage of those religions. It was necessary to understand their beliefs, to understand them. Has op said that she needs this training because she is surrounded by trans gender people? Are her colleagues 90% trans? Then why? This training is becoming compulsory everywhere on the off chance that one day, one of us may work with the 0.5% of the population who are trans. When has this ever happened before?

saraclara - did the training you did on religious beliefs require you to accept those beliefs as true? And were you threatened with losing your job if you expressed a contrary opinion?

@EverardDigby I know what you mean, as I sit here, a straight woman in a happy relationship in my mans jeans, t shirt and steel toed boots. I grew up loving trains and Thomas the Tank, Lego, Star Wars, lord of the rings and making models. I hung with boys because they had similar interests and I hated girly crap like barbie and pink and bang on the door. I’d rather go to modelzone than Claire’s, or a heritage railway over shopping.

If I’d been a child now I’d probably be looking at a life of being told there was something wrong with me and I have been born in the wrong body. I haven’t. I just like stereotypically bloke things

But I've clearly stepped into a hornet's nest

You've come on the thread and called posters bigots.

It probably hasn't occurred to you that most people here started out as wholehearted supporters of 'trans rights'.

The more we read, the more we see, the more we watch our own rights being ridden over roughshod, the more bs training sessions we're sent on, the more times we're called 'bigot' for raising reasonable questions ... the more of us are saying 'no'.

Bigot, infidel, heretic, witch, T**F. Whatever.

@saraclara bitypuypurself said youthoughtthere was somethingdevelipmentally wrong. That doesn’t sound very accepting. Nor does the ref coming over to challenge her participation in the football game.

I've heard a rumour that it's Transforum Manchester doing the training. A look at their training info does not fill me with hope.

Imagine thinking someone had a developmental abnormality in their brain because at one point in their life they had their hair shorter than you thought it should be. That’s bonkers.