Art Museum surprise

[Poppyisa]

I went to an art museum today, with my infant school age daughter. The exhibit was by a female scientist turned artist, celebrating women in STEM. A girls guide group was there on a field trip, as were lots of other parent and children.

Lots of hands on exhibits that’s kids especially enjoyed. One of them was this multi choice questionnaire. I hope you can read it. I wasn’t prepared to answer this and I saw a couple of other parents looking equally baffled. FYI other questions were on climate change, food production. I’d like to follow up with the Art Museum, but all I can come up with is WTF!

What
Have
I
Just
Read
🤢

Exactly my thoughts. My kid can read and as she started reading it out loud, I couldn’t believe my ears.

Please complain to the Museum- what a complete, scaremongering load of offensive rubbish. As others have said, hard to know where to start with it.

There is no biological basis for ‘being transgender’, being transgender is a purely political category. Gender dysphoria is not prerequisite for ‘being transgender’ therefore.

‘Being transgender’ is not even a stable category politically- there is no social consensus on who is or isn’t transgender- and it is certainly not a biological reality that you can find a gene for. Laws do not allow embryo selection apart from for avoiding the birth of babies with very serious genetic diseases.
The suicide statistics on transgender people on the UK are routinely misused and it’s appalling that they should be further trivialised in this way with this ignorant quiz.

Are people really this ignorant and irresponsible as to present to kids and the general public that this IVF prospect is realistic? Despite the fact that all of this is anti-scientific nonsense that wouldn’t be legal?

How absolutely insulting to families who have to make real choices about avoiding terrible inherited genetic conditions to set this nonsense dilemma up like anything like what they have to go through. It’s appalling.

I would be interested to know who is promoting and funding this because I would be very worried what they might try to ‘prove’ with the results of this nonsense. What a wasted, misleading anti-scientific inclusion in an exhibit supposed to be about women in STEM.

What??

I think the art project is a way of collecting data on what they would call “transphobia”.

I would answer E, take out a pen and write

THERE’S NO SUCH THING AS CISGENDER AND TRANSGENDER EMBRYOS FFS.

Hope this isn’t derailing, but in other Art Museum Surprises: I just spotted this schools pack for art teachers by the Tate Gallery.

My goodness it has some offensive dogma nonsense in it. (As well as some reasonable questioning of gender norms. What a missed opportunity.)

www.tate.org.uk/download/file/fid/122609

It calls Transgender Trend ‘a hate group’, too:

‘It’s important to note that in 2018 in the UK there is a multifaceted attack on transgender
people, including children, and that this attack – which includes outing young children, threatening violence to transgender women, encouraging ‘conversion therapy’ to ‘make’ children cisgender, sending death threats to youth workers, and trying to slow legal advancements for transgender citizenship – is also situated in the classroom.
For example, Stonewall responded to a UK hate group masquerading as experts which had recently insidiously produced and disseminated a ‘school resource pack’ that claimed to support gender non-conforming children. Stonewall commented that it ‘is a deeply damaging document, packed with factually inaccurate content’, claiming, contrary to research and experience, that
children being transgender is ‘just a phase’ that will be ‘grown out of’ and, as Section 28 did for gay young people, tries to withhold information and support from young transgender people. Stonewall continues that it ‘actively encourages schools to take steps that risk them falling foul
of their legal duties and duty of care to pupils.’
There is an extremely high rate of suicide amongst transgender children in schools. Recent studies show this risk of violence-to-the- self is negated almost entirely when children are given help and support in presenting as the gender they know themselves to be. Being outside in public can be even harder for gender non-conforming people of all ages – transgender women and feminine people, and especially transgender women of colour face huge rates of street harassment, among other more physical kinds of violence.
Being supportive of all transgender and gender non-conforming young people, having conversations about gender in the classroom and being open to having more than two genders, are all radical acts, and ways to build a radical classroom!‘

That is not art. That is disguised marketing, like those surveys which ask you questions about whst you know about their services, in order to inform you that they offer those services.

Furthermore, why is this a question for a "Women in STEM" exhibition? The whole point of observing "Women in STEM" is that women at least deserve consideration that there may be systemic barriers to women in this prestigious and important field. This is not the place for promoting the validity of transgender people. That would be better served by a dedicated exhibition because this exhibition is about Women in STEM.

I know I sound like an evil scientist myself, wanting to leave ethics out of an exhibition about science, but shoehorning in eugenics to an exhibition (which one hopes would be a celebration of) women in STEM is a particularly low blow. If we're going to consider systemic barriers to women in life, not just in STEM, let's consider sex-selective abortion of females. www.bbc.co.uk/ethics/abortion/medical/infanticide_1.shtml. We know selective abortion and eugenics are bad. Focus your eugenics questions on a group more able to change things! And you can take any sexist "born in the wrong body"ideas out of an exhibition about women in STEM, too.

What

The

Actual

Ever living

Fuck

And that Tate thing. What a load of twaddle.

Eurgh. What the fuck is a cisgender embryo?! Which gallery was this at? Going to the Tate is one of DDs favourite things to do, I'm thankful she can't yet read.

Please put the gallery?

I'm passed caring what people think of me.
So I would have laughed very loudly, and if any member of staff was around I would have asked lots of questions.

What the hell?

"after 5 years of intensive research"

As a woman in STEM I find that a rather optimistic timeframe. These people have never done any actual labwork, I bet.

And that Tate thing. What a load of twaddle.

And probably libellous. If I were Stephanie Davies Arai I'd get a nice scary lawyer's letter off to them.

Hmmm I wonder which option I am supposed to pick??! How extraordinary.

And that Tate item What has happened to critical thinking in this country?

I'd do what NotBad did. Consider it spoiling my ballot.

Well it does say ‘deposit your slip in the bin that corresponds to your answer.
Mine would be paper and card recycling.

What "Art Museum" is this?

This 'scientist turned artist' doesn't seem to have a realistic grip on how research works - funding, ethics committees etc.

Or genetics

I don't have any words.

THERE’S NO SUCH THING AS CISGENDER AND TRANSGENDER EMBRYOS FFS.

I'll pinch Notbad's even though they're too polite.

Dear goddess.

WTAF?

Also in the Tate Gallery guide thing

"We also have single-sex facilities such as toilets, changing rooms and sometimes accommodation. Develop a culture where you simply accept that people choose the right facilities for them."

Why on earth would you tell teachers and children to develop a culture where they don't view a random male in the girls facilities as dangerous and problematic.

If I believed in anything other than material reality, then Jesus would be weeping.

Complain to the gallery. This brainwashing of children and adults has made it out of the cult commune and into mainstream. What fresh hell is a 'cis gender embryo'? This needs adding to the whatabouttery list.

I hope Stephanie picks up on this defamatory statement by Tate.
Let me guess, the Stonewall trainers again?