Transphobic DD.

[Viennabreathes]

I’m fuming as I type this so I apologise in advance for typos/mistakes.

DD3 came home from school today a bit flustered. I’ve got out of her that her and some friends were discussing trans rights/issues in Ethics today (it’s a compulsory class they take but not an actual GCSE so it isn’t too structured and the teacher lets them debate whatever they see fit if it’s in a controlled manner).

One of DD’s friends said if she was a rape or domestic violence victim she wouldn’t feel comfortable having to share a prison cell or
changing room with a trans woman. A girl in their class immediately stood up and shouted at DD’s friend, calling her a transphobe and telling her that she’s ‘uneducated and completely misinformed’.

DD stood up for her friend and this led into a bit of a debate, from what DD and her HOY have told me, DD said the following:
-‘If you have a penis, you’re a man. It’s simple’
-‘Can you be quiet for a second and let someone else get a word in? You keep interrupting and calling us transphobic to shut us down as you can’t bear us having different opinions’

I got an email from DD’s Head of Year today saying that she has an hour detention next Monday due to an ‘incident’ which happened in this lesson today.

DD was honest with me. This same girl called her a ‘cis girl with no fucking brain cells’, to which DD replied, ‘I’m a girl, not a fucking cis girl. If you think people can identify as trans, I identify as a woman. Not a cis woman.’

Yes DD swore. But after being spoken over and provoked for 30 minutes.

I don’t see why she is in this much trouble and she tells me when the Head of Year spoke to them both, she was forced to apologise to the other girl (if she didn’t, she would have been kept out of lessons with this girl until she did) etc.

My child is not transphobic and frankly, I agree with most of what she said.

AIBU to email her HoY and book a meeting to discuss and support my DD? DH thinks I am overreacting.

Bravo wellbehavedwomen, excellently worded.

If any of this is remotely true then good on OP’s DD for standing up for herself - I’m just slightly skeptical about this first time poster and her teenage DD’s argument that sounds exactly like a mumsnet script.

... - I’m just slightly skeptical about this first time poster and her teenage DD’s argument that sounds exactly like a mumsnet script...

Go on, you've piqued my interest. As someone who's apparently a newcomer yourself, what are you suggesting OP's motives are exactly?

A bit of attention, probably.

Another thanks to wellbehavedwomen on this. I too initially took the stance that GC women were exaggerating the problems and was myself proven wrong in my research. I had not, however, come across the powerful article by Marcus Evans, so thank you for providing links.

OP, I usually support the school in their right to issue detentions, but this seems utterly ridiculous. I'd definitely want to speak to the HoY to get a proper understanding of what the detention was for, and how exactly the teacher has manage to lose control of a discussion to the extent where students were insulting and swearing at each other.

It's interesting and bloody boring those flinging accusations of transphobia ... on any thread discussing a poster's child who the OP says may be trans, posters like this can often fall over themselves to tell us "you must be kind, it's a child FGS".

This thread is also about someone's child. Why doesn't that courtesy and respect get extended when the shoes on the other foot?

How did you get on today OP? Did you see the HoY?

Hope you got to see the Head today and that it went well.

Sorry, it was late when I posted and some links are wrong - thanks to the poster who alerted me to that, as the BMJ one especially is important (weirdly, a stray 'the' at the end redirects to an unrelated article):

BMJ link

Rhona Hotchkiss link

"choke on/suck my dick" link.

I also forgot to link the NYT article, discussing the UN international findings around unpaid work performed by women, and the Guardian report on the findings that 1 in 200 people alive today are modern slaves, 71% of whom are women.

I was worried it was too long and derailed the OP, so thanks to people saying they valued it - and I hope, OP, you've had a constructive conversation with the school today.

Sadly medical doctors like Alice Roberts - who digs up skeletons and determines their sex by the skeletons - is in the TWAW camp.

I don’t think she is a medical doctor - I believe she is an archaeologist. Her bodies don’t correct her!

I think she is a medical doctor. And if I am wrong she might be an anthropologist. In other words, a doctor for whom actual biology is the basis of her qualification.

That must make excavating graves very problematic.

Thanks all,

I’ve organised a meeting for Thursday with the HoY. Will be armed with facts and ready to support DD.
I’ve passed on all your lovely messages to her.

Great to hear Vienna. You’ve been given loads of information (much of which I’m very grateful for too). I guess it will be a case of keeping calm. Listening to them first. And then coolly repeating back to them what they’ve said to you (take notes if it helps) just to ‘clarify your understanding’. And then defend her to the hilt for her right to state her beliefs in a debate without being attacked or insulted or abused. If she swore she should admit that wasn’t appropriate but that it was in response to being verbally attacked herself. Ask to see any ‘guidance’ they might be using and go in armed to the gunnels with yours. Best of luck!!

Safe Schools Alliance will be able to offer some really good support and help here, Vienna.

Your poor daughter. I worry for all girls in schools the way things are. I hope you get the out come you want. Being branded transphobic and made to apologise is shocking.

Viennabreathes please accept a message of support for you and your brilliant DD from me too.

She’s a star. And so are you for bringing her up so well, and having her back.

Good luck tomorrow.

Good luck!

My feminist mates had been trying to get me to pay attention to the erosion of women’s rights for ages, but I was very much in the ‘be nice’ camp. It was my ASD son coming home from 6th form saying he’d been called a transphobe that finally made me engage.

He’s grown up around all sorts of interesting, counter culture people, including some transwomen, so I was baffled. I thought maybe he’d got the wrong end of the stick due to his ASD so I asked him what he’d actually said?
Which turned out to be that sex and gender are separate and gender roles are socially constructed, largely to oppress women, but that some people find life works better for them if they take on the appearance of the opposite sex and/or the roles associated with the opposite gender.

Which is exactly what he’d been taught at home (he had ACTUALLY been listening to me 😂). His school peers, however, had been arguing that sex is socially constructed and gender is an inborn character trait!

Well, off I went to Google to find out WTF his classmates were talking about, promptly fell into the gender identity rabbit hole, through the radicalisation portal and lo! I landed here, on FWR.

It was when Cancer Research UK switched the word woman for the phrase ‘anyone with a cervix’ that I started making contact with real-life networks of women resisting this shite.

So, your daughter is not alone. Children raised by feminists (in the old sense of the word, not the ‘sex work is work’ choosey choice, empowerment nonsense of the word) are likely to clash with the PoMo queer theory they are being spoon fed in schools.

The more of us who go in to schools and point this out, the better.

How did the meeting go @Viennabreathes ?

www.theguardian.com/society/2018/oct/11/karen-white-how-manipulative-and-controlling-offender-attacked-again-transgender-prison

Hopefully click link

I can see why MTF should go to female prisons, no risk at all. 🙄😏🤔

Hope it went well OP

Any updates?

Dr Dr Alice Roberts (as she would be addressed in some countries) is both an MD and a PhD. But still not very bright.

Book smarts isn’t necessary ok the same as being bright.

My sister had a friend who was a nuclear physicist. It was a standing joke the she was flummoxed by the microwave (not how it worked but how to make a baked potato). She was very impractical.