10yo son accused of being transphobic, help me write to school

[flowery]

I am trying not to be too angry, but my 10yo came home yesterday saying I'd be pleased to know what he said about transgender at school. It was a discussion amongst his friends, not with the teacher present and not as part of a lesson, and he'd said it was not possible to change sex.

Apparently one of his friends said he was transphobic for saying so. He doesn't seem worried and doesn't want me to make a fuss, and it doesn't sound like it was said to him in a nasty way. But I'm not happy.

I've got no reason to think the school is teaching any gender woo stuff, I don't think they're particularly 'woke', but I want to check. I'm also not sure what to do about the accusation. I don't want my son to feel he can't express a view or say biological sex is real without someone else accusing him of any kind of 'phobia'.

He's not shy and is popular and quite a strong character, but that's not the point.

I have the new government guidance so I am planning to write to his teacher, probably in a 'not making a fuss don't want to get anyone into trouble' kind of way, just asking how they teach this subject and reiterating that I would like to be sure that it is clear to children that someone disagreeing with them isn't a phobia, that it is is not literally possible to change sex, and that differing opinions are perfectly fine.

I seem to remember someone somewhere linking to some kind of table done by the NHS where it says it's not possible to change biological sex. I can't find it, does anyone know what it was and perhaps have a link?

Plus any thoughts on how best to handle it would also be appreciated.

Not possible to change sex but it is possible to change gender with operation and medication.

Why do I want to be wonder woman and not super man like all the other boys? Why did I tend to look to older girls for social cues and imitate them to some extent even as I tried really hard not to? Is there something internal, something I was born with, that did that? Could that be a gender identity?

And I was just the opposite. And I had female role models around me, but I looked to the males and I preferred Batman over WW and still do. This is the problem with using these as signs of being a different gender. I also loved Brian Ferry, Boy George, Marilyn, ACDC, Annie Lennox and Bananarama. What of it? It never made me think that I might be male even though I wanted to be very much.

"Not possible to change sex but it is possible to change gender with operation and medication"

Does that not mean that gender is just presentation of a stereotype?

I've not RT whole T, but please don't contact DS's teacher! They have got more than enough to cope with at the moment!

@caringcarer

Not possible to change sex but it is possible to change gender with operation and medication.

Not possible to change sex but it is possible to change one's appearance with operation and medication.

I think this version is more truthful.

@JenniferSantoro

I wonder what message you give him at home for him to come home and say you’d be pleased with him saying a person couldn’t change sex. It sounds very much like the narrative you’re feeding him at home is transphobic, rather that neutral. A ten year old doesn’t just develop these views without input from someone.

This.

Are you suggesting that facts are transphobic Prettybubblesintheair?

As a SciFi fan, I find this disturbing.

If you concede that human sex changes could one day be possible then at what point would the change happen. Chromosones, reproductive capacity, testes changed to ovaries, uterus implants, hormones, surgery? Surely at what point the change happens is a matter of opinion? There are no objective facts here.

This is all about destabilising and rewriting science to suit a group's agenda. Calling fact's 'opinions' because one day in centuries or millennia to come someone might develop robust enough gene editing (maybe through nanotechnology) to be able to change a persons cells permanently to sustain a permanent change of the majority of cells to the other sex to then sustain the extreme cosmetic surgery needed to finish the newly 'sexed body' is quite a reach. And yes, even then, unless a transporter beam can reconstruct the body completely with modifications to the skeleton, brain size, lung size and other differences that will not be able to be changed once fully developed, no one can fully change sex. Maybe a foetus can.

It may never actually be possible, or it may be possible but ruled out as unethical, and it may actually happen. Either way, it cannot happen to a degree that a body can magically change sex or to produce the hormones needed to sustain the changes.

That is a FACT now in this timeline. There is absolutely no data to suggest that this is possible. Therefore it is a FACT that it is merely a theory. Just like we are not capable of warp speed and to use transporters to beam us down to new worlds.

To state this is an opinion is the perpetuation of denial of proven science over wishful thinking.

(This is an opinion.) To me it is clear that it is a similar move to destablise language in the name of inclusivity. Women have been called vulva people, vulva owners, cervix havers, birthing people, menstuators. All the while men are just called men! Hardly inclusive, and hardly freeing women from the millennia of oppression that we still had not freed ourselves from.

Either way, it cannot happen to a degree that a body can magically change sex or to produce the hormones needed to sustain the changes.

should be

Either way, it cannot happen now to a degree that a body can magically change sex or to produce the hormones needed to sustain the changes.

How can stating that changing your physical sex is impossible be anything other than neutral as it is simply the stating of a scientific fact.

@Angryresister

In a world where women can lose their jobs etc after an accusation of transphobia, we should certainly not do nothing...

This.

[quote jj1968]@OldCrone

By definition, 'gender identity' is an identity based around the concept of gender. So this 'internal sense' must be based on how well we feel we conform to the socially imposed (or expected) behaviours. From this I understand that 'gender identity' is the internalised form of how we feel about the stereotypical behaviours expected of members of our sex. So it has to be all about stereotypes. How can it not be?

Well I don't think gender identity is that for most trans people. Certainly not for me, I couldn't really care less about gender, I've certainly played around with it, but no way could I be bothered to do the whole hair and make up thing every day and I think that would apply probably even more if I'd been born female. If I could flip a switch and be whoever I wanted, or whatever I feel would be most comfortable, I'd probably be a fairly butch woman. My issue is really with my body and always has been, and that causes discomfort, or dysphoria* But of course gender, as a social force is unavoidably to some degree part of how we see our bodies and sense of self. I can make myself 'look' like more of what society has imprinted on me that a woman is supposed to look like, and to some extent that lessons dysphoria. On top of that are the social pressures involved in Patriarchy. Simply put the more femme I look, the better I pass, the better I'm treated and the less likely I am to face random abuse. It's not nice being the freak everyone stares at in the street so there is pressure to adopt feminine stereotypes and live up as best I can to feminine beauty standards (which of course comes with it's own price in terms of being more sexualised, and femme trans women are highly sexualised by a lot of men as a kind hyper-sexualised exotics). But I think the vast majority of trans people would like to get rid of the social pressure that gender inflicts. I also think there are some trans people who really just prefer the sterotypes and aesthetics of the opposite sex to the one they were born. Is that just gender dysphoria manifesting in another way, I don't know, but I don't think it's an invalid way to live, I think we need structural change to free ourselves from patriarchy and criticising people for personal preferences of expression is antagonistic really to building the kind of movement necessary. A bit like environmentalists lecturing someone about going vegan whilst ignoring the power plant in the backyard.

*just to add to that, there is something which puzzles me which is why did i automatically have female role models from a very young age. Why do I want to be wonder woman and not super man like all the other boys? Why did I tend to look to older girls for social cues and imitate them to some extent even as I tried really hard not to? Is there something internal, something I was born with, that did that? Could that be a gender identity? I really don't know, I find it quite hard to square with my own analysis of gender in some ways, but it was a thing, and despite quite happily doing boy's things as a child (I had little choice back then anyway) I never really fit in and wasn't quite like them and throughout childhood my role models were always women.[/quote]
What strikes me most about this post, is how (apart from the last paragraph), you are equating 'gender' with appearance. For women, the issue of 'gender' goes much deeper than the superficial issue of appearance, and for me, at least, my appearance is hardly of importance at all.

The only times it concerns me is if I am attending a formal event, where I aspire to look smart and appropriately dressed. In normal day-to-day life I think it barely matters at all.

I do think we'd all be a lot better off, though, if men had the same freedoms as women do to dress in a way that was as masculine or as feminine as they want. I can wear my men's t-shirts and men's jeans and nobody even notices, but when a man dresses in 'women's clothes', he is labelled a crossdresser.

But if we are going to achieve this ideal, we're not going to get there while gender nonconformity in appearance is equated with 'gender identity'. Men should be free to wear 'women's clothes', but that doesn't make them women or 'transwomen' or people with a feminine/female gender identity. It makes them men who are expressing some part of their personality through their clothing.

if you concede that human sex changes could one day be possible then at what point would the change happen. Chromosones, reproductive capacity, testes changed to ovaries, uterus implants, hormones, surgery? Surely at what point the change happens is a matter of opinion?

As a scientist interested in scientific ethics, I find this along with other “trans humanist” theories disturbing because they always fail to address the moral question. For example taking a consequentialist moral standpoint:

1. what are the costs to society at large of pursuing such extreme interventions?

2. what are the benefits to the individual pursuing the extreme intervention?

3. does 2 outweigh 1? Always or only sometimes? Do we know going in?

4. If 2 outweighs 1, who pays the costs in 1? How will society ensure that costs and/or benefits are distributed equally?

The same questions in bioethics must be addressed for any radically new medical intervention to be used. In my experience most transhumanist thinkers absolutely refuse to even consider societal costs - they consider benefits and costs from a radically individualistic (libertarian) point of view. Fortunately plenty of pushback against this has always existed - see GATACA

Re: scientific plausibility:

I do think it will likely be possible within this century for stem cells taken from males to be induced to develop into viable ova which could be fertilized by sperm. And the opposite as well (female stem cells made to become sperm). I would be willing to concede that this is a case of biological sex changing in the Petri dish. However the sex of the individuals donating the tissues to begin with doesn’t change. They still have “the type of body shaped by evolution to produce small (or large) gametes in an anisogamous species”. In fact most people that would do this likely would be gay males and females not trans people.

In any case, this intervention would be extremely expensive so we are back to our analysis above. Who pays? If society pays, what benefits are there and are they distributed fairly?

I do not think physical sex change in individual humans will ever be possible, and I think that uterus transplants into males are ethically indefensible because of the issue of the inability of a child to be conceived in this way to consent to the unknowable risks they were put through during pregnancy. And that doesn’t even get into who the uteri would come from. I feel similarly with artificial wombs as well. And again we have the question - quo bene?

@peachsquish

Love to know where you think all the organs will be donated from. Can certainly imagine many women , myself among them, would rather remove themselves from the organ donor register than have their organs used in a Frankensteinesque experiment to validate delusions.

And the obscene use of time and money it would require for such a vanity project. Whilst everyday actual women around the world will probably still be dying giving actual birth

@OldCrone

Are you suggesting that facts are transphobic Prettybubblesintheair?

Well I certainly am. Not in themselves, but depending on the context and way in which they are expressed.

I'm sure if you consider the point a bit more you will be able to think of facts that could be racist, sexist or homophobic if you said them in a certain context and a certain way.

Well I certainly am. Not in themselves, but depending on the context and way in which they are expressed.

The fact under discussion was that people can't change sex. The OP was happy that her son understood this scientific fact. Is this fact transphobic? If so, why?

I'm sure if you consider the point a bit more you will be able to think of facts that could be racist, sexist or homophobic if you said them in a certain context and a certain way.

I'm happy to consider examples if you'd like to provide them, but my understanding is that 'phobic' and 'ist' terms imply prejudice and opinion, whereas scientific facts are objective facts. I'm also happy to be proved wrong and admit to being wrong if there's something that I've failed to consider.

As a scientist interested in scientific ethics, I find this along with other “trans humanist” theories disturbing because they always fail to address the moral question.

And it's noticeable that the conversation is always framed as "turning a man into a woman" not "turning a woman into a man". Why are we talking about uterus transplants and not testicle transplants, the challenges of retro-fitting erectile tissue and the exact point at which the female person would become a true male with no difference whatsoever between him and a man who was born male?

(That's a rhetorical question - I know exactly why. The men thinking about this see themselves as indivisible units of human, while females are collections of parts)

@Graciebobcat

OldCrone

Are you suggesting that facts are transphobic Prettybubblesintheair?

Well I certainly am. Not in themselves, but depending on the context and way in which they are expressed.

I'm sure if you consider the point a bit more you will be able to think of facts that could be racist, sexist or homophobic if you said them in a certain context and a certain way**

This is true.

Legally in the UK you can change gender. That is the law as it stands. You may not agree, but it stands.

The context of the fact stated by OPs DS is not clear. If his peer was saying for example that they wanted to become a woman, change their gender from being male. Using semantics by stating the fact that they cannot change biological sex, was a step beyond reasonable or necessary, unless qualified with, 'but you can change gender".

The context of the fact stated by OPs DS is not clear. If his peer was saying for example that they wanted to become a woman, change their gender from being male. Using semantics by stating the fact that they cannot change biological sex, was a step beyond reasonable or necessary, unless qualified with, 'but you can change gender".

These are 10 year old children. All they need to know about this is that they can't change sex.

If another boy is saying he wants to become a woman, he should also understand that this is not possible. Nobody should be telling him that he can change sex.

he’s obviously repeating what he hears at home

kids are usually naturally accepting of differences in others

^These are 10 year old children. All they need to know about this is that they can't change sex.
^^
^If another boy is saying he wants to become a woman, he should also understand that this is not possible. Nobody should be telling him that he can change sex.

This.

They can change gender. Fact.

@chickenyhead

They can change gender. Fact.

What is "gender", as it is being used in this sense? What is actually being factually and measurably changed?

The context of the fact stated by OPs DS is not clear. If his peer was saying for example that they wanted to become a woman, change their gender from being male. Using semantics by stating the fact that they cannot change biological sex, was a step beyond reasonable or necessary, unless qualified with, 'but you can change gender".

It's not semantic at all and it's a reasonable and essential grounding in reality that kids need.

Changing gender is a euphemism for using hormones and surgery to try to emulate the opposite sex. It's not a benign experimental phase kids can play with.

As we have now seen.

The right to change gender is in the legislation as is the definition. You unfortunately don't get to choose which laws apply. Might be worth reading a bit more about the law.