Schools and trans pupils changing their name - who decides?

[requiredwriting]

Hello, this is a personal question but I know that you lot will know.

We have entered into Gender Hell and our daughter is now non-binary. She emailed all her teachers to ask to change her name and pronouns, and they did. Before they told us, or she told us.

For about the last week I have accepted this, and now that the dust has settled, I am furious. What are the guidelines on this, does anyone know? I've looked and I can't find any at all. I need to know before I set their collective arses on fire.

For obvious reasons I have name changed, but have been around here before, on and off.

She has a large bust, so feels that she is automatically catapulted into a set of expectations that she doesn't want to meet. She wants a way out of that.

That’s actually made me really sad. I do understand. What a horrible, toxic world we live in that makes girls and young women feel like this (I know it’s common).

Sorry. It’s all so shite. Agree with what you say, bonbonours, so sorry you’re struggling with this too.

I just wish there was another way to protect and raise up these girls, so they don’t fall for the propaganda that they can somehow opt out of being female, and that that’s a desirable thing to do. But I know it’s a huge, huge battle in this world full of extreme porn, Instagram perfection, and hideously rigid “gender” stereotypes. Just misogyny every way you look.

That sounds really hard, OP.

www.bayswatersupport.org.uk/

Is a support group that might be helpful.

gender-critical non-binary - I can almost see the logic of this - it's an attempt to escape gender, yes. Hard as it might seem, though, we can't escape sex. The problem is not one's body or sex, the problem is certain behaviours or societal attitudes. We have to learn how to avoid, mitigate, fight or navigate them, and it's hard.

I wonder if exploring assertion might be helpful, does your daughter feel she has bodily autonomy, can exercise, state and protect her boundaries effectively?

It is almost like looking for a suit of armour, it sounds like, to protect against society's expectations/demands. I really can empathise.

I find this site my go-to for parenting: www.ahaparenting.com/ages-stages/teenagers

@MondayYogurt

Listening to the personal stories of detrans women there is quite often a great discomfort with the sexualisation of being a girl becoming a woman. They mention looking back now and wondering why no one told them the sexualisation and abuse from men was unacceptable and that they didn't have to pretend it was OK or ignore it. Becoming trans was their way of going back to a non-sexual state. So I would suggest opening up a dialogue about boundaries and seeing if she has had any negative experiences with male attention.

Yes to this.

It is almost like looking for a suit of armour, it sounds like, to protect against society's expectations/demands.

I think that sounds like a very good analogy, Arabella.

Thank you everyone, you all make it a bit less lonely.

@ArabellaScott thanks for the link; we are in touch with them.

There’s so much to say but I need to try and relax as my sleep is really suffering, but will come back tomorrow

fakenina:
The school cant change her entry on their MIS system (database) untill she has a medical diagnosis.

TeaAndHobnob
As there's only one option for sex (or gender as all our systems insist on calling it) that would stay the same unless there was a legal change.

Sadly, both these statement appear to be incorrect according to DfE guidance.

Gender should be self-declared and recorded according to the wishes of the parent and / or pupil.

Individuals are free to change the way their gender is recorded. There is no requirement from the department for any legal change or gender recognition certificate and it remains open for the school to amend the gender of any pupil, within their own MIS, at any time.

The and / or in the first sentence might be taken to imply that parental consent isn't needed to change the recorded gender (and hence pronoun use) but I'm sure that interpretation of this will vary between schools.

Right, I'm back although I don't know that I have much sense to share.

@bonbonours Our daughter is 14 as well. From reading other threads on here, Yr9 seems the peak stage for this to happen. What was the social contagion for her? Here, interestingly, it seems to be in school rather than the internet, as we've mostly peeled her off her phone without complaint, but half the class showed up at the online Pride group this week.

@persistentwoman My next job is to see whether the Cornwall guidelines still meet the DofE recommendations now. I suspect not. If anyone knows any links or guidance, that would be really helpful.

@MondayYogurt and everyone else. Yes, basically. I'm at a very early stage of understanding - assimilating lots of information and putting it together logically for non specialists is basically my job and so I am dealing with this via the means of research. But there do seem to be a number of factors which predispose to rapid onset gender issues in teenage girls and a big bust is definitely one of them. Also mentioned in despatches are non-neurotypical (she has ADHD, rather than the ASD which is extremely common), and being gifted, which DD also is. So in short, she feels really different, and this is a convenient outlet.

I think this desire to get out of the pressures of gender and sex is nothing new. I was a fat goth at 16 - and felt different for a whole host of other reasons including being a southerner in Manchester and arriving at a new school in Yr 10 with 4 GCSEs already. I didn't have a hope. But what I observed even then was that female goths were either fat girls who didn't want to be judged by conventional standards, or were extremely pretty and frightened by their attractiveness.

Meanwhile my friend at university was very attractive and spent the second year basically dressed as non-binary in loose jeans, leather jacket, wooly hat, spiked short hair. Just like any non-binary girl now, but without the language to call it that. She also had a pair of dungarees, which were pale brown and made out of sweatshirt fabric, with a crotch which hung down to her knees. Everyone else couldn't understand why she wore it; I knew exactly why, because she wanted people to see her mind (we were at Cambridge fwiw).

So I do understand. But I don't think - as you've said - that any of this is feminist. Go and be who you are but as a woman. But then can you change the prison of gender when you are 14, on your own?

Threads by other parents, soliciting advice from others in similar situations on here will be useful. There was one recently. Taking the focus completely off gender issues seems to be common advice, and encouraging anything that makes the body seem useful or powerful. Singing, rock climbing, whatever.

If it wasn't for the medical pathway, and the issues over changing rooms etc that this all opens up, I don't think all the new 'genders' would be that different from previous generations identity exploring like goths etc. Pronouns, or calling yourself non binary, in themselves don't have to be a problem, if the person reliases that this doesn't stop them actually being female. These are labels and teens play with labels. Obviously it indicates underlying worries that you are finding, but these can be addressed independently of whether she is calling herself non binary or whatever.

If she is 'gender critical non binary' then I can see her logic in a way. If it means she understands that being female just is what it is - and that's not going to change - then 'non binary' is new terminology for an older thing.

However, a child we know was at first 'gender fluid' then came out as a trans boy, and it worries me that in the current climate this is a step towards medicalisation. If that spectre was removed we could just let them get on with it I feel.

@Manderleyagain

"If she is 'gender critical non binary' then I can see her logic in a way. If it means she understands that being female just is what it is - and that's not going to change - then 'non binary' is new terminology for an older thing. "

I agree. The problem is that this immediately comes under the trans umbrella, and the school start talking about their "journey" and it all gets blurred. Plus all the advice for schools is about trans, not non-binary and I think we need clarity.

I have just listened to an audiobook on this exact subject. Abigail Shrier the transgender craze affecting our daughters. It is well researched and opened my eyes. It is American but as applies to us here too. It might help you clarify your thoughts and what to say to the school.

requiredwriting The Cornwall guidelines are marginally better than most of the others - there is evidence that educators were involved and it at times recognise conflicts. BUT, any advice that undermines basic safeguarding principles by advising driving a wedge between a child and their parents and keeping secrets from parents is toxic and frankly all the professionals involved should hang their heads in shame. The Dfe SRE guidance is explicit that safeguarding must always be upheld.
If schools don't share critical information with parents about their children then parents are not in a position to support or protect their children. I've been involved in a serious case review after the death of a child where a teacher decided to keep a child's conversation secret from parents and the child subsequently killed herself so maybe I'm more aware than others of terrible consequences when professionals act in this way. The trouble is that schools (along with everyone else) have become deskilled and are too scared of being called transphobic to engage in critical thinking about this.

Just as a heads up, this thread has come to the attention of the monitors on Twitter and has been screenshot and is attracting comments - just so you remember to be extra safe on anonymity.

@gardenbird48

Just as a heads up, this thread has come to the attention of the monitors on Twitter and has been screenshot and is attracting comments - just so you remember to be extra safe on anonymity.

Then I shall use this as an opportunity to say Detrans Lives Matter Detrans Journeys Are Valid