trans social contagion more likely in single sex school?

[Twistiesandshout]

Inspired by another thread.

We have to choose between single or mixed sex senior school for DD. DD is not "girly' at all, and actively rejects stereotypical girl behaviour etc.

Lately with all the social contagion trans things I am reading I am getting worried about sending her to a single sex school. The girls school is my/our preferred choice and proudly states it is empowering young women of the future which I love.

So I thought I would ask here do you think social contagion is more or less likely in single sex school?

all UK state schools are supposed to provide an act ofworship.that'sadly Christian in nature. Or at least that used to be the case 7 years ago, no idea if it's changed

This isnt true.

Religious observance was terminated in some local authority areas over 10 years ago.

It also doesn’t apply to independent schools.

My DD is at an all girls school and after discussions with her friends announced that J K Rowling wasn’t transphobic but she maybe could have phrased things a bit better! In the current climate, I was pretty happy with this.
I have spoken to the school lead on PSHE and they didn’t seem to be using any of the organisations I found concerning and were keen to ensure both that girls weren’t restricted by stereotypes and that they didn’t make any irrevocable decisions while too young. They talk lots about the developing teenage brain, which makes sense to me and so I am happy with their approach.
I am sure it depends on the school culture so probably is worth having an informal chat with them if you are concerned.

@RoyalCorgi yep. Key reason I sent my DD to an all girls school and saddled myself with fees as a single mum.

I am disgusted with the abuse that boys are able to get away with against girls in mixed state schools.

Even our local one which is really good has issues with this.

'Social contagion trans thing...' WTF?

I am more concerned about the intolerance, stupidity thing that seems to be transmitting.

You are going to have to be the major influence in her life to counteract any nonsense she may encounter at school.

I've been drumming into my children from a very early age that there is no wrong way to be a girl or a boy. They are crystal clear that what sex you are isn't demonstrated or changed by what you like or who you like. They also know that other people believe in girl-things and boy-things. But that we think that's sexist nonsense.

It's like a vaccination of common sense. They encounter these daft ideas that other people believe they are 'female-brained' but they already know it's wrong.
They're immune.

I'd work on having some good conversations with her now, regardless of which school you choose.

(And I'd probably choose the girls if I had the choice)

I worry about this too. I’ve chosen an all girls school for my ASD DD. The options were two girls school, a third if we were catholic, and a new mixed academy who aren’t set up for ASD kids just yet. Being free from sexual harassment is a big plus as it was horrendous when I was at school in the 90s.

DD is already talking about sexuality and gender despite not knowing what sex (how babies are made) actually is, I had to tell her after she refused previous attempts and a book I’d given her. She started dressing as a “Tom boy” after getting close to another girl who’s spoken about gender and was into “boy” stuff. Before this we had a boxes full of Disney princess dresses and my little pony that she asked for and loved. Also had train sets etc, before I get jumped on.

There’s no doubt school peers have an impact, even if the internet is the catalyst.

Are there any trans girls in all girls schools?

@ElectraBlue

'Social contagion trans thing...' WTF?

I am more concerned about the intolerance, stupidity thing that seems to be transmitting.

It is not intolerant to ask why there has been a 4,000 % plus increase in girls hitting puberty and suddenly deciding that they don't like their developing female bodies and want to become boys. It's not stupid to ask why so many political lobby groups focusing on trans issues have been suddenly allowed into schools to influence policy, safeguarding and pastoral care practice and to advise children that they might have been born in the wrong body - to the extent that the DfE have finally had to ban this. It's responsible to ask why so many adult led trans groups are advocating medical transition for children while said adults retain all their body parts and merely self identify It's safeguarding children to ask why so many trans polices advocate schools transitioning their children in secret from their parents.

This is all about children's safety and wellbeing.

But it's intolerant to look at all the young females who, when given a binary choice between identifying as "girls" or "boys", decide that the latter corresponds more accurately to how they feel, and assume that they must all just being suffering a "social contagion". It's very dismissive language.

What a lot of people seem to overlook is that "Identifying" with the "gender" that supposedly corresponds to your sex IS still a gender identification. People seem happy for girls to go on "identifying" as girls, and even expect them to do so, when really they shouldn't have to do anything of the sort. There's no reason why one's biological sex should be any more a decisive category of self-identification than whether one is tall or short, thin or fat, white or black etc.

Personally I think the whole binary choice thing is false and restrictive and we need to get beyond it, but society clearly isn't there yet. In the meantime, I don't see why a female saying they have a male gender identity is any worse than saying they have a female one. Both are just products of social conditioning - one by mainstream society and the other by youtube activists. They shouldn't feel they have to have either.

You tube activists are part of mainstream society, in fact, there are a range of actors all constructing 'gender identity'. What is new is the assumption of agency, that one actively chooses an identity. That agency is also socially constructed, as in choices that don't necessarily have anything to do with sexual difference being interpreted as 'gender identity' choices.

To make this a bit more tangible: I like grey cardigans. What does that say about my 'gender'? Fuck all, methinks.

Back to the OP: there are ways of asking these questions, and there are plenty of teachers who are not on board with the brave new gender world. If parents don't ask these questions, teachers will continue to uncritically adhere to advice given by ideologues.

At the end of the day, the conversations you have with your child at home will influence her more than anything she'll encounter at school.

People do observe that the uptake for genderist politics is quite a middle class thing, it would be interesting to know if that’s true and if so, whether it is reflected in school intake vs their pupils’ gender identity decisions.

I wonder if it's the lack of day to day contact with the other sex at a single sex school that makes you think that if your aren't like your friends then maybe you are like the other sex, as you have an unrealistic idea of what they are like, and how much you will be accepted as one of them by that sex.

My daughter has been at a girls school for two years. My observation is that while bi and gay girls seem to be out much earlier than they were in my youth, the incidence of gender neutral and trans students is quite low and reflects what I would expect to see in the outside world.

I’ve found an all girls school a great environment to celebrate being female, regardless of what this looks like. My DD14 doesn’t wear makeup, loves her doc martens and embraces her D cup breasts.

But Fifteentoes it is dreadful gender stereotyping. If a girl likes jeans, hoodies and clumpy Doc Martens and playing with stereotypically boys toys is she really a boy?

Or can we say that boys and girls, men and women, can wear the clothes they want, have the jobs they want and the hobbies that they want without being told they were born in the wrong body.

Your sex is your sex and that is that. Accept who you are. Live the life you want but without pretending to be something that you're not and never will be.

It isn’t a category of self-identification though, being a girl or a boy is a matter that exists outside of identity, in exactly the same way as ones height, weight, date of birth etc. do

I have been told that I am a cis-woman - that I am comfortable with the gender I have been assigned. The ideology does suppose that unless you are trans, you have by choice, elected to be a girl and yes, that you accept the stereotypes that go along with that.

I think anorexia is more common in girls schools, isn't it?

If I'm right in thinking that, then I'd suspect trans ideology is also more prevalent in girls' schools as it has the same kind of social contagion element and often for the same reasons as anorexia (self harm / trying to supress puberty).

However I think the overall school ethos is most important. What message are the DC getting from the school? Does the school practice affirmation? etc

Anecdotally, the two girls I know who have identified as trans both go to single sex schools. In both their schools there seems to be a group of girls who identify as trans or n-b and encourage each other eg one group of friends clubbed together to buy one of the girls a binder. I think it may be easier to identify as a boy when you are not confronted on a daily basis with teenage boys and what they are actually like.

I think single sex schools for girls promote more of a ‘You can be and do anything you want as a girl’ and actively work against stereotypes so I’d choose single sex if it’s the best school.

However, obviously schools can vary so it does no harm to ask a few questions. You can frame it in a positive way.

@UrsulaVdL

What a lot of people seem to overlook is that "Identifying" with the "gender" that supposedly corresponds to your sex IS still a gender identification. People seem happy for girls to go on "identifying" as girls, and even expect them to do so, when really they shouldn't have to do anything of the sort. There's no reason why one's biological sex should be any more a decisive category of self-identification than whether one is tall or short, thin or fat, white or black etc.

It isn’t a category of self-identification though, being a girl or a boy is a matter that exists outside of identity, in exactly the same way as ones height, weight, date of birth etc. do

I think the problem is that that's not what teenagers hear (or at least not all they hear) when they are asked "are you a boy or a girl?" The way that question is framed within society as a whole is not confined to biology, so even if you would give an answer that corresponds to your biology, that's not all you would be saying.

I suspect that people on this board like to imagine that a biological female saying "I'm a girl" is just accepting certain facts about her biology and that's all. That's easy for us to say with a whole tradition of feminist theory fighting against gender stereotypes behind us, badly sadly I think it's still not how most people perceive it. Particularly when they're first discovering and coming to terms with what it "means" to be a boy or girl, in terms of sex, relationships, careers and wider social participation as an adult.

I just sometimes wonder if we could be kinder towards these young people and try and understand what it is they're trying to tell us, within the clunky and misleading language that society equips them with.

But Fifteentoes it is dreadful gender stereotyping. If a girl likes jeans, hoodies and clumpy Doc Martens and playing with stereotypically boys toys is she really a boy?

No of course she isn't, but at the same time I don't think the reasons teenagers have for calling themselves trans are necessarily as superficial as that.

My son went through a period in which he dressed as a girl and called himself one. I think in his case it was because he didn't like the boys he knew and couldn't make sense of their aggressive and competitive way of relating to each other, while he was developing some close friendships with easygoing girls. His interests weren't particularly "girly" and didn't particularly change.

It's tough as a teenager to work out where you belong and who you belong with, and whether we acknowlege it or not the terms "boy" and "girl" are loaded with significance in terms of that.

Your sex is your sex and that is that. Accept who you are. Live the life you want but without pretending to be something that you're not and never will be.

I don't think most teenagers who call themselves trans are pretending to be something they're not though. I expect most of them accept the reality of their biology, they just use the words male and female to mean something else. If a biological girl tells us that their sense of self, personality and identity corresponds more to what society calls "maleness" than "femaleness", who are we to say they're wrong?

I know there is an extreme position that biological sex itself doesn't exist, which is obviously ridiculous. But I don't think many people even among those exploring this stuff go that far, do they?

Oh Jesus Christ, can we stop with "be kind"? Can we just stop with the implication that the dedicated, loving, caring parents, teachers and professionals on this board are unkind ? That we're not in real life supporting and listening our children and young people and (in many cases on this board) navigating very difficult situations with them?* And that instead of also looking at the bigger picture and thinking, talking, acting on the issues and concepts at play here, what we really need to consider whether we're really being kind enough yet?

Women have the opposite problem. We are usually being too bloody kind.

*Thankfully I'm not in this situation but it's not hard to find women here who are, who are bending over backwards to understand and support their child without fully caving to this ideology.

@FifteenToes I see from your last post that you have more personal experience that I do with children's gender identity issues, so perhaps you didn't need all of my lecture. "Be kind" is a phrase that will drive many of us into a fury in this context though...

Some of the language used about young people who call themselves trans or make statements we find difficult to understand is quite dismissive, condescending and at worst ridiculing. The OP of this thread is a case in point: Calling it a "social contagion" seems like a way of saying that these young people can't really have thought about it properly or be saying anything serious, they're just going along with a trend.

I don't think this should be a deciding factor in choosing a school, but I think it depends on the cohort.

My experience of going to a single sex school back in the 80's was that compared to my mixed sex primary school, there was no expectation that girls should be 'girly'. However it was quite a high pressure environment and eating disorders were relatively common, so I wouldn't say it was all lovely.

I expect most of them accept the reality of their biology, they just use the words male and female to mean something else. If a biological girl tells us that their sense of self, personality and identity corresponds more to what society calls "maleness" than "femaleness", who are we to say they're wrong?

Honestly, in an ideal world, everyone should be shouting as loudly as possible they are wrong, because they have swallowed and are endorsing a load of sexist nonsense that does real harm to women and girls.

However, in reality, that won't get you very far when talking to a teenager.