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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

English teacher tells class that JKR is transphobic

348 replies

QpopTYUIop9 · 25/03/2021 17:41

Just that really.
I'm absolutely fuming.
30 kids now "hate" JKR apparently.
This is an abuse of influence surely, not to mention a worrying lack of critical thinking.
I've printed out the "transphobic" tweets so my Y7 child can make up their own mind. With a lot of ranting from me in the background Angry.

OP posts:
Aroundtheworldin80moves · 26/03/2021 12:08

Harry Potter... Where you have a character that change their appearance at will to look like whatever they like (male or female), other people who can change into animals, and potion which makes you look like another person.

Wandawomble · 26/03/2021 12:20

@toffeebutterpopcorn can you take the spoiler down so it doesn’t ruin it for anyone else? These TRA’s and their hatred of books does my head in. I understand why you wrote it in response but urgh!

adviceseekingnamechanger · 26/03/2021 12:24

Love how tra poster writes 'thanks for making me feel at home' and a passive -aggressive heart.

Do you think women here should just be nice and accept all your beliefs because women should be kind and nice and accepting? Shouldn't have any ideas of their own? Shouldn't politely and robustly critique yours on a public forum? And when I say politely, I mean free from death and rape threats.

Honestly, the entitlement.

MissBarbary · 26/03/2021 12:25

@DodoPatrol

It’s really not ‘transphobic’ to know that transgender people remain their birth sex. It’s in the definition. If they weren’t their birth sex, they wouldn’t be transgender.
A point Blaire White has made often.
MissBarbary · 26/03/2021 12:27

[quote Xanthangum]It was a children's educational website called The Day @gardenbird48

www.theguardian.com/society/2020/jul/23/childrens-news-website-apologises-jk-rowling-trans-tweet-day[/quote]
Did they ever apologise and/or correct their embarrassing wittering in the same article about "Wagner’s Fifth Symphony"?

Wandawomble · 26/03/2021 12:28

@adviceseekingnamechanger

Love how tra poster writes 'thanks for making me feel at home' and a passive -aggressive heart.

Do you think women here should just be nice and accept all your beliefs because women should be kind and nice and accepting? Shouldn't have any ideas of their own? Shouldn't politely and robustly critique yours on a public forum? And when I say politely, I mean free from death and rape threats.

Honestly, the entitlement.

Women should be nice and kind and let ideological beliefs corrode our safety and the safety of our children.
andyoldlabour · 26/03/2021 12:28

Shizuku

Please supply evidence from actual biologists who are not based in the US. I do not trust anything which comes out of that place anymore.

TinselAngel · 26/03/2021 12:36

@RufustheSniggeringReindeer

How is "Stark" a pun? Are you getting it mixed up with "Strike"?

Yup,

So they don't know the name of the main character in a book they've read?
Erkrie · 26/03/2021 12:37

I think it's incredible that people come out of schools with no clear knowledge of the basics of biology. Instead resorting to crappy references that have no scientific or observational basis. People clearly go to great lengths to bury their heads in the sand. What a world.

Igneococcus · 26/03/2021 12:42

I'm a scientist, a biologist, with a PhD and almost 30 years of research and a publication record and I wouldn't sign that piece of waffle if you'd put a gun to my head.

EdgeOfACoin · 26/03/2021 12:51

Is biological sex that complicated?

My husband and I recently decided to start a family. Did we:

a) carefully discuss the merits of either of us bearing a child and going through childbirth; consider the impact that pregnancy and maternity leave would have on our respective careers, and then make a choice as to which one of us would carry the child; or

b) embark on the process knowing from the outset precisely which one of us would be able to gestate and birth a child (assuming no fertility issues) and accept biological reality?

Currently one of us is experiencing fatigue, extreme hunger pangs, constant nausea and semi-regular bouts of vomiting. One of us is discovering that this is having an impact on our work productivity.

Can anyone on Mumsnet guess which one of us is experiencing these symptoms and explain why?

Xanthangum · 26/03/2021 12:56

If its your husband, you're about to make history Edge!

TalkingtoLangClegintheDark · 26/03/2021 13:03

My understanding of biology is derived from actual scientists who, en mass, say that sex differentiation is extremely complex.

What you should be feeling is raw terror that things have got to a state where apparently rational people can put their names to bullshit of that order, and horrifying numbers of people lap it up.

This doesn’t say anything good about where society is at all. Far from it. No surprise that it’s from the US: however bad things are here, at least there are more outposts of sanity and rationality than over there.

To address your point: how complex was it to differentiate the sex of your parents? Is it a mystery which one of them did the impregnating, and which one conceived you, gestated and birthed you (and possibly breastfed you)? Are you saying there’s any actual doubt about any of this, in your case or in the case of every other human being on the planet, who’s ever lived?

Sex refers to reproductive capacity. And it is on the basis of our reproductive capacity, and the relative vulnerability that arises from the fact of being female, that women (female people, who carry the entire burden of reproductive labour) have been oppressed by those of the male sex for thousands of years.

Any attempt to obfuscate that must necessarily be to the disadvantage of the group that has been oppressed, and is still being oppressed, and to the benefit of the group doing the oppressing. Which is why the movement you support and promote is a covert male supremacist movement.

Two sexes, Shizuku. Two. And barring an absolutely tiny number of people with extreme forms of DSD, it is not complex at all to differentiate between them. Which fact the male sex have used to their advantage for millennia. And are still doing now. And you are enabling them. FFS.

JSL52 · 26/03/2021 13:05

Wow , I'd complain definitely and ask her to point out her evidence.

TalkingtoLangClegintheDark · 26/03/2021 13:05

@Igneococcus

I'm a scientist, a biologist, with a PhD and almost 30 years of research and a publication record and I wouldn't sign that piece of waffle if you'd put a gun to my head.
Well said.

Dark days when so many apparently educated people will twist the truth in that way and call it “science”.

TalkingtoLangClegintheDark · 26/03/2021 13:06

Congratulations, Edge! Smile

TalkingtoLangClegintheDark · 26/03/2021 13:20

@QpopTYUIop9

Believe me I'd love to (and still might) but my child is terrified of the fallout on them - they are all like sheep and now the whole class believes the narrative.
OP, I really feel for you. There’s no doubt this warrants a complaint, or at the very least further investigation, but in terms of possible fallout for your DD, I can absolutely see why you’re hesitating.

Y7 is such a tricky time anyway - navigating the change to high school, new friends, burgeoning independence, and of course puberty. Peers are becoming more important than parents, and peer approval is vital. And this year they’re going through all that in the middle of a pandemic, with all that that involves. Of course you don’t want to make her life any harder for her.

But it’s also why it’s spectacularly bad of the teacher to make this comment.

I’d worry also that the teacher saying that indicates the school may well have been Stonewalled and they’ve all had the training, from one org or another, which would make them less likely to be receptive to a complaint, could even generate hostility. Can you do some digging on their website and find out if that’s the case?

EdgeOfACoin · 26/03/2021 13:26

@TalkingtoLangClegintheDark

Congratulations, Edge! Smile
Thanks, Talking!

Sadly, Xanthagum, we're not going to be making history anytime soon. Shame, because we could have done with money from the publicity.

It seems that for us, like for 99.9% of the population, biological sex was remarkably uncomplicated.

And for those of my friends who had successful fertility treatment, it was still possible to predict which one of them would ultimately bear the child. Turns out that the IVF clinic didn't even ask about gender identity.

ArabellaScott · 26/03/2021 13:29

Aw, Edge! [floweres] Congratulations!

ArabellaScott · 26/03/2021 13:29

Flowers, even!

Justhadathought · 26/03/2021 13:30

The teacher is making a perfectly valid claim in my opinion and I entirely agree with them.

I used to be an English teacher; and therefore I know it is not the business, or the job, of the secondary school teacher to be inflicting ideological beliefs on young minds in this way.

ArabellaScott · 26/03/2021 13:33

Wanda, I like this and would like it on a T shirt:

ideological beliefs have no magical power

EdgeOfACoin · 26/03/2021 13:34

@ArabellaScott

Flowers, even!
Thanks, Arabella!

Tbh, I wasn't after congratulations or trying to derail the OP's thread.

It's just that the whole 'biological sex is complicated' argument galls me at the moment in a way that it wouldn't have done even a few months ago.

ArabellaScott · 26/03/2021 13:36

I remember my teachers at high school being at great pains not to disclose their political, religious or other beliefs/associations. Even, and probably particularly, RE and politics teachers (modern studies). At the time we thought it was funny to try to guess and get those beliefs out of them - now I see that they were protecting both themselves and us, as is right and proper.

ArabellaScott · 26/03/2021 13:37

It's not a derail, it's a baby!!! Smile