How to challenge "trans people are born trans"?

[howtocomplain]

DS is being taught in school that everyone has a gender identity and trans people are born trans and that identifying as transgender "is not a phase", by Allsorts, who have been invited in to do assemblies.

I'm mindful of the government guidance that external agencies must provide content that's evidence-based, and this stuff is plainly nonsense.

Can anyone help me explain this to the school?

Can anyone point me to the source 80% of kids desisting stat? I've heard it loads but it'd be great to have a source.

And anything else that shows that children change their minds about this, or that there are a number of reasons kids may be confused about their sex?

Also, does anyone know where I could find something evidence-based, or written by experts, on social contagion?

Thanks :)

Not everyone has a gender for goodness sake! It’s absolute hogrot. How old is your DS?

What year is he. I would ask for clarification of how this is being taught and how. I think i would send the pshe dept the transgender trend link amd remind them that there is no consensus on this issue even within the trans community

fairplayforwomen.com/stereotypes/

Can you not just refuse to let your child go to those kinds of assemblies? It’s what I’ll be doing, already teach them at home the biological facts of the world. DD is turning out quite gender critical but DS is on the spectrum and him hearing things like that in school terrifies me. He already struggles to differentiate between fantasy and reality, he’s never going to be able to understand things like that and given his tendency to get very obsessive for periods of time (then completely lose interest months and months later), I’ll be refusing every and all kind of in school education on sex and gender.

Do you have the materials used? Or can you ask. It sounds as if they are ignoring guidelines and using materials that are quite wrong.

www.gov.uk/guidance/plan-your-relationships-sex-and-health-curriculum#using-external-agencies

Materials which suggest that non-conformity to gender stereotypes should be seen as synonymous with having a different gender identity should not be used and you should not work with external agencies or organisations that produce such material.

I would say it’s pretty difficult to prove that a child has certain thoughts about their identity FROM BIRTH . Society puts pressure on us to conform to a certain gender stereotype but just because a girl likes let’s say firetrucks doesn’t mean that she is trans. Children go trough phases.
My DS is nearly 2 and always picks out pink Hello Kitty stuff to play with at his play group. That doesn’t mean he is trans, it means he simply likes the pretty color and he likes cats and hasn’t been influenced yet by our society’s gender stereotypes.

Is this their way around not being able to say "born in the wrong body"?

I’d be asking the school what possessed them to think Allsprts was an appropriate third party resource. They are the ones who produce the dice game.

@ConfusedAdultFemale

Can you not just refuse to let your child go to those kinds of assemblies? It’s what I’ll be doing, already teach them at home the biological facts of the world. DD is turning out quite gender critical but DS is on the spectrum and him hearing things like that in school terrifies me. He already struggles to differentiate between fantasy and reality, he’s never going to be able to understand things like that and given his tendency to get very obsessive for periods of time (then completely lose interest months and months later), I’ll be refusing every and all kind of in school education on sex and gender.

My DS already has clear views on this, he's autistic and into science, and is very clear that there are two sexes.

They've had one anti-bullying assembly which included all trans people are born trans, bug they have a whole assembly on gender identity coming up.

Even if he doesn't go to the assembly, if all his peers are taught that to you must agree with gender ideology is bigotry and that his perfectly reasonable opinions on this are bigotry, that's bound to impact him negatively isn't it? And, will the adults back these ideas?

Also his little sister is due to go to this school and social contagion among girls concerns me a lot.

@crumpet

I’d be asking the school what possessed them to think Allsprts was an appropriate third party resource. They are the ones who produce the dice game.

Yes, I plan to ask them that.

As I'm going to be accusing Allsorts of introducing ideas with no evidence,I'd like to show that my views are backed by evidence.

I've read lots of compelling evidence online, kicking myself for not bookmarking it all at the time!

The problem here is the narrative "trans people are ...". Trans isn't one thing, there are a number of different groups under the trans umbrella, for example transsexuals (with gender dysphoria strong enough to motivate them to seriously consider gender reassignment surgery), young people with identity issues, and those having cross-dressing type behaviours.

As far as I know there's no clear answer either way about whether or not transsexuals are "born trans". However, that group probably represents less than 5% of those in the UK referred to as "trans".

Good resources here
safeschoolsallianceuk.net/resources-2/factsheets/
And here
www.transgendertrend.com/schools-resources/

Much of the lobbying over how laws and society must change and what young people must be taught depends on representing the whole issue as relating to transsexuals while they are in a very small minority. In effect, transsexuals are used as a human shield for very diverse groups of people with different needs and motivations.

Whilst the rights and protections for women and girls are being chipped away.

Just how is one minority so powerful?

It would also be interesting to know from the school what they mean by being born trans, given that people claiming a transgender identity mean all sorts of things by it. Are children born with an innate understanding of sex and a knowledge that they are in the wrong body; or are they born gender non-conforming, meaning that they are born with a personal preference for things that are not typical for their sex; or that they are born gender non-conforming meaning that they are born with an understanding of gendered expectations and wanting to reject them; or they are born with negative feeling towards their sexed body and a desire to change it that of the opposite sex or to render it sexless; or that they are born wanting to declare that they are the opposite sex; or what...

If the school (and it is the school, whatever the resources they are using) is claiming that children are born trans, then they need to be able to clearly explain what they mean by trans, so that people can look at the evidence and form an opinion on how best to respond to what is actually happening with a child rather than merely responding to a label as it if the label itself was inherently meaningful.

Ha - took me so long to write that nauticant said it better and in fewer words!

@PaleBlueMoonlight

Ha - took me so long to write that nauticant said it better and in fewer words!

I like your list of questions though, I'd love to see a teacher respond to them. I suspect they haven't actually thought about what they are saying.

@nauticant

The problem here is the narrative "trans people are ...". Trans isn't one thing, there are a number of different groups under the trans umbrella, for example transsexuals (with gender dysphoria strong enough to motivate them to seriously consider gender reassignment surgery), young people with identity issues, and those having cross-dressing type behaviours.

As far as I know there's no clear answer either way about whether or not transsexuals are "born trans". However, that group probably represents less than 5% of those in the UK referred to as "trans".

Yes, exactly.

Good point to mention clarity about what they mean by trans exactly.

I'm not trying to say no person who identifies as trans wasn't born to have gender dysphoria, we simply don't have enough evidence to say one way or another. Certainly there are trans adults who claim to have always known they wanted to be the opposite sex.

But we know this isn't true for all of the huge number of children IDing as trans today. All the detransitioners debunk that idea. I'm going to include one of Keira Bell's interviews, she's great at interviews anyway but one of her more recent ones was particularly good, I need to see if I can find it again. Also David Bell's most recent interview about the other issues children are facing and how transition is medicalising young lesbians.

There's the Lisa Littman study on ROGD, isn't there, is there anything else in this vein? Have there been any more studies on ROGD or detransition? Or any other experts I should quote?

[quote malloo]Good resources here
safeschoolsallianceuk.net/resources-2/factsheets/
And here
www.transgendertrend.com/schools-resources/[/quote]
Thanks :)

@crumpet

I’d be asking the school what possessed them to think Allsprts was an appropriate third party resource. They are the ones who produce the dice game.

OMG, was the dice game from Allsorts?!

Yes, I definitely plan to be asking why they think Allsorts is an appropriate agency to bring into school. They're a lobby group pushing a set of beliefs as fact.

I went on their website to see what actual expertise these people have (I suspect none in child development etc), but it's impossible to tell as their "meet the team" page includes only pronouns, first name and no pictures - no way of knowing who these people are.

I get frustrated generally that most people do not understand how many MH problems are created by society. We are all products of our environment
Society creates fetish too which I find fascinating but there is little research
If you compare different societies the presentation of conditions such as anorexia is often different
Probably less so now because of social media
People don't understand brain development and groups with an agenda are pushing this

The dice game was 🤢
It had different body parts of (missing the clitoris of course) and participants had to say how those body parts could go together for sexual enjoyment. So they might throw a anus and vagina
All of the programmes being pushed come with an agenda. Pushing boundaries. No discussion of risk