Gender identity teaching in schools

[Serenschintte]

Do DS 14 has just told me that next week he will have two lessons during PE about gender identity.
We are not in the Uk but in Europe. He’s at an increasingly ’woke’ International school where at the start of the year all pupils were asked in all classes for their pronouns. First year this has happened.
Of course he has Pe on Monday. I’d describe myself as gender critical. DS is 14 and with 0 interest in dating etc right now. He’s very geeky and science focused .
Anyway I have asked 1. Why were parents not told about these lessons? and 2. What are they going to be teaching the students?

Any other questions I should ask?

Fortunately I can remove him from the class so he isn’t exposed to any nonsense.
The schools line is usually that they won’t be teaching anything just informing the kids. But given that we have already been told the sex and gender club will be educating the school community I am somewhat dubious of that claim. Thank you

He’s at an increasingly ’woke’ International school where at the start of the year all pupils were asked in all classes for their pronouns.

It seems very cruel to force 14 year olds to choose a gender identity. They really haven't thought this through.

It seems very cruel to force 14 year olds to choose a gender identity. They really haven't thought this through.

It's also in contravention of Yogyakarta 6f, although I'm no advocate for those principles nor how they were drawn up without consideration of the needs of women (as Prof Wintermute now regrets).

Ensure the right of all persons ordinarily to choose when, to whom and how to disclose information pertaining to their sexual orientation or gender identity, and protect all persons from arbitrary or unwanted disclosure, or threat of disclosure of such information by others

yogyakartaprinciples.org/principle-6/

*Wintemute, Professor of Human Rights Law at Kings College London, is an expert on anti-discrimination law and sexual orientation law, and was one of the co-authors of the influential “Yogyakarta Principles”.

He now says the international human rights community got it wrong in merging lesbian and gay rights with the idea of a right to have “gender identity” replace sex.

sex-matters.org/posts/updates/yogyakarta-principles/

That's all good and great, until the child grows up and sees gender diverse people, when the child gets a job and an employee comes out as trans or non binary, they will have no idea what it means and will seek help from forums who also have no idea what it means (ref: the thread about the non binary employee). There are real world implications as shown on this forum. Education is the way forward imo, censoring isn't helpful.

I would guess that at this moment there are roughly 7.8 billion gender diverse people in the world.

Gender is cultural and societal expectations of how a people should behave, feel and present because of their sex. Expectations vary over time and from place to place, so aren't innate. It is certainly true that some people define their identity according to gender (a belief system), and that some people feel such extreme gender dysphoria that they feel they can only live comfortably as the opposite sex. Other people just experience gender as an oppressive restriction on their freedom.

It should be possible to teach about gender without insisting that each child choose a gender identity, just as it should be possible to teach about religion without insisting that each child express a belief in God.

If the school is insisting on pronouns, they are not teaching about the belief, they are teaching the belief itself.

@anaily

In the real world i will see and meet people of different religions, like i will see and meet people of diverse gender. Being educated about the real world is useful, there is a thread about an employee coming out as non binary in another thread where the op is lost on how to handle it because of a lack of resources or education. This entire forum is evident of that. There is no hope for anything remotely pro trans here, it will be censored and deleted, criticism of gender is allowed while criticism of anti gender is not.

You can't have read that thread if you think that education about gender identity would be the answer.

The OP is not HR, but asked to do the job of HR by the OP's bosses, who refuse to issue guidance on how to square the circle of employee rights and client expectations.

The OP is working with extremely conservative clients who are paying millions for a service. That service does not involve the client being required to re-educate themselves about the doctrine of gender identity and and what its proponents hold as beliefs. If this becomes a requirement, the client will spend their millions elsewhere and the OP will be penalised by the OP's bosses.

However, the OP wants to do right by a soon-to-come out non-binary employee. So do the three bosses directly below the OP and above the employee. So that's four management levels seeking to do right by this employee. They are all also aware of their obligations to female employees under the Equality Act 2010.

Would you please tell me how education about gender identity would help in this situation?

If the school is insisting on pronouns, they are not teaching about the belief, they are teaching the belief itself.
Society and most schools insist on pronouns and gender assignments based on sex. Which is really distressing/annoying when you don’t conform. The way out is to ditch ALL pronouns. Its “children”, not boys and girls. Its “they” not “him/her”. Asserting the gender and sex are the same is the ideology. Gender is a societal construct (similar to religion), nothing more, nothing less.

I don’t want my child to be taught there is anything “wrong” with their body or behaviour that could be cured if only they took these (irreversible) hormones (that will make them sterile for life) and make the other half of the population uncomfortable with their forced presence in formerly single sex spaces. I equally do not think it is healthy for a child to be actively encouraged to keep secrets from parents. Same as I reject religious teachings that say we are all sinners from birth and if only we pay enough tithes we’ll be cured, but you have to tell the priest everything - it’s nonsense. I will be removing my child from any of these sessions if I am informed of them - though they seem to be held by stealth a lot of the time, I wonder why that is?

I’d like my child to be taught that gender is a construct and just because you are a boy or a girl, it doesn’t dictate what you have to like, wear, do, or who you have to fall in love with. Because no one of one sex can possibly ever know what it is like to be the other one, that is very simple.

Many cultures for centuries have practiced some form of communication with ancestors, but Western spiritualism was a product of the trauma of so many lost to war and disease and the novel idea of telecommunications that led people to believe you could talk to the dead and the dead could talk to you.

It was guff, pushed by charlatans on the make.

It was a world where people were credulous enough to believe in the Cottingham Fairies, promoted by Arthur Conan Doyle, who was not a fraud, just an educated fool.

"The OP is not HR, but asked to do the job of HR by the OP's bosses, who refuse to issue guidance on how to square the circle of employee rights and client expectations."

What is the actual issue? That the employee is non binary and the op is gc so there is a conflict there, the conflict being gc, not the non binary. Telling hr that an employee is non binary, like what do you expect hr to do? No specific issue was raised. As for conservative clients paying millions for a service, does that give them the freedom to pick and choose which employees they are willing to interact with? If a male client is against a female client is that acceptable behaviour? Does that justify sexist behaviour and sex discrimination?

If a male client is against a female employee* is that acceptable behaviour?

Society and most schools insist on pronouns and gender assignments based on sex.

Do they insist or is it the convention for which there is now an available option in settings (including schools like the one attended by the OP's child) for those that wish to avail themselves of it?

"The OP is not HR, but asked to do the job of HR by the OP's bosses, who refuse to issue guidance on how to square the circle of employee rights and client expectations."

A reminder that there's a point at which continued discussion of a different thread can lead to a risk that the thread on which it happens is deleted for being TAAT or the specific posts are.

What "gender assignments based on sex" do schools insist on?

Woodwork for boys and cookery for girls?

What "gender assignments based on sex" do schools insist on?

Schools routinely separate secondary age boys and girls for PE lessons, and in many cases they learn different sports. Some still have separate uniforms (though this seems to be dying out). I can't think of any others tbh.

@ChloeCrocodile

What "gender assignments based on sex" do schools insist on?

Schools routinely separate secondary age boys and girls for PE lessons, and in many cases they learn different sports. Some still have separate uniforms (though this seems to be dying out). I can't think of any others tbh.

Not at all. The norm today is for PE to be team-taught to a mixed group, with a male and a female PE teacher supervising.

Are you confusing PE with Sports/Games?

Are you confusing PE with Sports/Games?

Probably - my school calls it all PE and they are separated by sex for anything physical. You sometimes get an opposite sex teacher leading the lesson though, as our specialist hockey coach is a man and the main rugby coach is a woman. The academic GCSE and A level classes are obviously mixed though.

Yes, PE is a National Curriculum GCSE subject, with written exams and everything.

....And for Sports, pupils are separated by sex, not gender.

There is every difference in the way that homosexuality is taught and the way gender identity is taught.

Teaching that some people are sexually attracted to people of their own sex is teaching a fact. That we also tell children that in our society that is seen as equally valid as being attracted to the opposite sex is teaching a value that almost all of us share.

Teaching "gender identity" is teaching something as fact that is at best far from proven and that many people profoundly disagree with.

"employee coming out as non binary in another thread where the op is lost on how to handle it"

There is nothing to handle. There is nothing going on here. No one gives anything about how anyone else's personal identity falls into their personal stereotypes around 'gender'.

anaily you are just a liar, aren't you?

"In the 80s parents said they don't want their kids learning about homosexuality.
In 2020s its transsexuality. Same thing different era."

Sexuality is very much not the "same thing" as gender identity.

Honestly, I'd move schools.