To Feel Really Saddened That DD's School can't say Daughter or Girl

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I went to a my DD's high performing Central London Girls school last night for an introduction to year 8 where they mainly talked about attendance.

We then had a talk by the form tutor in the classroom. I noticed that during the entire form tutor chat she was referring to the girls as children. This wasn't an accident because at one point she nearly said daughters but stopped herself. I've noticed my daughter talking about the girls in her class as "people". I've also seen her gender PHSE work from year 7 which says if you misgender someone it is an act of violence. Hmm what about obliteration of gender?

I am profoundly dismayed by this and feel that the school is complicit in the stripping of girls/women's identities. How can "inclusivity" mean that the females have no identity whatsoever?

Am finding this whole situation really really disconcerting. Something nefarious has penetrated the school system. How can fundamental biological/physiological fact be washed away by "lived experience".

@YouMeandtheSpew

Women are people. They are a group of people who face systemic oppression to varying degrees around the world. If you can’t identify an oppressed group, you can’t tackle their oppression.

Same sort of principle as ‘All Lives Matter’.

This is the main issue! Nothing anti-trans about it.

So many of the challenges and prejudices women face are highly unique. Why don't we come up with a new phrase so that we could say girls and X? Wouldn't that be more inclusive?

Maybe you could tell the teacher she identifies as a girl so its ok to call her one?

It all feels a bit of an own goal really. How can transwomen be women if women aren't women? Is misgendering is an act of violence why are they refusing to refer to anyone by their gender?! It's so hypocritical and lacks any common sense.

One (boys' school) head has said they think this may be the end of single sex schools, as a significant number of the teens see themselves so much on a spectrum these days

There was a time when schools would have put teenagers straight when they voiced unscientific illogical views. Now they are affirmed and sceptics are admonished. What a time to be alive.

herecomesthesun, that is depressing - that teens “see themselves on a spectrum”.
Sex is categorically not a spectrum, it is a simple binary.
One can only speak of a spectrum if referring to dated sexist gender stereotypes.
A girl is still a girl if she likes football, war games and tech. A boy is still a boy if he likes pink, crochet and dolls.
These obvious truths have been lost sight of in this regrettable rush back to the 1950’s in terms of “identity”.

@NotQuiteUsual

It all feels a bit of an own goal really. How can transwomen be women if women aren't women? Is misgendering is an act of violence why are they refusing to refer to anyone by their gender?! It's so hypocritical and lacks any common sense.

Exactly this!

Why can't the school say girls and people? Then everyone is included, surely?

I think it's very telling that the staff member giving the talk started today "...daughters," and checked herself.

Clearly there is an agree vocabulary set from which certain sex-specific words have been excised. There's some right-speak and right-think going on which strongly suggests the school has been Stonewalled. It should be somewhere among the policies on their website.

If the language for sex differences is eliminated, we will find it harder to articulate sexism, perhaps even to perceive it. We will certainly have trouble complaining about it.

Have you ever discussed something important to you with someone who refused to grapple with the issue you were raising but instead found fault with the words you were using to express your views? It's like shovelling smoke. That's where we might be headed.

...to say, not today!

It is very interesting that a thread about girls is immediately re-centred to put trans at the fore. Why is that? We have seen masses of this recently from politicians - ask a question about women, the immediate reaction is to go straight to trans.

It appears that women and girls just cannot be spoken about without reference to another group.

Most strange.

What exactly is a 'girls' school' if girls can't be named? The logical next step would be to shut their doors and apologise for having existed.

I've also seen her gender PHSE work from year 7 which says if you misgender someone it is an act of violence

I would ask to see the PHSE head of department and ask what type of violence it is? Violence is the use of physical force to injure, damage, etc. So I'd be very concerned if girls in the school are using physical force when they use pronouns. That should be stopped. If not, then why are they teaching children incorrect vocabulary? How does that fulfil their duty to educate children and keep them safe from harm? What if, for example, a girl was experiencing actual violence from a parent, another girl or member of staff? How would she have the language to explain this when useful words are being stripped of their meanings?

I don't know. My daughter goes to an all-girls school, and there are a few trans-identifying students. I don't think it's a big deal as statistically, it's vastly unlikely any of them will be trans-identifying by the time they're 20 anyway, and either way the important thing in the meantime is for them to be happy and do their best at school. The school, which I would say is very old-fashioned in a lot of ways, takes a very laid back attitude too and still refers to our daughters and the girls though.

Most importantly, I think it's significant that a tween or teenage girl who is identifying as a boy is NOT refusing to go to her all girls school or insisting on moving to an all boys school. Everybody - the child, the parents and the school - is happy for "Sophie-who-is-now-Alex" to have short hair, wear trousers instead of the school skirt AND to be at an all girls school, changing with the girls, sharing rooms with girls, doing PE with girls and carrying on perfectly as normal.

With that in mind, I would trust the school. They are handling a huge number of teenagers with all their fragilities and passionately held opinions and feelings, and they are doing it on the basis of many years of experience.

They ARE children/pupils/students, so I would let the school do their bit. You trusted them enough to send your daughter there for a reason.

Girl just means juvenile human female so its absolutely inclusive of everyone in the school.

Pretending you cant see sex doesn't mean all the sexism and struggles dont exist. It just means you have no words to describe them.

Those girls however they identify are still juvenile human females and will still all suffer from it taking 7 years to dx endometriosis, or being forced to function after major abdominal surgery on a poxy paracetamol.

But hey yeah let's all talk about " people " and everything's a "people problem" and there's fuck all that links all the people who suffer from it

If boys were failing at school and that was missed because the girls higher grades raised the average I'm.sure oarebts would suddenly be upset that tebur boys were failing and nothing was done about it because " look the children are doing fine "

I've also seen her gender PHSE work from year 7 which says if you misgender someone it is an act of violence

Did the SCHOOL say it was an act of violence, or did your daughter say this in her homework?

@NotQuiteUsual

It all feels a bit of an own goal really. How can transwomen be women if women aren't women? Is misgendering is an act of violence why are they refusing to refer to anyone by their gender?! It's so hypocritical and lacks any common sense.

Exactly. Absolutely no logic whatsoever. How ideas like this can enter places of learning is beyond me.

I suggest emailing the head cc'ing the governors asking why girls are not being described as such anymore, and asking if they're so afraid to mention the girl/women words, do they plan to change the school name or the entrance policy to include that most educationally disadvantaged group of all - boys?
I suspect this is being driven by a tiny number of girls with gender issues. But they've thrown the baby out with the bath water here for a girls school not to acknowledge the existence of, well, girls.

@FangsForTheMemory

Oh give the anti-trans stuff a rest!

Why is it anti trans to refer to female children as girls and daughters?

Interesting point @astoundedgoat about the benefit of being able to keep trans-identifying girls in an all girl environment - for safety and for it to be a reversible decision.

OP you sound like hard work

Accept that things are changing or move schools

@Whatwouldscullydo

Girl just means juvenile human female so its absolutely inclusive of everyone in the school.

Pretending you cant see sex doesn't mean all the sexism and struggles dont exist. It just means you have no words to describe them.

Those girls however they identify are still juvenile human females and will still all suffer from it taking 7 years to dx endometriosis, or being forced to function after major abdominal surgery on a poxy paracetamol.

But hey yeah let's all talk about " people " and everything's a "people problem" and there's fuck all that links all the people who suffer from it

If boys were failing at school and that was missed because the girls higher grades raised the average I'm.sure oarebts would suddenly be upset that tebur boys were failing and nothing was done about it because " look the children are doing fine "

When you sit in a meeting and they constantly refer to daughters it is irritating. I feel like standing up and saying we aren't all their parents, have some bloody respect for the kids who are in care beit family or LA and for their carers.

Everyone studiously ignoring ancientgrans very valid point about why referring just to 'daughters' in that kind of setting might be inappropriate

If it's a school for people then anyone can go, right?

How would they explain to the parents of a boy person that their child wasn't able to go to the school?

A teacher having to self-censor the actual material reality of a situation? What kafkaesque nightmare is this?

@Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g

One of the many things that bother me here is the unthinking assertion that women and girls who have no gender identity issues are a privileged group. In relation to trans and non-binary people, we are considered equivalent to white people in relation to other ethnic groups, ie we are privileged, and oppressive by refusing access to single sex spaces, services and language. There appears to be no grasp that we are actually ourselves at risk of violence and sexism, and we need these separate spaces, services etc for our safety, dignity and privacy.

@spindrifting
Absolutely. A certain nakedly aggressive strain of TRA, which has managed to get an astonishing amount of mainstream traction, has managed to convince society as a whole that women and girls are in fact an oppressor group unwilling to share privilege with an oppressed minority.

Yes to all of this! It's scary how completely this is taking hold. It's utter lunacy. It is now becoming mainstream to actually use the trope that women are the oppressors as a tool to oppress women.

And we have to remember as many women go along with this, that the suffragettes were opposed by many women who could not see past the dominant ideology of their day.

I’m a bit torn about this one.

I am very angry about the current attempts to erase women from politics and trample over our rights, but I would like to de-gender our language a bit.

I’d like to be able to call children ‘children’, or use they/them a bit more in general conversation, without feeling like I’m being rude not referring to gender. I think it puts too much emphasis on gender, which really shouldn’t be the most important thing to hang your identity from.

That’s not what is happening here though. It’s not about being more inclusive by removing gender from the language, it’s trying to take the words women and girls and changing them so they can be used differently, and then replacing them with odd, seemingly biological, identifiers. It’s insensible. What’s needed is a new term that encompasses what they define trans women + women as, but because most women reject gender stereotyping, there isn’t anything that works —because gender is a load of old bollocks—.

@Microwaveableteapot

Everyone studiously ignoring ancientgrans very valid point about why referring just to 'daughters' in that kind of setting might be inappropriate

I missed it entirely - sorry!

Very good point: girls and children works fine IMO.