Changing pronouns / names in secondary schools

[Hotgotthetrots]

Apologies if this is not quite the correct forum, but your help would be appreciated.

My daughter (12) attends an all girls grammar school and is starting to get quite stressed about the constant changing of names / pronouns by a high proportion of her class.

She is very worried that she will be lambasted by her peers if she gets a name wrong, or uses the wrong pronoun as the children who are identifying differently use this as an opportunity to ‘have a go’ at their peers, accusing them of being transphobic or ‘deadnaming’ name. My daughter (who secretly cannot understand the latest obsession with gender identification and the outcry of JKR etc but does keep this to herself) is desperate to not get something wrong as she doesn’t think she would get the support of the teachers if all of a sudden, someone who she who previously had a female name / uses she / her etc has overnight changed this to a non binary name and they / them pronouns. An example was when a supply teacher used someone’s ‘deadname’ when taking the register - the students accused the teacher of being transphobic and it was as if the teacher had to accept this ‘telling off’. When merely, the teacher had never met this person before, so there was certainly no intention to offend.

It seems as though the message for our children is to be kind, to be tolerant, but this is not extended back to them when a mistake I is made. Which is inevitably will be. Any tips on how she can navigate this would be hugely appreciated as she genuinely does not want to offend, but equally does not want to be bullied if she mistakenly calls someone Susan, when they are now ‘moon’.

(And I hate the fact that this is actually a ‘thing’ but it absolutely is - it almost seems contagious in her school!)

This is so stressful for children. You're describing a bullying culture that's developing and the adults must step in and stop it. The only way teachers will intervene is when parents complain. I'd contact the Head and make the same comments that you've made on here. Your daughter (and all other children) must be protected from this bullying - as that's what this is.

The school culture is in the power of adults to influence. They need to intervene and put in place some boundaries to stop individual children creating a climate of fear about this.

There needs to be a very clear message to students that weaponising pronouns in this way is unacceptable. The example you give is a classic example of children undermining the authority of a supply teacher and it's the perfect opportunity for the school to give a clear message to children about undermining a teacher's authority with made up nonsense.

Schools must step in and stop this happening.

I can quite understand how that would create anxiety in this setting.

I don't know what steps schools can reasonably take to stop such behaviour escalating but it needs appropriate management if this isn't to become a way of abusing teachers or bullying fellow students.