Born in the wrong body

[jessmin]

My DS has used this phrase in relation to people who want to change gender identity. He has been taught at school as part of RSE that “it is possible for someone to change their gender identity if they really really believe they were born in the wrong body”. His words.

I've emailed the head teacher asking to discuss and am reviewing all the guidance from safe schools alliance.

My biggest concern is that I don't know what on earth he has been taught. Their online curriculum map and lesson plan did not mention gender identity or ideology at all. I didn't question the content because I naively thought they were not going there yet. It's Yr4. I now want to review all the material and teaching guidance notes.

I'm also concerned about him having the phrase 'born in the wrong body'. Can you help me explain why it's wrong to use that term? I'm not sure I'm articulate enough to get it across when challenged.

Update: spoke to head and happy with how it went. Explained how it wasnt within the lesson plan to cover as a topic but was brought up by a child asking questions on the back of another question about pronouns. Pronouns came after a discussion about how families can be made of different people - 2 mums/2 dads etc.

I pointed out the DfE guidelines on born in the wrong body and head is not aware of the 2020 change so has said they will look in to it further and ensure they get it right in future when covering this topic. I explained that a few charities that provide support to schools immediately changed their materials and that there are other organisations that have reviewed all the materials for schools to say whether the comply or not etc. This was all news to him. I think I will follow up with a link to safe schools alliance as a starting point for him.

Thanks for all the advice on this one.

Well done for standing up and having your say. People doing that is how we're going to get back to sanity.

[quote ArtemesiaK]This must be it, I thought it was longer ago...
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/1147874.stm[/quote]
I remember that. i think of her sometimes and wonder of it is still her dream or if the role has changed so much in recent years that she now regrets it.

Glad it went well, OP - although it's obviously not great that it happened in the first place, it's very reassuring to know that the school were just a bit clueless as opposed to deliberately pushing that stuff.

IME, it definitely doesn't hurt for the head to know parents are aware of equality law and current guidance - it can only raise standards so you've done them all (and the pupils) a huge favour in pointing them in the right direction.

Well done OP.

Either inclusion is really a thing or it isn't. There are other protected characteristics and telling disabled kids people can be born in the wrong body is just beyond unacceptable.

Good for you op. You should send the school Genspect's school guidance, that will give them a steer. Most - not all- schools are more clueless than ideological linksharing.samsungcloud.com/avTKBGKsZqoN

[quote KlaraSun]Good for you op. You should send the school Genspect's school guidance, that will give them a steer. Most - not all- schools are more clueless than ideological linksharing.samsungcloud.com/avTKBGKsZqoN[/quote]
That link won’t work when I tried it, says expired.

Do you have another one? Or info where to find this?

I’d likely want to send it to school also.

Ty!!

Sorry about that, here's the right link, it's brilliant: genspect.org/wp-content/uploads/Schools.pdf

[quote KlaraSun]Sorry about that, here's the right link, it's brilliant: genspect.org/wp-content/uploads/Schools.pdf[/quote]
Thanks I’ll send it. Have passed a long ssa & tt documents and have argued & argued & they are finally sort of listening. But another source will help do ty.

Don't see the problem with "wrong body" the child did not talk at all about disability or body shape/size.

Personally I would definitely NOT be pleased if I had a penis!!!! I would be much more upset about having a penis than I am about being a little chubby or not liking my nose

Also the "wrong" body parts is a very big problem when it comes to, for example, bathrooms and changing rooms!

Personally I would definitely NOT be pleased if I had a penis!!!!

How do you know?

You'd have been brought up differently since birth. You'd be a totally different person. Your brain will have formed according to your experiences, which would be different to those which you have experienced.

How do you know if you'd been born a boy you wouldn't be a happy one?

Imagining you've suddenly grown a penis overnight, but nothing else about you has changed, is like some fanfiction porn. It doesn't happen.

You are your body, your body is you, there's no "inner soul" versus "meat suit"* thing. Everything you know and everything you think you know is absorbed and experienced through your physical self.

• I know someone with a chronic condition who likes this way of thinking, but a lot of that is tied up with guilt at being ill.

@grey12

Don't see the problem with "wrong body" the child did not talk at all about disability or body shape/size.

Personally I would definitely NOT be pleased if I had a penis!!!! I would be much more upset about having a penis than I am about being a little chubby or not liking my nose

Also the "wrong" body parts is a very big problem when it comes to, for example, bathrooms and changing rooms!

Are you assuming that disabled and chronically ill children won't be capable of listening to all this in class and drawing their own conclusions?

Can you really not see the harm in this for them?

Good for you, OP.

Well done for challenging this, OP.

@FlyingOink I meant as in if I was transwoman I would hate having a penis because I would see it as a part of something I'm not.

Don't know where the confusion to disability comes from! Like I said, the kid didn't mention anything about that at all. This was never a confusion when I was growing up and we weren't as "woke" as the new generation

@Artichokeleaves kids need to learn that not everything is about them!!!! so a disabled child is learning about transgender people and hears it as if it's applied to their disability?.... that's a stretch....

I was definitely born in the wrong body. Cindy Crawford got mine in a terrible twist of fate. I don't think I'll ever get over it.

There is no such thing as being born in the wrong body, and teaching young children at a very impressionable age that it is such a thing is cruel and dangerous.

Many children, not just able bodied, neuro typical children go through stages where they are at odds with thier bodies, this is a normal stage of development, responsible adults should not be pathologising that.

I meant as in if I was transwoman I would hate having a penis because I would see it as a part of something I'm not.

But how can you know that? You can feel sympathy but you can't know how you'd feel about your penis if you had been born male and then identified as trans. Plus only 5% of transwomen have genital surgery, it was on a survey done by a transactivist group (GIRES).

Not that I'd wish the surgery on anyone, it's experimental with no set procedure and terrible revision, infection and failure rates, plus lots of maintenance required.

Well done OP. We all need to challenge schools who have fallen down this rabbit hole. That genspect paper is very good and alongside the information from Safe Schools Alliance, Transgender Trend there's now lots of information to use to help counter the dangerous misinformation in schools from the queer theory advocates.

There is no such thing as being born in the wrong body, and teaching young children at a very impressionable age that it is such a thing is cruel and dangerous.

If you've ever seen those videos where little black girls are asked to pick the best or prettiest doll or picture, you'll know how heartbreaking it is to see children internalising what they are shown by society. Those little girls pick the white ones, they know they are seen as lesser from such a young age. It is horrifically sad.

Are we going to tell them they're in the wrong bodies, and kids with disabilities are in the wrong bodies, and we can all just opt out of our bodies if we decide our minds deserve a more popular shell?

@FlyingOink

There is no such thing as being born in the wrong body, and teaching young children at a very impressionable age that it is such a thing is cruel and dangerous.

If you've ever seen those videos where little black girls are asked to pick the best or prettiest doll or picture, you'll know how heartbreaking it is to see children internalising what they are shown by society. Those little girls pick the white ones, they know they are seen as lesser from such a young age. It is horrifically sad.

Are we going to tell them they're in the wrong bodies, and kids with disabilities are in the wrong bodies, and we can all just opt out of our bodies if we decide our minds deserve a more popular shell?

It's a very sick mindset that tells any child anywhere that their body is flawed and needs fixing. The damage that is being done to children's developing minds by this ideology is unforgivable.

OP there is a new statutory PSHE curriculum this year, and your school should have been consulting with parents on the content and teaching format last year - have they been doing this?

This gender stuff does not appear in the new statutory primary PSHE curriculum AFAIK.

Have a look at:
pshe-association.org.uk/curriculum-and-resources/resources/explainer-slides-statutory-pshe-changes-and-new

pshe-association.org.uk/curriculum-and-resources/resources/programme-study-pshe-education-key-stages-1–5

[quote grey12]@Artichokeleaves kids need to learn that not everything is about them!!!! so a disabled child is learning about transgender people and hears it as if it's applied to their disability?.... that's a stretch....[/quote]
..........

No, it's seriously not a stretch, and 'not everything is about them' in the context of this hypersensitive political ideology is ridiculous.

If you tell children that sometimes people are born in the wrong body and it makes them very sad and they can identify out of it, how is that not going to be hurtful and distressing for a child stuck in a painful, disabled body that they may very well feel was unfairly inflicted on them and would very much like to be able to identify away from?

How are you going to teach some children that you fix your sadness by changing your body, but other children in the same class that you have to deal with and face and learn to live with what life has handed you however unfair and horrible it is?

I'm staggered you can't see this. I have sat with a sobbing kid with cerebral palsy who is starting to realise their belief that physio and all the muscle injections and surgeries won't ever fix them to the point they have a body like ablebodied people do. This is ridiculously insensitive. If I could identify into a body that could walk and do without pain and let me have a normal life I would do so. Some of us have to lump it and learn to love and deal with the body we've got, however much we hate it.

Are you really saying we should say to disabled kids, anorexic kids, chronically ill kids, YOU have to learn to deal but those kids get to identify out of their sadness about their bodies and have something different and it's not all about you?