Great! DC1 school now joined the gender / sex nonsense

[NotEnglish]

Just before christmas we got an email from DC1 schools that they will end early on a certain day as the whole staff will attend an inhouse workshop as a preparation for the new sex education project the 10 to 12 years old will work on in the next months.
The email was quite vague and did not name the organisation that offers the training but mentioned "genderidentity" so I asked for clarification and asked explicitly if "trans" was included in the trainig and if yes, what were the key points.
Got an answer which still was vague. Asked again to please specify what they mean with "genderidentity" and how that differs from "sex" (We are in Germany so do not have different words for gender and sex, it's both "Geschlecht"). DC1 class teacher (which is also a lead on this project) sent me this picture:
She also explicitly wrote that they will talk about "how we can't always see the sex a person has"

So how do I go from here?
I already wrote her back that I don't want DC1 to take part in these lessons as I don't believe in this ideology and see a potential for harm for childrens health and womens rights and asked her how we can facilitate DC1 not attending.
Problem is: We have a law that makes school attendance compulsory so I don't even know if I have the right to have DC1 not attend.

Here you are OP. Hopefully the Safe Schools Alliance guide to talking with schools about all this will be helpful:

safeschoolsallianceuk.net/schools-resources-and-policies/

There have been attempts made in Germany to introduce 'self identification' for trans people, and to allow minors to access puberty blockers and cross sex hormones without their parents consent.

So I think the first place I'd start is by checking to see what the current laws are, and if there are any new laws in the pipeline. Ask the school, what are they preparing for?
One thing that happened in the UK is that organisations were 'getting ahead of the law' and acting as if self ID were already legal.

You might find this thread useful

Rough translations of the picture

Right side from top to bottom:
Genderidentity - Who am I?
Romantic and sexual orrientation - With whom do I want to have romantic or sexual relationsships?
biological sex - Which hormones, genes, prmary and secondary sexorgans do I have?

Left side:
Look and Expression - How do i show miyself to others trough clothing, movement, language and behavoiur/conduct

I would take a breath. Agreed the first thing to work out is whether you even have a legal right to withdraw a child from lessons in Germany. Then consider the impact on your child, positive and negative, of doing so.

You can provide information too, eg following ds's interests in animals and/or nature, talking about puberty and what an amazing time it is, consider reading things like His Dark Materials trilogy which in its lovely description of the changeable daemons of adolescence makes it clear that nobody should be aiming to fix themselves into an identity at that age but instead should be developing their own skills and thoughts.

I didn't take everything I heard at school as gospel, in fact really I absorbed remarkably little of it There will be positives in this too and removing your dc is a big step.

Which Bundesland are you in? There is probably quite a difference between the various states.

@Igneococcus

Which Bundesland are you in? There is probably quite a difference between the various states.

NRW

NRW has a CDU/FDP government at the moment? Could you contact the Erziehungsministerium or whatever they are called these days? How old is your DC1?
Are you German NotEnglish? I can't think of a single German internet forum which is GC, a parenting site where I used to participate has gone all "just be kind" and the majority seems to think it's all about intersex. I really fear that this law change which is part of the coalition agreement will go through pretty much unopposed.

Igneococcus, DC1 is 11.
Yeah, I'm german, and as I could not find a german forum where gedercritical/biolology based things are discussed, I landed here, even though I obviously struggle with english, as you all can see.
I'm quite active on a german parenting site but to be honest I really don't fancy starting a discussion there because in the past there have been some threads from parents of trans kids and one woman who wholehartedly supports her husband during his "brave transition" to "be a woman", etc, and while not many people engaged, all the post were completely supportive and kind and "wow, thats great" and "oh no, how dare people IRL question the transition, that is so rude" so I suspect even if I might not get flamed there I definitely won't get any helpfull input or info.
The whole board is sadly not very feminist, overall.

I also fear that the third try to change the law will be successfull and that the Greens will make the same horrendous mistake they made when they allied themselves with paedophiles during the gay rights movement. The difference beeing that then they were an obscure minority party basically known for their enviromental politics and now they are a big mainstream party with loads of seats in the Bundestag.
(And a male politician on a seat that is reserved for females via the party policy.)

@NotEnglish I often listen to the WHRC webinars that are held most weeks on Saturday afternoons. There have been some great contributors from Germany though I get a sense they feel very much like they are ploughing a lonely furrow. You might find some useful information or names you could contact if you take a look through some of the past ones which are on YouTube.

Most of the German contributors I have listened to have spoken in English so I'm not quite sure if the ones listed for Deutschland are the same ones I have listened to, but if you take a look around the YouTube channel you will find something relevant I am sure.

Here is a link to one of them.

I had a search of the site that I used to be on (RUB, but I only ever was on the Aktuell section) and the discussion there feels a little like it did 4-5 years ago on Mumsnet. There are maybe three regular posters who clearly are following the debate in the anglosphere (and I bet at least one of them might be on MN, Austrian not German, she mentioned Kathleen Stock in one post) but the rest are falling over themselves to be nice, kind and oh so progressive. If I weren't so busy I'm almost tempted to wade back into the discussion there.
I would be really surprised if it won't go through, nobody will see it an important enough topic for which to risk the coalition. I remember the early days of the Greens, I remember when it was mostly Petra Kelly, Otto Schily and Joschka Fischer, I miss them.
Do you know any of the other parents well enough to raise the sex education issue?

That image is called the 'Genderbread Person' and I think is British in origin, created by an organisation called Genderbread. It could be worth looking them up and also looking what Safe Schools Alliance and Transgender Trend have to say about their materials.

@Igneococcus

I had a search of the site that I used to be on (RUB, but I only ever was on the Aktuell section) and the discussion there feels a little like it did 4-5 years ago on Mumsnet. There are maybe three regular posters who clearly are following the debate in the anglosphere (and I bet at least one of them might be on MN, Austrian not German, she mentioned Kathleen Stock in one post) but the rest are falling over themselves to be nice, kind and oh so progressive. If I weren't so busy I'm almost tempted to wade back into the discussion there. I would be really surprised if it won't go through, nobody will see it an important enough topic for which to risk the coalition. I remember the early days of the Greens, I remember when it was mostly Petra Kelly, Otto Schily and Joschka Fischer, I miss them. Do you know any of the other parents well enough to raise the sex education issue?

Sharing your concerns regarding the planned legislation - Greens are fully captured and libs are largely a men's rights party anyway. The Social Democrats do have a GC-leaning wing around Leni Breymaier, but mostly are still stuck in the "be kind" phase and/or leave the discussion to LGBT spokespeople. In any case the lead ministry will be Justice (Lib) with input from Family and Women (Greens), both of which currently aim to fasttrack this.

OTOH.... the wider media aren't fully captured aside from their online and youth sections, and second generation feminists still have considerable institutional influence (in fact Emma magazine is already gearing up for battle on this). More importantly, things are definitely going to hit the fan when it comes to revising the constitution's equal protection clauses: it's no accident the coalition agreement so far only talks about inserting sexual orientation but not "gender identity". So a lot depends on how the timing plays out.

To OP, regarding NRW - I wouldn't just look at the ministry, but also consider contacting the women's wing of NRW CDU who tend to be quite influential. Also, who is your local Landtag deputy?

Sorry if I’m missing something really obvious.
Why is educating children about gender and sex a bad thing?

Genderidentity - Who am I?

Well I reject the social construct of a gender identity. There is no such thing as a male or female brain so the picture is misleading.

Sorry if I’m missing something really obvious.
Why is educating children about gender and sex a bad thing?

No problem with sex ed but gender education is just woo. A girl who likes to wear trousers and play with mean is not a boy in the wrong body, but that is what the gender 'education' says.

It completely reinforces gender stereo types and holds them up as ideals.

They also teach that anyone can change sex, which they cannot.

@ValancyRedfern

That image is called the 'Genderbread Person' and I think is British in origin, created by an organisation called Genderbread. It could be worth looking them up and also looking what Safe Schools Alliance and Transgender Trend have to say about their materials.

The genderbread person is American. Originally from here: www.itspronouncedmetrosexual.com/genderbread-person/

@CakelsLife

Sorry if I’m missing something really obvious. Why is educating children about gender and sex a bad thing?

This is how the inventor of the genderbread person defines 'gender identity'.

Gender identity is all about how you, in your head, think about yourself. It’s about how you internally interpret the chemistry that composes you (e.g., hormone levels). As you know it, do you think you fit better into the societal role of “woman,” or “man,” or do neither ring particularly true for you? That is, are you somewhere in-between the two? Or do you consider your gender to fall outside of the spectrum completely? The answer is your gender identity.

So your 'gender identity' is all about how your personality fits with gender stereotypes. Do you think that girls should be taught to believe that they're not really girls because they don't like traditional female stereotypes and don't think they 'fit in' with them?

www.itspronouncedmetrosexual.com/2011/11/breaking-through-the-binary-gender-explained-using-continuums/

@CakelsLife

Sorry if I’m missing something really obvious. Why is educating children about gender and sex a bad thing?

Sex is real. Sexual reproduction is real. What is gender, other than a set of outdated and offensive steryotypes?

Perhaps this letter that was successfully used to challenge the use of the genderbread person resource in the UK will help? (Safe Schools Alliance, but thought it was worth including as it’s so targeted).

Obviously the legal stuff doesn’t apply, but there is nothing unreasonable in raising concerns about the use of resources that have been withdrawn from use elsewhere because they have no basis in science - & that are pushing an ideological agenda via the education system, which latter you’d think would set all sorts of alarm bells ringing (& pushing rigid ideas of gender roles together with labelling people & insisting they must have IDs according to this belief system…?!) It’s a perfectly legitimate comparison to draw, because it’s nothing about it being this movement being so privileged, it’s that NO group/cause/movement should hold such sway (unless you happen to have signed your child up for a private education with a very particular slant). Oh & absolutely no comparison can be made with the UK’s requirement state schools hold a daily act of collective worship that at a minimum be “mainly of a broadly Christian character”, in case anyone has a mind to try diverting the course of the thread by going off about that.

It’s been withdrawn from use by a[t least one] school in Australia too.

Good quality SRE is so so important & there is plenty the school could be focused on - I know the figures will be slightly different for Germany, but I doubt they’re so very different that children viewing porn isn’t an issue. If they already have mobiles or will be getting them when they move to whichever branch of secondary education they’re going to they need to know about online safety. It doesn’t matter there are 12yo “influencers”, you need to keep your accounts locked down, you don’t send nudes (or ask for them!), & you don’t accept friend requests from people you don’t know, even if they SAY they’re your age [& sex]. They could expand the teaching about periods beyond just teaching the menstrual cycle - breaking social & cultural taboos around menstruation isn’t just something that needs to happen where girls & women are made to sleep in goatsheds when they have their periods, after all.

Maybe they can do some gender nonsense when they’ve taught everything they actually need to about sex? What’s that, no time? Shame.

Very best of luck challenging this NotEnglish: it’s a brave thing to do; & not only is your DC1 lucky that you’re willing to speak up, their classmates are also.

(Oh & OP, please don’t worry about your English: from this side of things you’re absolutely fine; but I know that from your side it might be stressful &/or you might be second-guessing yourself lots, potentially leading to looking [lots of] things up [that you know perfectly well are correct] so writing posts takes you ages.)

Obviously the legal stuff doesn’t apply, but there is nothing unreasonable in raising concerns about the use of resources that have been withdrawn from use elsewhere because they have no basis in science - & that are pushing an ideological agenda via the education system, which latter you’d think would set all sorts of alarm bells ringing (& pushing rigid ideas of gender roles together with labelling people & insisting they must have IDs according to this belief system…?!)*

Absolutely this, and as the OP is in Germany, well they have a history of propaganda in schools.

Thanks for all your help, will see what I can use and what I need to adapt for Germany.

Somebody asked if it is a private school: No, it's a state financed school.

I landed here, even though I obviously struggle with english, as you all can see.
Off topic, but OP, your English seems basically perfect to me.

Good luck with the... Geschlechtkuchenperson?

Sorry NotEnglish - I’d understood it was a state-funded school, I was making a more general comment that one would expect the promotion of a particular ideology to be the preserve of private schools that are clear about the worldview their curricula stem from. The obvious ones are faith schools (though not all faith schools are religious enough, I’m thinking more of the ones that treat don’t teach evolution, or indeed teach nothing unconnected to the religion in question) but arguably Waldorf/Steiner schools fit in that category too.