Questioning language used in school SRE lessons

[DaddaGreen]

To be up front I’m a dad. I’m not sure it’s my place to be asking this here but I can’t think of a suitable male environment to do so.

I’ve been a long term follower of gender critical feminists on Twitter and today the word appeared home from key stage 2 sex and relationships lessons. “Gender.” From personal experience and that of people close to me I don’t have a lot positive to say about elevating a set of social stereotypes above biology. Why is that word in a talk about puberty?

Has anyone ever talked to a school about it? I suspect the teacher has used it through squimishness about the word “sex” but to our soon to be teens and others it means something different. How do you raise this without going full bore?

I suppose it depends what they said about it.

What exactly was covered?

Body changes, puberty, etc. which makes me wonder why the word gender featured at all. We learn the correct words for body parts. What’s wrong with the word (biological) “sex?” My underlying worry is that I’m either I’m being paranoid or “gender” is creeping in as a topic that I don’t think kids their age are able to understand.

Quite a lot of people still use gender and sex interchangably, and it's still common in North America.

You need to find out from the school exactly what will be in that lesson, including any material they will be using. It's uncomfortable to be that parent, but it's necessary. If they're just using the word gender as a euphemism for sex, that's OK. You just want to make sure they aren't teaching gender ideology. There's new DofE guidance that makes clear what's appropriate, and you can check safeschoolsallianceuk.net/

Gender is still often used to mean sex, in fact up until 5 minutes ago it was seen by almost everyone as a polite way to ask for or to state sex, eg my maternity unit still uses the term 'gender scan' to mean observing baby's sex.

We all have to be that parent at the moment. There's nothing wrong in checking precisely what a school / teachers mean. Given how many schools have been captured by the gender woowoo toxicity, it's vital to ensure that children aren't being taught fact free ideology at the behest of adult groups.

If they're offended - that's a problem. If it gets them to review their use of language and to clarify that they're teaching age appropriate factual SRE, then it's a win.

Just ask the school.
It's not unreasonable to ask for clarity. Are they using gender as a euphemism for sex, or with its other meaning of being a social construct?
Given schools are now saturated in gender ideology, it's more important than ever that precise language is used. Otherwise you have a drift between the word and what it's commonly understood to mean.
The old chestnut - toilets for example, if a school says it's toilets are single gender. What does that actually mean?

Thank you all for your responses. Off to figure out that email now