Even English lessons now assume unquestioning acceptance that trans people are victims

[BotCrossHuns]

Had a discussion with a young pupil this week about their English homework, which is on the theme of identity in poetry. One of the poems they are studying is about a boy wearing typically women's clothes (an evening dress).

Her take on what they've been told (which may not be an entirely accurate representation of what was taught) is that it's about identity - "you can be a woman if you feel like it, and if you want to wear dresses/wigs etc, that should be accepted as making you a woman, and that the fact that society doesn't accept it and makes the narrator feel awkward means that society is transphobic, which is bad".

They are focussing on English, literary techniques, poetry etc, and not on critical thinking or biology, so there is absolutely no discussion about whether this is transphobia, what transphobia constitutes, what a woman is, etc. - it's all just part of an accepted narrative - "transphobia is rampant in society, that's bad" and this poem is an example of it, let's look at the ways/techniques the poet uses to explore that. They are too young to really appreciate subtelties - to them, it's about wearing women's clothes, therefore trans, therefore must accept them without question. Her comments suggested that narrative was completely taken on board.

I found that frightening, that it's such an accepted fact: trans people are hard done by, biggest victims around, trans children especially (the 'boy' in the poem), we should be extra nice to them as a result, etc. Whether that was the poet's intention at all, whether that's what was meant by the poem, is irrelevant - that's the message that is coming across to the Year 7 who are studying these poems (alongside poems about race, religion, and other minority characteristics) - they are all grouped together as targets of discrimination and therefore automatically a bad thing/bigoted to ask questions. While the fact that there is discrimination might well be true in the case of someone trans/enjoying wearing women's clothes, the message that is coming through loud and clear to the pupils is that anything other than unquestioning acceptance that it makes them a woman is bad. The poem doens't even mention 'trans', just wearing women's clothes, but that is still how it's being interpreted by pupils - 'must be tolerant, accepting, agree that they're a woman or you're transphobic'.

It's not just the PSHE lessons that need to be scrutinised. The messages are insidiously being promoted everywhere - not just that discrimination/bigotry are wrong (which I'd absolutely agree with - people should wear what they like, evening dresses and wigs included), but that this is automatically transphobia, a huge thing in society because people don't believe trans people are really women and that makes them victims. And because it's a lesson about poetry, the 'facts' being presented are not actually being questioned.

It's for reasons like this that I am moving to an even more rural location where I will have even less contact with society at large. Things are going to get a loss worse over the next few years and this shit just makes me despair.

There is so much great English poetry, why give the poor kids faddish stuff like this?

I suspect it's not the poem Mangyinseam, it's the lack of any open critical thinking. A good teacher can encourage students to examine the poet's view and explore the issues and alternative perspectives. Sadly with only one opinion being allowed, it just becomes an indoctrination tool to promote a narrow world view that excludes girls and women.

Thank you BotCrossHuns for this.

Yes there didn't seem to have been much questioning of the views expressed at all (though I am aware that I am getting the story told by pupils who struggle with the subject and might not have taken it in fullly). It wasn't that they were told that questioning was wrong or that they should believe something was the only opinion, it was that there was no discussion of the views whatsoever. I have no idea whether the teacher believes those views or has even really thought about them in any depth or realises that there is anything to question. It was just an unspoken assumption that it was like racism or disability discrimination or similar, a topic that is unarguably wrong, so no need to even look at that aspect of it - it was just about how the poet was showing this and what techniques etc. That's what made it so insidious, I think, that it was tied to these other -isms that there is no question about. Nobody stops to question whether the racism described in a poem about racism is actually racism; they accept that as a given and look at how it's presented and explored. By putting other topics in the same bracket, all of them get treated with those same assumptions.