How do gender theorists classify those with severe learning difficulties?

[GrinAndVomit]

I have a younger brother with very severe learning difficulties. He is now entering his teens and is becoming a man. He is non-verbal and has absolutely no concept of gender identity.
How do people who buy into gender being self ascribed, define people like my brother? He can’t self ascribe.

Well quite. I teach children in a send school. Some of them are similar to your brother.

gender ideology is phenomenally ableist.

They are very selective (and very far from genuinely “intersectional”) in what aspects of reality they pay attention to, so they mostly wouldn’t.

If you asked directly I think they’d mostly refuse to answer, but if they did answer it would be fucking horrific. I seem to remember one of them saying that a woman with dementia isn’t a woman because she doesn’t have an identity. (I wonder why a woman with dementia is significantly more at risk of sexual abuse than a man with dementia, then.)

This ideology is absolutely brutal to the genuinely vulnerable.

Ah well according to certain pro trans drs at the Tavistock and gender gp have no problem with non verbal children with asd and other issues "talking " through parents/guardians who "understand " their non verbal communication.
According to 1 particular US therapist a baby boy who unpops his onesy is telling you that he is a girl and wants to ware a dress🤨

Honestly I don't think they care. I don't think they are even thought of. Disability isn't something to desire or celebrate with rainbows, it is mainly an inconvenience.

I've just come back from my local shopping centre which has pride flags and a inspirational quote from Eliot Page but where the disabled spaces were blocked off by building work and the lift to the area I wanted was out of order and the only actually accessible toilets had been vandalised. I'm sorry to say I don't think they think about your brother or my family member at all.

It’s women and girls with severe learning difficulties that I really fear for and think of. They are so incredibly vulnerable to rape and pregnancies plus the issues around managing menstruation etc. They don’t know they’re women so are they not women? How can we protect them if we have no language for them?

They would base it on external presentation and behaviour. So if he started showing an interest in wearing dresses or make up, say, than that would be taken as a sign that he is a trans girl.

There was one teaching resource put forward in Scotland as I remember, written by a TQ+ group, saying that one week you presented stereotypically girly stuff to the child, and then the next week you provided only stereotypically boy stuff to the child, and depending on their reaction you then assigned their gender and acted accordingly.

Words fail. A lot of educationalists went bananas and thankfully it vanished. But that is the level of batshit, yes.

They don't. Thats the point. They dont insist on stereotyping others....

He wears what his parents buy him and dress him in. He has no interest in clothes. He does love his trampoline though. What gender does that make him?

So they would revert to relying on the the sex of the individual because that is essentially all that matters in terms of care, needs etc?

For me this is why I have never believed in any sort of innate gender identity.

RadicalisedByMumzNet our town centre has pride flags flapping from every available post but the disabled toilet is out of order and hasn't been fixed for weeks.

What are you talking about? 🤨 TRAs are always insisting people who say they aren't trans are therefore “cisgender” based on stereotypes. If you say you don’t have a gender identity, TRAs insist that you have. So does a non-verbal intellectually impaired person have a gender identity too?

Are you saying that they would refuse to describe my brother as a boy/ man because he is unable to say so himself?

It is quite amazing the enthusiasm, influence and support a movement for equality can garner, when the core drivers within it are white, straight, able bodied, educated, affluent and male.

I worry about it from the other direction when people can't insist on carers of the same sex.

Yes! Exactly! It’s just fraught with dehumanising and dangerous possibilities when we can’t state a woman is an adult human female regardless of how she presents herself.

This was a few years ago so I don't have the source to hand, but I remember some piece of guidance being produced saying that children with learning disabilities who don't pick up on gender stereotypes aged 4/5 the way that their peers do should be actively taught about them, and given the toys and activities that 'match' their sex. If they don't like this and reject it, it's proof they're trans.

So incredibly regressive. (And yes, doesn't account for those with more severe disabilities who wouldn't understand the stereotype 'teaching' in the first place.)

Crikey.

Oh, why are they always over all the threads here calling women “cis” and straight without even asking first then? We had some threads last night for example where a few genderists came on and told us all we were all obviously straight, despite not even having bothered to ask.

The one thing we know about gender ideology is the absolute devotion to certain kinds of gender stereotypes — mainly hair, clothes, and so on — and the dogged insistence about what is considered “gender non-conforming” or not.

the dogged insistence about what is considered “gender non-conforming” or not.

Yes, the 'non conforming' involving a uniform as much as everything else.

What was that quote a few months back about someone sadly noticing at a Levellers' concert, hundreds of youngsters passionately singing along about 'there's only one way of life and that's your own', quite oblivious to the fact that they were all wearing identical uniform, a bunch of little clones busily conforming in the fond and romantic illusion of non conformity.

The idea that you can just be biologically female and after that do and feel and think and wear whatever tf you like, without rules or labels, is too shocking to be countenanced.

I’m always saying the same as you OP.
it entirely undermines the notion that self-identity is the only way to identify someone’s sex.
My daughter is profoundly disabled. She is non verbal. She does not understand the idea of naming, of tomorrow/today, time, plans, stereotypes… and never will.
When my first daughter died at full term because she had never taken a breath outside the womb I was shocked to discover that legally she was never a person.
Thats how I feel gender identity crusaders would view my daughter- as not a person.
Because obviously you can only be verbal to self-identify and behaviour is indicative of absolutely nothing.
I wonder if anyone who is a TRA had a stroke that rendered them unable to speak or move without assistance would they stop being a person too..?
It makes me very angry how disabled people are viewed, in general and in this issue most especially

DS has ASD and once asked me to put some nail polish on him. When he came into some mild teasing at school, he asked me to take it of again.

Then for a few days afterwards he would ask me to check his outfit over at the door and make sure it was 'suitable for boys'

I had to explain to him (a kid of nearly 10) that shops are divided into boy sections and girl sections and I always shop for him in the boy section and, not to worry, because everything he owned was socially acceptable and unremarkable on a boy.

He had genuinely not noticed this and seemed to regard it as another inexplicable rule that neurotypicals have made up to complicate life. Otoh, he was definately grateful for some pointers on navigating it.

I know some people who would say 'Oh what a shame he doesnt wear nail polish anymore. His natural gender expression has been crushed.'
But honestly: The nail polish, the 'boy clothes', none of it has any social meaning to him.

This is another great example. It’s not just non-verbal people.
Does Mishy therefore have a problem with you referring to your son as a “he” because there is no definite male gender expression?
Its a shame Mishy doesn’t feel the need to elaborate on their very vague answer

Possibly not suitable for your brother but here's a resource designed to target and confuse vulnerable people with a learning disability

"People with a learning disability are just like anyone else. We can identify in lots of different ways. Words like these help us describe how we feel. Male, female, both, neither or somewhere in between"