Important piece in the Telegraph - schools cutting out parents

[Birdsweepsin]

Telegraph don't do share tokens I'm afraid but this should give you an idea of the stories

Anne’s experience echoes that of other parents who have agreed to speak to The Telegraph about their experiences as their children are swept into a gender “cult”.

Many of the teenagers are autistic or suffering from mental health issues and the parents believe that they are using the label to make sense of the world, a box in which to contain the confusing experiences of puberty.

Those who have been bullied or struggled to make friends are suddenly celebrated for their decision to come out as trans, often encouraged by their teachers.

Whilst most see little harm in their son wearing a dress or their daughter having short hair, their fear is the race toward medicalisation. Powerful puberty blockers could lead to lifelong harm or irreversible surgery.

The parents, whose stories are rarely heard in this increasingly toxic debate, have been labelled bigots and “monsters”, cut out by teachers and medical professionals and told they cannot question the decision.

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/07/02/telling-lies-parents-anger-schools-pushing-trans-ideology-children/

Oh my god, this is awful

The hospital changed her gender on forms and Charlotte “realised that I was in actual danger of being accused of child abuse because I am not affirming my child”.

Whilst most see little harm in their son wearing a dress or their daughter having short hair, their fear is the race toward medicalisation. Powerful puberty blockers could lead to lifelong harm or irreversible surgery.

This is crux of the matter. If it was just about clothing and name changes this would just be a harmless youth culture that we could all just roll our eyes at and ignore. But the potential for medicalisation, surgeries and social service intervention if you don’t go along with it must be terrifying.

The above link did not work for me without subscribing but here it is from an MSN link:

www.msn.com/en-gb/entertainment/other/they-re-telling-them-lies-parents-anger-at-schools-for-pushing-trans-ideology-on-children/ar-AAZ7ceF?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=0c933409b0a04a2b89973c782a099512

Horrific.
How do they justify this? I'm sure there's some kind of pathetic arguments.

I remember when we used to get posters on here who would insist that this just doesn’t happen in schools. They’ve been very quiet recently. 🤔

I'm not shocked. Well I am. But it's the teachers taking-leave-of-their-senses bit... leading to these awful, awful cases where kids are parents are estranged, or the kids end up chemically or surgically altered.

Wake up world! This is NOT OK!

Ignoring the risks of the child ending up on a medical path, there can be a massive undermining of the child’s relationship with their parents and many schools don’t appear to care about this in the slightest. If staff are giving the child the message that of course they support the child’s social transition, that staff believe the child when they say this is their “true self” and staff will ensure they have a safe supportive environment at school to be affirmed in their gender identity, staff are giving the child the message that their parents are not supportive, that maybe the child isn’t “safe to be themselves” at home.

This can greatly destabilise a child’s sense of security within the family unit, no matter how hard the parents try to support them as a person without supporting the identity. You can then end up with a child with whole raft of mental health issues on the back of the tug of war between parents and school (self harm, depression, anxiety etc) which the school turns back onto the parents by claiming these are caused by the parents not affirming!

it’s a desperate cycle for parents to be in.

This is an actual fucking quote from the article:
"“Somebody may want to be called a banana one day and if that is going to make them have a safer Tuesday, then we will do it. If on Wednesday they want to be a table, then it is our job to make them feel safe and included at that moment,” the teacher said."

Absolute madness by supposedly responsible adults. I wouldn't let these people look after my hamster

Thank you, Birdsweepsin, for posting some useful
extracts as many of us don't have access to the Telegraph.

I happened to be reading an article in Unherd today by a mother of a teenager who at one stage declared she wanted to be a boy. It's an interesting (and really distressing) insight into the fears and sense of powerlessness of a mother, who did try to get help through the doctor, NHS mental health and even private practitioners, with no success, but who also didn't seem to be aware of any alternative sources of advice or support to counteract the school policy of changing name etc. - I mean websites such as Sex Matters or Safeguarding or even mumsnet.

As usual with UnHerd, the discussion in the comments is worth reading too.
unherd.com/2022/06/why-did-my-daughter-become-trans/?tl_inbound=1&tl_groups[0]=18743&tl_period_type=3&mc_cid=43700ed00f&mc_eid=31e133b3a4

There's so much of this in the news, read a DM article about this too today. I can't believe teachers are teaching some of these things. There definitely needs to be firm guidance on RSE coming from trusted sources rather than activist sources. And age appropriateness. Parents need to know what is being taught and have the opportunity to remove kids from the class.

Why do primary kids need RSE? Definitely will be asking my future school about their policy, they are a strict church school though so hopefully sex isn't considered until after marriage lol! For some reason we didn't even have sex education classes at my school and all turned out ok.

Primary students should be taught RSE. They need to know what healthy relationships look like, and what sex is. This supports work around safeguarding and students being aware of sexual abuse they may be a victim of.

Trying to get rid of all RSE in primary school isn't the way forward.

Instead the RSE primary students receive should be balanced and based on biological fact, not woo gender definitions.

The Daily Mail, the Telegraph and Unherd are all right- wing or far right wing and they are feeding your moral panic

Of course they are, Antifascist dear, of course they are. 🙄

The fact that you think "right wing" is an automatic insult suggests you mightn't be the person to take advice from on political/social issues.

I agree with antifascist on those papers and on their having noted that this issue is a way to shore up the Tory vote. I don't think the Mail and the Telegraph would object to being described as right-wing. The Times might but realistically it is, with more of a range of views presented.

I also think that RSE is really important for all children and am pleased with how it was handled in my son's schools. I have nothing good to say about the pathetic nature of my own RSE which barely existed in my own school, meaning there was nothing to counter the bizarre visions of relationships in movies plus the very distorted family lives some of us were experiencing. Luckily we had the robust support of the Just 17 problem page which did educate me and helped me to some extent. I don't think Tiktok is a substitute for that.

I believe the experience of 'being trans' seems to be a complex psychological, sexual and cultural response to a mixture of things. The way that children present as trans is quite different from adult transitioners and teachers being required to treat these phenomena as identical is quite dangerous. Children are not adults.

Well for starters, girls seem to be starting their periods younger than they used to, so it's entirely possible that a few of them will be starting in primary school. Doing the "how your body changes at puberty" stuff in late year 5 / early year 6 might be useful to get ahead of those changes starting, although as I don't have primary age kids I can't say if this is what they're actually doing.

Sorry I disagree, sex education was taught in line with age development, primary children are too young to take this on and in a perfect world shouldn't be taking on concepts such as sexuality at their age. I agree that maybe discussion about periods for girls might be appropriate.

Yes there is child abuse but that's why they have campaigns such as Pantysaurus which covers this really well, perhaps they need more of this. I don't think the answer is exposing primary age kids to conversations about sex because it might have the opposite effect of lowering boundaries and at the very least parents should have the option to opt their kid out.

Which is just a slogan chant for you to avoid actually engaging with any content of the articles.

I’m in favour of children being taught about sex in schools. Much too important to be left to parents.

(Or to have the curriculum driven by the Daily Mail , Telegraph or Unherd)

Being taught about sex, in a factual manner, changes that come as part of puberty, attraction and healthy relationships are all fine in my (and I imagine most peoples) books.

What clearly isn’t fine is encouraging a lifetime of medical intervention and infertility in the pursuit of inclusion and acceptance.

Pigeon alert

If gender ideology is taught in schools then the medical side should be taught as well. Get balance in. Tell pupils about gender dysphoria. Tell pupils about the risks of binding, the fact that there is a low evidence base for the use of PBs and CSH and all the unknowns about PBs and the known side effects/risks of both. Talk about internalised homophobia and the fact that autistic children are over represented at GIDS. Talk about detransitioners.

Obviously do this in an age appropriate manner, but if schools started teaching balance, I think it would be the fastest way for general awareness to spread amongst parents and I think most parents would be horrified to realise what a mess we’ve created.

Why on earth would you be teaching about binding or internalised homophobia in primary school?

I said age appropriate manner. I didn’t say teach it to primary school pupils.

I can't imagine an age appropriate way to teach anyone about binding as a positive. Maybe in history something about costume emphasising different body features through history including some actual physical damage; the Victorian children's books i read a lot certainly included a lot about the horrors of 'tight lacing' and how bad it was, and that some people used quasi medical argumentsfor it which were rubbish, so I'd come across the idea of restricting women's bodies for physical appeal and that it was a bad idea.