Gender critical parents homeschooling children?

[HelenaRavenclaw]

I don't have children yet, but I was curious to know if any gender critical families here have decided to homeschool their children (non-Covid-related) to save them from the indoctrination of gender ideology in schools. I myself was homeschooled for a few years in secondary school many years ago when gender ideology was not around. (My parents decided to do it because the schools in our area were not academically strong in STEM and they were against the idea of sending me to boarding school.) But if I have children and there are good schools nearby, I think I still would homeschool them to avoid the gender madness, and mixed-sex toilets/sports which is risky for girls. It would be nice to know if there are already informal groups of gender critical parents who homeschool their kids, support one another, and do group activities with the kids together.

It wasn't the predominant reason that we home educate, but I'm very grateful not to be navigating the current gender stuff embedded in the school system.

I am trying to sniff out the other GC home ed mums locally - it's a delicate business!

I'm not sure home schooling is a sure fire way to avoid it unless you saw no one else. In my experience the people who would align themselves with homeschooling are the ones that have swallowed the most kool-ade.

Neither of my DC's primary or secondary schools seem to overly got entrenched, dd1 did have a friend who identified as a boy but it all seemed very low key. It seems areas of high deprivation and/or a significant ethnic mix are less susceptible to it all. (Just my impression from here)

Unless you plan on avoiding all home ed groups, you'll struggle. We found all the home ed groups we were a part of to be very 'woke'.

Exactly! That's the problem. We need to make our own GC home ed groups!

I home educate (not for that reason but it is an added bonus to avoid the gender ideology in schools). I know several other home ed families with GC views too.

I’m wary of trying to keep mine away from it altogether because if I succeed, suddenly the real world will be this big shock. I’d rather teach them that “some people think this thing” and then try to help them understand those ideas critically.

I home educate and among the families I've met there is one teenage girl who is now non binary and uses they/them and one young boy who identifies as a girl.

This is really interesting, I haven't encountered any explicit gender wokeness in any HE groups. Plenty of covid denying / anti-vax / children are starseeds etc etc though so maybe gender expression is too mainstream an issue....

It's hardly as though there is a daily barrage of gender ideology going on though. It's not going to discussed every day, every week or even every month. They might have one SRE session on it in a year, and if you disagree, you can talk to your kids about that. At primary age you are still your kids most important teacher if you want to teach them that.

The chances of girls having to mix with anyone born male are minimal, especially if you're not in a major city.

So homeschooling to avoid these things seems a slight overreaction to me. I get doing it to avoid, say, bullying, which is a real risk. There being 'gender ideology' pushed to an overbearing degree or girls mixing with female identifying kids born male are not really very likely occurences.

Mine are in secondary school, and while there is one FTM trans, it is also all v low key. Like

Yes, I think that's a very sensible way to go about it. Otherwise it would be like trying to pretend Latter Day Saints didn't exist if you lived in Salt Lake City or something.

Because mine have been raised to understand that 'gender' is just arbitrary stereotypes, it's a little difficult to explain why exactly anyone thinks that a desire to wear certain clothes or play with certain toys has a bearing on one's sex. It's the direct opposite of what I've taught them.

Having been a classic tomboy myself, I'm worried about today's tomboy girls seeing other tomboys "transtition" to identifying as boys at school, and feeling pressured to do the same (otherwise they're not boyish enough). Had I been a child today, I'm sure I would have agonised over my "gender" and wanted to take advantage of the colourful "services" Mermaids are offering, so that I could fully blend in with the boys who were my playmates.

Of course I understand that it's impossible, and indeed unwise, to completely shield children from the fact that many sexist people believe in gender ideology and like to erase biological sex. That would be like shielding them from the fact that many people think climate change is a hoax, or that many people are racist. It's fine if any future child I have spends time with a trans/nb child once a week at a music class for just one hour, for example. But if my child sees multiple trans/nb children all day every day at school sees them using the wrong sex toilets, being called by the wrong sex pronouns, affirmed and celebrated by friends and teachers, allowed to join the wrong sex sports teams, etc. that's not something I'd be happy about. Teachers may not be mentioning gender ideology every day, but they will be implicitly validating it all the time.

(I don't mean to sound hateful towards trans/nb kids -- I would have been one myself had I been a child today! I pity them and hope they get the love and support to realise that they don't need to adhere to streotypical gender labels and deny their sex to live their best lives. I think they're the victims of Stonewall, Mermaids, TikTok, Tumblr, etc. But I wouldn't feel comfortable with my child regularly spending time at the house of a trans kid whose parents happily support this gender madness and the misogynistic denial of single-sex spaces, just as I wouldn't feel comfortable with friends and families who are openly racist.)

Don't know how part of my above post got struck out! I didn't mean to remove that part.