Was anyone else teaching or working with children in the decade 2000-2010?

[BadSkiingMum]

I am resolutely gender critical and one of the things that makes it so tricky for me to believe the 'born in the wrong body' idea is that I was a primary teacher for about ten years (from 2000 onwards) and the question of gender identity never arose. Ever.

To give a little context, I was a full time class-teacher for many of those years (across four schools), spending the whole year with 30+ children (so knowing them extremely well) and then taking on management positions where I was involved in reviewing the attainment, progress and wellbeing of dozens of other children. Yet a desire for a child to identify as a different gender to that of his or her biological sex was just not apparent; many children were facing problems such as poverty, broken families, refugee status, learning disabilities, involvement with the social care system, being a young carer... I worked in schools where a significant proportion of children could be described as disadvantaged; in other schools I also taught the children of surgeons, diplomats and bankers. Huge amounts of time were spent in school on initiatives to support children's wellbeing. There were undoubtedly children who had mental health needs and, at the time, budgets were good so services such as school counselling or play therapy were available for some children where there were particular concerns. As a teacher I worked alongside those other professionals and read their reports, yet the issue of gender identity was never, ever mentioned. Other children were receiving support from CAMHS (even a very well-known clinic in London) and the lack of feedback on this topic was the same. Nor was it ever raised in training sessions, professional development meetings or online teaching forums, where I spent a lot of time.

This lacuna is very puzzling to me, as that same generation of children is now in their mid-twenties and a narrative of having 'felt wrong' from an early age seems to be prevalent. If this was so much the case, why did it never arise? Not once, in the many hundreds of children with whom I had contact? Never from colleagues in other schools? I am confident that it would have been discussed, albeit anonymised. Schools were certainly making time and resources available to explore and support wellbeing, so surely it would have emerged? Or are personal histories simply being re-told to suit current identities?

However, for the sake of fairness, it is important to note that, at the time, mental health was generally viewed by schools in terms of how it was impacting upon a child's progress, attainment and behaviour, rather than being an outcome in itself. I think that shift in perspective has been beneficial - I think that children and young people certainly do get more support than hitherto which can only be a good thing - but I also wonder if a certain 'pathologising' of emotions has taken place...

So, arriving at my original point, were you teaching around the same time and were your observations and experiences similar to mine? If not, when did you first notice gender identity politics becoming apparent in schools?

When I was teaching this was never ever an issue. Never ever mentioned. Only since we’ve had this stuff from America it has become a fashion. It effects a very, very tiny number of people not the sudden surge in numbers that have come forward. In the years ahead the NHS will be faced with monstrous claims for mistreatment.

Yes, I was working with children aged 5 to 18, and also university students, during this time. I was a school and university counsellor.

Two of my clients spoke to me about feeling uncomfortable being the sex they were. They were both male - one was in the early part of secondary school and one was a student. It was clear that this was a very, very difficult thing for them to talk about. Only because they knew our sessions were confidential were they willing to even mention it. It seems very likely that other clients also had these thoughts and feelings but never brought up the topic with me.

Several more thought they were gay, and again these were difficult topics for them to bring up. More difficult, for example, than clients telling me they were using drugs or being sexually abused. THAT difficult. It was taboo as far as they were concerned.

So why on earth would you people posting here and saying "Nope, never happened to me (and therefore it didn't exist)" think a school pupil would speak about this to any teacher of an academic subject, presumably not in confidence or even in private? The fact that none of the kids you worked with told you they thought they were trans is NOT evidence that none of them were.

"I am resolutely gender critical" says the OP. Don't you think your students could sense this?

I'm not saying there isn't currently an extremely concerning trend for troubled children and young people to consider themselves trans when there may well be another explaination for what they're going through. In my view, that's undoubtedly the case.

But at least the few kids who actually ARE trans are getting a hearing.

TL;DR - the fact that you never heard of a trans kid when you worked with children years ago is NOT proof that they didn't exist.

Worked from the early 80s until 2014 both full and part time (mostly full time in secondary) - nary a peep about it.

So why on earth would you people posting here and saying "Nope, never happened to me (and therefore it didn't exist)" think a school pupil would speak about this to any teacher of an academic subject, presumably not in confidence or even in private?

So that’s your explanation for why 10-15 years ago an academic teacher had never had a trans child in their class…

And what’s your explanation for why now the exact same teacher in the exact same school now has 30-50 trans children in a single year group of 300?

Don’t you think that’s a bit odd?

Because that’s the real question here, not ‘why didn’t I have a single trans child in my class for 10 years’ but what has changed to have gone from having 0 then to 50 now?

And why does ’coming out’ see to happen almost universally at the very end of year 8 or the beginning of year 9? Why isn’t it more spread out amongst year groups across primary and secondary schools?

Christabel, it concerns me you seem blind to the reasoning as to why a child develops dysmorphia about their body to the point of extreme surgery. A "true trans" person has still been badly affected by something growing up.

I did know a child in my class in the 80s who wished with all his heart he could be a girl - only because the boys bullied him for playing with us.

I also taught a child who was very frustrated that he wasn't allowed to wear dresses and grow his hair long in a send school. Princesses and long hair were his passion. Interestingly he only started to talk about being "trapped in the wrong body" after older siblings told him, after watching a documentary about a transwoman. However he had no issues with his body. So back then, the Tavistock said he was just gender non conforming.

It arises in children from issues around gender stereotyping. How that's dealt with in the home and in the social structures around them. And significant links to abuse and trauma.

All these teachers commenting had either been teaching in the 80s or more likely grown up in the 80s with boy George and Sinead O'Connor, Alien, reading famous five etc. we were looking at gender stereotyping in schools; I remember challenging ideas around this as well as making books that challenged it priority in the literacy hour. Bills New Frock for example.

stereotypes for boys has never been a well dealt with as for girls; it's always been more acceptable to be a "Tom girl" than a feminine boy, hence why in the past gender dysphoria was mostly within boys and also rare.

No child, whether able bodied or not should feel their body is wrong. I cannot square the body positivity movement with the trans movement. It's absolutely bonkers. It's society not accommodating difference that drives this.

There are now university teacher training courses that have modules on "books that have trans characters" Ffs. People being paid to do phds on trans inclusion in primary. The whole sexist socially driven ideology is generating A LOT of money for A LOT of adults, besides the drugs companies, surgeons, private gps etc. and there's no evidence that transition really helps mental health in the longer term. There's evidence on brain scans that there are similarities with anorexia.

I had severe dysmorphia about an aspect of my body growing up. I know how it started; a skin issue/difference plus teasing and curious children, impact of beauty stereotypes, which I sensitively internalised as me being the issue that had to change. I never told a soul though as I grew to realise in my 20s how and why it came about. It's never gone away, I learnt how to manage it.

Excellent riposte, @TheClogLady. Widening it out to the general population, isn't it odd that the huge surge in people identifying as trans comes from teenager girls and middle-aged men? There are some adult females identifying as transmen or nonbinary, but the numbers pale into insignificance alongside the adult males identifying as transwomen, often after building a career, marrying and having children.

Thanks for that post, @WarriorN. Your pupils are very lucky to have you in their corner.

@ChristabelHolloway
Thanks for your input.
To clarify, of course I wasn’t gender critical at the time because it was never mentioned in either my personal or professional sphere. I had absolutely no position on the matter back then and only really became aware of current gender-identity issues from MN in about 2016, by which time I was no longer teaching. Children, parents and other teachers were sharing all sorts of sensitive personal information with me in those years, so they certainly weren’t holding back due to my perceived stance on any other issue.

I suggest that the Tavistock BBC documentary and the wider availability of smartphones (passed down from parents to children) are the likely tipping points.

One of the problems I have with some posters here is that they don't seem to believe that being trans actually exists. Yes of course there's been a huge surge in young people claiming to be trans, and many of them may well be latching on to this as a way of framing another issue. For example, the massive rise in girls on the spectrum believing that they are trans is a) extremely troubling and b) almost certainly driven at least in part by fear of what it means to be a woman in today's society - and who can blame them for that, frankly.

I am as concerned as anyone else by the meteoric rise in trans dogma and what it means for children and young people. I am horrified by what's gone on via the Tavistock (I nearly trained there in the 90s btw - lucky escape) and similar institutions. I am vehemently opposed to medical intervention for anyone under 18. Of course biological sex is real. Stonewall is a disgrace, and women's rights are threatened. So far I'm as terfy as anyone else.

But this statement - A "true trans" person has still been badly affected by something growing up. - is just WRONG. And this lies at the heart of many of the posts on here - and it's fundamentally transphobic, in my view. Would you say this about someone who is homosexual? And if not, why not?? This is a real question - if you believe that some people are born homosexual, but nobody is born trans, then please explain the basis for that belief.

Transgender people have always existed. They are rare, certainly well under 1% of the population. But they have not all sufered some hideous trauma. We don't yet know why some people are trans anymore than we really know why some people are gay. But wishing they didn't exist, and expaining them away as victims of some unspecified event in their early lives, is demeaning and antiscientific.

I really wish that some of the posters here would put aside their prejudice, which seems to me to be rooted in fear of something they don't understand, and accept that heterosexuality is the norm but not "normal". The great majority of people are straight, but some are not. This is the reality, and railing against it takes away credibility and energy from the real fight, which should be against the erosion of women's and girls' rights and the propogation of queer ideology.

Thank you for your very civil reply, BadSkiingMum.

There were issues that were spoken about in the decades before this and there were those that were not. That was one of the points I made in my post. This was a time before gay marriage, when gay people were still considerably disadvantaged in law and anti-gay rhetoric, including in for example comedy on the BBC, was still rife. As for trans people, we were still at the Les Dawson stage.

As I said, my young clients were much less likely to talk about their sexual orientation with a counsellor than about other issues. I was not alone in this - I was in a supervision group with other counsellors and they found this to be true, too. Parents were embarrassed and ashamed to think they might have a gay, let alone trans, child. And children picked up on that. Society still openly mocked and attacked anyone who wasn't straight. Children know these things - they don't live in a bubble immune from societal pressure, do they.

As for you being GC back then, no, of course the term hadn't been coined yet, but don't you think we all give off a "vibe"? People sense who they can safely talk to aout a particular issue and who they can't.

I'm troubled to hear about these other teachers sharing all this sensitive personal information with you, too. Where was the privacy and protection for the families you worked with?

I agree completely that there's been a massive change. I'm not denying that for a second. My point is simply that trans children existed before, even if we weren't aware of them.

Homosexuality cannot be compared in any way to gender dysphoria. The former is sexual attraction the latter is a mental distress illness. It is lazy and homophobic to do so.

My statement is not transphobic.

I have not come across one trans persons biography that did not include an early experience of homophobia and/ or sexism.

Of course trans people "have always existed" - only since cultural identities, dress and roles became defined for the sexes. They've existed as long as as homophobia and sexism has.

Why is the only answer to medically transition? Why is the individual experiencing deep distress at fault and has to change?

@@ChristabelHolloway . This is a really interesting area to discuss and where I feel some confusion and conflict that's hard to get clarity on in the maelstrom of current ideology and debate, and from you post, it seems like you would be able to give some well reasoned explanations.
From your experience and pov, can you explain what it means to the trans children you talk about, to be 'trans'?
I'm genuinely curious and open minded and seeking understanding here.
Apologies if this is detailing the thread at all.

BTW I am an avid listener to the 'Gender a Wider Lens' podcast in my attempt to grapple with this. I don't know if you listen to this/your thoughts on their material?

I taught in schools in UK, mainland Europe, Africa, USA. I had a long career doing so, retired early 2000's. I also coordinated various syllabi and other curriculum matters across many and various schools and developed world-wide contacts in education.

I never heard tell of anything like "gender identity" until long after I retired. I never came across any "trans" children, although I was involved with a few gay teenagers (before the word 'gay' changed its meaning, and indeed even before 1967 when (adult) homosexual acts first became legal in UK).

Of course I knew of Jan Morris and April Ashley ... also of (usually gay, as they and we thought at the time, albeit under different names) men who made up their faces, wore dresses and liked to be referred to as "she". (One particular guy of this ilk ran a bar I frequented as a young man. He talked of himself and his friends as "queens", did the whole camp, limp-wristed schtick, but was as tough a man as you might wish to meet, as some of his customers came to rue if they stepped out of line.)

Children, though, never. Not a one. Not in any school I came across or knew about. "Transgender children": ... a very recent invention, whatever apologist revisionists might claim.

Why? Whence? I am not sure, although I have thought about it. It seems somehow deliberate, say no more than that. (And, of course, "gender identity" as it is purveyed by the current ideology is a complete nonsense; simply and obviously so.)

I will explain my thinking. Based in the understanding of how young children develop early ideas of the world.

Young neurotypical children absorb information about their world via stereotypes very early on. They learn to categorise based on key details. Sorting is an early years and early maths skill. Some notice details more quickly that others. Some are more interested in people and others more interested in cars.

Humans are exceptionally sensitive to visual imagery and we are bombarded from an early age. Most of it is sexist and heterosexual. Kids clothing is v sexist.

Any child who is gay absorbs this information. Some / most children are sensitive to peer and social stereotypes and so learn early on the social conventions and they want to conform. A mix of personality and experiences growing up, both sexist and homophobic may result in an extreme level of internal distress.

It can be more complex if an individual is autistic and has social communication skills that enable them to remain in mainstream schooling or would be in a school classed as MLD. (Roughly 70% of autistic children are currently in mainstream education.)

And this lies at the heart of many of the posts on here - and it's fundamentally transphobic, in my view. Would you say this about someone who is homosexual? And if not, why not?? This is a real question - if you believe that some people are born homosexual, but nobody is born trans, then please explain the basis for that belief.

I genuinely want to know why you compare people with gender dysphoria with homosexuality?

Why not compare with anorexia or another body dysmorphia?

From the little I've gleaned from neurological "brain scans" there are more similarities for those with GD as with the brains of anorexic and dyspmorphic patients.

Secondly, are yp who develop anorexia or another body dysmorphia born with the condition?

I remember a very specific shift to sexualise merchandise aimed at children - the playboy pencil-case being the one I remember best. Googling suggests it was around 2008.

www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/msps-to-probe-sexy-kids-ads-992563?utm_source=sharebar&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=sharebar

We aren't born blank slates. We all have personality traits from being tiny.

The experiences and nurture we have thereafter can help or hinder how those facets of our personality develop.

I have been reading this thread with great interest and admit to knowing far less than lots of pp. Just a thought that could the prevalence of gender identity questioning come from the very binary juxtaposition set up between male and female whereas in reality most things are continuums rather than than binary oppositions? Those who feel uncomfortable trying to fit themselves into one box or the other now have the language and the role models to describe themselves. In some ways non binary identification is similar to identifying as human and disregarding divisions of race or gender.

It was a time when Girls' Clothes and Boys' Clothes became very noticeably gendered - it took real effort to find a coat for a girl aged 4-10 that wasn't mauve or pink and it was very likely that any child who was wearing a different colour was told by other children and the parent judged by other parents that they were wearing a Boys' Coat and that it was cruel to make the child stand out in that way - despite the fact that spotting your errant daughter in her red hooded coat amongst 258 pink and mauve ones was a definite advantage at kicking out time. Girls' shoes were also no longer mostly Clarks/Startrite flats with buckles, velcro or laces - it was all slip on pumps, things with flowers and sparkles and at most, a little cross bar Dolly number.

Toys had become all bright Barbie pink for the 'girls' version' whilst the boys had every other colour. My childhood bike was a girls style (much to my disgust when I wanted a red or yellow and black BMX), but it was blue - by 2002, it was necessary to go to a section labelled 'Boys' to get anything but pink or purple.

Having long hair became the only style for girls with bows, sparkly clips, beads, hairbands and suchlike - a girl with a bob, never mind anything shorter, stood out against all the long haired children.

So as the definition of what was acceptable for girls to wear and to own narrowed, how they looked narrowed and, along with that, expectations of behaviour became more entrenched in the 'girls don't behave like yours do, look at yours, she's off playing with the boys again'.

I'd been on the receiving end of 'You're not a girl' back in the 1980s, but it was still not as strong a pressure as it was by the 2000s even when it also came from my bloody mother with her Girls Don't Want Computers For Christmas You Get A Hair Curler And You Will Like It. I resisted it as a parent, always encouraging DD to choose clothes and toys that she liked the colour of/actually wanted, rather than buying exactly the same glittery pink stuff that everybody else seemed to be choosing.

But the pressure became so strong that by 2007, my daughter was beside herself that she'd be laughed at for wearing her longsleeved green t-shirt with a rabbit on it because 'Green is a Boys' colour' and she had to wear a skirt and watch the boys playing because 'they'll see my knickers if I join in'. And it was a disaster if the shoes that fitted in Clarks' were even near to the boys' shoes section unless they were a) shit in terms of support and grip or b) covered in flowers and stitching and preferably had some glitter or bows - without that visual shorthand, a sensible pair of school shoes 'had' to be meant for boys.

Once those attitudes were so entrenched, it would make sense that girls who weren't comfortable with pink everything, didn't like scratchy, frilly clothes, restrictive skirts and shoes, liked superheroes, cars, bikes, football and climbing trees and were getting bullied for not conforming were then looking for reasons why they weren't like the other girls. And as they got older, the internet started providing an answer - well, you're clearly not a girl! You can get medication and surgery to fix that!

I'm under no illusion that had I been born thirty years later, rather than it being an irritation in my life to a) be told I was a boy and b) that none of the girls wanted to be friends with me because I wasn't like them and c) to be very unhappy when menarche and physical changes meant I wasn't able to ignore that shit anymore, I'd have been transitioned. And I'd have gone along with it, because from what I had seen of girls' things, expected behaviour and the bloody male predatory attention from 10, I knew I didn't want anything to do with any of that.

Thank fuck it wasn't a thing when I was 4 - 16 is all I can say. And that it wasn't children who started this on the internet.

I wasn’t working with children but I was an older teen at secondary school/sixth form. I cannot think of a single time that ‘gender identity’ was raised, or even hinted at with a lack of ‘official’ terminology. There was one girl out of a year of 120 who was a quirky dresser, wore a suit to our prom, and was very popular (in the ‘cool’ crowd). Also your usual tomboys, or ‘butch’ lesbians. All with plenty of friends and no bullying etc as far as I am aware.

Our subculture back then was ‘emo’ which was quite a ‘gender fluid’ (ugh) way of dressing - boys with long hair and eyeliner, girls in jeans and studded belts, all wearing black and red and band t-shirts. I was part of this fad and hung out a lot on MySpace and with various other non-conforming kids. Again, not once was gender or transsexualism ever mentioned. Not once.

My belief is that when emo left nothing took its place - we haven’t had a defined subculture for years, so ‘gender identity’ and the niche sexual identities filled this gap. And it will follow the same pattern, generally burning out as the kids reach their older teens or early 20s at the latest. It’s just how much harm is caused by then.

@NeverDropYourMooncup I was starting sixth form in 2007, I don’t really remember what you’re describing - hoodies and jeans were your basic girls outfit for a long time, or skinny jeans and a fairly plain top with converses. If you watch the inbetweeners - set around that year - the ‘hot girls’ are just wearing skinny jeans, have straightened hair and a little make up but nothing pornstar-like or OTT girly.

There have always been kids who were more uncomfortable than most with accepted gender roles. If they were girls they were called tomboys, if they were boys they were called sissies.

To the extent that those terms are pejorative and indicate a problem, you've then got two options. You can conclude that the gender roles are unnecessarily and harmfully restrictive and work to enlarge, erode or abandon them. Or you can conclude that there's something wrong with the child's body because it doesn't fit their mind and work to change that.

Decades and decades of feminism and associated disciplines attempted the first, with some considerable success but still a way to go. Unfortunately, somewhere in the mid-2010s, the dominant social discourse and approach to dealing with it switched to the second. Despite the fact that it's obviously completely insane.

I don't think kids have changed particularly. What's changed is the concepts we lay before them and invite them to make sense of life and express themselves within.

I think it probably moved in a wave that started with toddler toys and primary school children’s clothes and then moved up through the school years so wouldn’t have been particularly visible in 6th form until around 2015?
Which was also around the time when the smartphone and social media likes became a reinforcing factor in teen behaviour.

My eldest is presumably the same age as Mooncup’s but is a boy, so I’m more of an observer of the girlification of childhood than someone who was forced to bash up against it.
I clearly remember setting out to buy my then pre-school little boy a set of home role play toys circa 2003-4, dolly, pram, dustpan and brush, tea set etc and having to search far and wide to get them in realistic colours, ie shrunken versions of real world items, rather than Barbie fuchsia.
The advent of actual Barbie pink prams for newborn humans must’ve been not long after - I think they were pretty much all beige, black and navy when my son was born! I did manage to get a cow print car seat but that might’ve been the next baby (big age gap, menopause brain)

Thanks again, BadSkiingMum.

Yes, I'll try. It's quite a while ago but I retain the gist :)

The older boy, a very academic university student, was a pretty conventional male 19 year old in terms of his appearance and presentation, though he had long hair (not uncommon then). He very much wanted to experience what it was to be a girl. He had always felt closer to girls than to boys in terms of interests, emotional responses, attitudes and so on. He found other boys boorish, emotionally stunted and boring. Since he was clear-thinking and articulate he was able to express all this very well, though he was still embarrassed and somewhat ashamed to talk about it.

He came from an utterly unremarkable middle-class background and had a straight younger brother. I always encouraged clients to spend some time considering how their family might have influenced them, but as far as I could see there was nothing here that would have "caused" him to feel this way.

His sexual orientation was very much straight, and he'd had girlfriends, including sex. He had never told them about his trans leanings and was understandably very worried about what it would mean for his relationships and sex life if he did.

He wore dresses and makeup in private, and told me about the freedom he felt when he wore a skirt. He envied girls their curves, their breasts and so on, and disliked his straight-up-and-down frame. He had a female online identity which he kept secret as well as a public male one.

What he wanted was to be able to present himself as a girl in society but to be able to continue to have romantic and sexual relationships with females - straight females, not lesbians. And he was more than aware of all the problems that posed.

We didn't get past the exploration stage in our counselling sessions (it was not long-term counselling) but he did express relief at being able to talk about this to someone who didn't judge him.

The other boy was much younger and less able to express himself. Again, I couldn't see anything obvious in his background that "caused" him to want to be a girl. He was at an age where other boys were beginning to discover girls and he was attracted to them too. He just wished he was a girl.

I think part of the difficulty for most of us is that it's quite clear what homosexuality is - you are attracted to your own sex rather than the opposite sex (in reality it may not always be that straightforward but it's a valid working assumption). But understanding how a trans person feels and thinks is much more challenging. My counselling style was always very much about trying to empathise with clients and see things from their point of view, so I heard what these boys said without necessarily fully "understanding". I just knew that it was so, for them.

I hope this is helpful, and if there's anything you'd like me to clarify, please ask.

Sorry, my last message was for DameMaud. Apologies. I don't yet know how to edit here - I'll go and learn!