"Transphobic bullying is rife": 15 y/o trans boy's view of coming out at school

[ButterflyHatched]

A rare and refreshing example of the mainstream media actually publishing a young trans person's own words on the subject of their own existence and how the government's draft guidance is likely to affect the people it directly pertains to.

‘Transphobic bullying is rife’: a 15-year-old trans boy’s view of coming out at school | Transgender | The Guardian

Except until now with the guidance, teachers in many schools did have to call the child by their preferred name and pronouns following the peer culture.

Which is patently ridiculous.

They use shortened versions though, Jon for Jonathan, I'm not talking about playground names. Some children also use their middle name rather than their first name but I'd expect this to be clarified with a parent if the school hadn't already been notified on enrolment.

This.

yes, it is.
Which is why teachers have been calling for centrailised guidance and even now some schools will ignore it. But it does mean that teachers should have some protection from bad management.

My ds is in secondary I don't think I was consulted about him using the shortened version of his name, but that it was he is down as. I wonder if he had wanted something totally different, I would have been told.

Mind work tried to 'officially' change my name to the shortened version, despite me having explained many a time that my full name is what my professional registration is under.

I’m pretty certain that KCSIE was drawn up without discussing it with 11 year old children. Sometimes, the adults have to get in with the adulting.

Precisely so. And because it would be a safeguarding risk. The point is that if everyone genuinely believed this child was a boy, they would have no qualms about allowing them to use the boys’ toilets.

If you had asked me at 11, 12,13,...if I wanted to change in front of boys the answer would most definitely have been NO! So if children - and I, unlike @ButterflyHatched mean ALL children and not a select few, had been asked I'm quite sure most of the females would also say no. To force girls to accept male children in their changing rooms is also bullying. To try and force someone to use your preferred pronoun is bullying. Why@ButterflyHatched do you not care about the majority of girls being bullied?

Presumably bullying women and girls out of having boundaries is the operational mode? Vanishingly few women or girls world wide would consent to stripping in front of random males in changing rooms, showers etc so those determined to remove women's boundaries must use coercive control as they're discovered that demands to be kind don't work?
The fact that we're talking about children in schools just magnifies the unacceptability of this approach.

One of the biggest flaws in trans ideology is the belief that everything a child says is true and accurate and has no other explanation. This “article” is no different, and it doesn’t surprise me the Guardian has decided it was worthy of publication.

This 'guidance' relating to children and young people has been drawn up with no consultation whatsoever with children and young people.

I'm sick of seeing this facile argument trotted out. Many, many laws affect children but we don't routinely consult them, because by and large, they have very little knowledge/experience of the ramifications of law/policy. It's particularly unreasonable to expect them to contribute to guidance on such a confusing and divisive issue, especially when so many of them have been brainwashed presented with a completely imbalanced view by schools, social media, etc. Children have a right to be heard, certainly, but they also have protective rights, meaning it's up to adults - not children themselves - to ensure that they are adequately safeguarded.

Bullying is not acceptable.

I also don't feel it's acceptable to tell a girl she must be a boy simply because she's not feeling very 'girlish' Can't we just be happy being a tomboy these days? Who are these dangerous adults allowing this shite to go on??

I really really worry for the mental health of these children. I cut my hair (well shaved) when I was 12 because I wanted to look like a boy. I wore only trousers, No skirts. I put my head down because I wanted to be invisible. I grew out of it, as we all do. Thank christ no ADULT told me that's cool, become a boy, here's a new name, you're now a 'he'. Honestly feel all this nonsense is child abuse.

Butterfly is a man post surgery who has womanly feels. Like the cosmos or something.

The issue is kids who are trans overlap massively with kids who would be bullied anyway, it is why they are so susceptible to glitter families etc in the first place. They are not very reliable witnesses either, with their extreme egocentric beliefs they take things to heart or personally such as other peoples eyes existing becoming side eye or glares of hatred. Other people feeling uncomfortable as transphobia.

So what was the bullying? And the bit re 'if people only accepted me as I am it would all be fine' actually is 'if people went along with my lies and everyone else's needs and opinions were ignored and ridden roughshod over, because no-one else matters, it would all be fine for ME!'

@ButterflyHatched you should say if you are MTF or FTM. Someone has asserted that you are MTF. You. Should be honest

ITS IMPORTANT. You are on a feminist board so i am keen to learn about your feminist views on, breast feeding, and the sale of formula, the failure of the criminal justice system regarding DV and rape, Pay inequality, abortion rights, black women in all areas of health, maternity rights

go on go on go on go on am dying to know

Butterfly has said before that Butterfly is MTF.

When gender ideology was raised at DD school, several parents raised the issue of bullying including some whose children had suffered significant bullying. BUT it was all targeted at children who had ‘misgendered’ someone or weren’t sufficiently obsequious to those who identified as trans.

👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼🍎

The penultimate paragraph is very disingenuous about kids experimenting with their names and clothes and their parents not being informed; this is NOT the same as school indulging a fantasy that a pupil is the opposite sex.

The article reads as a teenager having a strop. It’s not at all informative and gives no insight into the potential impact of the recent guidelines.

Agree with locks on doors not working and not following up on bullying as being huge failures on the school’s part but this has jackshit to do with the guidelines or with the child being “trans”.

Very poor, Grundian. Need to do much better.

Are children usually consulted about government guidance aimed at ensuring their own safeguarding?

This is a bit of a "You can't transition because your life will become too difficult due to the way I am going to treat you." classic here.

Transitioning can help ameliorate debilitating gender dysphoria. This can be addressed in many ways - some of them are connected to an individual's own self-perception and others can be due to how they are perceived by others.

Transitioning won't completely change the way others treat people they perceive to be transgender. This itself can sometimes be a source of dysphoria.

Sometimes transitioning can cause people to be treated as if they aren't trans at all. This doesn't fix the problem of societal transphobia - it just sidesteps it for that individual.

Transitioning young increases the likelihood of a person having a fighting chance of living a life exposed to the least possible amount of prejudice, and means they can potentially do so before they become an adult. It helps avoid a sense of 'missed milestones' and the trauma of experiencing gender incongruity for a large portion of your life. It isn't a panacea but it can help some people a great deal.

This privilege - to appear to be an ordinary person below the notice of those who systematically abuse transgender people as a matter of principle - once gained, can be revoked at any time. You only get to have it once in any social group. Some people don't take advantage of it at all and always disclose their history anyway.

Minority stress remains a lifelong factor regardless.

Transitioning young increases the likelihood of a person having a fighting chance of living a life exposed to the least possible amount of prejudice, and means they can potentially do so before they become an adult. It helps avoid a sense of 'missed milestones' and the trauma of experiencing gender incongruity for a large portion of your life.

Translated: “males who are medically transitioned as children pass better as adults, ergo it’s beneficial to medically transition all children to justify this rationale.”

It isn't a panacea but it can help some people a great deal.

Not a panacea, and how do you predict which “some” it will help “a great deal” even though there is no evidence demonstrating it does any such thing? If it’s only “some” why are so many children being offered medical transition?

The utter stupidity of those who believe it’s possible to socially trans a child at school behind parents backs and for the parents never to find out about it!

Kids in school have siblings in other years, and hundreds of classmates.

Parents are connected via WhatsApp groups

People are curious, people gossip.

‘Oh, Mrs P, I heard your Chloe is going by the name of Aiden nowadays! How did he choose the new name? Did you pick another family name, like you did 13 years ago’

And crikey knows how many kids have been outed by the schools IT system, you sign in, expecting to pay a fortnight’s worth of dinner money and a school trip and someone has inexplicably changed the pupil name on the account from Luke to Luna.

Much better to have a school-home phone call rather than have parents be the last to know.

Because they will find out and it’s going to be a lot better for the kid to have ‘come out’ via a formal, multi person meeting at school than it is to wait until this year’s Xmas cards from school friends are all inexplicably addressed to Ash Blue-Blade Brown instead of Annabel Brown.

and if a child is actually in danger from their parents then the school needs to make a social services referral, ASAP.

The narrative in these anecdotes is that the parents are the horrible nasty ones who don’t let the child be “their real self” (whatever that may mean) and that the child needs protecting from his or her own parents.

This itself is dystopian, and it also undermines the safeguarding principle that children should never be asked by adults to keep secrets from their parents. What an awful mess.