Non binary Teacher year 4

[1982mommaof4]

Okay not sure if it's me being sensitive...
My daughter is in year 4 juniors and she has a new teacher who identifies as Non binary and has made the class aware of this. She likes this teacher which is great. However, my DD now has questions that to be honest I don't want to answer.
One being do they( daughters words)have what I have or my brother has because they look like a girl but aren't.

Does that mean that some girls aren't girls...

How would you answer these questions, I'm trying to be sensitive and not offensive but I'm finding difficult to not be brutally honest in what I think.

Well, I haven't conducted genital checks on her teachers or classmates so far, so I wouldn't know for sure who is watching over her or sharing a dorm with her anyway. I can only trust that the school has done everything in its power to keep her safe.

The old "genital checks" chestnut are people really still trotting out this line?!

If you aren't sure who's looking after your child on an overnight trip, you've failed as a parent.

@Bigwelshlamb there aren't huge number of people with DSDs, the number is massively inflated by including conditions where the sex of the person is known but they have some smaller variance in their development.

Even so, people with DSDs are not a third sex. Their existence does not mean that humans have more than two sexes. They have developmental disorders that mean that their sex is harder to immediately determine than 99% of the populations.

Even more so, people claiming a non-binary identity or a trans identity are not claiming they have a DSD.

DSDs have zero to do with "non binary" gender identities.

I'd just say the teacher just wants to be seen as a person rather than a sex. I don't see the need to make a drama of it. GS, who lives with me for various reasons, had a teacher who was bi, when GS told me I just said that's nice dear. Never mentioned again.

I'll let social services know in the morn.

Actually sex does matter at a population level in the examples you cite in the first paragraph. Sex matters here because still, still it is the sex who carry and bear children who end up doing most of it. Sex doesn’t matter in so far as there is nothing inherent in being male which means you don’t do so much childcare or domestic shit as female people, but it matters because it is the female people who do more precisely because they do carry and bear children and society still sees it as more their role.

Now the issue for me with non-binary is that it is not a political statement which helps in any way whatsoever to dismantle these societal disparities. So who does it benefit?

There is nothing radical about whatever signifiers one changes to become non-binary. There is nothing which says to girls and young women ‘we can challenge the structural inequalities we face’. More, it seems to me to say, I opt out of this. And why the heck would that not seem attractive to young women?

The challenge we face as parents and educators is empowering young women to change and overcome stereotypes whilst owning being female. This doesn’t mean they have to present as or live up to stereotypical expressions of femininity in fashion or styling ot anything like that. But that it’s okay to say, I can present how I like as a woman and I will still challenge and fight the limitations put on me.

Being on the FWR board, I know I am not saying anything new here, but I think it still important to note. What radical, political and social change is going to come for women at a population level by individuals declaring themselves non-binary?

Good grief, is someone ticking off the squares on the bingo card?

No, there aren't huge amounts of biologically intersex people. Your daughter's friend has an extremely rare medical condition. This doesn't make her less female than any other girl or woman.

Intersex is an outdated term. Most people with the medical conditions that used to be lumped together under the umbrella term 'intersex' would prefer the term DSD to be used, standing for disorders or differences of sexual development. Some people prefer VSD standing for variations of sexual development. Intersex makes it sound as if these people fall between male and female, and they don't. Their bodies have developed in an unusual way in the womb, often because of a genetic condition, or in a few cases because of illness or accident after birth. They are all either male or female.

Estimates of how many people have DSDs have been wildly inflated by including women with polycystic ovary syndrome and men with hypospadias. Cases where there is genuine doubt about which sex to bring a child up as vanishingly rare.

But the most important thing about all of this is that it's got nothing whatsoever to do with identifying as trans or non-binary! People with DSDs have repeatedly asked to be kept out of this.

Holly, imagine a PE teacher in a secondary school claiming to be non binary. Which changing rooms should they supervise? PE changing rooms are an area where bullying of children often happens and an adult presence is essential for health and safety reasons. So would you allocate this non binary teacher to the girls or boys changing rooms?

don't see the need to make a drama of it.

Tell the teacher that. Everyone has a sex. They're not more special than the boring old plebs who don't pretend they don't.

I think this is the right place to post this. I hope that BigWelshLamb reads it and takes it seriously as it is written by a man with a DSD.

'This is a serious plea:
To ALL rational developmental biologists, endocrinologists, clinical medical scientists: Please can I ask you to state;
1) The binary of sex is real, ie male & female.
2) Those of us with DSD conditions, regardless of complexity, are still males or females with chromosomal disorders/reproductive/hormonal genetic conditions.
3) That 'intersex' is an outdated misnomer term, that was replaced in 2006, as part of the Chicago Consensus meetings.
4) Condition specific language is preferred amongst most that have such conditions, & if an umbrella term is to be used DSD (differences/disorders of sex development) or even a new umbrella term should be used to show we have congenital/genetic conditions of reproductive/chromosomal disorders.
5) To shun gender ideological/social science that tries to use such conditions to justify political agenda or personal self identity(ies).
We must together stand for clinical medical science, the truth, common sense - all to protect vulnerable people, like myself with such conditions & to spread scientific reality. Thank you.'

https://nitter.net/lundyradio

This isn't generating the screenshots perhaps hoped for.

We are all people. We can use all sorts of categories, young people and old people, black people and white people, male people and female people, people who are parents and people who aren't. We don't have to use all those categories. I'm quite happy not to bother with those categories unless they are necessary.

That's is true. My answer was in relation to. PP saying there is only male and female. Biologically it isn't that simple.

I honestly wouldn't expect a teacher to be sitting in the changing rooms in secondary school. I'm not just saying that. It didn't happen when I was in school. We had a male and a female PE teacher. If either of them felt the need to lurk on us at that age, they would have been called a perv or a lesbian behind their backs.

I suppose you try and be careful but factual. This is a female bodied teacher right? So just say that she has female body parts but for reasons she doesn't want to be called Miss /Mrs and she doesn't want to be called she. Maybe tell her to best call the teacher by name as "they" is a bit complicated.

The whole explanation of 'they' as plural is probably a bit redundant for a 7yo. So English is being mangled.

You could also ask dd questions. What does she think about it? Try and point out it's just the fashion right now. People like to be different. Ask your dd if she feels like a girl. If it were me I'd be saying I don't feel like a woman I feel like myself and I don't mind being called 'she' but equally don't feel that means I need to do or look traditionally female things.

It is that simple. We are a sexually dimorphic species, i.e. like all the other mammals we come in two variants, male or female, and this is because there are two sex cells or gametes, large and small. Small gametes are sperm, large gametes are eggs. Female bodies are organised around having large gametes and being capable of reproduction in the years of sexual maturity and before menopause. Male bodies are organised around production of small gametes. That's it, biologically.

It's complicated so of course sometimes it goes wrong. But there will only ever be two sexes.

Please read my post above.

No, there aren't huge amounts of biologically intersex people. Your daughter's friend has an extremely rare medical condition. This doesn't make her less female than any other girl or woman.

So rare it's unlikely the story is true. There are far, far more people who want to use DSDs as some sort of gotcha for "trans" than actually have DSDs, so in any trans-related debate, the chance of any actual first- or second-hand DSD claims being true are very slim. (Personal false DSD claims from "trans" people quite possibly do outnumber redheaded trans people, unlike real instances - actual studies showed no higher real incidences than the general population.)

Just as a "female" sex offender in a "self ID" environment very probably isn't, an "intersex" person in a trans discussion very probably isn't, for the same basic statistical reasons.

That's is true. My answer was in relation to. PP saying there is only male and female. Biologically it isn't that simple.

All people with differences of sexual development are either male or female.

@Bigwelshlamb it's not simple, in some very few edge cases, but it is a fact that humans as with all mammals are either male or female. Just because in some specific circumstances it can take some investigation to establish it doesn't mean it isn't true.

We are all people. We can use all sorts of categories, young people and old people, black people and white people, male people and female people, people who are parents and people who aren't. We don't have to use all those categories. I'm quite happy not to bother with those categories unless they are necessary.

Sex categories are necessary, though, as ppl said, for safeguarding reasons.

Treat it just like if the teacher was a Muslim with practices that highlighted this (eg full burkas / timetable to allow for prayer) or another religion.

"Some people believe..."

Biologically it isn't that simple.

Humans are one of two sexes, but sometimes there are issues in development. Their bodies are still organised around one reproductive role more than the other.

Year 4 was when they covered puberty in my kids' school. That's going to be fun.

The questions I would be asking the head would be around how they are communicating this to the children without encouraging them to think that if they don't confirm to sex stereotypes they might be non-binary/the other sex themselves.