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.

Nooo! Because by that logic the child could well conclude that you can only be a girl if you like girl things.

@EasternStandard This is new so haven't had any contact yet. I struggle to use they them in emails and conversation. 😩

This

Simply say “some people don’t feel as though they are a boy or a girl and they call themselves non binary”. If your child asks why, say you don’t know because you don’t feel that way yourself. That’s it. No big deal. Your only concern should be if the teacher can teach and is kind to their pupils

None of that is relevant when a young child is asking their parent simple questions; you don’t need to have a detailed discussion about the persecution of lesbian and gay people with them.

And gender identity isn’t an affectation either. And it’s worse for intersex people, as they still sometimes have surgeries performed on them as young children, when they can’t consent, to help make them fit a male or female societal box, and people lie to them about it.

I listened to an interview with an intersex person recently, who didn’t find out they had AIS until they were at university, as they had had surgeries in childhood, and been lied to about what the surgeries were. They said they went from identifying as female to identifying as nonbinary and intersex after they found out what happened to them.

You can’t protect intersex people from unnecessary childhood surgeries without being open with children, when necessary, about people not always fitting into neat male and female boxes.

Non binary is nothing to do with disorders of sexual development.

It’s intertwined, since some people identify as nonbinary as a result of their experiences of having disorders of sexual development.

I'd add " Beacause some children think they have to like 'boy' things if they are a boy or 'girl' things if they are a girl - and if they don't like those things they get confused. But really being a boy or a girl has got nothing to do with your hobbies or your toys; it is just to do with the type of body you have".

Teachers need to be clear about reality for the sake of all of their pupils. It is not kind. or responsible, to mislead children

That's only because it is a new label that they can play around with and see if it fits. DSD's do not mean one is neither male nor female.

The vast majority of people who identify as "non binary" are XY or XX with no typical features. It's muddying the water to suggest it has anything to do with DSDs.

No atypical features

These are children being wholesale gaslit by an adult trying to pretend that the sex binary doesn't exist. They are all apparently being compelled to use inappropriate pronouns that counter facts and what they see in front of them which hinders their learning
Adults are free to believe what they want. But those employed as teachers are required by the Teachers' Standards to ensure "that personal beliefs are not expressed in ways which exploit pupils’ vulnerability ..."

A year 4 classroom is not the place for an adult confused about their identity to play that confusion out to an audience of 8 & 9 year old children.

Some of the well known women's rights activists on Twitter have posted this thread on Twitter. Gets a repost by Glinner himself!

It really is more complicated, because it is not straightforward at all.

You tell a child "some boys love other boys and want to be their boyfriend and hold hands, and some girls love other girls and feel they would like to marry them". That's it.All straightforward, simple and true. No denial of sex or of reality at all.

To explain what 'non binary' means you have to explain the confusion or discomfort in the head of the child who is using the term -whilst maintaining a grip on the truth and reality of sex and the fact that everybody is either male or female; that you don't get to choose. The reality of sex has nothing to do with feelings. Children have enough to deal with when formulated an ego identity without being lied to, manipulated or confused.

The thread is about people who identify as nonbinary. You don’t know what the teachers situation is. They could, like the person whose interview I saw, look and sound entirely female and identify as nonbinary and have AIS. Whether you think they are really male or female isn’t relevant.

To be honest, if you think this is what a teacher should say to the other children then you are asking that teacher to gaslight their pupils; and that is simply not on. Deeply irresponsible. Furthermore you are validating an unreality in the mind of a developing child, and further cementing it.
I'm an ex teacher btw - It would be deeply wrong to mislead children in this way.

The suicide rate amongst trans people is not 'astonishingly' high. That is a manipulative made up lie and I'm sick of the 'be kind' brigade constantly parroting it. Show us those 'astonishingly' high statistics, it shouldn't be hard if they are that astonishing. And I'll apologise.
But I'm guessing you won't be back because you won't find any evidence.

It is not about what " I think"; it is about reality. It is a fact that you cannot change sex, or be neither one sex or the other. Total gasllighting. by the teacher.

My daughter is now a teacher and there was a young male teacher who was identifying as a woman at one of her training schools.. An all girls school. The girls were expected to call him 'Miss'. He got to wear thick make up when the girls and even the teachers are not permitted to themselves. The girls knew full well he was male. He also ran an LGBTQ lunchtime club in which he encouraged girls to think they might be trans. Some of the girls attending were very vulnerable, or from difficult family backgrounds.

Goodness knows what the Head was thinking of? Needless to say lots of complaints from parents. -many of whom were from religious and ethnic minorities.

I think there's more robust evidence of the fact that transitioning doesn't alleviate the likelihood of suicide (that is in reality smaller than the exaggerated claims) anyway.

That’s a completely different situation to what the original poster described.

Do you know what we are fudging statistics anyway because if someone can legally change their sex, we don’t actually know who is at more risk of things like mental health difficulties or suicide.

But my main point remains. If a teacher is another religion, race or sexuality then children are not compelled to change their belief systems and are not compelled to change their speech.

I think it is wrong to compel children to change their belief systems and compel their speech. Very, very wrong.

@Apollo441
https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2023/06/28/health/transgender-suicide-risk/index.html

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5178031/

https://www.science.org/content/article/transgender-people-face-much-higher-risk-suicide-landmark-study-reports

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/transgender-teens-7-6-times-more-likely-to-attempt-suicide

https://www.gendergp.com/what-is-the-transgender-suicide-rate/

Thank you

@RebelliousCow I don’t think the teacher should say that. I think the OP should say something like to their child. I don’t think the teacher should mention their gender identity at all because it isn’t relevant to what they’re teaching a y4 class and it’s their own business.
I don’t see how it’s irresponsible or gaslighting. Non binary identity exists and pretending otherwise seems irresponsible and gaslighty to me. It is an identity not a sex