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.

Only because there were people saying they believed in them

Nobody on this thread - or any other - has said anything at all about "sex essences" apart from you!

Er....? What's immutable is sex. Girls can't become boys or some indeterminate 3rd sex. No essences required.

If you're arguing it's a belief and explaining the driver behind it peas, that's fine but it's completely at odds with primary school level teaching, and standards.

I do not believe it's helpful to draw analogies in any way with religion for a range of reasons, but particularly because believing you've have a gender identity and the law and society must participate is anti safeguarding.

We don't need to butlerise education

It's at odds with secondary education as, if you use Erickson's descriptions of child development, teens is for 'identity.' But he never found or mentioned gender identity.

Erikson

At my school children change for PE. Y4 male teacher is expected (and does) leave the classroom. By the end of y4 it’s not out of the question for girls to have their periods or be wearing bras. It’s not acceptable to mix the sexes or have girls supervised by male staff at that age, which clearly we acknowledge.

As WarriorN says swimming often starts in y4 and obviously children can’t spend all day in a swimsuit so changing facilities (which are often old style single sex open plan changing rooms) are required.

2 sexes in all mammals is a fact.

It's a much more basic fact than the earth not being flat or evolution.

A nonbinary teacher is the same as a flat-earther teacher or a teacher who does not believe in evolution. They can have those beliefs, but if they teach them to their students, or bring those beliefs into school, that's a breach of professional ethics at least.

I also think compelled pronouns quite firmly fall under the definition of 'emotional abuse' of those children by that teacher in KCSIE. So a serious safeguarding failure.

That is all.

We're going backwards. I don't know if it was an urban myth but I was told that in days gone by, some girls had taken their lives when they started their periods, because they believed they were dying as no-one had told them this would happen. We're headed back in that direction where children will be totally unprepared for the changes in their bodies because they'll be so confused and / or think they get to choose.

Identities as such only exist in social contexts, though. They mean nothing if you don't mean for them to be validated or referenced by others. If you don't require any external recognition, why even bother to adopt such an identity? We all have feelings about who we are and how we feel but that is totally a private matter. Why the need for a label or a name. Feelings are amorphous and intangible.

Beliefs in “immutable sex differences” aren’t just a belief that there are sex differences. They are beliefs that all female people share an essential female essence, and all male people share an essential male essence, and that people are male or female “really” (or not) based on whether they have the supposed essences. A belief in immutability of those essences is an aspect of an essentialist belief (look up essentialism if you want to). Someone who doesn’t believe in male and female essences isn’t going to believe there are any essences to be immutable. That doesn’t mean they believe there aren’t sex differences.

I've seen some piffle in my time but this takes the biscuit. What on earth are you waffling on about? There are female bodies and there are male bodies. That's it. Fixed at conception. In a few cases there are missing chromosomes or genes or faulty genes, which may mean the reproductive system develops in an atypical way, but there is never, ever any chance that a female mammal can turn into a male one, or vice versa.

I think you’re supposed to keep a beaker by the bed for sex essences.

I don't think it is about " essences" more about the realities and experiences of living in a sexed body; and also the influence of hormones on the developing infant brain and pubescent body. Hormones are powerful substances. we know that testosterone is an indicator of aggression and of accompanying mental attributes. If you watched the documentary about the transman who gave birth - you would have seen them experience an overwhelming flood of maternal feeling towards the baby - whuch they then sought to dampen down by " getting back on the " T' as soon as possible".

There is more than enough evidence that the male sex drive operates differently to the female sex drive - and this is for obvious biological reasons. Look at the gay male sex scene as an example of what unfettered male sexuality looks like; in a way that the lesbian scene does not.

You will find males very much over-represented when it comes to certain sexual fetishes, tendencies and practices. There is is evidence that the male brain, whilst not structurally any different to the female brain ( even though larger) tends to process certain types of information differently. Boys, for example, tend to be more object oriented and there are studies with even very young babies which verify this. Female brains tend to be a lot more 'fluent' and connected across hemispheres than male brains, and language is more developed.

You will note that in the playgroup or playground girls are often a lot more relationship oriented, tending to form stronger pair bonds than boys, and if you've ever taught girls, you'll know that girls can be a lot more complex or 'entwined' emotionally. Boys are often far more simple and straightforward.

Onbviously these are generalisations, and there are always outliers and exceptions; and individual character, aptitude and so on can outweigh certain generalised tendencies. But there are obvious sex based differences which are rooted in biological differences. It doesn't mean we are always completely driven by these differences, though, or completely defined by them,

Oh fgs count.

I've got to find that thread now.

What on earth is that garbage about essences? Could it be a lack of ability to reason amongst people who believe in gender identity? Or is it just deliberate derailing of this thread.

I wouldn't advocate teaching children about" essences"; just encouraging pupils to explore and develop their potentials. All children, regardless of sex, are now taught the same subjects; though observation and experience does reveal there are some generalised sex based differences. They may be subtle, or sometimes not so subtle, but they are there.

That is why most Transwomen who really believe and fel themselves to be women still display quite 'masculine' behaviours and traits - in spite of themsleves; and transmen in spite of feeling they really are male, continue to be 'read' in typical female ways.

A lot of you seem obsessed with changing sex lol. It has nothing to do with it. My points are, you can’t go back in time and develop in a different way, but there is also no essence shared by all female people, or vice versa, and sex differences are in part changeable.

Not everyone fits into a stereotypical idea of male or female, and some people complain that their sex characteristics have been altered in childhood without their consent to help them fit a societal ideal.

They won’t necessarily identify as a sex you think they should.

If someone grows up looking female and thinking they are female, and then finds out as an adult that they have AIS, for example, you can’t really demand they think of themselves as a man and use he / him, can you. Equally they shouldn’t have surgery performed on them as children, and be forced to use she / her, just because society is unaccepting.

To protect children in those situations from unnecessary medicalisation, there has to be more openness about and acceptance of difference by society. Not forcing them to fit your idea of what a man or woman should be, or demanding they think of themselves as you want them to.

It really isn't about dsds; many people with a dsd have spoken out negatively about this analogy and reasoning for gender identity linked to it.

For some with a dsd it's disabling as well as affects fertility.

This is nothing to do with this thread and is very rare.

Yes thank you. I feel like your post is one of the first posts I've seen that is talking sense and not trying to tip toe around sparing 'feelings'.

My god if I thought my year 4 DS was being told this BS I too would be incandescent.

Non binary doesn't mean anything. Its made up by people who are so backwards that they believe if you aren't uber feminine or masculine you must be neither male nor female.

I think it has everything to do with this thread, as if you can’t talk about it with children in an age appropriate way, and try to keep it all a secret from them, then you can’t protect children affected by these issues from unnecessary medicalisation.

The great majority of children who have this health issue would either not know about it till puberty and certainly not want it to be public knowledge.

But this thread is about someone who is non-binary @Peasandsweetcorns; it has nothing to do with DSD.

You’d be unlikely to see an equivalent thread about a child whose teacher had a DSD and wanted their parent to explain it, because in the vast majority of cases, you can’t tell someone has a DSD by looking at them. It is of course also perfectly fine to explain DSD to children if it comes up in conversation or they ask about it.

This is about a teacher who is female but whose declared identity suggests she wants the children in her care to believe- or pretend to believe - that she is neither male nor female.

Keeping it a secret from them and lying to them is wrong, in my opinion.

Some people with DSDs identify as nonbinary, because of their experiences; therefore it’s relevant.

Also, you don’t know anything about the teachers sex development, just that they look female. You’re making assumptions about them.

you are talking absolute shite

It has been demonstrated that people attending gender clinics do not have DSDs. Bringing DSDs into this discussion is absolute nonsense.