Non Binary Teachers

[WandaWomblesaurus]

My daughter (older teen) has had a total of three non binary teachers across primary and high school.
All were biologically female.
All went by Mx.

I asked her about her observations of them and anything she noticed in common with them as I was curious about how they have affected her education over the years.

"They all try too hard to connect with their students in an inappropriately informal way, talking a lot about personal life and relationships. A lot of talk about gender as would be expected. Sharing stuff about their own personal lives and relationships to the class and asking us about our relationships."

"They hijack the subjects they are teaching putting gender in. So for example we had a relief teacher in an English class giving us a paper about girls saying they are boys and having mastectomies and we were asked to rewrite it in our own words. I wrote on the paper I didn't agree with it."

"All of them have trans flags, stickers, posters saying TRANS IS BEAUTIFUL. Advertising it as a lifestyle choice basically."

"They try and be charismatic by putting on the nb front of 'coolness' and progressiveness but actually they are all quite awkward and square."

"Clothing wise they still all majorly present as women. They might have a short haircut but they wear dresses and makeup and I don't see how they even look androgynous or are breaking any stereotypes."

"A lot of time in classes is spent trying to imprint their opinions on us and they go off topic. They only try and relate to the girls. They don't have the skills to relate to the boys. A couple of the girls in my classes talk openly about having crushes on these teachers."

"The MX is a big thing, they get very snippy if they aren't MX'd, even by kids who are struggling to understand basic things. The pronouns are always seen as more important than the student."

Curious stuff isn't it?
I can't imagine these teachers having power in schools for much longer.

As always the question is, what rights do trans people not have?

The right these "non binary" people want is to compel other people's speech, make them jump through hoops, and make them unable to refer to "women" or "girls" as a coherent group based on their female bodies. It's not a healthy or fair thing for society to indulge, even (especially) in children.

Maybe these teachers need to focus on teaching the children maths, science, English, art… and stop thinking the world revolves around them and their new found ‘truth’ that the rest of humanity has managed to miss since we crawled out of the swamp onto dry(ish) land and thought menus is nice’.

If I have a Catholic priest as a teacher, in a mainstream school, I expect my lack of belief in god to be respected equally to his belief in god, and not to have to perform obeisance to the Catholic faith on a daily basis. What is the difference?

I have no major issue with 'non binary' identities or whatever. Some of the theory makes a kind of sense, although I disagree that they are effective in practical application.

As is so often the case, though, the 'identity' isn't really the crux. The crux is people manipulating or attempting to bully (cry bully is very relevant here) others. We see this again and again in 'gender' adherents. The 'identity' is the vehicle for authoritarianism and bad behaviour. People attack while claiming victimhood. The whole movement seems based on this power inversion - people claim a 'marginalised' victim status and then use that to bully other people.

In this example, a teacher, who holds the majority of the power in a student-teacher relationship, uses their NB identity to coerce children, to claim 'transphobia' and to sanction the children for their non-compliance.

For example, (and no offense to said poster, I'm just interested in the dynamics) we see someone immediately reacting to this thread with censure, reporting it, demanding nobody discuss the issues. Possibly the person doing this sees themself as defending the underdog. In reality, though, there is no 'underdog' here. As posters we are all anonymous and therefore roughly equal.

Children will discuss their teachers. And yes, even mock them. This is the nature of teenagers and I'm surprised a teacher would find this surprising. Parents will also discuss their children's teachers. People will talk. People will have different views. People will disagree.

The problem as I see it is the culture that has been created whereby normal discourse has been stifled and forbidden due to the belief held by one special type of person. In this instance, not even on the thread or named! Comparisons with the Stasi, the Red Guard and McCarthyism are absolutely accurate.

As is so often the case, though, the 'identity' isn't really the crux. The crux is people manipulating or attempting to bully (cry bully is very relevant here) others. We see this again and again in 'gender' adherents. The 'identity' is the vehicle for authoritarianism and bad behaviour. People attack while claiming victimhood. The whole movement seems based on this power inversion - people claim a 'marginalised' victim status and then use that to bully other people.

In this example, a teacher, who holds the majority of the power in a student-teacher relationship, uses their NB identity to coerce children, to claim 'transphobia' and to sanction the children for their non-compliance.

Yes. It's stark how often this happens.

For example, (and no offense to said poster, I'm just interested in the dynamics) we see someone immediately reacting to this thread with censure, reporting it, demanding nobody discuss the issues. Possibly the person doing this sees themself as defending the underdog. In reality, though, there is no 'underdog' here. As posters we are all anonymous and therefore roughly equal.

The championing of the underdog is what motivates a lot of good people to fight hard for others. Hopefully, civilised conversation (wherever it can be effected) can explore this further. Specifically in to the harms being done to children under the status quo. Yes, I'm angry. I'm so so so angry. But that doesn't stop me listening while I also challenge. I don't need to shut down my opponents as a first recourse and I would expect the same in return. I'm glad that this thread stayed up (to be fair, I don't think it was in danger) and it's helpful that there is a whole range of voices on it.

Yes, lots of good people have been taken advantage of because people have claimed to be marginalised and victimised.

Some people will claim victim status as a way to gain power.

As repeated often, people may or may not be marginalised, but this does not mean that other people's rights, views, and wishes are to be dismissed.

I suppose this is inherent in a society attempting to address inequalities. Attempts to redress power balances by enabling 'equity' mean some groups are given more support/power to try to address the imbalance. This creates an opportunity for some people to exploit the process and gain power. Especially, of course, if its a group that one can merely 'identify' into.

For anyone on X (apologies to those that aren't as I have no idea how to extract the video), this is an interesting, angry viewpoint from a woman who identifes as non-binary. It's notable that she calls herself a non-binary woman, not a non-binary person in her rant....

https://twitter.com/bee_kay/status/1750248852504859089?t=aZKwh4tbKu4EBuI0Njk7uA&s=19

The parallel with the teachers here is that any teacher who insists on children adopting their (the teacher's) belief, through pronouns like they/them for example, is performing a hostile takeover of someone else's "lived reality", in new-speak. In the case of the woman in the video, it's her husband. She demands that he accepts he's not straight, he's queer. In the case of the school environment, it's some, but thankfully not all, teachers demanding that their pupils don't see them as men or women but as neither.

And her constant references to being a vagina owner... well.... I'm not about to start fighting the inevitable sexist expectations and limitations that come my way in life by reducing myself to this description. If I lose the word woman, that's what would happen. Her anger is also a great example of what ArabellaScott says above about being marginalised and a victim in a self-created way.

Ps note to MNHQ... as she calls herself a non-binary woman I've used "woman" and "she" above. I hope that's within the talk guidelines on pronouns. I'd welcome the chance to rephrase before deletion if I've misunderstood. Normally I either use preferred pronouns or avoid pronouns altogether, depending on the circumstances 🤞🙏

For example, (and no offense to said poster, I'm just interested in the dynamics) we see someone immediately reacting to this thread with censure, reporting it, demanding nobody discuss the issues. Possibly the person doing this sees themself as defending the underdog. In reality, though, there is no 'underdog' here. As posters we are all anonymous and therefore roughly equal.

I see gender ideology as a way of claiming victimhood for people with power, so they can continue shitting on the truly marginalised. The way it's entered all institutions - that speaks of power.

Marginalised women - like the women prisoner who spoke at Let Women Speak about how scared she was of state sanctioned rape by a male bodied rapist who had been put in the same prison, and who taunted women daily that he was going to rape them. So scared that she had a coil fitted. She's the person without the voice here, the only place she COULD speak was at LWS. Where are the articles, training and awards about HER experience? Non-existent, that's where.

As a SPAG pedant, I object to the mangling of English and I suspect children brainwashed with individual pronoun usage some of the time but not all of the time are likely to do less well in SATs etc because English is hard enough to grasp without upending all the rules for a key element of language but not always, oh no, only for special people, but you can't tell who. Pronouns are NOT individualistic, if they are they're serving the same purpose as names they are redundant. All it does is confuse children at key stages in their development.

If you're going the individual pronouns route then the only fair thing to do is to have this option available for all - and good luck with getting any teaching done whilst remember 30+ names and 30+ pronouns per class or 300+ for each for secondary school teachers (probably a conservative estimate - happy to be corrected).

If ONE person has special pronouns, that's saying all those who don't are happy to be reduced to sex-based stereotypes (under messed up GI thinking) - how sexist is that? How DARE they assume that of all the children in their care.

I'd rather get rid of pronouns altogether than have children confused in this abusive way.

It would be an interesting analysis, gender washed schools and their SAT results. I'd bet good money they'd be worse than schools retaining normal English usage.

So many excellent points. It's worth unpicking a bit the presentation of "the most marginalised & vulnerable group in society" status as promoted by politicians like Starmer & Ed Davey. That prompts so many people to abandon all critical thinking and accept all the narrative and demands, no matter how predatory or dangerous.
This is an immensely powerful lobby with the capacity to upturn the social contract, erode fundamental medical principles - (first do no harm and don't medically experiment on children). It's got schools to abandon safeguarding for certain children and been able to wholesale gaslight girls that they have no rights to boundaries from males who require them to be undressed for validation purposes And that women's sport is open to men for the taking. This ideology is dripping with power.

There is an immensely vulnerable group - and it's the mentally unwell children (so many teenage girls) who have been abandoned to these powerful organisations and are currently engaged in the saddest of personal situations as they try to "change sex" . They're the vulnerable ones with the supposedly responsible or "trusted adults" standing watching and wibbling on about being kind and respectful.

It's not kind or respectful to watch children below the age of consent being socially groomed into taking catastrophic actions that result in future infertility, being a medical patient and life long mental health & physical problems.
The notion that our personal lives or our capture by a political lobby is something that should be visited on the children we teach is just wrong and (as pointed out upthread) in many cases breaches the Teachers' Standards, let alone the Nolan Principles of Public life.

There's so much wrong with the capture of schools by Stonewall, Gendered Intelligence, Mermaids, GIRES, Global Butterflies & countless other powerful groups.

@Coffee473 thank you for persevering as I agree there's a balance around broad sweeping assumptions v the queries around safeguarding issues this grey area brings up.

I don't think you are a tra and a few years ago I didn't have as much issue with NB as I do now. Some has been influenced by the extremely aggressive (and unlogical) policing of language in a local breastfeeding group, the rest by worrying numbers of mastectomies by NB women. What Nb is and means is just not clear and open to far too much doubt.

The lack of guidance means chaos for schools and SLTs in this area. Which will
lead to 'teacher bashing' if it's not clearly spelt out soon and in line with professional standards as unfortunately there are cases of teachers and schools who aren't approaching or handling this appropriately. This discussion and clarification is MUCH needed to keep pupils and staff safe.

I've been brain fogged all week and I'd completely forgotten about a local send school I know of where all sorts of completely inappropriate things were being said and taught by a couple of female teachers / TAs who identified as NB. Luckily the head took the issues seriously following complaints and contracts were not renewed. And was just recently was told of similar issues with an 'NB' member of support staff in another send setting, again a woman, confusing an older teen with send about her sex and sexual identity. Escalated, I'm not sure of the outcome yet.

This is anecdotal but I've personally heard it enough now in my local community to think there are issues around this where it seems to give some a free pass to cross boundaries and discuss confusing inappropriate concepts.

Hope you feel better soon.

My current infection drugs have hit me and all I can think about is bobble hats.

WarriorN

Well, I hope you're better soon.

There was discussion earlier in the thread on the harm that can result from children being damaged after being told to believe in a different reality about someone else's sex. Although it's the sex of another pupil (not the teacher) in this case, this article helps to articulate some of the psychological harm that can result from this:

https://archive.ph/3KzMG

Hopefully that link works.

I'm following up on something I posted earlier up in the thread. I'm putting it here in case it's helpful to anyone.

This discussion has really helped me to clarify how to approach the current promotion of preferred pronouns at my daughters' school. Although I don't know if the teachers that run the LGBT club, which is putting up all the posters, identify as non-binary or are just allies of trans and non-binary identified people, the end result is the same: these posters are actively promoting gender identity as a "thing" in the school.

I've already shared a copy of my response to the draft government guidance with the school and am in conversations with members of the SLT. The direction of travel seems to be positive and I'm keen to keep the dialogue as constructive as possible. There are clearly some very activist staff at the school, so I understand that it's not a quick or easy job to sort this out. I've now sent an email which includes the following main points:

1. a reminder (with reference to my guidance feedback) that the guidance sets out the fact that not everyone believes that we all have a gender identity
2. following the Forstater appeal, the right to a lack of belief in gender identity, as well as the belief that sex is immutable, is protected in law. Screenshot and link to tweet from Anya Palmer on my earlier post.
3. a request that the school follows up on whether this promotion of gender identity belief fits within the existing laws of the Equality Act and the statutory Teaching Standards on how personal beliefs should be handled by schools. I've asked if it should be handled in the same way as religious beliefs.
4. a summary of why autistic and looked after children are particularly vulnerable to believing that they are in the wrong body. I've also summarised the impact on SEN children when using preferred pronouns for others, WRT confusion and an impact on their ability to learn.

I appreciate this isn't my thread, so I hope it's not a derail to say thank you to everyone for the discussion and a special thank you to MrsO for (as ever) the invaluable insight and clarity on how beliefs should be handled in school.

Thanks for posting this. It's a really concise and clear step by step on what can be done.

I'm glad that MNHQ left this thread standing because it's important we think about how to address this behaviour from Transactivists in schools.

My original post was about the behaviours that my daughter who has experienced it all first hand had observed amongst a particular type of trans activist teacher. She feels this behaviour has impacted her education in several ways - including the ways that the girls she knows now talk about their bodies - including hating their breasts.

This is not a lovely warm rainbow hug movement of inclusivity and self acceptance. It's the opposite.

We need to be able to discuss this. We need to protect our children.

A couple of points to clarify here for the people thinking I'm being mean. I would suggest in the first place that they might think about their priorities. But anyway here goes if it needs to be explained.

"They try and be charismatic by putting on the nb front of 'coolness' and progressiveness but actually they are all quite awkward and square."

What my daughter meant by this is that these teachers aren't confident and boundary breaking, rather that they seem to be followers spouting a script rather than thinking for themselves.

"Clothing wise they still all majorly present as women. They might have a short haircut but they wear dresses and makeup and I don't see how they even look androgynous or are breaking any stereotypes."

This is pretty evident. These are not teachers presenting in androgynous ways. They are biological women, presenting as women, demanding that they are not seen or addressed as women, by CHILDREN.

I'm sorry some people think these are mean observations.

Thanks @SinnerBoy, a bit better this afternoon with more drugs and a nap. 🤪

She feels this behaviour has impacted her education in several ways - including the ways that the girls she knows now talk about their bodies - including hating their breasts.

This is not a lovely warm rainbow hug movement of inclusivity and self acceptance. It's the opposite.

We need to be able to discuss this. We need to protect our children.

Yes.

THIS is why it matters.

It's a massive issue and ideas of "being kind to teaching staff" being a reason to avoid challenging this in schools is a dangerous anti safeguarding message.

Also, gender identity is ALL ABOUT STEREOTYPES that's exactly the point that's being discussed. If there were no stereotypes there'd be nothing to 'trans' to or away from.

Exactly this!

But don't want to be called women 🙄

This.

This is such a sad thread in some ways. Teachers who should be trusted adults to children caught up in an ideology that renders them confused, denying facts, science and the reality of their bodies.
Schools uncertain and confused about what's socially acceptable and allowing children to be hounded and bullied out of accurate observations, use of language and basic biological facts.
And worst of all, children facing an avalanche of contradictory ideological nonsense in a place that should be safe, rational and balanced. Somewhere there's a clip of Helen Joyce talking about how this ideology breaks institutions. I fear it's breaking some children as well 😞