Pride in primary school

[Askingforafriend24]

Help me get my head around this. Primary school is making a huge deal about pride, and running a themed summer fair to celebrate. The whole school - kids and parents - are expected to get involved. Including an educational seminar for the parents that we are expected to attend!

I’ve been told point blank I am a dinosaur for questioning why there is such an emphasis on celebrating LGBTQ+ communities to a bunch of kids who probably don’t think about any of this stuff yet. There is already a carefully planned curriculum around all of this from the LA so I am confused as to why the school feels the need to go even further, particularly holding a massive event outside of school hours! I feel I have other things I would rather do with my Saturday morning, and I feel attending Pride events should be a choice for families to make for themselves.

One parent is no longer speaking to me because she was so horrified I even questioned the event - so hoping someone could come along with some advice.

Don’t get me started on sports day, when the kids all compete against each other (up until year 5) - which means the boys win pretty much everything and the girls come away empty handed. Again apparently I am ridiculous for daring to point out how unfair it is. Really fed up with it.

I think it portrays a notion that it's regular to be gay but in reality it is a minority of people

@FrancescaContini I am not being rude but your barrage of questions aren't exactly helpful in a discussion forum. They come across as quite aggressive. My children discuss not barrage me with questions.

I simply shared what my recollection of what my son learnt. He knew what a boyfriend, girlfriend, wife husband was at six. He had no issues understanding what transgender is as in someone in his school community that he knows now identifies as a woman. He doesn't see the politics or the issues because he is ten.

He knows members of the school community and our family are members of the LGBT+ he knows more than me. He knows our family are allies and some of our family are responsible for organising family friendly Pride events.

He will attend the march and participate in family events.

@boredm I don't even understand your language, what do you mean 'regular'? It is normal to be gay. If you mean that it's uncommon and you're using language poorly then you're also wrong. Fewer and fewer people now identify as straight.

We absolutely do need to make sure that the message that comes across is 'it's ok not to be straight'.

Why? What is the point of these marches? They are merely for the T etc. just look at the marches and event in the Us now - because that’s what will come here soon (as it often does).

I have family in Boston and Washington and they were gobsmacked at the sexualisation and kinkification of these events now - and the real push for it to be seen as ‘child friendly’ - selling willy plushies to the kiddies, having stalls selling dildos and know costumes, and having men on leather dog costumes (and less) wandering the streets. It’s Q theory in practice.

And ‘allies’ implies that there is a war.

Allies is language used going back to the 1960s in Ireland used by family members of Irish men and women incarcerated for being gay. @HoneyButterPopcorn

And there is a war on gay people in plenty of countries still, so it isn't an inappropriate word.

@Marblessolveeverything I was pretending to be six, hence the “barrage”.

I am impressed that your son understood aged six what transgender means as it still makes no sense to me, given that it’s impossible to change sex. Unless of course you are reinforcing rigid regressive stereotypes about what it means to be male or female, but I would hope any primary school worth its salt would steer well clear of teaching stereotypes to children.

Back in the early 2000s, I came out as bi to everyone in my class (year) on a school retreat. (Cringe in retrospect, but so is a lot of high school.) I tried to get the school to let us starts a gay-straight alliance, which we didn’t get because it was a Catholic school.

And I agree with the above. Little kids don’t need a whole school festival for anything related to romantic or sexual relationships. Their parents can take them to something like that off of school grounds if they want to.

Also, when it comes to young children, most of them are being raised in an environment where same-sex relationships are no longer taboo. My MIL has this weird thing where she acts like seeing professional women in children’s media is a big deal - “oh, the doctor is a woman in this book.” My kids look at her like she’s out of her mind, because yeah, and so what? That’s not revolutionary anymore. Even when I was a little kid, there were women in all types of careers all over children’s media. But my MIL makes it seem like this isn’t “normal” because she singles it out for commentary.

I think it might be better for LGB acceptance among kids if people just act like it’s not widely taboo (because it’s not) and not worthy of lots of special attention.

Sorry to sound sinister.
"Help me get my head around this."
If Op wants to understand/know what the school is doing why not go to an event that explains what the school is doing.
Knowledge is power - Francis Bacon.

@FrancescaContini none of my children ever barraged me with questions. Nor any of their friends. They took time to consider an answer and may ask for further context.

He understands transgender at a level that impacts his real life as in he understands people may ask him to possibly use different pronouns. He doesn't care about the bigger gender question. He cares about does his friends parent allow cookies or not. And is their dog friendly, he is ten, there are his priorities

As regards the issues you or I would consider no he isn't going to worry about female only places because again he is ten.

No I definitely don't enforce rigid stereotypes nor does his school.

My sons did the long hair for a while, the black nail varnish, I bought the dolls and toy cars I ensured as much as possible they watched a variety of shows showing that men/women can do any job etc.

Children knowing about sexuality, celebrating Pride, etc doesn't mean they have our context. It lets them know before they know about their personal sexuality that all LGBTQ+ are valued and loved and to me that is vitally important.

Were is the war? How is marching along Baker Street in a baby doll costume helping gay people in Iran?

Exactly, why would a child need to celebrate someone in a same sex relationship in their lives or even wider society. Presumably they experience, internalise and accept it on a day to day basis as it is.

As a child I was always very accepting of LGB relationships and it was the fear mongering, AIDs-epidemic 80s and early 90s FFS. I honestly think this level of well-meaning, forced emphasis would've made me cringe. It's not very subtle (and no I don't mean that in a homophobic way, merely that you can organically weave it into the conversation/discussion/curriculum).

It sounds like the day to day curriculum is already very robust in this area in OP's case.

How is this summer fair inclusive of children from particular religious backgrounds? They have to forego a fun summer activity because the ethos is at odds with their family's belief system?

What does Q stand for?Questioning which is a word some people use to describe who they may like to date.

Q stands for Queer. A term many LGB people find offensive as it was used as an insult. Now it refers to Queer theory - the breaking down of society’s norms. This explicitly includes the norms that prevent sex between adults and children. All the big academic Queer theorists - Butler, Rubin, Foucault, forget the one beginning with ‘C’, are quite clear on this.

I was at school on the 70s. I remember a book in primary two about some kid with ‘two dads’. Mum and dad’s best pal was gay, as was my big cousin and a parent at dad firm. Not many lesbian in our world - but maybe that because of the ongoing misogyny.

By the time of got to secondary school the ‘cool kids’ were the far clique (including my sister - I have a lot of sisters).

This was just after the time when my big sister couldn’t get her name on her and her and her husbands first mortgage.

My other big sister was sexually abused and the police came to our house to persuade her to drop the accusation (the same bloody thing happened to my niece a couple kid years ago - same old same old eh?). She (my sister) was such a pretty girl, why was she walking alone (she was coming back from work)… the poor man wasn’t quite in his right mind, poor old thing… my niece was told that she would be torn to pieces in court and have her reputation shredded and that he’d probably get off anyway. She chose to protect herself and her little girl from the trauma.

My physics teacher told us that he didn’t like girls in his class and that we should be doing cookery instead (he was quite dismissive of the girls and ignored us mostly).

So great. Have parades and fetes and flags for the new pride - society as ever is slanted towards men - apart of course from girls who are encouraged to breast bond and have mastectomies whether they ‘identify as’ males or nonbinos.

So my almost blind sister can just muddle along, have the stress of mixed sex changing rooms and loos, rainbow, Rainbow crossings that cause her to stumble, and a lack of ‘accessible’ signage and high contrast stops on the edges of steps.

‘You’ve come a long way baby’

I have no idea what your reference is as I am in a different country.

Allies I know support information about the c.40+ countries where being gay is still not legally treated equal.

The definition of ally is understood for generations in Ireland to be a person or group that provides assistance and support. I assume you are aware of this.

The use of the word ally is significantly used outside military use. Though I am from a neutral country so we don't impose military definitions 🤷‍♀️

The resources shared in our school uses questioning.

It as often stands for questioning as queer. Most major organizations offer both words for Q.

Primary-aged children should not be invited to celebrate adult male kinks, or medical transition, or any form of gender 'transition' (from and to what?) that they can't understand until they are much older. Or ever, as it's beyond even adults to place an accurate, definitive definition on what gender actually is.

Any school doing this is breaching the statutory safeguarding guidance for schools KCSIE, which explicitly says exposing children to inappropriate sexual content is abuse as is exposing children to concepts they cannot understand or cope with.

How so many schools have got away with such blatant disregard for their statutory safeguarding guidance I'll never understand.

I think it's nice to explain that people can all love each other and parents and families all look different and none are better than others so I would encourage celebrating pride day.

Why would anyone need to 'identify as straight'?

If you're straight you're straight

I'm in Canada and my children's school goes hardcore on Pride week with all sorts of over the top events and dress up days. I was in a tizzy about it until I actually questioned my then 5 and 7 year old last year about what Pride is. They didn't have a clue! My 5 year old said "don't know" and my 7 year old said "it's celebrating everyone being themselves". So basically it's a bunch of virtue signalling and maybe something for the older kids to celebrate (the school goes to age 13) but I don't think there is a single mention to the primary aged children of relationships or gender identity. The whole thing is quite silly, really.

We have gay neighbours, also some gay friends (openly and why not). Surely this is not unusual and therefore kids these days just grow up seeing gay people as a normal part of life, not something that needs to be made a big deal of…My kids don’t give two hoots about their friends’ sexuality but they certainly used to eye roll about their school’s constant banging on about LGBT. The school meant well, but honestly, give it a rest guys!

Ha! They know the actual reference is Queer and they know what that means so they hide it behind something innocuous sounding like ‘questioning’ until they are immersed.

@GarethSouthgatesWaistcoat you queried " How is this summer fair inclusive of children from particular religious backgrounds"

I would argue it is absolutely vital that children from backgrounds which don't respect LGBT+ people are aware acceptance lies in the bigger community. To me that is a huge no brainer and quite sad if it isn't seen.

Knowing they have allies may be life changing and saving for that child.

No it isn't the Irish primary curriculum of 2021 resources uses that language. It is available on Google. And plenty of organisations use Questioning.

Within school resources where the word queer is used the explanation often includes the word questioning to describe it.