How to talk to 5yo DS about non-binary / trans teacher

[NorthernLoon]

DS is in reception. We received a message from the school recently advising that one of his teachers was leaving, and welcoming that teacher's replacement. The new teacher's title is "Mx" which Google tells me is a non-gendered title. So far so good.
Today DS met the new teacher for the first time and has come home saying the teacher "looks a bit like a woman, but not really, and has a man's voice". He didn't ask any specific questions about that, so I didn't offer any explanation. (And I'm aware I might be jumping to the wrong conclusion - could just be a slightly masculine looking woman with a 40-a-day habit for all I know!)
But assuming the teacher is a TW, how do I talk about that with a 5yo?! I don't want him to get in trouble at school. But I'm not happy to teach him a belief system i don't agree with.
He knows basic male/female anatomy, the correct names for private parts, and that he is a boy because he has a male body. He's gone through various sparkly/pink phases, and my sister is a fairly tomboyish PE teacher. So we've talked in very basic terms about social stereotypes around "gender" and how they don't really mean anything.
But where do I go from here? He's a gentle little boy - he would never want to hurt anyone, and he hates getting told off. But he would absolutely go into school and say "My mum says Mx ... is really a man". And my personal beliefs aside, I don't think that's helpful for anyone.

Because you are teaching a child to lie about what they see. Young children shouldn’t be put in that position.

Developmentally, kids are usually in the categorising stage at this age and can get pretty rigid about boys and girls and who's who. I'd be very surprised if your child is the only one thinking it through and finding their own words for it right now. I'd keep listening, and as a previous poster said, you can suggest they ask the source, since you actually have no knowledge. It's hard for me to picture not seeing this person since my child was at a small school and everyone was visible on the playground at pick-up, but I don't imagine you'll be waiting long to actually see the teacher. You may find that you don't actually need to say anything much. Just listen, and be interested, and see what comes out.

Islam is a religion, not a race, so your analogy doesn’t work.

Indeed. I’d take an equally dim view of a teacher joining any cult and would deem them unfit to teach my child

Especially so young, when they're just learning how to understand the world.

Precisely, due to COVID my little one didn’t see any other children for a long time (we weren’t in the Uk at the time and restrictions were very heavy). She called everyone a boy until she was 2 and a half.

Like most parents I try to give her accurate information about the world because she needs to know basic facts to then be able to process and sort information. It struck me when she was doing the solar system and habitats at school that she is being taught what her world is and where it is. I really don’t appreciate it if school lies to my child or expects them to lie about what they can see with their own eyes. There is reasonable politeness and then there is compelling lying, I couldn’t care less if a transwoman worked in school and wore a dress but used the correct sex pronouns. I would be able to just say Mr Smith likes wearing dresses, thats fine.

But thats different from compelling a child to lie about what they see.

If it is a transwoman I don’t think training children to pretend they can accurately identify sex is useful, I actually think it’s downright dangerous. We stuck males in female prisons who then assaulted women because people were pretending they couldn’t tell the difference between a male and a female.

The Mx thing is just self indulgence imo.

Islam isn't a race, it's a religion. The accurate comparison to incorrect pronouns is a white person wearing blackface and expecting to be considered Black.

People change their names all the time. Women change their names upon marriage. It's reasonable to for someone to change names and request that others use their new name. It's not reasonable for them to request for others to use incorrectly-sexed pronouns.

This person isn’t transgender as far as I can tell. If they were they’d be using she and miss if a male.

the EA doesn’t say anything about pronouns

Oh please. So it would be islamophobic, not racist then. Does that make it better now? Is that acceptable to you all?

“Inaccurately sexed pronouns” is an absurd statement. Using a trans person’s pronouns is not inaccurately sexing them because pronouns in English have never functioned as precise labels for biological sex. They are social and linguistic tools that reflect how someone is recognised in daily life. We prefer to drag performers as “she” during performances, we call animated characters like Bugs Bunny “he,” and we use “they” for someone whose gender is unknown, a boat is called “she”. Historically, pronouns have always been shaped by cultural norms, not by rigid biological definitions. To claim that pronouns must only reflect assigned sex at birth is to ignore how language actually works in real-life communication and is being rude and belittling someone just to prove a point and stand on some kind of moral high ground.

Again, let’s not forget that gender reassignment is a still protected by law, and that deliberately using the wrong pronouns could be seen as creating a hostile work environment. There have been cases of this going to tribunal and the person being misgendered winning.

Lazy

@WhatNextCatsAsDoctors do you think a 5 year old could be accused of creating a hostile work environment? Pulease.

We find it very jarring when we read a sentence like:

Mary was at work when he noticed the window was open. (Who's "he"?)
or
The actress thought they could ask for a day off (one actress, we know she's female, so "they" must be someone else).
If we see someone with a female sexed body then exactly the same applies - in both of these instances we'll be confused about the pronouns as neither "he" nor "they" can refer to someone who is clearly female.
If you read "the child will bring their books to school" you don't know the sex and indeed if you see a baby dressed neutrally you'd probably also go with "they" but it's jarring and confusing to have a pronoun that doesn't match sex.

If we use "she" for drag queens on a night out that's a really advanced use of metaphor which children won't understand. Just like they wouldn't understand mum or dad having a "cheeky half" or a "lock in": because they are children and don't understand idiom or adult contexts.

@Christinapple

any teacher who is putting their own wants / emotional needs before those of the children, shouldn’t be teaching.

If they have a man’s voice but look like a woman because they are a man dressed up as a woman, you would be telling them a lie about an important fact of life.

I would find out for yourself OP, then move your child if the teacher is a man dressed as a woman. Five is too young to not get muddled.

We do use pronouns for sex.

We absolutely do use pronouns for sex. Evidenced by every person who's ever used a pronoun for a baby or an animal. None of them can be said to have a 'gender identity'.

Exactly and likewise Mr and Mrs also refer to sex not gender. "Mx" as far as I can tell doesn't refer to anything.

Agree.

Sometimes we do. But as I said in my post, pronouns in English have never functioned as precise labels for biological sex. What’s the biological sex of a boat?

We are not talking about boats.

Pronouns are what we use in place of someone’s name to communicate with a third party about the person under discussion. We are able to do this even if we don’t personally know the person under discussion because we can tell what sex people are and so can the person we are talking to. It is how language evolved.

No-one owns their own pronouns. They are a function of whatever language is being spoken. And they refer to sex in English (except for the drag queen situation which is theatrical convention stemming from gay males sometimes calling each other “she”).

You’re trying to gaslight us now @WhatNextCatsAsDoctors but it ain’t working I’m afraid.

The pronoun for boat is “it”. Pronouns function as a replacement for saying the noun. So I can say: That boat looks very expensive.

Or, if we’ve already discussed the boat and it’s clear what I’m referring to, I can say:
It looks expensive.

English unlike many other languages isn’t gendered when it comes to nouns. So while French has for example le pain for bread (masculine noun) and la maison for house (feminine noun), there’s no equivalent in English.

Kindly stop trying to sound as if you understand what you’re saying because your last post in particular is plain gobbledegook. It’s a tedious way of attempting to derail a valid discussion and as I said above, it won’t wash with many posters and readers. Your earlier comment about Islam being a race was frankly ignorant.

There are gendered nouns in other languages, which occasionally cross over a little into English.

This, however, is totally irrelevant to whether we refer to sex or gender when using pronouns to refer to humans and pets - both of which have a sex.

I’m clearly referring to the fact that many people traditionally refer to boats as her, saying things like ‘she’s beautiful’. I was using it as an extreme example around why pronouns are not precise labels for sex, which someone else said earlier in the thread. It’s simply not true.

Also I did NOT say that Islam was a race. Someone was speaking about race and I shared an example of Islamophobia. Many, many people consider Islamophobia to be a form of racism but I should’ve picked a better example (of which there were many to choose from). Don’t twist my words.

The irony of you saying I’m gaslighting when you are so purposefully twisting my points is too much.

I’m clearly referring to the fact that many people traditionally refer to boats as her, saying things like ‘she’s beautiful’. I was using it as an extreme example around why pronouns are not precise labels for sex, which someone else said earlier in the thread. It’s simply not true.

It is true however. For anything that actually has a sex, pronouns have always referred to refer to their sex, not something else.

The very occasional example of a gendered noun, doesn't negate that in the slightest. In any case, the vast majority would use it for a boat, not she.

@WhatNextCatsAsDoctors

This is what you wrote.

No wonder the op hasn’t been back!