How to talk about 'trans-girl' in my son's class.

[user1471471849]

Hello,

My son is 7 and there is a 6 year old trans-girl (aka a boy who identifies as a girl) in his school. It's a small school so everyone interacts with each other a lot. When the boy first socially transitioned and started wearing girls clothes and changed their name it was hard to know how to explain this to my son. He's a clever guy who asks hard questions and he was confused about what was going on. I went with the line that the child is a boy but is confused and feels he's a girl and not to bring it up to avoid arguments or hurt feelings.
Just to be clear, I don't agree with the parents' choice to socially transition such a young kid, I feel the kid is being pushed into this.. But it's not my place to say and I'm conscious of the poor kid's mental health and not wanting to make his life harder. To me, sex is binary and immutable but I knew that I'd eventually run into problems. Unfortunately, my son doesn't get on well with this kid and has made comments about him really being a boy. So we were called into the principal's office today saying the boy (or girl in the child's mind) is transgender and is a girl now. I explained what I'd told my son- that the child is biologically a boy but is confused and feels he's a girl and to not bring it up. I also said I wasn't willing to lie to my child and say that you can change sex and I got the impression that they agreed but said it's the school policy ( here and nationwide- in Ireland) to accept this.

Obviously, we don't want our son to be upsetting anyone so we'll make sure he knows to be very mindful of people's feelings but it's such a hard road to navigate (being truthful with him and trying to make sure he doesn't upset the child by passing on his thoughts on the matter- it's not a nice situation for anyone). I know we're going to come up against this again. The parents haven't said anything to us but I reckon it's only a matter of time.
If anyone has any advice on how I could manage this situation better please let me know.

Thanks.

I wasn't living in Ireland when the Gender recognition issue piggybacked on the Marriage Equality referendum so didn't vote - I'm fuming about the roll back of women's rights in Ireland. At least now in the UK (thanks to a group of Scottish women), the Equality Act has been clarified to mean biological women.

Genderwoo is another form of belief and its adherents every bit as dogmatic as hardline believers in other belief systems. They are completely illiberal.

I must admit, I am aghast that the school claimed that he is a boy below the neck and a girl above the neck.

That reminds me of the people who avowedly don't eat any meat except for fish on a Friday for religious reasons - but then re-classify other meats as fish as well, so that they're still "only eating fish".

There's nothing wrong if you choose to eat chicken or beef on a Friday (or indeed if you choose to only eat fish, or if you choose to eat no meat at all); it's just when people make rules and then desperately search for any kind of way around reality in order to supposedly still keep within those self-imposed rules - however illogically.

In some ways I'm very glad I grew up in the 60s and 70s (in many other ways not!) I was desperate to be a boy when I was 5 to about 7 - boys clothes, football, hated dolls etc.. I know that it was a phase and was for many complicated reasons, but I grew out of it and have been quite content with who I am for the past 50 years!
It's scary.

I agree with the first part of this. However, I don't think it's reasonable to expect a seven year old to avoid pronouns.

I know a number of parents with trans identifying children who frequently have to correct themselves mid-sentence to replace accurate pronouns with preferred ones. These parents are trying and none are gender critical. It's just much more difficult than it seems. Applying such an expectation to the OP's son would be setting him up to fail.

The public didn’t get any vote on the Gender Recognition Act 2015. There was a citizens Assembly (with activists, including chair) who made a recommendation to the Oireachtas/Dáil (can’t remember). Even their recommendation of medical diagnosis was then rejected. No discussion of impact on the rights of women and girls. Because of all that, women in prison now have aggressive and violent men threatening to rape them, women have been assaulted in supposed women refuges, men can physically tackle women in LGFA (and management have tried to shut down any talk of women’s rights by even local parents in this). I suppose the full chilling effect is a cascade across the board.

Oh, I forgot the fellow (dad of 3) who is lauded when he puts on the wig to be on the NCWI, but said he went for a job interview dressed as a man because he actually wanted the job. He wasn’t doing his playing for that (my words).

So, at first many though ‘Citizens Assemblies’ would be a good thing. However, there has been concern how those appointed to the assemblies are selected. It is not just a wide group of citizens to give balanced representation of Irish society across the board.

Yes, this - very much so.

It would be like raising your child in an English-speaking country and grounding them in grammar with only one word for 'the' - and then suddenly insisting to them that, sometimes (and you won't often know when), you have to use German grammar instead; because some people in English-speaking countries get upset when people there use English, so you are a bad and unkind person if you don't inherently know and then remember when (still supposedly speaking English) you have to use der/die/das etc.

Most of the schools in ireland are private and Faith schools. Most of the old stock are under RC control (small number Jewish, C of I etc) so single sex would be the norm and parents in these schools can go to the faith leaders in control if its an ethos issue.

The ET were set up for parents who did not want a faith education so are more likely to be into gender as its a "fashionable" social issue.
There is also a history of child sex abuse ( in schools and child organistions) so all teachers should be aware of the need to be responsible and respect child safeguarding.

However almost all schools are run independently by the local BOM and staff so how genderism is managed is mostly down to who has social power and is willing to be on the BOM. And social downgrading to be a girl will be seen by some as stunning and brave.....

In the OPs case she needs to focus on how the school will accept her childs belief and ensure that he will not be bullied for them. At 6 its going to be about how the school manage supervision and not allowing either child to get into verbal arguments in the class room or on the playground.

Its likely the other childs parents will say their child is being bullied as her child refuses to say the other child is a girl. However because the other child is a special "different" the school will not want to be seen as unsupportive and may even have policy in place which discriminates against her son. The government was fine with putting a male child rapist into the the womens prison which has a mother and baby unit and is pushing for selfID for children so the OP needs to ask for all written documentation on how the school will manage the issue and point out where the policy puts her child at a disadvantage.

Thanks for the correction Cailleach - I got it entirely arseways.

I find the school’s line ‘male body, female brain’ important in all this.
They are making it sound like a biological fact. I came across an adult transwoman account on threads recently and he was saying he is absolutely a cis woman, and adult human female, because he always had 100% female brain.
Is anybody aware of a female brain vs male brain research? Is that something provable and real? Where did the school get it from?

I think this is one of many situations where you have your own family beliefs, but are conscious of how that may land out in the school yard. I'd use the Santa analogy as a good one, we'd expect families who don't believe in Santa to tell their kids not to go around ruining Christmas for the kids who do believe. So you don't need to hold back at home but explain that it's very distressing for the child if they call them a boy. I think it's obviously harmful bullshit for this poor kid, but it doesn't make that kid's life better if your kid calls it out in the yard.
The Educate Together schools are all-in on the T of LGBT. I say that as a parent whos son goes to an ET secondary school. It's otherwise the best school for him.

And even if it were true, the main reason for separate toilets, changing rooms and other facilities is based on biology and not feelings.

Even just going on averages, what percentage of your body consists of your brain? Well under 5%. Why would you assume that the 5% would dictate which facility you should use over the 95%?

Can we stop using terminology like ‘girls clothes’ and ‘dress like a girl’ please. Clothes are clothes, and wearing a skirt doesn’t make you a girl.

Wonder how the head explains the idea of the non binary child. What sort of brain do they have?

It's also emotional abuse as defined in KCSIE. It's imposing developmentally inappropriate expectations on children and imposing a belief system on them, not allowing them to express themselves naturally. All of these things are very specifically identified as forms of emotional abuse (if persistent which imposition of wrong sex pronouns and expectations that children pretend they can't see sex is)..

Adults who are full on into genderwoo can't stop themselves using sex-based pronouns as has been shown in many open justice court cases where the TRAs desperate to harm women who spoke up about reality couldn't themselves do it.

If they can't do it when they're trying their best in court, expecting a primary age child to is not just unreasonable it's abusive.

Also, sex is important for safeguarding, training children out of the instinctive ability to accurately sex people is not kind. Sex matters for safeguarding.

In addition, if you teach children that their perceptions don't matter, and the feelings of other people must always come above their feelings then they will not be able to disclose abuse.

It's all so unhealthily one way - unhealthy for ALL children involved. As PP has noted, respect needs to be a two way thing and friendship relies on MUTUAL respect. That means accepting, if you're trans, that other people see sex and respecting their right to express themselves naturally just as they respect your right to change your name, dress as you wish and consider yourself the opposite sex. Expecting that the other children spend all their time pretending around one child is abusive.

It's fine to ask children not to constantly state that a child is fat and be sensitive to that child's feelings, however it's also not ok for adults to expect them to pretend the child is thin when they're not. It's fine to ask children not to tease or bully a child if they're not very good at maths, however it's also not ok to expect all the other children to pretend they come top in every maths test and are a child genius.

All the people saying this poor child should subvert their observations for the sake of an ideology should read this: Four year old boy joins Church of England primary school as a girl

It's not kind to the trans child - as who will want to be friends with someone where you can't speak the truth about something as fundamental as sex, where the accommodation is always and only one way? That's not friendship, that's an abusive dynamic being enabled by adults.

You cannot force children to be friends with other children and they won't want to participate in 'friendship' which is so woefully unbalanced because the other children matter too, their observations about the world matter too, and children are - in my experience - finely tuned to injustice, which this is.

There is research on differences in brain development between the sexes. This link is a few years out of date but gives an indication of the type of studies.
https://stanmed.stanford.edu/how-mens-and-womens-brains-are-different/
All you can look at is an average presentation, there will always be an overlap.

The school won’t have information about the brain of the child in question anyway (as opposed to how they were socialised). It’s just their way of explaining things. I think they’re doing the child a disservice.

Children are constantly telling other children Santa isn't real. You have a conversation with your child that it's just like religion, we all believe different things and they have to decide what they believe. And children mostly believe based on experience so if they get a load of unexplained presents every Xmas that their parents say are from Santa then they're more likely to believe.

And the school doesn't call the kids who don't believe in Santa bigots who are 'discriminating' against all the other children if they don't pretend to believe and expect them to change their language to use Santa pronouns all day every day. At most they might have a quick word saying 'you're upsetting the little ones, maybe just avoid talking to them about it at all'.

Children can SEE biological sex.

And at the end of the day Santa isn't as important as biological sex. No-one's actually seeing Santa in school on a daily basis, unlike biological sex differences. Santa doesn't matter for safeguarding in the same way. Santa doesn't require us all to change the way we speak on a daily basis and lie on a daily basis.

It's an interesting mind experiment, but IMO thinking about how schools address Santa actually underlines the extreme abuse being foisted on children because of gender ideology.

Yes, I do think the Santa example is different. The corollary would be if they op’s son had to affirm someone in his school as really being Santa, if they claimed to be.

ET has fall for this nonsense hook, line and sinker. I'm the absence of moral frameworks, they seem to latch on to what's fashionable.

Honestly OP, I'd be tempted to move him, if I could.

Shocked that the school is allowing it tbh. 6 year old children can't be trans.

I'd not be brainwashing my kid.

'Son, sometimes people are a bit mental. Just try to be nice'.

I'm not saying it's the same as Santa in terms of equivalence of belief, I'm saying that's how you treat it in conversation with your kid, which is what the OP asked. I get all the outrage, but in practical terms this is a kid in an ET school in Ireland, so from a pragmatic perspective this is what she needs to do. That doesn't stop lobbying politicians, etc for change, but this isn't the case where a principled stand will go down well. The religious schools are fully bought into LGBTQ, all families, etc. as well if my other kid's Catholic school is anything to go by.

I would be looking at other schools if the school can't treat your son's observation of material reality as equally valid compared to another child's inner belief that he is something different to what he materially is.

It's not ok to tell your child he's wrong, or that he's being unkind by stating neutral facts because he's not. If you look in the article I linked it was very traumatic for the little girls lied to by adults - it undermined their entire trust of adults in schools. And why wouldn't it? Of course it would.

just read the article, thanks.. Kids are definitely too young to have any opinion on this. Even adults need to be treated carefully, many are vulnerable and looking to fit in but kids have absolutely no concept of what they are signing up to.
To the poster who suggested changing school, I don't think that's going to help. There might not be a trans kid in a new school but the guidelines are all the same. It's comes from the Dept of education. Someone sent me a good link (the countess website) which states that the transgender section in the educational departmental guidelines have been put together by a trans lobby group. It's coming from the top down. We'll have to deal with it from the bottom up.

sorry, it's the same poster with both points.

I'd maybe start teaching to say 'i don't agree with you, but I respect you. And that's ok, people don't have to agree on everything'.