Advice please - TIM teacher just arrived at DD’s school

[KnottyAuty]

DD reports that the new teacher has asked to be referred to as she/her and Ms Smith. They are obviously male. DD isn’t happy about the power imbalance of potential behaviour points and detentions for non compliance.

I’ve got no idea how to advice DD how to handle this but obviously know from reading here that using this language is a safeguarding problem. Ms Smith should follow the same rules as all the other male teachers. If everyone must use this language, then it looks like the school is unable to tolerate GC beliefs.

Suggesting that DD respectfully avoids pronouns doesn’t seem workable as using the teacher’s name will include “Miss”….

Is there a gender neutral way of referring to a teacher like “Professor”?!

What do I advise DD so she can work within her GC beliefs? And what should I write to the school to say about this?

eta clarification

The other aspect of safeguarding that needs to be further discussed, is the impact of female students having to use female language for a male teacher and which they then feel confident to reject male people's demands to access the female single sex spaces?

The act of normalising this male person's philosophical belief that is not reflective of material reality, will have an impact where those female children will have received the messaging that they should accept that person's identity in language. In my opinion, this is very likely for many children to influence their likelihood of being able to clearly articulate their needs for single sex provisions.

Do pronouns affect this teacher’s ability to do their job?
They are teaching mathematics. They aren’t doing a typically gendered role within a school.

Im sorry, I don’t understand the issue on its most fundamental level.

if someone mispronounced your name, you would respectfully correct them. If they continued to miss identify you then you would likely perceive their action as malicious.

so Ms Smith is her name.
and your DD says that she is “obviously male” (I’m guessing DD Rather than OP coming to this decision themselves)

why does it matter to her?
Why?
Ms Smith is never going to be in the changing rooms for PE or the pupil toilets.
Ms Smith is going to teach her classes, take her marking home and hopefully do her job to the best of her ability.

You seem to have great offence that Ms Smith appears to not be female at birth.
but does it hurt you?
does it hurt ms smith’s teaching?
does it hurt DD?

you asked what you can advise your DD to do.
tell her to respect her teacher as her teacher respects the class.
tell her to talk to you or her form tutor or head of year if she is unhappy
tell her to be kind. It doesn’t cost her anything and surely you’d rather your child were kind than knowingly bully another person.
she she doesn’t agree with Ms Smith?
That is OK.
DD is entitled to her beliefs just as Ms Smith is

Because men with distasteful sexual kinks are always totally honest about their motives? Get fucking real.

"Educate Yourself"

Oh yes,
we know EA2010 and H&S 1992 and GRA2004 and SC16/04/25
very well
better than most journalists
so when activists misrepresent the law
we have the receipts

The teacher is male.

Well, I am gender critical and I would call the teacher Ms Smith. Simply because I pick my battles.

If this teacher had legally changed his name to first name: Miz, last name: Smith then this would be their legal name, and you wouldn’t be compromising your own beliefs by simply calling them by their chosen name.

I would tell your daughter to think of it this way, and try to just get on with your lives.

Where have I said anything that suggests that people cannot have their own boundaries around language or that anyone should be subjected to coerced language?

You seem to have taken our disagreement about whether titles relate to the sex binary in the same way pronouns do, or whether they are a gender stereotype social construct as some kind of indication that I disagree with you on both of those - which I don't.

However, I do think that language, it's coding and meaning is extremely important, as demonstrated very aptly by this thread - which is why I feel it is also important to understand which elements of that language are use to denote social constructs vs biological reality.

I've been clear that while gendered titles don't bother me personally because I am wary about defending something which has been used as a tool of oppression for centuries.

However, I understand that they do bother some people and I don't have a problem with people choosing that for themselves.

I do believe, however, that there are ways of using language which both respects the teachers chosen identity and position and the OPs daughters right not to have to use Miss or She

Hence why I suggested in my first post that the OP has a discussion with the head and in subsequent posts that using they / Mx could be a way forward.

You are not gender critical.

How would you know there is a safeguarding fail if your child is saying Miss did X or Y?

In this situation your child as an atheist is being handed colander by her Pastafarian teacher and instructed to wear it while in the school as this shows everybody that your child believes in Pastafarisim.

Neither your child nor the OPs child should be forced to pretend to believe in Gender Idology in order to access a Stated funded education system.

The schools job is to provide the education service. They have an obligation to find a way to address the issue in a way that facilitates the students without making the personal life of a teacher a problem that a student has to support.

Ms Smith is going to teach her classes, take her marking home and hopefully do her job to the best of her ability.

His.

What makes you say so?

countries where they have fewer rights than they do here

Another irony.
We only have rights here because we police them and maintain them. We cannot take women's rights for granted and assume they are secure.

Allowing male people to identify as female, and thus enter our spaces and places, mangle the language, take sports prizes and business awards meant for women, take public positions shortlisted for women, and so on, erodes women's rights. It erodes the very concept of "woman".

(We also fight the right wing who want to take away abortion rights.)

But then you'd ve saying that all trans people are just men with kinks. Is that what you are saying? Because it sounds like youre sayimg we cant rely on any research where trans people report their experiences and views because they are all just "men with kinks"? Would that be a fair representation of your views?

I can see that it isn't important to you.

Thank you for clarifying.

I shall hope though that the person I did ask the question of will be able to indicate whether they believe that the barrister in question was right in choosing to use accurate language.

Literally this.

Thank you- I’ve never heard of that before!

No you'd have to side with these political parties in order to get in and make such policies stick.

You'd have to go with people like Nigel.

because you are happy to encourage your daughter to uphold an ideology based on gender

Yep. Ask any GC person and about 90% of them will say something similar. And the trans neutral > "educate yourself" > TERF pipeline only ever goes in one direction, because you can't unsee it once you've seen it.

I wish I was still ignorant. It really was bliss. I wish I was wrong about it all. Because if we are wrong, it means that women, children and LGB people are NOT being harmed, physically and mentally, sometimes severely, sometimes for a lifetime.

I would rather look like a gigantic twat than be proved right. Sadly, we ARE proved right, over and over and over again.

Then 'Miz' would be a name and not a sex based title. It is not comparable.

why does it matter to her?

Because: reality.

They can be both, of course. “His holiness” certainly has belief content, as does “she” when applied to a male.

I am free to use either, but as someone who doesn’t buy into either belief system, it becomes most objectionable precisely when it’s socially enforced.

And bollocks is it part of the social contract in Britain. Or if it is, it’s a part I reject. In some countries going along with the orthodoxy is indeed part of the social contract. I don’t think China’s leaders care much what you believe privately, provided you mouth the right words when required. That’s not what I want in our UK social contract. Do you?

How would you describe an issue that pertains only to girls or women? You are advocating for destroying the ability to do so? Would you reduce us to dehumanising body parts and functions in order to placate men?

Your DD is there to be taught maths by this man, to listen to what he's saying in his classroom, to exhibit good behaviour, to turn in her homework on time, and to do her best to pass her exams. She is not required to acquiesce to any requests to call him by a feminine honorific if she doesn't feel comfortable doing so. A simple 'excuse me please teacher' will suffice.