School recommended reading - I am so cross

[Wishiwasaway]

I thought my son’s school was one of the sensible ones, that had managed to avoid the trans indoctrination but no…

Today, on their instagram, the sports department are promoting “The Passing Playbook”

This is the premise of the book:

Fifteen-year-old Spencer Harris is a proud nerd, an awesome big brother and a Messi-in-training. He's also transgender. After transitioning at his old school leads to a year of bullying, Spencer gets a fresh start at Oakley, the most liberal private school in Ohio.

At Oakley, Spencer seems to have it all: more accepting classmates, a decent shot at a starting position on the boy's soccer team, great new friends, and maybe even something more than friendship with one of his teammates. The problem is, no one at Oakley knows Spencer is trans - he's passing.

So when a discriminatory law forces Spencer's coach to bench him after he discovers the 'F' on Spencer's birth certificate, Spencer has to make a choice: cheer his team on from the sidelines or publicly fight for his right to play, even if it means coming out to everyone - including the guy he's falling for.

I have emailed the school and pointed out:

• single sex sports are not discriminatory, they are necessary for women.
• promoting the idea you can play sports according to how you feel, and not your biological sex, only has a negative effect on girls
• That it is a crime in the UK not to disclose your sex to your partner. In the book Spencer kisses the boy who is unaware that Spencer is actually a girl.

i am now on tenterhooks to see what they reply….

So what's the fucking point of being trans if you are then attracted to the opposite birth sex. My head goes spinning by all these contradictions. It's so ridiculous.

Kissing should be consensual. Someone lying about their sex wouldn't allow me to make an informed decision about whether I'd be willing to kiss them.
A lesbian may quite rightly have refused to kiss a man who is identifying as a woman, if they had known and made the decision to continue then that's fine, but she may well have chosen not to if she had known. This doesn't matter if you're gay, straight, bi, man or woman, you shouldn't be deceived about the other persons sex where consent is at play

What age is this novel aimed at? In my early teens I loved Dick Francis, Anne Rice, worked my way through Golden Age Sci-Fi, and was obsessed with Lord Of The Rings. In my later teens I discovered Iain Banks and got stuck into the Victorian classics.

At no point would I have been interested in contemporary, US-set self-absorbed relationship stuff. Just so dull, without all the gender-queer woo.

Whether you agree with trans identities or not, being trans is (for them) about gender identity, not sexual orientation. Just as a women can be straight/bi/gay, so can a trans person. No contradiction.

The head of the school and the teaching team have so far been excellent in every contact I have had with them with regards to my son. I hold them and the school in high regard and respect, so more than anything I am hoping for a sensible reply, so I can continue doing so. Fingers crossed!

I really really don’t want them to have been indoctrinated.

the concept that a biological female would become a number one player on a team of teenage biological males. Yeah, sure, Jan.

the concept that a teenage biological male would have no clue about the sex of a biological female unless she told him... I mean, COME ON. What utter idiocy.

And, yes, lying to your love interests is nasty and criminally self-centred.

The contradiction is that while the person who identifies as trans is who they say they are, their partner needs to 'change' their sexual orientation to suit the trans identity. Therefore, the partner cannot say who they are. The meaning of heterosexuality and homosexuality is broken down to suit the whims of the trans identified person.

What is this “gender identity”?

I’ve seen trans people claiming that it’s liking things that stereotypical members of the opposite sex do, in which case it’s very valid to question why a heterosexual female believes she’s male.

Is it just about her enjoying football?

Id be interested to hear the school's response as I also have a DS there. I saw the FB post, but didn't know anything about the book. 🙏

The problem is that many senior leaders will have no clue about this. Given the capture of the unions, the DfE (until very recently) and even Ofsted some years back, the message they've been getting is that all things trans must be given priority and that safeguarding children from GI is bigotry

The impact of the SC judgment and the forthcoming SRE & KCSIE guidelines won't land until this September, giving transactivists in schools an upper hand until leadership teams are aware of the new safeguarding requirements.

Once the first school is criticised by Ofsted for failing to safeguard children from mixed sex changing, toilets etc, once the court case against the Brighton school is heard and once the clarity of the KCSIE statutory guidance about single sex changing / undressing, sport etc, things will change. Some senior leaders will have to unlearn Stonewall law and resume safeguarding children again.

oh no heaven forbid not in a private school. don't they know that the reading list must be vetted by the paying customers parents.

Tanya de Grunwald of 'This isn't working ' podcast (with a focus on HR) has long predicted that the private sector will be the first to return to sanity because gender ideology is terrible for business. It looks like universities (where queer theory first originated) might be the last holdouts.

Basically, to be a normal girl, and to be seen as a person as opposed to be sexualised by the boys. We've all been there.

I have just had a reply from the Head. Overall a very positive email. The school does support single sex sports and does not agree with the medicalisation of children.

Unfortunately he has not read the book so he still thinks it is a harmless work of fiction about teen relationships, friendship, inclusiveness etc.

I have gone back and explained that the subject matter is a great deal more insidious than it appears on the surface. Then I have listed out various examples, including the suicidal ideation in chapter 11, where the leading character, after spending a day at hospital regarding their cross sex hormones, states:

“he wished it didn’t have to be like this, that he could spend his Saturday like everyone else and not be poked with needles and asked awkward questions, but also knowing that doing so probably saved his life.

i have also signposted him to Hannah Barnes, Helen Joyce, The Women who wouldn’t Wheest, Invsible women etc.

He is an intelligent, inquisitive and open head. I think he will genuinely engage with my points.

Separately, I want to thank everyone on this thread and the many others over the past 5 years who have engaged and educated me on this subject. I learnt from your posts and I hope by sharing my story we show what has changed and what still needs to be done.

Second that @Wishiwasaway

Well done OP! Sounds like the Head is about to be sharply peaked 😁

I think the ideas contained with modern gender identity ideology are so insane that people have trouble wrapping their heads around it (they think they must be missing something) or simply stick their heads in the sand so they can't think themselves into being one of the "evil" ones.

Good job at trying to get your points across on a genuinely insane topic.

Yes! I try to understand it. Another poster explained the difference between identifying as a gender and feeling attraction to a gender as for me it didn't make sense for a boy to identify as a girl and then be attracted to girls- so a transgender lesbian. I have understood but I still can't wrap my head around it. I'm 46 and growing up some of my friends had traditional masculine interests, short hair and never wore typically female clothes etc. They identified as individuals but were not in denial about their biological sex. But I think some who were vulnerable and tried out different "styles" to suit their identity would have been sucked up in the transgender propaganda had it existed then.

Happy to have boys who know they are boys but that they can be individuals; be sensitive, creative, poetic without dragging their birth sex in to the mix. I think feminism have failed those who want to transition because they think they need to try to change their biological sex in order to fully be themselves instead of embracing diversity in personality.

Well done, OP. He does sound decent, although it’s disappointing that he’s not familiar with the book.

You, like most MRAs and TRAs, don't understand what consent means, and what sexual assault is. If a woman is a lesbian and wouldn't consent to kissing a male, but a male kisses her without telling her he's male, that is legally called deception and is a chargeable sexual offence. How can your attitudes on consent, boundaries and sexual assault be so in the dark ages?

I think my friend's DD did successfully hold down a slot in the school boys team at that age, she was certainly allowed to as long as she was able. She was at the local club academy so extremely fit and highly skilled compared to average school team players.

It's generally considered fine that way around provided there aren't safety concerns deemed too great for the individual to consent to. DH remembers a girl in a school u15 boys rugby team she was so good at the sport (probably not the A team but still), I don't think that would be allowed these days for safety reasons.

A girl joining a boys' team/sport after a certain age risks injury to herself.
A boy joining a girls' team/sport after a certain age risks injury to every girl on that team.

Not to mention turning single-sex changing spaces into mixed sex, which in schools after the age of 8 (or 11?) is unlawful.

Yes, quite. And presenting it this way in a book seems deliberately deceptive when so few girls are good enough to make a boys'/open team and the real issue is boys wanting to join a girls' team.

I think even so there is a limit on how much risk a minor should be permitted to consent to. Plus the risk they're taking also affects the other players. If a boy tackled a girl in rugby and she ended up with a serious injury, that would impact on him too.

But a girl not being permitted to play in boys football, if she's good enough, doesn't ring true. Or if that's how it works in the US, I think it's unnecessary - if the girl is good enough she should be able to play, just like a good enough junior is allowed to join the adult team. Presumably if she's trying to hide her sex she can't be changing in communal boys changing rooms anyway.