My work insisting I refer to a 9 year old as they/them

[TheMadGardener]

I work in a British primary school. Just started new term. Long standing pupil, a girl, is starting Year 5 now so she is 9 years old. No issues until now although parents are quite "alternative/new age."

Headteacher has informed staff that according to the child and her parents this girl has decided to be non-binary. Staff are now to refer to her as they/them and she is now using a gender-neutral shortened version of her name (think Alex instead of Alexandra or Jo instead of Joanna).

I am extremely uncomfortable with this and will definitely not be using they/them - I will be referring to the child by her chosen abbreviation to avoid using pronouns (at least it's a shortening of her real name rather than a made-up name).

Serious question: I thought new legislation discouraged schools from getting on board with this sort of thing? Or is it only they can't let children do it without parents knowing?

I'm finding it very hard to keep my mouth shut on my actual opinions in the presence of headteacher. (Colleagues I've spoken to on the quiet all think it is bullshit too)

Actually it is not. It is how social contagion operates and many of us have seen it happening again and again in the classroom.

I was thinking the same thing. It's trying to make a point but any point that needs that much work is not worth making.
@TheKeatingFive patients is rewarded though because she's helping highlight the point that this ideology produces nothing more than obnoixous, no nothing keyboard warrior's

No, of course not, especially not as kids. Boys and girls tend to have pretty gender defined identities. That doesn't work for everyone. There was none of this gender terminology when I was a kid but it was the era of androgyny (Bowie, Lennox, New Romantics etc) and a lot of us liked that and dressed and behaved accordingly. I think I certainly turned out better as a result of that experience.

No, it is what happens. At a deeper level it is what happens when middle aged Jim from marketing decides he is Janet and comes in on Monday morning in unsuitable clothing and a bad wig, uses the womens toilets and gets upset when Mary from accounts phones and calls him Jim. Why should Mary be a bit player in Jim’s sexual fantasy of being a woman? What if Jim decided his sexual fantasy involves dressing as a baby, or wearing leather bondage and a gimp mask? Would Mary from accounts still be hauled into HR and told to be kind?

It was made very clear in an employment tribunal that people are entitled to their own views on using pronouns to describe people who have declared that their gender “identity” is at odds with their sex. People can not be compelled to deny something they know .

It's so annoying that people describe FWR as intense, as people shouting you down when it's the opposite- so many trolls.

The point is no one thinks their sex totally defines them.

That there’s nothing else notable about them other than their sex. Not their age, family background, cultural heritage, interests, personality, etc, etc.

So, are you saying whatever someone refers to you as, it has no emotional impact on you whatsoever? Nothing, and definitely not long-term.

9 year olds probably need to learn that they don’t get everything their own way, they don’t get to watch everyone dance when they command it. Healthy, well adjusted ones, anyway.

She means respecting choice. I’m same. I think Mrs and Miss are very retrograde but I’ll use the titles people ask me to. They/their too if need be. It’s not my business to do anything else. I will say getting the language right in class adds another layer for teachers who already have cognitive overload. But you have to do your best. I did draw the line at calling a child Satan once and thankfully they changed their mind before I had to. I don’t know how that would have played out but I would have cited my religion as a protected behaviour.

And sorry, further to @dh280125point …

It is absolutely incumbent upon all of us to stress to our children that while they may associate typical behaviours with specific sexes, there is room for both sexes to express themselves entirely as they like without that being ‘wrong’ in some way

Definitely it does! If someone repeatedly refers to you as 'they' when there is actually only one of you and you are clearly one sex or another, I think that would be really damaging.

This. And some places it has actually happened in this extreme way

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/vancouver-island-university-fetish-student-professor-fired-1.4400306

”Vancouver Island University is at the centre of a human rights complaint alleging that female staff were not protected from a student who brought a diaper-related sexual fetish to the B.C. school.
A 105-page complaint filed by the Nanaimo school's former director, Human Rights and Respectful Workplace, Katrin Roth, said the man's behaviour was treated as a disability when it should have been dealt with as a potential threat to female staff.
"He will not stop unless we make him," said Roth.”^

And you have the right to attach that meaning to the word they. If people continually called you that when it doesn’t feel right it would impact you.

Others have the right to feel they fits them better than he or she.

It's not that hard to call someone "My Lord" if they asked me to but I wouldn't do that either.

Exactly.

I’ve read accounts of workplaces where trans rights activists have managed to get everyone referred to as they/them. Which must have pissed off the males who she/her as much as everyone else but there you go. “Non binary” is the new black (the colour in fashion, not the race, obviously)

Oh my word reading the comments on here makes me despair. I know a child who from a toddler experienced these same difficulties with gender, nothing influenced, just genuinely feels like a girl in a boy’s body, and it’s fucking hard for the parents to navigate. Even if you don’t agree with it yourself, because it’s something you’ve never experienced or had a family member experience, or it doesn’t work with your beliefs, just respect that someone else is experiencing a different reality to you and get over it. Do not make it into a battle that that child and their family does not need.

How does a toddler feel like a girl in a boys body?

From a toddler?! Toddlers have no concept of boy or girl. That's unbelievable.

Yes it’s hard for the parents to negotiate. No one else is responsible for propping up that false self image. It’s not a reasonable expectation that society will do so. It’s a mental health issue and that’s how it should be managed.

Also, parents of “trans kids” tend to come out with these self justifying tales of how their child was “in the wrong body” from birth.