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)

sex hormones fluctuate enormously

Yet never quite enough to grown the gonads of the opposite sex...

Very niche IVF treatments are a product of modern medical science, pretty certain for the 300,000 years of human breeding that came before modern times, it took just the 2 usual ones, a male and a female, to accomplish it.
Pedantic quibbles just serve to complicate a simple conversation.

Athlete Caister Semaya assigned female at birth but had undecended testes. Had to take testosterone suppressing drugs to complete in women’s sport. Honestly I’m not trying to be tricksy or smart arsed here . It’s probably not even relevant to thread but I don’t think people are as binary as we might think. Only my opinion!

Caster Semenya is a male with a DSD (46 ARD). His testosterone level was normal for a male. He in no way demonstrates a deviation from the sex binary.

Caister Semaya assigned female - so what, he was born with a mutation on his sex chromosomes that meant he didn't develop in the usual way a male child does. In a country that does not have a health service let alone a modern one, observing him to be female was a mistake made at the time of his birth. He's has a DSD condition, but he's still male, he's not mixed sexed, inter sexed or any other sexed but male. There are only 2 sexes.

Has female genitalia though

He really doesn't. You need to be female to have female genitalia. The DSD 46 5-ARD is sometimes known as penis at 12 as the penis and testicles often descend later..

A man with a developmental disorder that affects the development of his penis is no more a woman than a man who has lost his penis because of accident or disease.

There are disorders like CAIS where somebody who is genetically male doesn't respond to testosterone, and so is phenotypically female, but it is necessary to recognise that they are genetically male to diagnose the condition.

Not with undecended testes attached to it he doesn't, female genitalia doesn't have undecended testes, that is the product of the mutation on his sex chromosomes, that's what gives him a DSD condition.

Forgot to include the comment I was replying to.

No, his particular condition means that his penis did not develop properly. However that no more makes his genitalia female than a woman with unterine agenisis has male body parts because her womb didn't develop.

However, all these conditions are very, very rare, and don't affect the vast majority of people. If they did the human race would probably have died out.

Your opinion is badly informed. You haven't even spelled his name correctly. Most of us have put in many hours of effort to understand all sorts of issues around men competing in women's sports. Why not show the topic some respect and put in some genuine effort to inform yourself?
You could start here. There is a link to DSDs down the page.
https://sex-matters.org/resources/faqs-sex-and-gender/

Caster is a male with a DSD that probably wasn’t picked up when he was a child.

He’s a male and always has been. Absolutely nothing in his case points to sex being anything but binary.

No he doesn’t

Here's a fantastic article about the "penis at 12" condition, written by Michael Moseley, at a time when the BBC could be more open about the difference between the sexes:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-34290981

A pertinent extract:

Like the other Guevedoces, Johnny was brought up as a girl because he had no visible testes or penis and what appeared to be a vagina. It is only when he approached puberty that his penis grew and testicles descended.

As with some others with 46 XY 5-ARD, Caster Semenya talks about having testes that remained internal rather than descending.

true but unable to produce sperm

Is interesting. Did you read the linked Victoria Derbyshire one with links to Tavistock for parents who are worried. Incredibly out of date.

According to Google, some males with undescended testes are able to produce sperm but the majority can't, because the heat from being inside the body destroys it. That makes sense, given the reason testes are normally outside the body and in the scrotum is because of the sperm's temperature needs.

The key thing here though is that anyone with 46 XY 5-ARD (including Caster Semenya) doesn't have "female genitalia". They have what may look like female genitalia at birth, but it's not - it's male genitalia, albeit malformed at that point in their life, because they are male.

But more importantly, the only relevance that DSDs have for non-binary gender identity is that they can cause confusion in the public's understanding of biological sex: they give rise to the idea that someone can literally be "intersex" (which is impossible) and therefore having no sex can sound plausible.

There are (very few) babies that have been made by using a donor egg (for the mitochondria) and the nuclear DNA from the mother and the father. It is only very recent that we can do this and is done in cases where the mother would pass down severe, usually fatal, mitochondrial diseases. This requires medical intervention it doesn't happen naturally. It's another TRA distraction to bring this up.

Yes, so Caster is male with a DSD. Just a fault in development that meant testes didn’t descend and penis was small. It doesn’t make him not male.

Humans have lots of potential flaws in development, and a few of these happen to affect the development of primary or secondary sex characteristics. Some people are born with extra fingers and toes.

Males have testes, females don’t.

The percentage of people born with a DSD is about 0.018%. This really doesn’t mean that humans as a species are not binary.

FFS

sex is sometimes important and not hard to identify most times - especially looking at pregnant women

but for 90% of my interactions ( 99%?) my sex is actually irrelevant

reminding girls they are girls before a test and they perform less well

informing a remote colleague that someone is female during an email exchange and their opinions won’t be taken as seriously

every time we stress the difference we tacitly agree to gender - not sex - implications and stereotypes. By using he and she to introduce a musician we imply that the sex may be relevant to the quality of the playing

part of the transgender community first action is to take a name from the opposite sex - why should a name determine sex? What is it about girls that needs a feminine name ? Unless you think girls should be feminine ? girls need a feminine name ? But why?

Total over reaction here.

I am not a TRA! I just thought it was a rather sweeping statement to say there aren’t people who are intersex. Hermaphroditism? I have very little to gain from arguing and don’t want to distract from OP’s worries. I won’t change my opinion. I think the matter is filed under “debatable” for me right now.

There is no hermaphroditism in humans. It's biological nonsense to claim there is. You can hang on to this opinion if you like but it's wrong.

@SevenYellowHammers i mean this constructively, where have you sourced your information about DSDs? There are many knowledgeable women (and some men) on these threads who have read detailed scientific papers and really understand the differences across DSDs. Your posts about Caster suggest you’re possibly new to this aspect of the discussion?