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)

Wow. Sounds like @TransParentlyAnnoyed really does live in fantasy land.

I’ve never got my head around folk that make stuff up. Why do it? Surely it’s better to be hated for who you are than loved for who you’re not? And making up crap just to win an argument is self defeating when the “facts” are so easily unpicked.

good work @CassOle

Thank you. The credit really should go to MrPrettyDamnCosmic, though. 🙂

Am now half expecting @TransParentlyAnnoyed to pop up and say “oh, I’ve just have a feeling that I’ve had XYZ child so they do exist” even those they don’t exist then when challenged we’ll get the stock response of being “fantasist-phobic” and how we’ll never know and you only know if you know. But if you know it’s real and everyone else must play along 🤨

Thank you for tagging me and apologies for the delayed response. I had bookmarked your post to come back to it and read the article, then got distracted and forgot 🤦‍♀️

Thankfully I had a vague memory of having done so came back to it just now.

That section about the 18 year olds who come across as 13-14 year olds... I just want to weep 😢

The lack of follow-up.. the fact that this clinic is bankrolling the whole trust... the lack of clinical curiosity..

All of it is shocking but the (likely) permanent brain damage being inflicted on all of these children, who then go on to have more medical interventions once they turn 18, is beyond cruel. I'm glad that PBs were finally stopped as an available treatment but we're about to let 226 children be experimented upon again, with no follow-up beyond 2 years. Then what? Everyone who wants them can have them again?

Cass' 2 year experiment should have been booted out at the ethics stage. But presumably these services are too valuable to each of the trusts that have them. I wonder if any members of the ethics teams that approved it simply dropped out because they didn't want to be the person who pulled the plug on the 💰 but nor could they pass it as ethical.

Nine of its 12 members attended the first meeting, in September 2025 (seven are needed for it to be quorate). A subcommittee of five constituted the second. When approval was granted at the third meeting on 6 November, just three members were present. Only one person went to all three meetings.

https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/health/2026/02/inside-the-decision-to-pause-the-puberty-blocker-trial

I wasn't planning to come back to this thread but thought I would update my OP. We're 4 weeks into term now and it seems that "Alex" is already getting bored with being non-binary. Her classmates have gone back to using "she" and "her" about her quite naturally and she and her parents are not challenging this. I have continued to use her preferred shortening of her actual name and avoid using any pronouns to or about her.

Yesterday the headteacher came into class and asked if any Y5 girls would like to put their names down to make up a team for a school sports' tournament. Alex's hand was one of the first up, so she clearly still thinks she qualifies as a Y5 girl for sports purposes!

I can't predict the future, but it's interesting that her non-binary persona seems to be petering out after only a few weeks...

Thanks for the update.

Great - to think some kids are off to the clinic for treatment on the strength of behaviour like Alex's - not good

Jesus. That is mad.

I've made up nothing. You weird, weird people.

Confronting your own responsibility for the damage done to trans children by all this malice and poison is that hard huh.

🤷‍♀️ I have no responsibility for any damage to children that are so misguided by their belief they were born in the wrong body.

Parents have a responsibility to ensure their children are protected.

If only these parents had told their children that there was no ‘right way’ to be male or female, that they were perfect exactly as they are … we wouldn’t be in this mess. 🤷‍♀️

I've made up nothing.

LOL. Apart from a child who is sometimes an adult. Whatever happened to those second cousins?

My son exists, his bullying was real. His cousin is trans as well. I would seriously have invented a much better story rather than constantly repeat myself if my kid wasn't real. Wow.

I mean, Jesus actual Christ that is all very worrying. I'm a mum of three tapping on a phone. At home a lot this past year because two people in ny family needed a carer yo be constantly at home. And you're interrogating my every word like you're looking for the Zodiac Killer, desperate to prove that violence against trans children doesn't happen.

Shame it does. Reality is unwelcome to many here, I get that. Disrupts all the hate.

😆 You're hilarious though. Who knows what you'll find next? Maybe more clues! Maybe an origin myth! Perhaps I'm secretly Batman! Well, non-binary but uses female pronouns and refers to myself as a woman all the time, but still! Or I'm Spartacus. Santa. A Mighty Morphin Power Ranger!

Am I going in the lore then? The cast of characters? That's so tragic, because I'm the most ordinary person. So many of you treat trans/nb people like they're soap characters you're collecting information on, it's profoundly odd. Do you think this is a war?

Investigating an often slightly drunk mum who leads a very quiet life should be a sign you need to go outside yourself. Hope you had fun, because I talk way too much. Citizen journalism at its finest! Oh but wait did you miss any clues? Maybe go back and wade through thousands of words again!

Special applause to those of you who couldn't work out that my son was first in school, then briefly college and is now at uni. Perhaps point at a calendar sometime and ask someone to explain.

He's 18 snd trans, so is his second cousin. He has two brothers.

Christ this is odd behaviour. Do I really need to explain to you that people under 18 are children? And those above are not?

And how verbs work?

Weird, weird people.

when I read your posts, they hint at an emotionally exhausted Mum who wants the best for her child, but is also terrified for them and knows that they’ve been pulled into a movement, an ideology that they’re deeply involved in now. I hear skepticism and doubt in your posts too and I wonder if that’s why you come back here day after day after day, despite knowing that the vast majority of people here and in the outside world push back hard against this nonsense? The cognitive dissonance is palpable. I think you know the truth, deep down.

I’m sorry it’s yet another thing you can’t control, and that people can make up their own minds about what people post online, @TransParentlyAnnoyed- it’s been repeatedly stated that no one here wishes your child harm, we just disagree on ideological grounds.

“Confronting your own responsibility for the damage done to trans children by all this malice and poison is that hard huh.”

This is a very good example of the emotional manipulation that some people and organisations use to get people to comply to demands to act as if they believe an individual’s subjective belief about their reality is the universal experience. We see this type of tactic constantly. Shaming people for not affirming an individual belief that they are not the sex category their body is.

Other people are not therapeutic resources to be shamed into affirming that belief. No other person is responsible for ensuring that an individual can live as if they are the sex category that they are materially not.

It is not ”malice” and “poison” to expect to be able to use established English language conventions when referring to an individual as this thread was created to discuss.

I believe you. Your portrayal of a family where for three generations, womanhood and femininity have been fraught with difficulty rings very true.

Either that or I'm a mum who got into posting here while working as a family cater over the past year, because I had

a) too much time on my hands
b) I was angry and frustrated at how much violence my son's suffered.

I know the truth of that.

Please don't patronise me. I'm of perfectly sound mind and currently in the peaceful aftermath of caring. I have no children at home anymore and am working for myself.

I'm not sure what inventing your own characterisation of me does for you. Perhaps it's reassurance. Because everything I've said about my child, is true.

When.you've seen a happy, confident child be destroyed by transphobic violence at school, and have had to work to save their life, it tends to be irritating when people spread deeply untrue myths about trans children. The origin stories in particular really aggravate me.

My son's been through hell and is now rebuilding his life. He's happy in his own skin as a trans man, is accepted at uni - and still has that hyper-vigilance, because he knows what's happened in the past.

I know there is always a chance I will lose him. The effect on his MH of all the violence was shattering. The dysphoria is incredibly difficult too, which is why he was out in the first place.

He remains trans, and so does his second cousin, because even what they went through wasn't as bad as pretending to be cis. Coming out healed them. Violence scarred them.

I come back to push back. Because children are being violently abused in school due to online transphobia. It nearly cost my son his life, and badly affected his exams. Would that not motivate you?

That's the truth. It's also my life.

Being trans is normal.

Obsessing about trans people, and trying to excuse away the reports of school violence from their parents, is not.

I have wondered whether it is the cognitive dissonance that brings back a number of people who seem only to be able to use the board to vilify those people who reject that male people can be female and access female single sex provisions. The mindless mantras and use of pseudo science or theories that only exist in certain streams of philosophy leave gaping holes where evidence, logic and cogency support should exist.

Many of us have admitted we find the incoherence causes dissonance and the discussions here help sort through that dissonance. I can imagine if you are really struggling to accept that you have adopted a position that is not supported by evidence or even logic, you might feel better defending that position against those who reject the premise that humans can change sex or that biological sex is all that is relevant for deciding which single sex provision a person should access.

Some of us disagree on logical grounds as we don't believe that this "trans" daughter exists not least because you didn't claim to have one when you first started posting here. Never mind a story that ebbs & flows & changes in odd ways.

It is malicious and poisonous to discuss a child who has done absolutely nothing to any person here but turn up at school as themself.

Teachers and other professionals within a school have a duty of care. Disrespecting that child, is abusive.

Discussing a child witj such venom, simply because they're different, is completely abnormal. What part of 'they are a child' is so difficult to understand?

Pointing this out, as well as the devastating effects of violent transphobia within schools, is simply truth.

Adults should protect children. End of.

Adults should protect children. End of.

Quite. We all agree on that. We are just disagreeing on how protection looks in this case.

TPA is saying protect the 'trans child' by going along with their views unquestioningly and make all the other children go along with it too.

Most people on this board would assert that is unhelpful for the child, gaslighting the other children, and a massive potential safeguarding issue.

Of course any child including those who think they are trans should be protected from bullying and it seems the school in TPA's case failed woefully.

Using correct sex pronouns is not in and of itself bullying.

Well, he exists. And he isn't my daughter.

That's the truth.

As for not mentioning him when I first started posting...have you noticed my username at all?!

It's inconvenient to you that he exists, and suffered anti-trans violence, that's all.

You don't want to believe trans children are having their lives destroyed

They are.

Transphobia is a violent hobby. It is doing immense harm.

The scars my son has will never heal, and it breaks my heart.

TPA. I feel sorry for your child. But bullying not being addressed by the school and your child's mental state is not the fault of women wanting to keep their sex based rights and to safeguard children. You seem to often conflate the two.

My feelings exactly and I’ve expressed pretty much these same words to TPA multiple times on various threads.