Rishi Sunak said…

When mentally ill people have delusions, it is kind to gently return them to reality again and again.

So what you want the school guidance to say is that teachers should intervene and correct a child's friends when they refer to that friend using preferred pronouns?

It’s very welcome and a good start for any mainstream politician to say ‘women don’t have penises’, obviously- but ‘women don’t have their penises removed’ needs to be the statement that immediately follows that.

Femaleness isn’t defined by the absence of a penis (how very Freudian) and what I want to hear is that femaleness is being born female. Maleness being born male. There’s nothing else. There’s nothing wrong with those realities and we all have to live in them. The rest is just sex stereotypes. Cultural stuff. Humans can’t ever change sex. Cultural stuff can never change that.

Live how you like to live as long as you’re not hurting anyone else but men in women’s toilets- whether they keep their penis or not- have no business to be in there. They are not women.
They are hurting the actual or perceived safety privacy and dignity of women and our children who often use those facilities with or without us present with them. Women who believe they have a gender identity whatever it is will always be welcome in the womens toilets and if that’s not good enough for them then they can campaign for a third space if they want that.

Because reality is that men as a class contain risks to women and reality has always shown that some men will take advantage if we let them into our spaces.

Women need single sex spaces to be available to us because we have different lives to men thanks to the imposition of sex stereotypes on us and we have bodies that in reality do and need different things from men which should not be the object of misogyny, yet we are subject to misogyny and so we need each other’s company and support.

I don’t want any men however they identify, however committed they may or may not be in the pursuit of what they see as wearing the trappings of womanhood, to be in women’s single sex spaces.

Male violence and the threat of it has ruined that privilege for the men who might want to use women’s spaces for any reason. And that problem is not women’s problem to sort out. Men have to sort that male violence problem out among themselves. Women have loads of other issues of our own that we need to sort out. It’s completely unreasonable to expect women to have to solve mens’ problems too.

In the classroom, teachers should make sure that they teach children and children behave. The should probably be discouraged from talking about people present in the 3rd person because it is rude- bad manners.

That hasn't answered my question. Should teachers intervene and correct when a child uses preferred pronouns to refer to their friend?

And this happens, from experience, with the child both present in the classroom and when they are not there.

So what would you want the teacher to do? Given that you don't want schools to have any part in the social transition of children?

Slothtoes, Sunak has stated v publicly that a woman is an adult human female, so I don’t think he’s confused about penises (penii?), that would be Starmer!

Giraffe - Yes teachers should intervene, no children should not be encouraged to use preferred pronouns, and yes, teachers should continue to use sex-based pronouns even if the parents choose not to. Because social transitioning is an intervention, and any intervention should be delayed until the child is old enough to make an informed choice.

If, as you seem to, you believe that trans children exist, that transwomen should use the ladies (you used Blaire White as an example) then, to paraphrase what I said before, I would suggest that you aren’t saying people shouldn’t vote tory because the tories won’t address this stuff, but rather because you don’t want them to.

I am increasingly coming to the conclusion that kindly mis-sexing people is in the big picture of things, and looking at all needs involved, not a feasible or positive thing. It's been tried. It's caused havoc. It isn't ending well for anyone.

Yes the frictions we see are societies trying to move from splitting by sex to gender

It doesn’t work, women and girls lose out.

The whole experiment needs to be dropped.

In NZ, the Maori leader of NZ First and former deputy PM to Jacinda:

My family knows him and his whanau, for years now. He’s been in politics almost my entire life!

Social transitioning is a not a neutral act - Cass said this, she's far more qualified than any teacher to make this judgement.

Social transitioning should be done only alongside medical supervision and parental involvement. Schools are transing kids behind their parents backs, this is very well evidenced.

If friends want to use pronouns, that's fine, and those who don't is also fine. But that's not what's happening. It's the sanctioning of kids who don't lie and conform to the belief system of others that's the problem. It's the adult modelling that it's not ok to have freedom of belief and freedom of expression.

Do you know that already one mother has had it put in the ECHP of her child that they need to be protected from gender ideology? Why do you think that is? The reasoning is incredibly sound and I hope more follow.

Again, it's really bloody easy to just not use pronouns. If it's parents evening use the child's name, if they're there you wouldn't use third person pronouns normally anyway if you have an adequate grasp of English. Simply using their name and not using third person pronouns really solves all issues, it's not compelling the speech of others or modelling compelled speech to all the other kids, some of whom will be GC / scientists.

It's absolutely fine for children to use whatever pronouns they want for their friends, gender or sex based - that's freedom of speech, which should be the right of the speaker (not someone else to decide). It's not ok for adults to take either political position and ostracise the children who go either way. And this is what teachers are doing.

Using, modelling and enforcing preferred pronouns is a political act. Teachers can't possibly know how many children are being scared into silence by them doing this.

Most interactions between children and teachers do not use third person pronouns anyway and for any other situation the name can be used.

Quite apart from anything else, the assumption of pronouns for all the children who aren't demanding specific pronouns is transphobic as anything if your pronouns are gender based and you haven't asked them all individually.

Unless of course, the rest of the kids don't matter, only those who talk about their gender identity the loudest.

Well said @dimorphism

If, as you seem to, you believe that trans children exist, that transwomen should use the ladies (you used Blaire White as an example) then, to paraphrase what I said before, I would suggest that you aren’t saying people shouldn’t vote tory because the tories won’t address this stuff, but rather because you don’t want them to.

Again, trying to tell me I believe stuff that I don't. Really a bad habit of yours.

Do I believe that trans children exist? What does that even mean? Children who think they are transgender definitely exist. I teach some of them. Some of them are particularly vulnerable and struggle to come to school. Their friends routinely use their preferred pronouns to refer to them. Their parents have requested name changes for them, and that teachers use their preferred pronouns.

So what people are wanting here is that teachers now go against parents wishes regarding preferred pronouns and revert to sex-based pronouns, but that they also actively (and publicly?) correct these children's friends when they use preferred pronouns, giving the reasoning that their friend is mentally ill or deluded and that it would be kinder to not do what they have requested? Should we also correct the parents? How strong is this line that we are to be holding?

And do you think this is what the Tories are going to issue in their trans guidance to schools?

that transwomen should use the ladies (you used Blaire White as an example)

I actually asked how you think it should work in reality. How would you, in reality, stop a 'passing' transgender person (I also referred to Buck Angel) from using the opposite sex toilets. How is this to be policed?

Whilst I get where people are coming from with thinking a teacher should correct children using wrong sex pronouns I think in the real world at the moment that's a lot to ask.

However, any teacher using wrong sex pronouns themselves is making a political statement of adherence to a belief system that is not based on science and is in direct opposition to the facts of biology and what is still (thank goodness, they haven't burnt all the textbooks yet) in the GCSE Biology syllabus. Facts that are material reality.

They are putting pressure on children who want to use normal English usage - i.e. sex based pronouns - to change the way they use English and to subvert their best interests for someone else. They are modelling compelled speech. This is particularly awful for non-native English speakers and non NT kids.

I honestly think teachers using wrong sex pronouns should be sacked because it's really anti-safeguarding and it's so easy just not to use pronouns at all. It's a safeguarding failure on a grand scale pushing all children towards a particular ideology.

@noblegiraffe Given that preferred pronouns are harmful to many children, e.g. the child who has a specific condition in their ECHP that they not be exposed to gender ideology, why can't teachers just avoid third person pronouns? There is a third way.

"The whole thing is a mess. "I don't want men in women's spaces'. Right, so you want someone who looks like Buck Angel to be required to use the Ladies, while someone who looks like Blaire White to use the Gents? But you don't think that any actual policing is required? You do know at some point, hand waving isn't enough and policies have to be written? "

The obvious solution has always been third spaces, services and open sporting categories.

Again, trying to tell me I believe stuff that I don't. Really a bad habit of yours.

Actually, she said if, as you seem to.

You then go on to say people here want teachers to go against parents wishes. Not true. You’re making a big thing of pronouns that are used when someone’s not even there and can be avoided. I would use they in those situations because I won’t lie and I don’t want to set an example for children that we should.

Avoiding third person pronouns isn't easy when you're talking about someone.

Using different pronouns to the person you are talking to about someone else isn't easy.

Children aren't always present at parents' evening.

None of this stuff is easy.

What is interesting from this thread is that people do not agree what approach teachers should be taking.

You then go on to say people here want teachers to go against parents wishes. Not true

If people here want schools to not socially transition children and not use preferred pronouns, then given that I can think of many instances where parents have requested this, then backtracking would be going against their wishes, yes?

Or do you think that kids are only being socially transitioned at school behind their parents' backs?

Avoiding third person pronouns isn't easy when you're talking about someone.

It's a hell of a lot easier than using wrong sex pronouns but that's not supposed to be a problem?

Do you know that already one mother has had it put in the ECHP of her child that they need to be protected from gender ideology? Why do you think that is? The reasoning is incredibly sound and I hope more follow.

This is really interesting.

Do you know the context for the inclusion of this.

So many people on our local authority sen group have children who identify as trans, mostly autistic girls. I do think that autistic children are vulnerable and deserve protection.

My teenage autistic daughter is not in school for various reasons, the upside of this is that she is not being exposed to ideology and her vulnerabilities haven't been exploited in school. She was asked by CAMHS (ffs) if she sees herself as a girl, happily she said yes, but I really think that if she'd been in school she might well have been led to believe otherwise.

The situation with autistic girls is a mess. The parents believe they are doing right by their children, but it is improbable that every autistic girl in the area other than my daughter whose parents are in this support group is trans, yet that appears to be the case.