Rishi Sunak said…

None of it is easy. I've found that avoiding third person pronouns means you end up using the passive voice quite a lot which is odd.

You are failing to distinguish between how people behave and react to an ideology in practice ( i.e everyday interactions with people who have adopted trans identities), and how that ideology came to be so prevalent in the first place.

It is going to take time to unravel as a lot of young people, and their families, have become caught up in this; it has also become embedded in various institutions. What goes on in school is important though, and schools should not be teaching children that they can choose their gender ( which in their mind tends to translate as their sex). Schools should not be promoting this as a fact; and certainly not to younger children at all.

The LGB needs to be reclaimed as a distinct category which is based on sexual orientation - free from the TQ+ ( which is all just pure queer theory stuff). No more LGBTQ+ lunch-time clubs in schools. Schools should not be using preferred pronouns - even if the parents do.

You know what, I am actually grateful to noblegiraffe for helping me clarify what I am going to say to the school.

Given that I'm on the front line here, I do want people to actually clarify what they mean when they say 'schools shouldn't socially transition children'.

There seems to be disagreement.

Odd, but surely better than gaslighting other children and making them scared? I've had kids come up to me in private and tell me they're scared of gender ideology. Why do their feelings matter less?

You are failing to distinguish between how people behave and react to an ideology in practice ( i.e everyday interactions with people who have adopted trans identities), and how that ideology came to be so prevalent in the first place.

Actually I think that many on this board go on and on about the ideology and don't actually consider the real people and everyday interactions that inform the opinions of people who may disagree with them.

HagoftheNorth Sunak actually said: 100% of women do not have penises. Whereas Starmer said 99%

Sunak also said biology is ‘important’, yes of course it is.

If Sunak, the Conservative PM with a strong majority in Parliament behind him ACTUALLY thinks that and cares about women and children, then why the fuck isn’t he immediately repealing the GRA? The GRA absolutely and legally says women DO have penises. It says biology isn’t important.

https://conservativehome.com/2023/04/13/sunak-defends-the-central-importance-of-biological-sex-to-questions-of-womens-rights/

And why hasn’t Sunak clarified the Equality Act 2010 to confirm that sex means biological sex not gender identity?

Deeds not Words!

Vote Tory if it appeals to you, but don’t vote Tory just because you think they’re gender critical. This whole shit show has happened entirely on their watch and the Tories in government have done nothing legally to change anything. Please tell me what it is.
Oh wait they proposed self ID then rowed back only because they realised it was electoral cat sick. They didn’t actually denounce self iD. The Tories kicked GRA reform into the long grass, leaving women and GRC holding detransitioners up shit creek.

Cass review etc was inevitable because you can’t legally experiment on kids indefinitely and pushing for reviewing what is happening was not led by the Tory party but by concerned parents and whistleblowers and by seeing other countries looking at this same issue.

I really can’t be grateful for crumbs like this, Sunak already has the power and he’s not using it. I have no idea why some posters feel so reassured by all this. Must be nice but I’m not buying it.

There is no disagreement about the fact that teachers should not use wrong-sex pronouns at all. I think everyone on this thread agrees that in this instance a teacher is actively taking a decision for a child and their peers that they are unqualified to take.

And it is equally as easy to not use pronouns at all as to use wrong sex pronouns so the only reason to use preferred pronouns is political.

There is some disagreement about whether teachers should correct the children.

The other thing I'd say is I know kids who've changed their preferred pronouns multiple, multiple times. It's quite clearly attention seeking and if you actually adhere to all requests it gets really hard - far easier to just use their name. And also, kids do well with boundaries. Lying to children and giving in to their every whim is not good.

Some people would be unhappy with a solution that involves ignoring gender altogether and not using pronouns at all, or perhaps referring to everyone as 'they' for ease.

Teachers don't need to get involved in conversations between friends at school - unless those conversations are disrupting the lesson. Children have all sorts of nick-names for each other.

If the children know what the culture of the school is they will just tend to keep it to themselves. Continual affirmation and validation from trusted adults simply embeds gender identities even further and makes it difficult for a child to desist ( see thread posted by the mother with a daughter who is scared of desisiting from a trans identity at school - in large part because of fear of one particular teacher's reaction to that).

The Cass Review found that affirming a trans identity is not a neutral act.

There is no disagreement about the fact that teachers should not use wrong-sex pronouns at all.

There was some pushback about whether teachers should go against the wishes of the parent.

Teachers don't need to get involved in conversations between friends at school

Unrealistic.

Or do you mean that teachers should not be policing how children refer to each other?

So given that children spend a lot of time with their peers, social transitioning by peer group at school is acceptable? Just not by teachers?

But fewer people would be unhappy with this than compelled speech around pronouns for a tiny minority of students. The religious families, the science believers, the non-native English speakers, the kids with SEND. They'd all be far happier with neutral language and no pronouns than being compelled to lie, with no reciprocity for their beliefs.

If every single child in a secondary school suddenly decided they had neo-prounouns like Zie or Xir then how on earth would it work? It would be chaos! No education would happen at all (which is also what's happening for the trans kids I know - engagement with education fallen off a cliff). Pronouns aren't individual in English, and this is why. What's the difference with using names at this point? It's clear it's the coercive control of the many for the few.

Well, yes, of course. Safeguarding? Surely you can see there's a power dynamic here? A child can much more easily refuse a request from a peer than from a teacher.

There's a huge difference between what kids do among themselves (often risky behaviour as it happens) and that being endorsed by the people supposed to be the adults in the room who are responsible for safeguarding ALL children, not just a few of them.

And I don't think social contagion or social transitioning by a peer group is 'acceptable' it's just what's happening. Sadly, and the damage being done is enormous.

The very fact anyone could couch it in those terms is worrying. Children do not have responsibility, adults do. Legal responsibility, safeguarding responsibility - it's not for children to safeguard other children.

One girl came back, into my granddaughter's primary school, after the covid lock-down with a trans identity. She was only 10 years old. This was the first time the school had encountered such a thing.( Apparently her older sister had a trans identity too).

In consultation with her parents she was permitted to wear the school PE kit rather than the girls' uniform - but the teachers carried on using her name and her correct pronoun. The gir, though, would get angry with her friends when they failed to refer to her as 'he'. This upset them too, as they didn't like being called 'transphobic' and they were very confused about the whole thing.

The feelings and needs of the rest of the class/school tend to get neglected in such situations - as the child with the trans identity gets elevated to a special status - with different rights and privileges that the others do not have. That cannot be right.

The school tried to accommodate in the way it felt able - but without compromising on its own integrity or principle.

Back in the dark ages I had an occasional gay male friend who liked to be called 'she' and 'girl' by friends but it was friendly joking and pet words/names. That male friend was not insisting everyone create and maintain the illusion that they were actually female, then having a crisis of distress when they inevitably ran up against reality or someone did not use their preferred chosen words, and were not getting up to tell anyone who did not use their chosen words that they were committing violence/hate crime/going to hell.

Supporting people in the belief that transition means actually changing sex and that others can and should be compelled to maintain their chosen reality at all times at the expense of their own feelings, beliefs, rights and needs is where this has gone wrong. Social transition as said, is not a neutral act, and helping a child to believe that they have in fact become their desired sex and anyone who upsets them by presenting a barrier to this is harming them, is a lot of where this has all gone horribly wrong. And why women are not able to have accessible refuges, loos, hospital wards, yada yada yada.

But if you don't use pronouns at all you're not going against the wishes of the parent, you're just not using pronouns at all and if parents complain then teachers should explain that they are responsible for safeguarding all children not just that one child, and using wrong-sex pronouns in public in front of other children for whom it may be harmful is incompatible with that.

We’ve got ourselves into this mess under a Tory government though. Why is another one going to make things any better for women? They certainly won’t be pushing any other agenda that helps women.

I'm an ex teacher - and my daughter is currently teaching. If the children understand the rules and culture of the school they will go along with that. What they say to each other at break is largely their business.