And our dog, Pickle
Children are being put at risk by transgender books in primary schools that “misrepresent” medical knowledge on puberty blockers, an academic has claimed.
Books and lesson plans that are designed [to] educate pupils about transgender issues “fail child safeguarding and conflict with the law”, according to Dr Susan Matthews, an honorary senior research fellow in creative writing at Roehampton University.
After analysing a series of books that are circulated in British schools, Dr Matthews found that much of the information given about medical transition is “inaccurate”, adding that “potential harms are ignored, glossed over or falsified”.
Why do children in primary school need to be “educated” about transgender issues at all? Unless it’s to proselytize them, which surely shouldn’t be a goal.
She cited a book called Can I Tell You About Gender Diversity? which is aimed at children aged seven plus. The story’s protagonist is a 12-year-old character called Kit who is transitioning from female to male by using hormone blockers to stop the onset of puberty.
The opening passage reads: “My name is Kit and I’m 12 years old. I live in a house with my mum and dad, and our dog, Pickle. When I was born, the doctors told my mum and dad that they had a baby girl, and so for the first few years of my life that’s how my parents raised me. This is called being assigned female at birth. I wasn’t ever very happy that way.”
No, “this” is not “called” being assigned female at birth. It’s just being a girl. Being happy with it is a separate issue, but it’s not an assignment, it’s just a physical fact, like the fact that Pickle is a dog.
Young children believe what adults tell them, so adults should not be telling young children that their sex is an external imposition as opposed to a material fact.
Apparently the fact that chromosomal and/ or hormonal anomalies can lead to individuals with physical characteristics of both sexes ( intersex, or what I think used to be called ‘ hermaphrodites’) means that sexual dimorphism is a myth and it’s all nothing but a smear of “ intermediate states.” Every individual is therefore a unique sex and can’t be put in a box.
But if this is the case, then why bother with the entire song and dance about gender? Eliminate it entirely. The whole male/ man female/ woman dichotomy is already thrown out the window. Blurred biological lines can eliminate not just sex, but species and phylum. And physics? There’s no such thing as a “chair.” That’s a social construct. In our house, we sit on what you might still call “fireplace andirons.” We, however, embrace the continuum.
Yes, I absolutely despise that “assigned female at birth”. No, I was born female. I was assigned certain gender expectations as a result of the doctor observing my secondary sexual characteristics and realizing I was a girl. The doctor did not do that to me; my biology did. The rest? That was my parents and my teachers and my siblings and the television/movies/music that all told me what it meant to be a “girl”.
And I was never very happy with it. But I think it was better to remain a girl and then do my own damned thing my own damned way (as long as I followed certain societal rules about not murdering, not speeding, and eating my vegetables).
So, if you want to cut your hair short, wear pants, climb trees, hunt, fish, and play football, great! Just don’t say that makes you a boy. It doesn’t. It makes you a girl with interests that society refuses to recognize as valid for girls. Join us in the fight to break down the boxes, rather than insisting that we all must move to new boxes, even if those are ridiculously amorphic boxes that change at a whim.
Does the book ever tell us what Pickle’s gender is? Surely the dog was “assigned _______ at birth” too, right? Is the dog “happy that way?”
And it’s not as though there are more fundamental problems in US sex ed.
@YNNB #3:
Pickles is non- binary, and has gotten the bottom surgery.
People said, why do children need to know anything about homosexuality, too. Telling about it isn’t to recruit.
But the two are not comparable.
Pickle was assigned dog at birth. But how do we know Pickle isn’t really a cat inside?
Kids don’t like a LOT of things that they can’t change. I didn’t like being the smallest kid in the class growing up, and getting picked on for that, but just wishing I was suddenly twice my size wasn’t going to make it happen. Learning to accept these things about life is a huge part of growing up. We USED to tell kids that it was okay to be however they are, and to come to terms with that; we used to shake our heads in disbelief at parents who paid for unnecessary medical interventions in the form of plastic surgeries for their children. Now, though, it’s Extra Woke, and people recommending that kids learn to accept themselves are *phobes and “bigots”.