You should not reinforce harmful stereotypes
The UK has issued new guidance for schools on sex and relationships teaching. One passage in particular has drawn praise from people with sane views on children and “gender”:
We are aware that topics involving gender and biological sex can be complex and sensitive matters to navigate. You should not reinforce harmful stereotypes, for instance by suggesting that children might be a different gender based on their personality and interests or the clothes they prefer to wear. Resources used in teaching about this topic must always be age-appropriate and evidence based. Materials which suggest that non-conformity to gender stereotypes should be seen as synonymous with having a different gender identity should not be used and you should not work with external agencies or organisations that produce such material. While teachers should not suggest to a child that their non-compliance with gender stereotypes means that either their personality or their body is wrong and in need of changing, teachers should always seek to treat individual students with sympathy and support.
You should work together with parents on any decisions regarding your school’s treatment of their child, in line with the school’s safeguarding policy and the statutory guidance on working together to safeguard children.
Mermaids won’t like it though.
Fuck Mermaids.
Domino, I don’t want to have to explain biology to you…
I recently came across a lesson plan for teaching about transgenderism to elementary level schoolchildren, and was somewhat surprised to see a lot of emphasis on gender nonconformity. There are no special ways boy and girls think or behave: a girl can like trucks and playing in mud; a boy can like dolls and dress-up. Kids believe in a lot of stereotypes: dispel them!
And then they drag in “knowing you’re really a girl” with a boy’s body, or a boy with a girl’s body, and never explain how you’d know that. It’s supposed to have nothing to do with stereotypes— but if the children are already buying into them to the extent they need to be taught otherwise, wouldn’t that be a likely source? There were also some suggestive charts and genderbread people, which couldn’t actually suggest anything because there was all that wonderful encouragement to get rid of stereotypes.
I don’t think kids are that sophisticated, to parse the fine distinction between a boy who acts like a girl but there’s no such thing as acting “like a girl,” and a boy who’s a girl.
Oh gawd. That sounds so confusing for small children. I can tell it’s bullshit but I wouldn’t have known that at age 6.
Oh dear.
A whole lot of gingerbread people, unicorns and Barbie-to-GI Joe gummy figures are going to be getting pink slips. What other work are they going to be able to find? Just what charts are they going to find themselves on now? Maybe they can identify as Furries? Otherkin? WILL NOBODY THINK OF THE UNEMPLOYED GENDER STEREOTYPE SIGNIFIERS?!
What a massive relief!
Sastra, it’s my opinion that children should not be taught about transgenderism. It’s the same as teaching about religion: it’s always designed to maximize converts. Teaching about religion can be done in a way that is objective and honest; teaching about transgenderism could be, as well. Neither of them ever seem to be, because people who teach about them are so emotionally tied up in their topic that they are teaching to be them.
I do think children need to learn about religion; I do not think they need to learn about transgenderism. Teach them to see through the bullshit of stereotypes, and you don’t need to teach them about transgenderism, because they won’t care if they see a man in a dress, it’ll all be fine to them. But that isn’t what the transgender lobby wants; they want to teach children to hate their own bodies and believe in the sort of mind-body dualism that says it is possible to have a woman’s brain in a man’s body.
News flash: you don’t have a woman’s brain; you have a human brain. It is your brain, and is filled with whatever you know, believe, and think. None of that characterizes a woman, and not just if you are in a man’s body. It doesn’t characterize a woman in my body, either, and I was born and have lived for 60 years in a woman’s body. What I know, believe, and think characterizes me, no matter what I call myself. Even if I call myself a qzxkl gender, I am still me. It is my body, and no matter how much it doesn’t feel to me like it reflects me (yes, I have severe body dysphoria, thank you very much), it is still me.
I like not only the paragraphs cited, but the location of the paragraph. The heading is:
The beginning of the section talks about age inappropriate material, pornography, and over-sexualized content.
This is the correct category for trans ideology.
Iknklst wrote:
I don’t think TRAs, in general, really “want to teach children to hate their own bodies“ — I think they’re motivated by the desire to support kids who already hate their own bodies. Encourage them to “come out,” discourage others from teasing or thinking it’s weird. It’s an anti-bullying mindset gone over the rails.
And I keep running into the insistence that being transgender is so hard, so stigmatized, and so impossible to mistake that the odds of any child convincing themselves they’re transgender when they’re not are essentially zero. Couldn’t happen. Especially not from a program in a classroom. Children know who they are.
Children, no more than teenagers, do NOT know who they are. They’re forming, questioning, observing others and changing constantly. And their concept of sex and gender is usually hazy, and often stereotyped. The children’s book My Body Is Me — which encourages kids to accept themselves and integrate mind and body — is considered “transphobic.”
The better, more thoughtful and reasonable TRAs may be motivated by the desire to support kids who already hate their own bodies, but there are a lot of TRAs who are not thoughtful and reasonable, and their motivations seem to be all tangled up with misogyny and rage and narcissism and similar unhelpful qualities.
Sastra, I would add that the majority of adults don’t know who they are; probably including me. I lay no claims to knowing who I am. But I imagine I have a much better idea than the average grade-schooler.
But I do think that for a lot of TRAs, they are interested in growing their movement. There are too many stories of people convincing kids they are trans just because they are different than the gender stereotypes; that could just be a firm conviction that the differences really indicate something real, but intent is not magic here. I think any movement that commandeers every human behavior, healthy or unhealthy, as a symptom of the condition, and where they put up an online test where you cannot come out with anything but at least a mild to moderate trans, is a movement that wants to do just that – encourage kids to hate their bodies. They might think it is supporting kids that already hate their bodies, but that isn’t what it is in the end. That’s what they tell themselves, what they tell us, but not what they do. They “trans” kids who never thought of themselves as trans. We have seen it repeatedly, and not just in the genderbread person. There was a woman – a doctor – that Ophelia posted a video of some time back who recounts convincing a young girl she was a young boy because she was gender non-conforming, even though the girl came in to her office saying “no I’m not a boy”. This child, confused by comparisons with Pop-Tarts, went out of the office saying “yes I am a boy”. This is reported as a good thing.
So, yeah, I stick by my statement.
Who is “the UK” in this context? How did they get out from under the influence of trans ideologists? The governmental institutions had been so completely captured up to now that I’m astonished to see any agency able to print this “guidance” without being screamed down as transphobic.