Gender identity in schools

style=”padding-left: 40px”>Hopefully this new DfE guidance – a long-overdue wake-up call – will end the confusion and help teachers and pupils find some much-needed clarity. Barbie and GI Joe need to be shown the door, and they should take gender identity with them. Its definition is underpinned by sexist stereotypes: dress, speech, and mannerisms. Children must not be taught that their bodies might be wrong and in need of changing. It's a pity that this even needs to be said.

Indeed. No one is "born in the wrong body". It's a claim which never made any sense anyway – quite apart from the psychological havoc it can play with suggestible children and adolescents.

Update: more here on how Mermaids is now back-pedaling.

Comments

  1. Dom Avatar
    Dom

    Are you sure you want to say “No one is “born in the wrong body”. It’s a claim which never made any sense anyway”? There are — very few — cases in which rational adults have made that claim — Caitlyn Jenner, Eg.

  2. Mick H Avatar
    Mick H

    Um, yes. It makes no sense. It’s dualism: the body is one sex or another while the mind – that thing that lives mysteriously in the brain and is really “you” – can be a different sex. How does that work?
    Caitlyn Jenner is a biological man. That’s it. If he wants to live like a woman, that’s fine. But he’s not a woman. And he wasn’t born in the wrong body.

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