What a pile of crock! A thread.
theguardian.com/education/2020…
“It is crucial that gender stereotyping is addressed in schools and discussed in age-appropriate ways with children and young people: it is also crucial that young people questioning their gender identities are supported and listened to without judgment...
... Suggesting to children that it is possible to be born in the wrong body is misleading, regressive and potentially very harmful, and it is good that the DfE has clarified that this should not be done.”
In the olden days, we called this trope, “hate the sin, but love the sinner”. The premptive “loving” embrace of people that are not quite the way you want them to be, or act quite the way you want them to act, modelled for us by all the world’s religions, ever.
So instead of striking down those who deviate from your teachings directly, you smother them in your apparent love, goodwill and ideology until they feel so bad about themselves that they fall into line with your expectations anyway.
Because it’s better that to live with the constant subtle disapproval by those you look up to.
Every LGBTQ+ person, who has ever been told by their parent, teacher, pastor, that it’s ok to be gay “as long as you don’t act on it,...
... every UK adult, who had to suffer through school suffering from homophobic bullying because teachers were afraid to step in for fear being seen to “promote homosexuality”,...
...everyone, whose self-image today was/is completely screwed because they were never told by those they loved that it’s completely ok to feel they way they do, should feel the same towering rage that I feel right now.
This is not an approach that protects children!
This is a form of long-term, low level conversion therapy promoted by those, who just cannot accept that people do not always fit into the neat little categories they have adopted for themselves.
And that some of these people are LGBTQ+, who will themselves have gone through some version of this kind of abuse, makes the whole thing even more disheartening and disturbing.
Please don’t do the patriarchy’s work for them. We are better than that!
Trans children need support and encouragement and their cis peers need to be told in no uncertain terms that trans is a thing that exists and that it’s no different from their friend having red hair or black skin.
In fact, most kids are way ahead of us here and know that already. We come that way when we’re born. It is our elders and betters that teach us what “otherness” is and when that otherness can be used to make the other person feel bad about themselves and yourself feel superior.
We know that, because we’ve lived it.
And now we help them doing it to others? WTF, “gender-critical feminists”? WTAF?
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