I saw this today

[Skycaptain]

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/12/16/boys-can-have-periods-schoolchildren-taught-latest-victory-transgender/

 

A discussion point 

[Guest]

Thanks for the link. Interesting article.

 

It's too bad that this sort of thing wasn't discussed at my old elementary school, though I'm not sure if I could've handled it as a kid. Being raised in a more open-minded, less transphobic household probably would've helped... 😢 

[Ennis]

Two ideas I liked and consider really important:

- bins in all toilets regardless of gender (you can use them for all kinds of rubbish. It's not just people with periods who throw stuff away)

- abolition of gendered school uniforms (I'm a fan of uniforms in general but girls shouldn't be forced to wear skirts. They can of course if they want to)

[Anthracite_Impreza]

Of course the one who calls it rubbish is a Tory. See Tories? This is why I hate you с:

[overturn overturn overturn]

Wonderful article! It speaks about the truth. Thanks for sharing, it's time for expansion of "collective mind". 

Personally, feeling very released, after reading this.

[Siimo van der fietspad]

Jordan Peterson will be even more angry than normal when he hears about this.

[PixleyDust✨]

That whole thing about not teaching AFAB trans/nb folx about periods because it’ll only make it more confusing for us is such laughable nonsense for SO many reasons: 

 

1.) Totally sounds like he’s projecting his own experience with confusion surrounding periods when he was younger while also being cis. And maybe even his current confusion with evolving gender norms and concepts. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s still confused about periods to some degree and the AFAB reproductive system all together, actually. 🤔😆

 

2.) AFAB trans/nb folx know they have these parts, we just don’t like being wrongly defined by them. And telling us that experiencing periods doesn’t make us any less men/male/nb, that it doesn’t negate our feelings because some men/nb people experience it too will be confusing how? Like, telling us that this totally natural thing happening is just another bodily function that we and others just happen to experience and not an exclusive gender requirement will confuse us worse...how? 🤔

 

3.) In fact, I’d say that continuing to tell us that only women experience periods, when we “paradoxically” feel like something else whether it’s male, non-binary, etc, is what’s confusing people, you dip.

 

Like, It’s LITERALLY confusing us right now. Do...do you not see that happening? Can you really not see the obvious connection? 

 

Same with gender education. Teaching the idea that gender is a spectrum that happens to include binary points and not a strict binary in and of itself, isn’t going to “confuse them more” either. It’ll just continue to confuse the kids who don’t fit inside that system, and cause them to force themselves to fit inside it because they don’t know there’s actually a place for them somewhere else, somewhere outside or inbetween that binary. 

 

You’re not lessening confusion by opposing this, dude. I think you’re just trying to lessen your and other people like you’s discomfort with trans/nb people, you walnut. 

 

Great post @Sleighcaptain! 

 

This article gave me all the warm fuzzies. ✨😊🥰✨

[RoseGoesToYale]

Get this legislation over here asap! This is really freaking cool.

 

Also hope this'll actually give boys a forum to ask about periods, instead of teachers glaring at them and saying "Don't be a pervert! You don't get to know!"

[PixleyDust✨]

13 minutes ago, RosyIcepick said:

Get this legislation over here asap! This is really freaking cool.

 

Also hope this'll actually give boys a forum to ask about periods, instead of teachers glaring at them and saying "Don't be a pervert! You don't get to know!"

OOH, I didn’t even think of that. That’s a really good point! Cis boys should know about periods too, there’s no good excuse for them not to know, honestly. I 100% support teachers encouraging those kids to be curious and ask questions, instead of shaming, embarrassing, or excluding them for it. ❤️❤️❤️

 

Plus, think about the good a well-rounded sex education that’s inclusive of all sexes and genders could bring. Honestly, we could really use that shit in the states right now. 😍✨

[Chimeric]

This article neglects to mention that children as young as 8 years old are being taught this.

 

My personal opinion on gender identities and biological realities aside, I don't believe that schools anywhere should be teaching children as young as 8 anything about menstruation and puberty. Please don't misunderstand me - I think that those things should be taught, but I think that it should be up to the families to do so, especially for children as young as 8.

[Muledeer]

Interesting article.   The part about refuse bins being provided in restrooms for both genders got me thinking about our health and sanitation regulations.  I inspect public toilets as a health inspector.  One of the things I enforce is the requirement for covered refuse bins in each stall of the womens' restrooms, but not the mens'.  I never thought about the transgender aspect of that rule.  We are in the process of revising our state sanitation rules and I may try to influence a change with an official comment in the rulemaking process.

 

My second point to discuss is that I believe both genders experience monthly cycles (periods) even if it doesn't involve menstruation.  I have always believed (in my case anyway)  it was influenced by the phase of the moon.  

[Guest]

 

"School children will be taught that "all genders" can have periods in new sex education lessons"

 

Don't you think this is maybe more appropriate for the Hot Box because, as someone with two young daughters who has suffered with gender dysphoria from a young age myself, I can say this is actually a pretty controversial topic. 

 

"All genders" can't have periods and that's a fucking fact. Even trans-positive people can recognise that people born with penises who identify as male who produce sperm instead of ovaries can't have a fucking period. And that's just the beginning of where this article seems to either be talking utter shit, OR people in schools are just intent on making shit even more confusing for little kids than it already is.

 

11 minutes ago, Muledeer said:

My second point to discuss is that I believe both genders experience monthly cycles (periods)

Yeah see, that's also pretty offensive. If men (sigh, male identifying people with penises) actually knew what this shit felt like, they wouldn't say that. It's not just some emotional swing that happens with the moon, it can literally fuck your entire body up for like 5 days every month and cause so much pain that you're vomiting repeatedly. Not to mention the disgusting embarrassment of having blood literally spilling out of you for days on end and having to try to find a way to deal with that. And the cost of sanitary products when you're broke as fuck before Christmas. This is a nightmare for many people born with vaginas (regardless of gender identity) and I always find it just.. so far out of line, seeing people say that penis-bearers have their own version of it. Like when people say men (penis-bearers) have their own version of childbirth as well. Just. No. It doesn't work like that. Penis-bearers only get to say that because they don't know what a fucking nightmare this is.  

 

[kaysir]

13 minutes ago, Ficto. said:

"All genders" can't have periods and that's a fucking fact.

All genders can, but not all genders do. Or would it be better to say any gender can, but not any sex can?

 

I hope that these classes shut down any jokes and expression of disgust really quick. And I hope that they speak on the wide range of symptoms and pain levels people can have.

 

It's also worth including anti-sexist and non-dismissive teachings centered around girls because many cis boys and men look down upon cis women for their struggles during menstruation. Catch someone teeheeing about girls being "weak" to pain, nip it in the bud.

 

I always wanted to teach sex ed or biology to do something like this.

[Guest]

8 minutes ago, kaysir said:

All genders can, but not all genders do. Or would it be better to say any gender can, but not any sex can?

And 8 year olds are going to be able to wrap their heads around that?

 

Parents better start buying their XY chromosome sons tampons just in case, yes??? 

 

Bloody ridiculous (no pun intended).

[kaysir]

1 hour ago, Ficto. said:

And 8 year olds are going to be able to wrap their heads around that?

 

Parents better start buying their XY chromosome sons tampons just in case, yes??? 

 

Bloody ridiculous (no pun intended).

If someone says "If someone's body parts look like this, they might get what's called a period, no matter what gender they are" I'm sure kids could understand. I meant to add that I think that these classes would be better fit for 10 or 11 year olds.

 

Why would parents buy someone with XY chromosomes tampons? I'm not saying that someone without ovaries and a vagina can have a period. I'm agreeing with you that someone with ovaries and a vagina, regardless of gender, can. A man with a vagina can, an agender person with a vagina can, some cis intersex people can, and so on. Any gender can.

 

I think that it can be harmful to say "only girls get periods, it's how they know they're turning into a woman!" so less gender exclusive language would be good to use in these classes.

[Biblioromantic]

I think that having trash bins in the men's stalls truly doesn't hurt anybody. I believe teaching children (and adults) about nonbinary issues in general is probably a very good thing because 99% of life is not truly binary in the first place, so extending that idea to gender isn't something that bothers me in any way. I have some issues with some of the other stuff.

 

What I hope happens more than anything regarding this topic is that people with hateful, demeaning, bigoted opinions get drowned out by all the supportive, accepting, affirming voices out there. I really, really hope that happens. Because teaching a child to hate what he/she/etc does not understand is not healthy or helpful for anyone except as a form of manipulation.

[Just Somebody]

I think it's a nice step to claim that periods are human, people have periods and it's OK not a taboo,  and AFAB people are human, that being said ciswomen and transfolk are human, with feelings  and not objects... it's always good to remember .

[Sea Lemon]

9 hours ago, Chimeric said:

This article neglects to mention that children as young as 8 years old are being taught this.

 

My personal opinion on gender identities and biological realities aside, I don't believe that schools anywhere should be teaching children as young as 8 anything about menstruation and puberty. Please don't misunderstand me - I think that those things should be taught, but I think that it should be up to the families to do so, especially for children as young as 8.

I think it's probably better to give kids advance warning about these sort of things so they don't freak out when it happens - there was a girl at my school who got hers at 9 or 10 (before we'd had the puberty talk) and she got super worried about it, so I don't think introducing the subject at 8 is unreasonable. 

[Homer]

^ How common is this though? I know that puberty starts earlier nowadays than it used to a few decades back, but is it common enough to be an actual issue worth considering?

 

Also I can't recall to have visited a public/shared bathroom with no wastebin in it.

[Sea Lemon]

8 minutes ago, Homer said:

How common is this though?

Relatively uncommon, but not unheard of - the norm in my experience seems to be between 10 and 14, which still doesn't make broaching the subject at 8 particularly far out.

[Bloc]

3 hours ago, Homer said:

^ How common is this though? I know that puberty starts earlier nowadays than it used to a few decades back, but is it common enough to be an actual issue worth considering?

 

Also I can't recall to have visited a public/shared bathroom with no wastebin in it.

Usually there are no wastebins in the stalls of men's bathrooms, at least here.

[ElasticPlanet]

16 hours ago, Pixley said:

That whole thing about not teaching AFAB trans/nb folx about periods because it’ll only make it more confusing for us is such laughable nonsense for SO many reasons

Exactly. I think their reasoning must go something like this...

• Assume everyone is cis, hetero, vanilla. Or they should be.
• Anyone who is struggling to cope with the differences between their private inner world and the overfuckingwhelming cisheteroeverything around them is 'confused' and ultimately in some way wrong.
• Blame the 'confusion' on exposure to too many 'new ideas'; withhold information about and acceptance of anything outside the cisheteroeverything.

Any argument that fights confusion with ignorance needs to die in a fire.

 

16 hours ago, Ficto. said:

"All genders" can't have periods and that's a fucking fact.

A person who is assigned female at birth and has periods, may identify as absolutely any gender. I think the way you've phrased this implies that cis male is a different gender from trans male. I disagree and I'd say that it's the life cycle and the personal experience that are different between those two things, not the gender.

[Guest]

Gender is a social construct.

Your sex is not. 

 

So if ones sex or intersex, gave you the biological ability to experience periods. You can be identifying as male/non binary/whatever gender. 

 

There are transgenders who would have gladly experienced periods, because that makes them feel they would be female. 

 

That periods are painful, a bloody mess. Is undeniable true. For some it's even worse than others. And for some it is not even a nuisance.

 

But then there are also AFABs in there world with a medical condition called amenorrhea. Who aren't able to have periods. Or very much, less frequently. 

 

I would like everyone to keep in mind there's a whole lot of people's experiences in the world that doesn't go with the majority. To exclude these people and invalidate what they feel isn't a place in here. 

 

 

[Chimeric]

On 12/16/2018 at 7:29 PM, Muledeer said:

My second point to discuss is that I believe both genders experience monthly cycles (periods) even if it doesn't involve menstruation.  I have always believed (in my case anyway)  it was influenced by the phase of the moon.  

Not convinced.

 

The cycle that females go through is very carefully centered around building up the uterine lining, preparing ova for release, and then breaking the system down when a fertilized zygote fails to implant. Females have already produced every single egg they'll ever make by the time they're born, so the system is very carefully designed to protect them and make sure they're entering into an environment that's ready to have them. Males, on the other hand, can produce their gametes continuously for most of their lives. Sperm are cheaper (sorry, dudes, but facts is facts =D), so the body doesn't bother wasting energy protecting them - he'll just make replacements, instead. And because males aren't the sex responsible for gestation, there's no need to prep a uterus.

 

Males experience a 24-hour cycle related to sperm production, but not a monthly cycle.

 

 

On 12/16/2018 at 8:22 PM, kaysir said:

If someone says "If someone's body parts look like this, they might get what's called a period, no matter what gender they are" I'm sure kids could understand. I meant to add that I think that these classes would be better fit for 10 or 11 year olds.

We used to have words for this.

 

 

18 hours ago, sea-lemon said:

I think it's probably better to give kids advance warning about these sort of things so they don't freak out when it happens - there was a girl at my school who got hers at 9 or 10 (before we'd had the puberty talk) and she got super worried about it, so I don't think introducing the subject at 8 is unreasonable. 

Jeesh, 9, that's so young - that would be so scary.

 

I still don't think schools ought to be teaching anything about period and puberty and sex until much later on, if at all, though.

 

I really think the gender discussion ought to be kept out of schools altogether. That absolutely needs to be a family thing, especially since schools in Canada are already weaponizing the conversation against parents they don't feel are doing an appropriate job of it. Why do the schools get to decide what is or isn't the right way to be a parent? They don't. It's possible to teach acceptance and friendship without getting into the nitty-gritty of gender identification. I wouldn't want my kids to be taught about homosexuality and bisexuality at 8 years old, either. "Those two dudes love each other" is perfectly acceptable, in my opinion. Other parents may be far more gung-ho than I am, and that's fine, but I really think ought to be up to the parents to determine where the line is drawn, not the school system.

[ElasticPlanet]

6 hours ago, Chimeric said:

schools in Canada are already weaponizing the conversation against parents they don't feel are doing an appropriate job of it.

Should we be thinking of this as 'against the parents' or rather 'in favour of the children' ? I'd really want to go for the latter.

 

Speaking as someone who was harmed by not being offered a model of gender identity in my single-digit years, I see the whole society as playing a part in sharing (or when I was young in the 80s, withholding and denying) information about these important things. The schools' role in that process is necessary but not sufficient. It isn't their main job to make up for knowledge gaps elsewhere in the system (well for maths it is! LGBT+ issues perhaps less so?)... But if the ideas I needed had been offered to me at school, that might have made up for the fact that my parents, friends, the library, radio and television all failed. They failed because they were all embedded in a faily system; the whole system needs to change to share more, better and more diverse ideas. Changing the education system is just one component of all that.

 

I fear that the kind of parental control you suggested may allow more conservative parents who think they are helping their offspring, to harm them by shielding them from the ideas that they may actually need. My parents didn't do that to me - they were just innocent to the point of oblivious about gender identity.

 

As it happens I did first hear about trans people at school - there was a brief mention of Wendy Carlos in a music book. But to me that was just an interesting fact - it didn't give me any clues to finding my agender self. I needed and deserved  so much more.

[Anthracite_Impreza]

Parents do not know what's best for their kids just because they're parents. They are humans with biases and problematic behaviours, usually learnt from their parents, and cannot always be trusted to do the right thing for the child. I knew what puberty was from the age of six; I didn't have a nervous breakdown about it.

 

I'm a firm believer of "it takes a village to raise a child".

[Chimeric]

45 minutes ago, Anthracite_Impreza said:

Parents do not know what's best for their kids just because they're parents.

 

I'm not saying that they know better, but I definitely do not agree that the school system will do a better job of it. Yes it does take a village, and the social aspect of school alone has benefits of equipping children with knowledge and tools they need to navigate the world, but I think there are things the schooling system crosses a line about.

 

3 hours ago, ElasticPlanet said:

Should we be thinking of this as 'against the parents' or rather 'in favour of the children' ? I'd really want to go for the latter.

Against the parents. Teaching schoolchildren the difference between boys and girls does not constitute child abuse, and yet that's how Canada wants to treat it. Threatening to remove children from what is otherwise a stable household and putting them into the foster system is going to skew their perspective on what constitutes stability and its undoubtedly going to do more harm than good in the long run. This is what I mean by weaponize - I don't think they have the power to go through with it, but more than one system has told parents they would get Child Services involved. That threat alone is powerful for all parties involved.

 

The conversation regarding gender identity right now is still so rife with misinformation that I worry in the longterm it will only serve to confuse more than it will to clarify. With a lack of consensus in mainstream society and in the educational literature on how best to approach this topic so that trans children and non-trans children both benefit, pushing an agenda like this strikes me as experimental and just a touch underhanded, and that bothers me.

[Anthracite_Impreza]

Literally no one is going to get their kids taken off them, jesus. It isn't like we're teaching kids it's ok to kick puppies or steal from the elderly! Cis kids don't have to worry about these issues, it isn't going to bother them (unless they've been raised by transphobes). For trans kids this could be a matter of life and death.

 

[ElasticPlanet]

4 hours ago, Chimeric said:

Threatening to remove children from what is otherwise a stable household and putting them into the foster system

Is anyone doing (or threatening to do) this, specifically in cases that relate to gender and parents' views on gender? I don't like to rely on saying 'citation required' too often, but I feel entitled to say it now.

 

4 hours ago, Chimeric said:

The conversation regarding gender identity right now is still so rife with misinformation that I worry in the longterm it will only serve to confuse

By misinformation, do you mean dishonesty (which is more common on the transphobic 'side' of the '''''''debate''''''') or mistakes (which everyone must feel free to make in order to learn and progress)? How good are you at telling the information from the misinformation? See what I said about the confusion thing already...

 

4 hours ago, Chimeric said:

pushing an agenda like this strikes me as experimental

Finding out how to make the world less bad has always involved trying things and seeing if/how they work. If what trans people and our allies are doing now looks new, that's only because it and everything around it has been deliberately suppressed until now. Finding out how to live with your own gender and orientation is experimental for many people, and the more info they have to help, the better. The experience is intrinsically likely to be a bit overwhelming, and if you reckon you'll be thanked for trying to make it less overwhelming by keeping information withheld, well, see the confusion thing again...

[Chimeric]

1 hour ago, ElasticPlanet said:

Is anyone doing (or threatening to do) this, specifically in cases that relate to gender and parents' views on gender? I don't like to rely on saying 'citation required' too often, but I feel entitled to say it now. 

The only written articles I can find are horribly biased, so I won't even bother linking those.  Regrettably there is very, very little unbiased examination of this topic - which is one of my major concerns - but I think this documentary (Transgender Kids: Who's Calling The Shots?) does a good job representing a lot of different voices on all sides of this conversation - and it is surely more than 2! This is such a complex and multifaceted issues with so many wide-ranging implications that to express it in simple black-and-white does a great disservice to the conversation at hand. If I recall correctly, there's a family in there that talks about the feedback they got from the teachers at their school when they mentioned that they do not refer to their young son with "she/her" pronouns (he wears dresses to school). Further, Ontario Bill 89  Part V, does give the power to place children into care based on gender identity/orientation; it also makes sure that the places they go respect those things, which is important. As I said earlier, I don't think it has actually been used, but the tools are in place, and that makes me nervous.

 

Sidenote - if I could have found a link for that documentary on a less biased source, I would have used it, but it seems like it's been banned from a couple of different platforms already. It's a BBC documentary and it's really well done.

 

 

1 hour ago, ElasticPlanet said:

By misinformation, do you mean dishonesty (which is more common on the transphobic 'side' of the '''''''debate''''''') or mistakes (which everyone must feel free to make in order to learn and progress)? How good are you at telling the information from the misinformation?

I mean misinformation. The word "gender" has been used synonymously with "sex" since the 1600s. It wasn't until the mid 1900s that gender took on this concept of being a social construct rather than a biological one, and it took until about the mid-1960s to the 1970s for that to gain traction. That isn't that long ago. "Gender" is still used synonymously with "sex" in US law, in medical records (though this is changing), and in daily lexicon. Gender studies as a field of study is even more recent than that. The Journal of Gender Studies was founded in 1991. That makes it, as an established, peer-reviewed field, as young as Disney's The Beauty and The Beast.

 

The only reason I point this out is because the field is suggesting a lot of really big changes to the way society is structured, but it's composed of a relatively small group of people (there simply hasn't been enough time for the field to reach critical mass, as it were), and is churning out a lot of information very quickly. So some of this is bound to be mistakes as the field grows, and some of it is going to be misinformation just by virtue of the fact that we can't yet predict the outcomes of some of the social changes we're making. Probably a better term for this would be "hypothesis," but there is a lot of policy being enacted very quickly that is based on really limited information. Beyond the academic realm, a lot of the activism does involve a lot of misinformation; conflation of sex and gender, the hysterical requirements for gender affirmation at the risk of suicide (exaggerated), and the rates of desistence (under-reported).

 

I've been a trans ally for a long time, I'm gender nonconforming, myself, and I'm well-educated and skeptical enough that I trust my ability to root out misinformation.

 

Ultimately, we all want the same thing. We want people to be able to live the way they want to live and to present the way they want to present in a way that is comfortable for them. Life sucks. Anything we can do to make it less sucky for ourselves and for other people, we ought to do that thing. There will always be nutcases on the right that demand women be subservient to men, and there will always be nutcases on the left that insist biological sex is not a material reality. Most of us fall in the middle, so we're going to just have to figure out how to make it work as we move forward. My biggest hangup is that I don't understand why the message becomes "if you are a male who likes dolls and dresses then you must be a woman," instead of "it's absolutely fine for boys to like dolls and dresses." There is no way for any of us to know that what we're feeling is the experience of the opposite sex, because we can only ever know what we, as our sex, experience, so instead our "gender identities" are composed by how we think a certain gender should feel/act/be, based on how society tells us that gender feels/acts/is. I take great issue with this concept of gender.

 

Bringing it back to the original topic - I think it should absolutely be taught that it does not matter if little Johnny would rather be called little Jenny and hang out with the other girls at recess. I don't think school children need to be taught the intricacies of a field that hasn't gotten itself sorted out yet, and doesn't really have a consensus on the message it wants to be sending, and I certainly don't think that message should involve things like periods, especially not for 8 year olds.

 

And for what it's worth, I'm really tired of having my perspective alluded to as though I'm ignorant or transphobic. I'm neither.