The challenge of changing times and changing attitudes

I agree with Eloethan. Why make a big deal about it?

My DS, approx 30 years ago, complained to me that it was unfair girls could wear trousers if they wanted but boys couldn't wear skirts.
He had, and has, no interest in becoming female. He just fancied wearing different clothes.

I don't see a problem with a child wearing what they want but I do see a problem if adults pounce on that and encourage a young child to think that they want to change gender when that may not be the case at all.

Eloethan, I agree.

To be clear, I am not agreeing with the couple's beliefs. Yes, there is a very wide spectrum of Christian belief and practise. Some practising Christians do believe they are able to be 'loving' towards without being 'accepting' of people who do not fit their view of biblically determined ideas of the 'right way to be'. Other Christians would say this is a bigoted approach. I was actually disappointed and frustrated to hear them claiming Christianity as their justification, all the more so as there seems to be growing antipathy towards the mention of being a Christian in our society these days.

Nor do I think it would be necessary to have a 'long discussion' about sexual identity with young children, - I would rather not have to have any such discussion at all at such a young age. I'm not prudish, I just think it is unnecessary.

I always answered questions as simply as possible when mine asked,we have several gay family members and friends ,and it wasn't so "normal" 35 years ago .When they asked about 2 women being GF's it was easiest to tell them the truth that people love people ,sometimes men love women and sometimes they love men and Auntie R loves Auntie J .There were no problems from the children they just accepted that as fact

I heard the parents of the boy that was being taken out of the school being interviewed on the "Today" programme this morning.

Their reasons for taking their son out seemed to to be that he complained to them that he was "confused" that a classmate would sometimes come to school in boys clothes, sometimes in girls clothes.

So, it would seem that they then decided to home school instead, rather than perhaps try to gently explain how people can be different, and sometimes those people might have to go through some different things, but it doesn't make them bad.

If they are still kind, considerate and polite to their peers, then they should be treated the same way.

I think the reporting is muddling up different issues. My understanding is that a child comes to school in a dress some days and trousers on others. When wearing the dress, all the other children have to agree that she is a girl, when wearing trousers, they have to agree that he is a boy. If they don't do this, they risk getting into trouble.
I think this could be confusing for a class of 6 year olds and I don't agree that simply wearing a dress makes someone female.
I think all sides have handled this badly.

Why can't we go for 'gender neutral' uniform in schools - trousers, polo shirt, sweat shirt and then everyone gets a sense of belonging. These are children -comfortable and practical and of course, washable should be the important considerations where clothing is concerned.

I recall not being allowed to wear trousers for school because I was a girl and us girls feeling bad done by especially in the winter. When are schools going to learn that if they insist different uniforms for boys and girls they are going to land themselves in this sort of problem.

As a Christian I don't recall any sartorial advice being given in the bible and always got the impression that God had more important and bigger issues to deal with.

On one very practical level, I think keeping the choice re wearing skirts is important. I used to suffer from awful, very heavy periods in my teens. Even with advances in sanitary protection, as someone that uses towels, rather than tampons, I am sure I would have 'leaked' noticeably when wearing trousers. Not every young woman wants to use tampons and I think they should be free to wear what seems most comfortable and modest for them.

No, the bible is actually rather short on a lot of 'Christian' advice.

The point is being missed here. The child concerned wants to be treated as a boy some days and a girl on others. This is confusing for other young children.does he/ she want to use the girls toilets on dress days and vice versa?
All the children dressing unisex would not solve this if the child want to be treated as Victor/Victoria on relevant days.

I had not heard this detail in yesterday's TV exposure. Yes, very confusing! Also perturbed to think that other children would 'get into trouble' if they addressed him/her incorrectly according to the dress code. That does seem hard, especially as the children are so young.

My 4 year old Grandson started schoool a few days ago, and I really do not care about the gender issue.
This affects so few children and in fact I personally have not seen/heard of any, but if you listen to the press you would think it is common place.
It is so uncommon that my Granson would laugh at a boy in a dress. He is not a spiteful boy, just a boy would not understand the issues. He is going to school with the children he went to nursery with and this situation has not occurred.

Is that what's actually happening?
If so, is it what the child actually wants? Or what adults have decided s/he must want?

The Japanese language has no words for he or she. Japanese people think it is very odd that genitals and sexuality are such a focus when speaking English.

Just reading about these parents and I think they are actually just looking for a fight. Apparently they removed their 8 year old from the school when the boy in question first wore a dress. They have now removed the child who is 6 and in the same form. There is more going on here. Why didn't they take the 6 year old out first, he was in the same class?
If the boy is happy wearing a dress and manages to mix and learn I think it is up to him and his parents after all girls can choose to wear trousers and no one thinks twice about it.

Is it school uniform? If it is I suppose he can wear it however, I find it repugnant that children so very young are being versed in all this trans stuff. Yes they may know early on, who they really are and we do have the 'skills' to transform them, often into miserable humans. My son's friend died recently having made the change from male to female and then killed herself.

If only a bit of dressing up were the answer.

Attitudes are diferent in other places, I think it was a Canadian specialist who recently fell foul of the PC aspects of all this.

I wanted to be a boy for years when I was a kid, reached puberty, discovered boys and have never lookd back.

Just because we can provide some options, doesn't mean we must or that they will be satisfactory in solving all the issues.

If these parents want to be strict about "boys' clothes" and "girls' clothes", what period of history do they want? It isn't that long ago when all young children wore petticoats. Now most children wear trousers. If men should wear trousers and women should wear skirts or dresses, then why is the mother wearing jeans? It's all hypocrisy.

I heard it on Radio 4 the last 2 mornings.
These things do happen quite often & it is usually just a phase. We have friends whose son decided he wanted to wear girl's clothes & weird things he 'designed' himself- he was about 5 or 6. They let him at weekends but insisted on school uniform. He is now 22 & a real 'blokey bloke' for want of another word & is not gay. Although if he had been it would not have mattered to them of course.
I just think 6 is too young to decide these things- I desperately wanted to be a cat when was 6. Mum very sensibly bought me a mask & made me a tail. A few days later she then offered me KiteKat for dinner instead of the lovely chicken pie she had made & I decided that being a girl was not all bad!

I've no idea if it's true or tabloid speculation ..... but it's very unreasonable, to put it mildly, for the other children in the class to get into trouble for mis-identifying their classmate, depending on what he's wearing that day.

Wearing a dress or 'girls' clothing does not make you female.

My GSs and GDs all go to school dressed in uniform trousers and sweatshirts. In the hot weather many of the little girls wore gray shorts which are quite trendy at the moment so I do wonder whether these parents are set on making a point.

Pushing identity politics onto six year olds who want to think about Lego and 'Frozen' is a step too far on the part of one side of the political divide in my view.

Rename the problem as a school uniform issue and the solution is clear. The child wears the school uniform as stated in the policy. Then parents can choose schools with the policy they support.

I suspect this is actually going to be another class issue where the middle classes rigorously and sanctimoniously support the rights of poorer people to become victims while sending therir own kids to strict, traditional schools, either single sex or with 'proper' school uniform. Their children will not be playing rugby in dresses!

Well said lilyflower I have to say I thought this myself.

As a child I lived next door to a family of 4 children whose parents were very relaxed (disorganised) as parents. The children dressed themselves from a very early age and they just put on whatever they could find, so if all that was around was a dress then the boys wore that. Needless to say my mother was horrified, not about the boys wearing dresses, but about the 'slovenly ' mother!

What's with this girls' clothes and boys' clothes rules? There are clothes, in many shapes and fabrics. Many men wear 'skirts' in this country, hang around outside a mosque or church and you will see them, with their sons, enjoying the freedom that not having their legs enclosed can bring. The boy in the story was wearing his boy's dress.

We've had some schools declaring that their uniforms will be gender neutral, by insisting all students wear their uniform trousers. They have it wrong. There should be a range of clothes that the students can choose from. By insisting on trousers for all they have as usual thrown girls under the bus. The boys' uniform has become the norm.

There is a lot of confusion and anxiety emerging which could have a positive outcome as informed discussions happen. It's the difference between trying to get rid of gender as a hierarchy - the work that feminists have been doing forever - and accommodating the needs of the tiny minority of people who have a medical desire to gender transition (no-one can 'change sex'). There are many young people now who are refusing to fit into gender norms, the 'correct' feminine and masculine roles, and some are calling themselves transgender.

This new word is very wide-ranging in what it includes - from those who breach the old gender norms but have no desire to transition, through those who have a fetish about wearing opposite-sex clothes (transvestites) to those who use opposite sex hormones, to those who end up having surgery to change their body's appearance to what they desire. Gender as a social construct, something that is not 'real' and will vary from place to place and across time, is fluid and how people perform it should not matter except when it's a way to oppress others. Sex, female and male, is fixed (except rare intersex examples), to date that difference has brought problems for women as a group. Chucking out fixed 'gender' ideas is happening, in many cultures. Places where this is forbidden are not doing great for women. Saudi Arabia, anybody?

I wonder what happens in families, who do not have the time & energy to pay so much attention to the changing wishes of their offspring. This is not to say as parents we shouldn't take our children seriously. But it isn't necessarily a good idea to act upon their wishes immediately, as an example if a child wanted to dress as a super hero everyday to go to school , would that be allowed? Would we feel we're doing them harm if we didn't let them do so? If it eventually becomes clear that this child needs to transition , I'm sure no mental harm will come to this child by wearing trousers in the mean time. I think it is totally over the top for the parents of another child to remove their own child from the school because of this situation .

but would it cause mental distress norose4 my friends son who is currently transitioning says being forced to wear the "wrong" clothes caused him a lot of stress even as young as 4 or 5 .Unless you've lived with it you cant know or understand the level that stress was or how it affected the girl she was and the young man he is becoming.He is a lovely happy well adjusted boy ,doing great at school and all his activities including the Duke of Edinburgh awards ,and thats mainly down to the people who were willing to listen and support when it was needed

Possibly Paddyann, but life is full of situations that cause mental stress, that's what I'm saying really , perhaps just perhaps sometimes we are just a little too quick to react to a little persons wishes .

I dont understand how someone (a child) who possibly feels they are physically the 'wrong sex' would change what they wanted each day. Surely they would want to wear clothes appropriate to the gender they felt they were?
Its bloody ridiculous to expect everyone to chop and change to accommodate.