UK group pushes transgender indoctrination on three-year-olds
British three-year-olds should be taught to accept transgender
playmates and explore their own gender using storybooks featuring androgynous
penguins, MPs heard last week.
But a
parents' group says three is too young for gender issues, and that children are
already being overloaded with ineffective social messaging.
The
statements to the British Parliament's Committee on Women and Equalities
(membership: 10 female MPs and a single male) came from The Gender Identity
Research and Education Society (GIRES), a lobby group for transgender people
and one of many pro-trans rights groups testifying about everything from
transgender people in the prison system to transgender victims of hate crimes
in the courts.
But it was
transgender penguins that easily hooked the British news media as several
national dailies happily ran full-colour illustrations from the hitherto
unheard ofPenguin Land series.
These
books are GIRE's tools for targeting nursery school and day care children. They
make the point as cutely as possible using androgynous penguins with names such
as Tom and Polly that any child can be any gender – so be ready for it.
"The
numbers of very young children transitioning in primary school are increasing
rapidly, so information and reassurance needs to be given at the earliest
stage," according to GIRE's evidence.
It argued
that schools are not doing enough to respond to what it claimed was an
increasing number of "transitioning" pupils. (The claim was advanced
earlier this year by the Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust that the number of
under-11s referred to the National Health Service for gender dysphoria had increased
four-fold, from 19 to 77, in the past six years. In 2014, 47 patients were
under six.)
"The
Department of Education," claimed GIRE, "has not been enthusiastic
about including atypical gender identity development in the curriculum. Schools
usually avoid it until they are faced with the transition of a young person,
yet this should be included at all levels of the syllabus, and be celebrated in
the same way as other protected characteristics."
The books
feature artwork showing androgynous birds over upbeat captions one or two lines
long describing friends and parents accepting young penguins coming out with
their "true" gender. A typical sequence running beneath two pictures:
"The family has listened and decided they were wrong. They did the best they
could but now they know you are Tom."
A
Department of Education spokesperson suggested that the material already being
used was age-appropriate. "Our statutory guidance is clear that young
people," he told reporters, "whatever their developing sexuality,
need to feel that sex and relationships education is relevant to them and
sensitive to their needs."
So few
transitioning students does not make a case for system-wide indoctrination in
transgender issues in day cares, nurseries, and kindergarten, says
ParentsOutloud, a watchdog group. It complained about "overloading"
children with issues that were not relevant for pre-schoolers. "If it does
become an issue when they are older, address it then."
The
group's founder, Margaret Morrissey, believes that teachers should wait for the
students to bring up such issues. She is skeptical because schools have tried
and failed to change behavior before this. "We have given them sex
education and teenage pregnancies have risen year on year. We have told
children about drugs education and we have a serious problem with drugs. We
have told them about drinking and cigarettes and we have more children with
alcohol problems and smoking."
Online
comments on the gender-fluid penguins reflected the same skepticism. Barry
Whittingham, for example, stated: "I sometimes wonder if I smack my head
into a wall hard and often enough, I might end up with the right amount of
brain damage for these people to make sense."
Someone
with the username "vencedor" asked, "If my daughter says 'I'm a
girl,' why should I confuse her sense of identity by saying 'If you want, you
can turn into a boy, I'll love you the same?'" "Isaac" wandered
farther from the path of political correctness with "Education in
perversion and stupidity. You are born one sex for a reason. Get used to it
instead of trying to be a disguised homosexual or lesbian."
