Choose your gender: Parents blast barmy council for telling kids as young as four to pick sex ’they identify with’
Just as the Californian government is trying to discriminate against trans-folk, the local government of the city of Brighton and Hove in the UK is causing controversy by going to the opposite ends of the extreme.
The local council has written to the parents of new students about to start school for the first time asking for the preferred gender of the new entrants.
There are obviously anti-trans views put forward in the article. However, the main criticism isn't necessarily against expressing gender identity, it is that you are trying to assign a gender children who have yet to fully develop a gender identity, and probably don't yet have a concept of what gender is.
This isn't the first incident. Apparently they previously sent a survey to one school asking students gender identity with 25 different gender options listed. While I fully recognise gender isn't binary, I wasn't aware that the were so many recognised categories!
I'm interested to see what the reaction of the community here. Both to this article, and the actions of the council.
I actually partially agree with the views in the article. I think it commendable and correct that the school system should be open and supportive of gender identity. However, I do think they may have overstepped the mark here.
Only a small percentage of the population are effected by gender identity issues, so pro-actively asking everybody about this up front rather than dealing with the issue as it arises, is being counter productive. This falls into the category of being overly politically correct. I believe there is a growing resentment of what is seen to be positive discrimination in favour of small minorities.
Unfortunately local government in the UK seems to be the worst offenders of being overly politically correct. The town I live in is currently gridlocked due to numerous sets of roadworks to install and upgrade pedestrian crossings in places where there is very little foot traffic. They also ran a survey asking how to improve the roads for cyclists. This would be fine except we don't have many cyclists (I would estimate a low single figure percentage of total traffic), and they have just had to be bailed out by the national government in order to have enough money to fill the potholes.
I am all in favour of equal opportunities. However, I think the key part is treating everybody equally. If you start to positively discriminate in favour of certain groups of people, then all you do is potentially breed resentment in the rest of the populace towards that group, whether it is justified or not.
Comments
...the Californian government is trying to discriminate
I have lived in California for most of my 67+ years, but I am sadly unaware of exactly how "the Californian government is trying to discriminate against trans-folk." Please enlighten me.
Something I too would like to know......
First though, just what exactly is "the Californian government"?
A Californian is someone who lives in the state of California. But the proper expression for the state government would be "the California state government" or "the state government of California". Using the word Californian is like saying "the New Yorker government" - which is also incorrect. Or perhaps something that our friends on the other side of the pond might understand better, "the Britisher government".
Personally, I am no longer a resident of California, but it is my home state - a fact of which I consider myself lucky. California has one of the most liberal state governments when it comes to equality under the law due to both sexuality and gender expression. One of the major reasons I consider myself lucky to have been born there is that thanks to state law in California, I can have the gender on my birth certificate corrected to show my current true gender, rather than the one assigned to me at birth. Additionally, the state of California does not require actual surgery to do so, but rather I must simply get a statement from my physician stating that I am under treatment for gender dysphoria and also stating that my gender should be corrected to read female. Many states are not nearly as generous or as easy to deal with.
Now if you wish to find a state government which is not as liberal or forward thinking, I would suggest that North Carolina would be a good place to start........
Dallas
D. Eden
Dum Vivimus, Vivamus