Irish schools being sent ideological gender identity "pledge packs"

endacl

bingley / bongley/ boop

How the LGB community have let themselves be so overrun with other letters has surprised me tbh. The conflating of sexuality and gender identity seems extremely simplistic and there seem to be quite a few LGB people who wouldn't appear to enjoy being categorised with those represented by the TQIA+ in the new acronym...

While there are very, very few educated people left in society who have a problem about what two grown adults get up to in their love lives, the same can't be said in relation to trans issues - even many who are happy to accommodate somebody who's transitioned by referring to them with the correct pronouns etc will never actually see them as a "real" man or woman, and while you can tell them they're wrong to think that way and point to the scientific research showing differences in brain activity etc, they can point to the chromosomal and other biological differences which support the argument that the person is not a member of the biological classification to which they identify.

So, while society may then take the reasonable step of differentiating between sex and gender in order to accommodate those whose gender identities don't match that of their biology, that's opened the door for those who don't identify as either male or female and a whole raft of very subjective takes on gender have emerged. While I've no doubt that there's some merit to the arguments of some of those in this space, there also seems to be an awful lot of attention seeking going on here by those who want to be seen as being somehow more special than the rest of us.

By all means we should encourage children not to bully others on the basis of their sexuality or gender identity (or, indeed, on any other basis should any gingers be reading this :p) but this campaign seems to be going further than that with it's seeking to get schoolchildren to proselytize on their social media on what are extremely complex issues that many, if not most, adults have yet to get their head around. It's not like climate change where the vast majority of the scientific community are in agreement, we're looking at subjects where it often seems that no two "experts" are in agreement as to what should be considered a valid gender or sexual identity and which shouldn't... I mean, even those identifying as pansexual could be accused of being transphobic bisexuals!

I agree and whilst it'll do very little to stop bullying it is definitely a good thing to teach respect and tolerance. That said, my kids know there are only two genders and are well prepared for any nonsense they hear in school.

"I pledge allegiance... "

It's refreshing to see people using their real names on Boards. I'm presuming Hector Savage is your real name. You could change it to jsdkgjsdfkgjk if you wanted and everyone would have to call you jsdkgjsdfkgjk when referring to you.

Has to be answer Surely even to cover the basics otherwise we're dealing with nothing but hypotheticals

That's the stupid **** that gets gun nuts coming to your school

Maybe I'm just a crank, but I would put using "they" for singular in the same category as using "of" instead of "have".

However, I respect anyone's identity choice and object strongly to bullying.

But yet we in Ireland require religion to be taught in all schools.

Are you opposed to religious education being taught to children?

Gender and sex are interchangeable, it doesn’t matter what your ideology says. This is just common sense.

I'm sure you'll explain this in lay mans terms