A local incident here in Oxford has caught the attention of the world. Joshua Sutcliffe, a maths teacher at the state secondary school just down the road, has been suspended and faces disciplinary action for 'misgendering' a pupil - a 'student', as they are now called, apparently. Calling schoolchildren 'students' as if they were at University and of majority age confuses the fact that they are still minors. This is not a trivial point, in context. For essentially, the context is one of authority. Here we have a biologically female minor who is offended by being referred to as a girl by a teacher ("Well done, girls!", as the poor chap merely said) and this turns into a parental complaint several weeks later. The minor is then given the authority by the school's action on the complaint to utterly rule over the teacher, a responsible adult, who should by the nature of his position be in authority over the minor. This is a very strange state of affairs. The case has made waves, yet the reality is that it's only a small manifestation of a rampaging problem: the destabilising effect the push for transgender children is already causing, and will increasingly cause, to the social fabric. How about we regain some sense and proportion by using this simple method: minors, school-children, those who are not yet legally adult and who participate in whatever way in primary and secondary level education, do not get to dictate to adults on the subject of their sexual identity. That's it. And here's why: for one thing, it's unfair to the teachers, who have too many social engineering burdens to deal with already. For another, it's just rude. Kids are not entitled to boss grown-ups around, let alone get them disciplined or possibly fired for not blinding themselves to the scientific reality of sex differentiation. Once out of school, at university, in work: knock yourselves out. Until then, where adults and children interact on daily basis, where the rational education of minors is at stake, the adults are in charge. If parents rebel against this they can educate their children at home and stop tripping up the teachers who are trying to do their best for all the pupils in their care.
