Shoolboys wearing skirts – Some thoughts on Gender identification

A piece of doggeral written in response to an Irish Schools decision to allow boys to wear skirts.

 

 

In Limerick they wear them long,

yards and yards of cloth

to the ankle worn,

whereas  in Cork they wear them short ,

in nearly all the schools where girls are taught

In Newbridge they drop to well below the modest knee

while in Rathcoole the girls,

as a general rule

prefer  trousers while at school.

In Dublin there are highs and lows

from well above the knee and almost to the toes.

But, St Bridgids’ school,

Oh! ancient holy Celtic name,

has decided to enhance its fame

by allowing boys to wear the same.

Boys in skirts might look good,

[t all depends

How high the hems when err they bend

Teachers watching pupils play and frolic

May at last perceive

That the whole ideas i a load of bollocks

 

I wrote this piece of doggerel about a year ago, possibly longer.  It was triggered by a spate of strident headlines about an Irish Catholic primary school in County Wicklow  that announced a policy of allowing its boys (it was a mixed school) to wear skirts like the girls, if they so wished.     The principal of the school justified the policy by saying that this current generation of children become more aware of their sexuality and gender identification  much earlier than those of previous generations.

As a response to the headlines it was, I suppose a “reaction” and can therefore reasonably described as reactionary.

My intention was to publish it as a slightly humorous piece of satire on my blog.   But I didn’t publish it, and left it lingering in my drafts box along with other half completed bits and pieces of this and that.

I came across it again the other day and wondered to myself why I had not put it on the blog.     Was it that I was afraid of the reaction of the wokies?   Hardly, for I quite enjoy baiting wokies and rarely shy from the opportunity to do so.   Perhaps I was afraid of being called out as homophobic, which these days can be a career destroying accusation.    I am certainly not homophobic and am of a disposition that such accusations would not particularly bother me.   No, there was something else inhibiting me from sticking it on the blog and enjoying the responses.

I asked myself what would a responsible parent do with a small boy who decided that they really wanted to be a girl?   And in the face of such a wish then what should a responsible  teacher do?

I am quite certain that the wrong thing to do would be to belittle, mock or humiliate the child.    That way lies disaster and a complete alienation of the parent child relationship, with possible dangerous consequences for the emotional and mental stability of the child.   

Neither would you wish to encourage, or praise such a decision, even reward the decision and treat it as a special quality.    It is a terrible dilemma, and your instincts would naturally be to try and dissuade the child from their chosen path.  But what if that was to fail?  What then does the responsible parent do, for above all, we love our children.   We would not abandon them for being gay, so why then would we abandon them for choosing a gender identity at odds with their biological identify.

To be quite certain it is, above all,  a parental responsibility and not that of the school.  

Yet schools must surely have, in these times, some policy to deal with the children of parents who have accepted the wish of their children to go down that road, or who wish  to explore an alternative gender identity?    Their policy must not be that of a campaign on gender identity equality, nor must it reward praise or make special the choice that has been made.   They should not initiate the striping from the language all personal pronouns least the child (or their parents) be offended, nor start rewriting school books to remove references to Mothers and Fathers, boys and girls, males and females.  But I am now convinced that schools should develop an appropriate policy with which to address the issue for they will now inevitably have to face it and deal with it sooner or later.   Whether that is to allow boys to wear skirts is too early to say.   But if it was done without being judgemental, or encouraging more children to follow suit , and without questioning the identity of the majority of the boys and girls in their care, then it might not be so bad as at first thought.

Perhaps I’m not such a reactionary after all!?

So why, you may ask, bother to blog it all.  If its offensive then why not just move it from the drafts folder to the delete bin?    Well, it caused me to reflect a little, perhaps it might do the same for someone else?