Tatsuya Furudo, 30, from Nijiizu, a general incorporated association that supports the LGBT community, referring to the decision by Saitama Prefecture high schools that will soon allow girls to choose slacks instead of skirts for their uniforms.
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I see students who find it difficult to go to school every day because it is painful to dress in a uniform unfit for their gender identity.
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browny1
At the high school I teach part-time, the uniform code has great variety of options and is flexible.
One girl in my advanced class wears pants, shirt and tie and sweater like most boys.
In fact earlier on I thought she was a boy as she also has a short hair style.
She's a lovely kid and smart. I had the chance to meet her mother a couple of weeks ago when she came to take her home early because of illness. Also very nice.
Point is - the school just let's her be what she feels comfortable to be. I get on with other teachers of her well and the topic has never arisen. Maybe it has been discussed at the top, but there's been no heavy handedness passed down.
Result is - a young 16yr old achieves very well academically at school and is happy and popular.
No - omg collapse of society.
Mocheake
Just why is it "painful?" It's painful because TV and other elements are filling otherwise healthy kids with BS about "gender identity." Boys don't wear skirts. Wearing loose fitting pants isn't painful. Girls can wear either skirts or pants. No drag queens, trans or man-haters reading books to any children.
itsonlyrocknroll
It is the toxic politics surrounding gender identity that's poisonous.
How long before "pronoun misuse" becomes a "crime"......
Students face exclusion.
sourpuss
It is not a scientific consensus. Rather it is a consensus between activists, and those who are afraid of them, and those who have not read about the issue.
kohakuebisu
In this specific case, think its actually worse than that. The simple issue here appears to be about letting girls wear trousers. This can be for a whole host of reasons, feeling the cold, not wanting to show their legs, personal preference, .... A girl wanting to wear pants and not a skirt may have a 100% female "gender identity". There is no need to suggest everything must be driven by LGBT issues.
fwiw, our eldest was a troublemaker at kindergarden because she insisted on wearing a skirt and not pants, which were the kindy rule. Eventually they relented and gave her a pass. This is when she was four.
commanteer
Medical institutions have supported bloodletting, eugenics, forced sterilization, lobotomies, electroshock therapy and countless other atrocities in the not-distant past. It would be scientifically unsound and unsupported by evidence to assume that they suddenly have everything right.
This issue is complex, but the very narrow transgender political faction wants to drum up support by claiming larger numbers - and young people are persuaded that their own issues are gender dysmorphia issues. They end up getting "treated", sometimes irrevocably, for the wrong condition.
While not forcing students to wear clothes that make them uncomfortable is fine, the person quoted at top has a political agenda and is hardly qualified in the matter.
itsonlyrocknroll
Saitama Prefecture high schools that will soon allow girls to choose slacks instead of skirts for their uniforms.
This is my point, the rub out loud.
Girls having a option to wear trousers, especially in winter season is simply common sense.
However the headline to this article suggests a more political Interpretation of gender identity.
Affecting/impacting schooling from junior to high school.
School, parenting, local education authority, must all be facing in the same direction free from gender political interference.
There is a clear distinction between the two.
Girls having a choice of slacks/trousers/skirts, and the complex world of gender identity.
Seigi
Boys who want to wear skirt will be soon be allowed in Saitama Prefecture...
Lord Dartmouth
Pull yourself togther.
commanteer
I said nothing of the sort. You are making an invalid assertion based on zero evidence. Ironic, isn't it? Your sentence after that made no sense at all in light of what I wrote, so I'll pass on that one.
I have considerable experience in this area, by the way, over many decades. So I'll take my observations over the politically motivated observations of others who have come later.
John-San
Painfull, come on. Painful is going without breakfast because of having drunk parents. Painful is going home to drunk parents again. Painful is not wearing a uniform.
ushosh123
While I get the idea that people should be able to self identify and if it makes them happy, whose to say it's wrong. But at the same time, how others / society views it can't necessarily be forced. And being different is exactly that, different. Like boys are different from girls just like how a boy identifying as a girl is different from a girl. And society will view it different.
purple_depressed_bacon
Genderizing clothes is a social construct as are many other things. For example, pink used to be considered a masculine color because it was related to red, which was noted to be a passionate, active, and aggressive shade. High heels were actually first worn by men. The Scots wear kilts, even to this day. Men and women in Japan both wear kimonos. It's an absolute double standard that girls can wear slacks and trousers but boys can't wear skirts if they so choose to. Or culottes which kind of look like a skirt and pants meshed together. I'd suggest to either make all uniforms gender neutral or allow the kids to wear what is comfortable for them, physically, mentally, and emotionally.
rcch
School is also a place for the students to discover themselves…; what you wear/how you present yourself (what do you feel when the world looks at you) is part of that discovery.
master
Lets see the citations on that one.
diagonalslip
I hated wearing uniform all the way through school, but it had nothing to do with 'gender identity'..... why not just let people wear what they want. no uniforms,
virusrex
So you think there is no professionals or even organizations of professionals that deal with this issue? because that is precisely the community of experts that contradict the retrograde considerations being repeated as dogma. It is impossible to believe you think that this is something that is not dealt by human health experts around the world, something so new and niche that there is no professional studying the topic and dealing with the patients.
Sven Asai
I don’t understand a word. If they want to learn something they run happily into their schools in whatever clothes available. Schools aren’t meant to become a fashion show, they are built for education purposes and usually filled with people who want to learn something as students and others who want to teach something to those students as school teachers. Anything else, ideology, fashion preferences and special treatment minority policy, that’s all something you can just leave and drop before the school’s entrance.
Redtail Swift
Money over social issues = case closed. Let them wear whatever they want. That's not the issue you have to worry about.
What you need to worry about is the bathroom situation. When gender identity pushes to the bathroom where we have to be partially nude in order to remove the elements, something bad is going to happen. Somebody is getting suspended or expelled.
Pinocchio was a fantasy story. He wasn't a REAL boy. Not saying you can't think you are, believe you are, dress like you feel, and act accordingly. However, when you enter that space, where there's no security, and you can't be protected, that's when there's an element of danger.
In context, I'm not against your gender identity rhetoric. I'm thinking more of how to protect them from unwanted advances and / or violent backlash by those that "rightfully" feel uncomfortable due to their binary education. A binary education that ain't changing any time soon by scientists.
nosuke
In Japan good luck getting rid of old traditions such as all children being forced to wear a uniform to school and that expensive back back called a ランドセル(蘭: ransel) that they force you buy and use for grade school.
RKL
Except when the community of experts do not exist other than in a nameless person's mind.
virusrex
It is not one doctor but the medical and scientific consensus in the world. It is not logical to expect that a nameless person on the internet knows more about the topic than the community of experts on the topic that explicitly contradict your personal opinion.
virusrex
But that is what it means, the scientific consensus is clear, it is obviously logical to think that this come from the available evidence, because otherwise it would be believing that professional health organizations all over the world are just making stuff up contrary to what has been published in the scientific literature. That would be the invalid assertion that you would be making.
Appeals to authority are worthless from an anonymous account, and since you are in contradiction to the scientific consensus on the topic you would not only need credentials to support that appeal, you would need also evidence to contradict the actual professionals health associations that say something very different from what you think.
virusrex
No it is not, it is making obvious there is no example that you can use to disprove the consensus.
So you claim, but are unable to give a reference where the scientific institutions support your opinion, again.
Nothing in your link say that scientific and medical institution position on gender has been reverted. Evaluating specific measures (and specially the timing of those measures) is completely different from saying gender is not a social construct not decided purely by biology as you are trying to misrepresent.
Once again, can you provide any example where scientific and medical institutions say the current consensus on gender is wrong? not specific measures, but the core understanding of the issue.
Trying to generalize from a very narrow form is like saying that disagreeing with Pluto being a planet proves the Sun revolves around the planet Earth.
virusrex
Any evidence to support that claim or is it based only on an appeal to your own authority on the matter? how come the medical institutions that deal with this do not support your explanation?
It should be easy to understand, is not there any kind of clothes you would not be comfortable at all wearing to school if it was your case? that is not believable. Could you just "leave" the different cultural meanings yourself?
virusrex
Can you prove this claim by providing a link where a respected institution related to sexual health says something different?
Because if you can't that means there is a consensus, you are just unable to accept it.
So as long as they do not support your personal belief they have to be wrong, even when they have the evidence to support their conclusions. And you could never be wrong, even when you are supporting an outaded concept that has been demonstrated as wrong with evidence, like eugenics, forced sterilizations, lobotomies, electroshock therapies etc?
You are the one pushing for baseless conclusions to be mantained, using as an argument how baseless conclusions had to be abandoned to improve human health, you are proving your own position as unsustainable and unethical.