Social workers must know how to think critically
Underneath the Telegraph’s sloppy report on the sinister “investigation” of Louise Chivers is a think piece by Chivers herself titled Social workers must be allowed to think critically. It should have its own url but it doesn’t. It should because it makes an important point.
Every week, social workers have to make decisions on whether people have “capacity” in a whole range of choices.
They then have to make “best interest decisions” if the person doesn’t, which requires critical thinking skills.
Social workers who do not think critically and follow the affirmation dogma will set vulnerable adults on false affirmation pathways.
I’ve heard of social workers in children’s services threaten child removal if parents don’t follow gender ideology and of kids sent straight to gender reassignment clinics after one trip to a doctor.
Social workers need to be aware of the social contagion phenomenon, particularly in teenage girls and the inherent homophobia in telling gender non-conforming youth they can achieve the impossible and “be” the other sex.
Read the whole thing; it matters.
This is homophobia, of course, but it is something else, the something that underlies the homophobia – misogyny. “We set up gender expectations, dammit, and you aren’t following them! Who do you think you are! Uppity woman! Bitch!”
We often miss the point that gender non-conforming doesn’t mean gay. Many of us are gender non-conforming in a number of significant ways because gender expecctations are so narrowly restrictive that we can’t breathe if we try to follow them. Dresses? No thank you. Make up? No thank you. Caring field? I’d much rather be in science, thank you very much. Nurture spouse and child? I did nurture my child as best I knew how, but I am not nurturing, and that makes me gender non-conforming.
Now that we’re being told little girls who throw away their barrettes are “pre-literate trans”, we are making assumptions that girls wear barrettes happily. I hated them. They hurt. I was neither trans nor gay; I just knew they dug into my head in a way I didn’t like.
Dresses, head tilt, pouty lips…none of those describe me, and while most the women I know where make up and some wear dresses, they don’t waste time tilting their head and pouting their lips. They are busy. Whether working inside or outside the home, they are busy. And most of us would rather throw on a pair of worn blue jeans and a soft sweatshirt than wear a dress, hose, heels, and all the accoutrements that go with it.
So yeah, it’s homophobia, but I get a little tired of people not acknowledging that the big driver of this, and of homophobia, is misogyny. Hating women is the national pastime these days – and not just our nation. It’s global. It’s ubiquitous. It’s baked into the very fabric of our society, and regulates a lot of decisions and choices we make. We won’t cure homophobia until we get at the root of misogyny and pull the whole thing out. I don’t see that happening any time soon.
I’ve lost count of the number of (otherwise) intelligent people I’ve had to explain exactly that point to, iknklast. Whenever I say homophobia and misogyny are related, people look at me like I just spoke in some crazy moon language. It’s the same now when pointing out the (at minimum) sexism in drag or the (also at minimum) homophobia in transitioning gender-nonconforming children. Especially boys, because the desistance numbers are much higher among trans-identifying boys than girls for some reason. (Hint: it starts with “miso” and ends with “gyny”.)