Trust depends on truth

Expecting us to lie that boys can become girls and that women can become "fathers" damages the social contract.

“He has been lied to by his teachers… And he is now no longer sure who is telling the truth… Should he trust the teachers, who told him she was a boy, even though all the boys could see in the changeroom that she was not a boy?”

So says a parent in a testimonial accompanying a submission to the Education Review Office (ERO) from Resist Gender Education, a group that advocates for scientifically factual and age-appropriate relationships and sexuality education in New Zealand. ERO is currently undertaking a review of the Relationships and Sexuality Education Guide (RSE), a Ministry of Education publication that was launched with much fanfare in 2020.

Tracey Martin, the Associate Minister of Education at the time, praised the new Guide, saying, “What this is about is actually about helping young people understanding [sic] how to have healthy relationships, how to know themselves and accept themselves, as well as those around them without fear.”

Regrettably, those high ideals have not materialised because the RSE Guide is seriously flawed. Rather than teaching children to accept themselves, it promotes as fact the idea that a person’s feeling of being masculine, feminine, or neither, is more important than their physical sexed body. The use of ideological phrases like “assigned sex at birth”, “cisgender” and “gender fluid” demonstrate that the Guide is a highly politicised document that is pushing an agenda with which most teachers and parents (including, perhaps, the Associate Minister) were not familiar in 2020.

However, four years later, the general public is much more aware of and concerned by the falsehoods being taught in RSE under the guise of kindness and inclusion. Prompted by voter pressure, the new government promised the “removal and replacement of the gender, sexuality, and relationship-based education guidelines.” That a year has passed and the only action has been to ask ERO to review the current delivery of RSE is a source of great frustration to those, like the above parent, who have witnessed the multiple harms caused to children by teaching them ideological untruths.

Being coached to deny the evidence of our eyes is not restricted to schoolchildren. The documentary “Trans and Pregnant” that screened on TVNZ on 11 November is another example of mass deception. This documentary was listed as, “A thought-provoking and inspiring documentary about two men who are on a journey to parenthood.” Except the couple at the centre are not two men. One of them was pregnant and, as only women are able to gestate a baby, that means she is a woman, albeit one who identifies as a man. That basic truth could have been told without detracting from the story, which was a look at how the woman’s unusual self-identification might affect her experience of pregnancy and childbirth.

The couple said, “We live in a queer bubble where what we are wanting to do is very cool and we’re really supported by our friends but it’s going to be challenging.”  The documentary presented as entirely reasonable the couple’s expectation that everyone else should suppress their own beliefs and join them in the ‘queer bubble’.   

After giving birth to a baby boy who will learn to call his mother Pāpā, she mused, “I think the number one thing people cannot comprehend is how he came into the world, and I think that’s going to be something that we’ll have to tell over and over and over again.” Judging by the fictions in the documentary, the story they will tell over and over again will not be the truth that they are a heterosexual couple who had a baby in the usual way, but the pretence that they are two trailblazing gay men.

The documentary was a feel-good exercise that made no attempt to address any of the issues that occur when a couple’s personal beliefs intersect with the beliefs of the rest of the community.

It is a relief that the new parents have acknowledged their baby’s male sex and are using correct-sex pronouns for him, but what will happen when he starts going to kindergarten or school? Will they expect all the other children and their parents to keep up the pretence that they are two men? Will they want the school to teach the children, against all science, that the baby grew in his father’s belly? Will anyone who questions those ideas be accused of hatred and negativity, as discussed in the documentary?

Resist Gender Education advocates for children to be taught about reproduction, sexuality, and healthy relationships without introducing the idea that someone’s identity overrides their sex.

The parent’s testimonial mentioned above documents the breach of trust in a NZ primary school caused by a female who identifies as a male being affirmed as the opposite sex by all the teaching staff, while most of the children and parents were kept in the dark.  

It concludes, “My purpose in writing this to you as decision makers for our children in the education system, is that I would like you to carefully consider what trust means to you and how important it is. If your decisions erode the trust between parents, children and their teachers, the system will no longer function, and people will walk away”

“Our system relies on parents sending their children to school, so that they can go to work, and believing that they and their children will be treated with respect. That their children will not be exposed to ideologies and ideas that are not age appropriate and that risk damaging them in the long run, or that risk eroding loving bonds between parents and children.”

RSE is an important part of New Zealand’s education system, giving young people the tools to develop healthy relationships and respect for diversity. But this must be done in a way that respects community values and honours parents' rights to guide their children through sensitive topics.

The current review by ERO, expected to be completed before the end of the year, presents an opportunity for the Ministry of Education to rewrite the RSE Guide and rebuild trust with parents by ensuring that it supports the wellbeing of all New Zealand students and their families.  

Fern Hickson