Children aged just four and five are being offered “they/them” pronouns in Queensland, shocking parents and sparking condemnation from psychiatrists.
Under a policy introduced by the previous Labor government, the Queensland Curriculum & Assessment Authority (QCAA) sends out consent forms as part of a process where kindergarten teachers provide information about kids to their new primary schools on which parents are required to nominate their child’s pronouns.
This year 46 kindergarten kids were recorded as “they/them”, and of next year’s cohort there have already been another 11 listed as using “gender neutral” or “non-binary” pronouns, The Australian reported.
Mother Nerissa Pace said it was “horrendous” that the Queensland government was pushing far-left extremist gender ideology on pre-school kids.
“These are four- and five-year-old kids who have no concept of what ‘they/them’ as a pronoun even means, and the notion that a kid can be neither a boy nor a girl, and that other children and the teachers and the whole school cohort would have to then support that radical delusion, is gobsmacking,” she said.
“It compels teachers and it totally denies their right to acknowledge reality. It would confuse the hell out of these kids.”
Ms Pace wrote to Liberal National Party Education Minister John-Paul Langbroek to complain, but he defended the policy as designed to “foster inclusion and recognise diversity in our community”, and said he was unable to intervene as the QCAA is an independent statutory body.
Three prominent psychiatrists also expressed their concerns about the practice, with Dr Jillian Spencer, who was stood down from the Queensland Children’s Hospital (QCH) for expressing a conscientious objection to “gender-affirming care”, describing it as damaging to children.
“Using preferred pronouns for children this age is harmful to the individual child and also to the other children in the classroom,” she said.
“I understand parents want to be seen as ‘good’ parents … However, it is not kind or caring to the child to play along with them being the opposite sex or non-binary. This is harmful to the child because it sets them on a path towards medicalisation which has serious harms.”
James Cook University academic Andrew Amos agreed that the policy was harmful to children as well as being “damaging to the family structure”, and said it amounted to “indoctrination into a particular political ideology that damages the child at school, but also at home”.
Another senior psychiatrist, Phillip Morris, said said age four was too early for children to be asked about gender, and “premature for the parents to be forced or encouraged to nominate this for their children”.
The backlash against the policy comes days after the Queensland health minister reinstated a ban on prescribing puberty blockers and hormones to minors who claim to be the sex they are not, just six hours after the state’s previous direction was ruled unlawful by a Supreme Court Justice.
Queensland Health director-general David Rosengren in January ordered a pause on the dangerous medications – which can cause sterilisation and irreversible physical effects – after it was revealed that rogue gender clinics were prescribing them to children as young as 12.
Supreme Court Justice Peter Callaghan said proper processes had not been followed in setting aside the directive, but said his decision was made due to legal requirements and not due to health issues, and Health Minister Tim Nicholls promptly issued a new directive.
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