Moral Maze Radio 4 Now

I am always gobsmacked that someone will say in one breath about the harm caused by gender stereotypes and then say in the next that we must all accept without question that everyone is born with a "gender identity".

Hang on. Relistened to this. This obfuscation is amazing.

Dr Anna Carlile - I'm going to throw that disingenuous label at you again. A not word-for-word transcript:-

AC: So heteronormativity isn't just about whether you're gay or not.
It's actually about understanding there are other roles for little girls and little boys beyond stereotypes. So really it's about challenging stereotypes ideas. I've got a colleague at Goldsmiths who works on girls and sports, and she finds that girls who love football and play football at primary school usually stop when they go to secondary school because of gender pressure, and that's all about heteronormativity as well. So when you're working on this stuff at an age appropriate way, that's the sort of thing you'd be talking about.

AD:I think we'd all agree that breaking down stereotypes for kids is a good thing.

I suppose my problem is that some of the messages that have been sent, like gender is assigned as birth,...which is one of things that has come up in this discussion. Well, that's something the majority of adults in this country do not believe, is it? Why are we teaching to children as fact, that hasn't been settled?

AC: That gender is assigned at birth?

AD: Yes, most people would say that biological sex is recorded at birth, not gender is assinged at birth, this is a very politicised thing to be teaching to children.

AC: So this is about the idea that sex and gender are a social construct isn't it. It's come from the idea that there are as many people with intersex characteristics as there are people with red hair for example. So it's not reasonable to say that all people who are born with particular kinds of genitals are fully going to feel like girls.
But I don't really know what you're referring to as to what's taught in schools.

AD: My point is that the book that was written No Outsiders by Andrew Moffat's, upon which much of this is based on that gender is a social construct, but that idea, there is no consensus on that. That is very hotly contested. My worry is why are we teaching things to children something which hasn't been settled before we have the debate?

AC: Well I mean the programmes I've been involved with aren't the same programmes as Andrew Moffat's programme,

I've done a lot of research with the charity called Educate and Celebrate which is run by CEO Elly Barnes, and the way they work is very much from the Equality Act point of view so they don't just talk about usualising LGBT people across the curriculum they talk about usualising people with all the protected characteriistics in the Equality Act across the curriculum so it's not really explicitly about dismantling heteronormativity it's more actually just about saying to children look all these different kinds of people exist and that's OK.

AD: Do you not worry about this is a form of indoctrination in of itself, all it's doing is taking an old idelogy and substituting it for a new fashionable one.

AC: I think it's useful for children to be raised to be critical thinkers. And if that's what it takes, then yeah.

From Educate and Celebrate's website:
www.educateandcelebrate.org/about/

Throughout the development, Elly formed a close partnership with Goldsmiths University of London and together with Dr Anna Carlile wrote a book of all the research from the Educate & Celebrate Programme released in March 2018

Swerves answers. Throws big words and incorrect facts into the debate.

And re the football playing girls. 'gender pressure'? It's fucking sexism.

Thank the fuck I did raise a child to be a critical thinker.

I will repost and hopefully not be deleted this time.

Has anyone pointed out to Anna that she spouted a load of cobblers about intersex being as common as redheadedness (I helpfully provided some links upthread)?

Because, in her position as an educator she should know this. I'm surprised she hasn't come across it in her extensive research.

More govt. money :
"As external evaluator for the charity Educate & Celebrate, Anna has undertaken extensive research into embedding LGBTQI+ issues across school policy, curriculum, and environment, in line with the Equality Act. This work was funded by the DfE and Government Equalities Office and has featured in a NatCen government report."

You are a real redhead. Do that enough times and it becomes true.

Goes of with a spray can to paint repeat after me, Trans red heads ARE red heads on the side of the BBC.

Indeed you can MrGs

Repeat after me: You are a real redhead. Do that enough times and it becomes true.

Oh zebrasdontwearbras, I’ve recently dyed my hair red! Can I now identify as a red head and gain the power? After all I look like a red head, except for my brows and pubes. But I’m sure it doesn’t matter what is in my knickers if I say I’m a red head.

Would like to add that we redheads are genetically superior.

Can also confirm that we are all witches proving that I am indeed the great great great granddaughter of the witches you could't burn.

So beware, wokesters

Why would anyone be looking for her photo?

As a redhead, I'm very tired of being brought into the trans/intersex debate as a comparator.

Did anyone else google Anne's name and find thier photo?

Oh FFS @MNHQ! Really? You don't think people should be challenged when they spout false statistics on the National Broadcaster?

And Educate and Celebrate's recommended resources include:

Gracefully Grayson
Alone at home, twelve-year-old Grayson Sender glows, immersed in beautiful thoughts and dreams. But at school, Grayson grasps at shadows, determined to fly under the radar. Because Grayson has been holding onto a secret for what seems like forever: “he” is a girl on the inside, stuck in the wrong gender’s body.

Are you a Boy or are you a Girl?’
is unlike any kind of children’s book you’ve seen before. With your help, we can talk gender creatively and with confidence, and assist parents and teachers the world over. What makes this book new is that it leaves it up to the reader to decide the gender of the main character. It’s a book that includes all forms of gender expression, and it allows parents and children to begin to break down the barriers of gender and to talk about what different stereotypes and roles mean to them.

(Tip: They're trying to work out Tiny's gender based on the stereotypical things Tiny chooses to adopt from one day to another . And then has links to Mermaids charity. If this is really about breaking down stereotypes, why would you need a link to Mermaids - surely you'd just be being cool with your child mixing stereotypes up?)

And, oh for ffs, Jamie's Transgender Cinderella film where Jamie wants to cut her hair and wear her wicked stepbrothers' clothes and falls in love with the princess. (God forbid Jamie might actually be a lesbian!)

I have a feeing woke woman was being a little disingenous on the Moral Maze this evening! Definitely working with an organisation that pushes 'gender assigned at birth' theory, even if it's not Moffat's!

The BBC reports that as many as 1.7% of the world have intersex traits. Tim Harford speaks to an expert in the field, endocrinologist Dr Bernard Khoo about why that number is too high.

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000222z

Michael Buerk is not at all happy with Carlile's stated belief that sex and gender are social constructs.

The message is, slowly, getting out there.

Anne Fausto-Sterling s suggestion that the prevalence of intersex might be as high as 1.7% has attracted wide attention in both the scholarly press and the popular media. Many reviewers are not aware that this figure includes conditions which most clinicians do not recognize as intersex, such as Klinefelter syndrome, Turner syndrome, and late-onset adrenal hyperplasia. If the term intersex is to retain any meaning, the term should be restricted to those conditions in which chromosomal sex is inconsistent with phenotypic sex, or in which the phenotype is not classifiable as either male or female. Applying this more precise definition, the true prevalence of intersex is seen to be about 0.018%, almost 100 times lower than Fausto-Sterling s estimate of 1.7%.

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12476264

I wish someone on Twitter would challenge her on the red hair/intersex rubbish.

MRKHTake2 would take her apart but I think she's no longer on Twitter.

Woke woman has “she/her” on her Twitter.

No shit, Anna 🙄

Just checked and the intersex equality site for the is down on the internet. Google says 1.7% intersex and red heads for uk 10% - I was just curious to see if this was true.

I always like to hear both sides of the argument. I think the red head comparison is not quite right if applied to Northern Europe but in the world as a whole yes it's probably right. The moral maze is discussing Birmingham school so it was a poor choice to use in context of the argument.

Just listening now. Will have to listen back to pay attention properly and search up the ‘witnesses’.

Woke woman that should be obvs

Woke gave me the absolute radge!

Here's the person from Goldsmiths: twitter.com/anna_carlile.

It's ironic that the programme is about the intolerance of the religious when Carlile's beliefs on offer to the programme sound to me pretty much like religious ones.

Woke woman also attempted to swerve Andrew's question around teaching primary children that 'gender is assigned' which he describes as 'not a settled issue', by saying that she doesn't use Andrew Moffat's resources, but used 'Educate and Celebrate'. (Oh hello, new resource site!) Educate and Celebrate, I think I heard her say, adheres to the Equality Act?

hmm www.educateandcelebrate.org/product/code-of-conduct/

Somehow we celebrate, at Educate and Celebrate, everything but someone's SEX!

Brief look at that site shows the absolute confusion, both of woke woman and these types of resources in general. Some resources that try to break down gender stereotypes at the same time as other resources linking stereotypical behaviour with 'gender identity'.

Absolute confusion, and nothing to do with sexual orientation.