Stonewall award and teaching at school

OP you could just ask the school how they are handling the obvious tensions between not wanting to promote gender stereotypes (because to do so is widely seen to be sexist and sexism blights lives) but wanting to promote gender stereotypes because that’s the basis of the political position that would describe everyone as having an inherent gender identity and that this identity could be trans or non binary or ‘cis’.

I’ve just seen another mumsnet thread, about Safe Schools Alliance taking legal action on this:
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3768850-Safe-Schools-Alliance-support-Legal-action-against-Oxfordshire-Schools-Trans-Guidance

Omg that young stonewall site is incomprehensible.
Let me see if I've got it straight.

Your gender is some feeling you have that attracts you to attaching the word "boy" or "girl" or neither to yourself. We all have one of these feelings even if we feel that we don't. It has nothing to do with the physical reality of sex, it's something else.
Everything we do - how we dress, stand(?!), what we read etc etc is deemed to be expressing this feeling that we can't tell we're feeling, even if we don't feel we're expressing anything. And everyone expresses their feeling differently. They may express it by matching stereotypes for the gender feeling that they don't know they're feeling, or by matching stereotypes for a different gender feeling that they're not feeling at all, because gender expression is unique and individual, and girls don't have to conform to any particular stereotypes.

So it's a feeling you can't tell you're feeling expressed in a way you can't tell you're expressing, and as such much more important than boring old observable biological sex in determining which 100m race you should participate in.

Have I got it right yet?

Gender expression - I think this means whether you express yourself in a masculine or feminine way

But men and women generally wear the same, jeans and t-shirts/jumpers.

Except the national dress for men is a skirt.

So I guess people who wear skirts are masculine and the rest of us neutral? Right?

What a steaming pile of pish.

I have finally gone up in flames and am now burned to a crisp with rage. Books for boys and books for girls? I used to be a school librarian - thank goodness I have retired. They would have to carry me out kicking and screaming.

The world has truly gone insane...

Well I read the link provided by HandsOffMyRights and I am still not clear what is the difference between gender expression and gender identity or more importantly, why it is being elevated over sex.

Gender expression - I think this means whether you express yourself in a masculine or feminine way (although I am not sure where my jeans and knitted hoodie fit, maybe the bunny slippers I am wearing are an expression of femininity, rather than just borrowed from my DD?)

Gender identity - this is I think how I feel about my gender. But what is my gender? The link says it is distinct from my sex which is based on biology (so they have that right). So my gender identity is how I feel about being assigned to the bunny slippers group and not the car slippers group? So what if I would prefer car slippers and everything which the car slippers group get? Then my gender identity is male?

Okay, so far so good, but why would I want everything to be organised on whether I want car or bunny slippers as opposed to what medical tests I might need based on my biological body? Why would gender expression (car or bunny slippers) be the basis for legal or social organisation rather than sex? Nobody seriously thinks that whether people can get pregnant say, or need abortions, is down to whether they prefer bunny or car slippers, do they?

It is just so confusing. It is not like they are saying biological sex does not exist; they acknowledge it does, but then they are saying what matters is your gender expression and how you identify (bunny or car slippers) and whether that matches what society thinks you should identify as. Just why?

Yet my son's headteacher defends the teaching of gender ideology as fact.

Yours faithfully, a reader of Bunty.

Social engineering at its finest.

Also very interesting about the Birmingham case.

Lang
It’s just absolutely shocking. It’s a betrayal of children and a failure to protect girls who are vulnerable to this not least because of the repressive, conformist gender stereotypes which are being promoted as part of this ideology. How has this happened? Michele Moore is very brave, I can see how concerned she is at this unbelievable situation. I don’t know what to say Lang. It’s absolutely appalling

It's horrendous.

This is Michele Moore at a WPUK meeting, talking about the effects of teaching children bodily dissociation.

Lang
I just can’t believe it. No wonder kids are so confused. ‘Assigned a gender at birth?’ ^Tiny isn’t a boy or a girl?’ It’s just gibberish. But the really awful thing is that if this is being taught at school, the children will assume it has some validity. And this will mess with their ability to distinguish between fantasy and reality. Adults are teaching them BS! How has this happened? And the Conservatives have been in government for nine years. It’s fricking unbelievable

.you've also clearly started threading LGBT themes into other areas of your curriculum....”

FFS. Can they just have a maths lesson or whatever the subject without having an ulterior agenda shoved down their throats.

And following Lang's excellent posts here is Stonewall's primary school guidance

www.stonewall.org.uk/primary-school-champions-programme

As we all know this could be for kids as young as 4, up till 12...

And here is Shelley Charlesworth on No Outsiders:

www.transgendertrend.com/no-outsiders-queering-primary-classroom/

This is insane. Is this being taught in primary schools? Why are Stonewall allowed to dictate the curriculum?

Oh, Bovary. Watching you repeatedly peak is both heartening and makes me want to cry because there is so much to peak over. Here is a lesson plan for one of the most popular books for little ones on these curricula.

equalitiesplans.blogspot.com/2015/10/transgender-equality-are-you-boy-or-are.html

I'd have a look at Safe Schools Alliance as well as Transgender Trend, both are useful resources for challenging this stuff in schools.

I'd also have a look at freedom information requests on the What Do They Know website for schools on you're area to see what questions have been asked before.

The school has probably paid for Stonewall training which isn't cheap and if it was me I'd like to know what it was they had to do to even apply for the award.

There was a list of champion schools the the Stonewall website but they took it down, maybe temporarily.

I think you should ask them how they are emphasising the distinction between sex (biological) and gender roles (historically specific and culturally constructed).

I tell you one book everyone should be reading. 1984. This BS is unbelievable

Read certain books?

I like 19th century Russian literature, 20th century American literature, trashy crime novels (preferably Scottish, American or Italian, can never get into Scandi-noir), popular science and history and anything on cannibalism, George Stewart's Ordeal by Hunger on the Donner Party is a particular favourite of mine.

Is that 'girly' enough for Stonewall or am I kicked out of womanhood?

The message of the book is that it is no one’s business to know whether Tiny is a boy or a girl. This is an activist message told to children who are too young to understand that sex is immutable and that there is nothing wrong with asking “are you a boy or girl?” a question that ought to be no different from asking someone’s name or age

This is insane. Is this being taught in primary schools? Why are Stonewall allowed to dictate the curriculum?

Debbie, the Transgender Trend site has a lot of useful information.

Are your children at primary school? There's a news feature about the Stonewall guidance here:
www.transgendertrend.com/stonewall-lgbt-inclusive-teaching-primary-schools/

Best of luck. I remember when seeing boys wearing pink and girls taking up football was a cause for celebration -- they'd been liberated from restrictive old stereotypes. Never dreamed that in the 21st century they would have adults telling them they were born in the wrong body. We seem to be heading back into the Dark Ages very fast.

I really hope the Conservatives use their majority to address the relentless attack on freedom of speech in academia, address the fact women can’t meet in public without being attacked by misogynistic thugs, that women are being hounded for a belief in biological sex and that the police are investigating people for limericks. This lobby’s influence is undemocratic and it needs to be urgently addressed. This preposterous BS has to stop

Turns out I did need to say it after all...