Teachers told to stop pushing stereotypes onto children, telling them they are trans

Kind of off topic, but Bobbi (2nd in the link) was just disgusted by disgraceful Boots for daring to ask for the birth sex of people having a flu vaccination. 🙄 Disgraceful!

I see Harrop was there immediately scolding boots as apparently sex is not important whatsoever when deciding on health stuff. How the hell is that guy a GP, seriously..

that is such great news Moptop and Michelle

Maybe it's going to get through to the library storytimes as well....

exactly Stella! Teachers were made to go along to these things and any questioning of the training had them labelled as transphobic. Many teachers have come on here and expressed their frustration at being expected to go along with Mermaids 'best practice' of affirmation only

and now they find they've been chucked under the bus with Mermaids basically saying the teachers misunderstood what they were taught and it's not Mermaids fault if the teachers went back into schools and used the information they were given

Id be bloody furious!!

I would be so pissed off if I was a teacher - how DARE Mermaids try to push the blame onto teachers? Teachers were pretty much pressganged into going along with it, and those that tried to speak up were silenced and called transphobic.

Just to mention another story in the press today: the very clear instructions given to the British museum by the govt have an awful lot of resemblance to the DfE guidance discussed here, even down to the language used. Same themes, same basic message of political activists will not be permitted to interfere with, dictate or control balanced policy.

It's looking increasingly like there is a clear, coherent message passing through all the govt departments and it's drawing a line on regulatory capture and activist rule by Twitter. Something's tipped.

The propaganda and misinformation they gave those teachers who (if they believed it) will have passed it onto potentially thousands of pupils (I think it was The Proud Trust or similar who claimed an information cascade of millions but that seemed a stretch).

These are the people that are owed an explanation and an apology for wasting their time with completely unlawful and incorrect information.

[quote Kit19]This is their Board which should be directing the strategic response
mermaidsuk.org.uk/staff-and-trustees/[/quote]
Kind of off topic, but Bobbi (2nd in the link) was just disgusted by disgraceful Boots for daring to ask for the birth sex of people having a flu vaccination. 🙄 Disgraceful!

twitter.com/ripx4nutmeg/status/1310181863756107783

To be fair, Bobbi did respond with 'tell me something I don't know' when someone called them an idiot, and appear to have deleted the tweet 😬

wiffle i think mermaids only really deal with children and their families so I'm guessing they have no real obligation to tell a school leaver at 18 whos technically an adult anything. They might get lucky ajd become employed at one of the top 100 SW employers where pronouns in emails and mixed sex facilities are the norm but yes anywhere else that applies the exemptions in the EA lawfully, its going to be a bit of a shock

www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/julianvigo/2018/12/27/pseudo-scientific-hokum-and-the-experimentation-on-childrens-bodies/amp/

'I spoke to Linda at Mermaids, a support group in London formed in 1995 by parents of transgendered children. She told me that this group supports parents who have children who do not ‘fit in’ with ‘gender roles.’ I ask what she meant exactly by ‘fitting in’ and Linda explains, ‘If you are a little girl who behaves like a boy, you will want to have your hair short, to play with the boys. Even at play group they will be different…they will be picked on and those are the problems.’ I tell Linda that many little girls will have short hair and play with boys—I was one of those little girls. She says, ‘I have known a lot of girls in my time and they don’t like rough and tumble..they don’t like playing with boys. They like to play with dolls, dressing up, playing in the Wendy House, to grow their hair…’ Linda emphasises that it is important that these children ‘fit in,’ a phrase she often repeats in our discussion. Is this what transitioning for some trans adults is about? Is this the ‘support’ that parents are receiving in order to understand ‘gender roles’?'

So the teens leaving school now /recently /soon are not going to be "deprogrammed". They're going to be confused when the younger kids have different attitudes. They're going to go into workplaces thinking whatever nonsense the mermaids education sessions taught them. Isn't there an obligation that having been "educated" with data that is now accepted to be legally incorrect, someone, somehow, apologises to them, says we got it wrong, here's the truth. How can the harm that has been done to these young people's understanding of themselves, of gender/sex and the law, be undone, if these children are now leaving education?

I'm sure you're right rogdmum. I'm sure there will be some teachers who will come out fighting. That's why I hope the warnings about potential legal action for abandoning safeguarding information gets out quickly.

This is their Board which should be directing the strategic response
mermaidsuk.org.uk/staff-and-trustees/

They’re like a bull in a China shop at the moment

Whats the relevant experience of those leading mermaids? They are coming under scrutiny now and have no idea how to handle this crisis or how to explain the incomprehensible content of their training.

This isn't people taking one slide out of context there are recordings and transcripts of the entire session.

I agree persistentwoman I more meant that I’m surprised none of these orgs (who appeared to have some sort of advance warning given their very quickly drafted responses) didn’t have the odd headteacher lined up to endorse the marvellous training they’ve received in the past. They keep tweeting about schools yet haven’t quoted anyone who has received the training.

I’m guessing they will get the odd one over the next week or so, but it’ll be interesting to see if schools start to distance themselves.

I suspect most schools have no idea rogdmum. They're buried in covid managing issues and this will woosh over their heads.
This is well embedded in some schools with lots of teachers passionate advocates and other staff silenced out of safeguarding concerns with cries of bigot. It is going to take some time to unpick. All the trans guidelines, the single sex toilets, the LGBT groups for 11 - 18 year olds, the Stonewall champion programmes, the allies and so on. Schools will have to maintain all the positive aspects of their work on inclusion while losing the damaging bits.
I actually hope that schools won't be the battleground - but also hope that the threats of legal action where schools have breached safeguarding guidelines will focus minds on weeding out the harmful ideology pdq.

Bloody hell they are furious aren’t they? The whole world are shocked by England’s transphobia. This whole week has been designed to drag them down and bully them. Reading that you can almost hear them choking back the tears, I knew it wouldn’t take long before they were playing the victim.

Sorry cross posting this...

It occurs to me that there has been complete silence from the schools that have undergone training by Mermaids, Stonewall etc. I know the guidance is brand new and most schools won’t have had time to absorb it yet (or even be aware of it!), but surely these orgs would have had some schools they could have contacted to endorse them?

They’re like a bull in a China shop at the moment

What I find interesting is that no one at mermaids seems to have the nous to have said ‘ok this is a massive issue that’s exploded right in the middle of the charity, what we should do is issue a bland response & then step away from social media while we work out a strategy to deal with this’

Instead they’re churning out stuff furiously some of which contradicts what they’ve said in the past but and also confuses comments made the day before!

It’s clearly extremely badly run - lacking in strategic thinking & crisis management. When the lottery gave them 500,000 a lot of ppl said at the time they didn’t have the strategic & management capacity & experience to deal with such a large grant. Unbelievably the lottery some how managed to convince themselves they would ok with ‘monitoring’

Oh lol they have decided that slide was about challenging stereotypes

Sadly for them, the content generally of that course was seen/ noted etc etc at the time.

Schools need to start being very careful, no win no fee solicitors are starting to circle and it might not just be the NHS that are targeted

Yes I did wonder if things would extend to the likes if schools, sports organisations, guiding, police etc

It also follows I think that parents of non- trans kids would start seeking legal advice too. I mean effectively their children have been mentally abused/gas lighted placed in danger , had their boundaries erased etc

I cant imagine the length of time it will take to correct all this in children. To re teach them that it's not bigotry to say no etc.