I'm a bit lost and need some guidance please regarding DD

Genspect are really good for discussing this. They have a website and podcasts on YouTube under (Gender) A Wider Lens. Both women work with gender non conforming children and have good and thoughtful discussions about what is going on. Their most recent podcast is with a de-trans young woman who explains about some of the influences that affected her.

My fault.

I normally lurk not post. I know the rules but knowing and remembering how to self censor aren’t the same thing.

It’s hard not to be honest about facts. Which begs the question what kind of dino eggs shells are OPs teachers walking on? Or wearing as blinders?

Oh - a deletion. Children are at the sharp end of this as they don't have the emotional and intellectual resources that one gains through maturity to assess and evaluate the very adult concepts about changing sex that are often sold to them as an alternative to the challenges of puberty.
Hopefully all the suggested groups have been useful blibblibs and that you'll get some support in tackling the school. I'll repeat the link to Dr David Bell's thoughts about the ideology and children:

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p09yk7dh

Get her out into nature and away from screens. Do some embodied activities with her - yoga, meditation, go for a walk/jog/run, play a ball game or sport together. Do things that require her to use her body and show her how amazing it is.

Good advice from GoodieMoomin. I wrote more before about peer pressure, and schools failing in their duty of care etc, but it got deleted. So will just add that there are excellent support groups for parents, eg Transgender Trend and Safe Schools Alliance.

Good luck to you and DD.

Unbelievable eeyore228.
There's a reason schools are meant to be politically neutral and now children are paying the price for that rule having been breached. Stonewall, Mermaids and other groups have been allowed to peddle their 'born in the wrong body' ideology to children, Stonewall have been allowed to pontificate on pastoral care, the curriculum and remove aspects of safeguarding, silencing all protests with accusations of bigotry. At the behest of Stonewall schools now run gaslighting LGBTQ etc mix age groups for pupils with no awareness of age appropriateness / safeguarding.
The only people who can and must challenge this are parents.

There is a frightening amount of pressure in lots of schools in relation to LGBTQ+. My DD started in Year 7 last year. Within a month of starting she told me that you had to trial being gay otherwise you were obviously a homophobic and that ‘everyone’ was a homophobic and transphobic. The language she used was nothing like her own. Her new friend has requested they be referred to using ‘they, them, it’ pronouns. They have a new name but none of the friendship group can call them by this new name in front of adults and must refer to them as she or her because her parents don’t know. The pressure of this has been enormous, DD being respectful got so used to using this new name that she accidentally used it in front of an adult and was accused of outing her friend. DD had subsequently declared she’s lesbian and has a girlfriend. I will support DD wholeheartedly, I will not tell her that she doesn’t know how she feels because let’s face it I’m not her! But I do feel that there is a lot of media and peer pressure out there that simply didn’t exist before. I have no clue how to navigate really, her school have been great and tried to organise some lessons to try and help but there’s definitely a speed to this that I haven’t ever witnessed before.

Also approach school with the view they won’t cooperate and you will be using grievance procedures. Check all details of this, all details of the d of e guidance it’s based on, all details of safeguarding procedures, and the d of e update to pshe. Get everything in writing always. If you discuss in person/phone request it to minuted, follow up with emails to say what’s in accurate in the minutes. Log everything. Get time lines established about what’s being corrected by when, including when they won’t agree-say if they don’t reply within X time to show what they will do to correct X X & X and the time they will do it by you will be using the next step of grievance procedures and so on. Keep a diary on top of this for evidence when you need to escalate it.

Schools don’t get free reign to ignore d of e & laws etc. But in reality they do unless parents use the procedures required. You’d use a disciplinary procedures for any employee who ignored their employment guidelines, grievance procedures, board of governors and ofsted is how we do that with schools.

@blibblibs I've been through this with 2 dds including a school trying to force a name change. Come to bayswater bayswatersupport.org.uk/ its been a great support to me and others in the same situation. Fwiw my eldest desisted after 4 years and my youngest is now showing signs of desistance no thanks to her school

Ofsted left stonewall this year didn’t they? I’d be asking school why they think ofsted made that decision. Link the bbc Nolan investigates podcast also. And all tt/ssa literature.

Ask if all literature from stonewall has been checked for working together compliance.

Check schools grievance procedures and use them. Including governors. And if school won’t show you evidence all the resources they use are working together compliant then ofsted will need to know why. Repeat ad nausem. Schools need to realise this isn’t an ideological disagreement with parents, they can’t agree to disagree with departs of Education guidelines, with safeguarding laws. And if their own procedures fail to correct it ofsted are the checks and balances.

I would take her on a very long holiday rather than homeschool - as that sounds like a punishment. I know thats not allowed these days, but my parents did that for me at that age just for the enrichment. Took me out of school and we travelled for 3 months. We did Europe and America.

I am aware thats expensive but its got to be cheaper than moving house.

My dd's school doesn't have any affiliation with Stonewall as far as I'm aware, but that doesn't mean there aren't loads of "trans" pupils there. It's a girls' school, viewed locally as being a bit old-fashioned, but there are, I believe, 7 trans boys in dd's year, plus around 3 "non-binary" kids. 145 pupils in the year group.

I guess my point is that moving school is no guarantee of avoiding this kind of thing.

From what I understand (going by what my dd tells me), the school will only change the name on the register after a meeting with parents. But once the name is changed, the pronouns change too.

I should also say that I did remove dd from school and she was educated online. That was how I forced her to go to exercises classes - to replace PE and to combat the more sedentary lifestyle of home Ed for teens.

Of course gather information to challenge the school's teaching on this. And challenge them on it. That is the big picture and all of us with growing dds thank you for it.
In your own home, you may have to strike bargains and negotiate only in order to buy time. Every few months means more brain connections made in the adolescent brain, more maturity developing, more realisations, a huge sexual crush that reinforces who you are. So as much as it goes against the grain I might negotiate that I will call you X (which is my compromise) as long as you do nothing that may cause you physical harm such as binding (which is your compromise). And we will see where we are in a year.
Regarding escaping from the internet, something I found useful was having my dd sign up to an exercise class full of mixed age women. My issues were not yours but connected to self image also, and being exposed to these women of all persuasions, sizes, intellects, some extrovert, some not, did dd the world of good. There is such benefit to being party to the post-class camaraderie. Yoga and Pilates are especially good for this.

She has been brainwashed. Breastbinding is a form of misogynistic self harm. She is now walking a path that leads towards medication, surgery, and infertility. Most young girls who announce they are trans are one or more of the following: lesbian; autistic; or victim of sex assault/harassment.

If it was me, I would:

1. Contact Transgender Trend and ask for advice.
2. Take her out of that school instantly.
3. Home educate her for 6 months if possible, as a ‘deradicalisation program’ so she has a chance to explore her feelings and body away from fanatics.
4. Get an autism assessment and work on her body positivity.
5. Manage her back into a school with a different ethos (possibly get a loan and go private?) after a chat with the head to check if the head is another brainwashed fanatic with no understanding of basic safeguarding.

Get her off the Internet and out of the school. It’s brainwashing.

No advice but watching with interest.My adult autistic brother is also going down the trans rabbit hole. He is an adult so no way to stop him. So pissed off with people encouraging him with what is likely to be a phase.

Get her out into nature and away from screens. Do some embodied activities with her - yoga, meditation, go for a walk/jog/run, play a ball game or sport together. Do things that require her to use her body and show her how amazing it is.

One of the young women from the Pique Resilience Project (no longer active but old videos still on youtube) talks about how she desisted after spending time on a horse ranch sans internet access. I appreciate that we're short on horse ranches in the UK but the point is about getting your daughter to live in, and at one with, her body.

The tantrums etc are very much a sign of emotional immaturity. But it seems this issue is very difficult to discuss calmly. Rhetoric around it escalates any difference of opinion into hatred/erasure. You have my sympathies, it must be very wearing.
It's probably wise to gently step back from facilitating this friendship if you can. 12 can be a very intense age for friendships.
Does your DD have interests and hobbies outside of school?