GDST schools announce trans policy

We can't post petitions (?) and this one isn't easy to find. However, could it be that anyone could say they attend one of these schools and has X opinion on it, and sign it?

Correction: I meant petitions to allow trans girls to attend the schools. We know that GDST says trans boys at the school will be supported to stay at the school.

The girls posting their petitions for the school to allow trans boys are young, emotional and idealistic. These aspects must be trumping all other considerations for them.

To think otherwise would make it tempting to say their parents should just send them to a mixed sex school as they don’t appreciate what they have; and tempting to see their lack of thought as not being a good advertisement for the education they have received at their GDST school.

Normally these schools have very good science departments. Maybe though the relevant facts have not been part of the curriculum. If teachers could be trusted it would be good if they were.

poll not petition

Forgive me if already posted - couldnt see it on here but Watford Observer has a petition on this which is showing 84% in support of this so far out of 9858 votes

www.watfordobserver.co.uk/news/19841276.girls-day-school-trust-will-not-accept-transgender-pupils/

and they are allowing comments which are very good from what I have read so far

Sorry haven't read the whole thread, this possibly already stated, but girls from girls' schools often had to go to the local boys' school if they did what we now call STEM subjects, especially at A level. The teaching, labs etc just were not available in girls' schools so a girl would go for those specific lessons. This was way before any gender bollox, the girls remained pupils of their own school, nobody considered the boys' school had become mixed sex.

DD has been at one of the GDST schools for a while now. I always loved listening to the deputy head and her thoughts, which alluded to this topic and their views without explicitly stating them. I am proud of the GDST for many reasons, this is just another reason to feel proud.

Wow that MP is VERY hard of thinking, isn't she?

She said: "But the Equality Act itself is clear on this.

"There's a provision in it that allows single-sex schools to maintain their single-sex exemption while also admitting pupils of the opposite sex in exceptional circumstances."

If both sexes are in attendance, they're by definition, NOT using the SINGLE SEX EXEMPTION!

There was also this on the detail about single sex schools:

twitter.com/RadFemLawyer/status/1477969181245071363

Paragraph 1 of Schedule 11 provides that section 85(1) (admissions), so far as relating to sex, does not apply in relation to a single–sex school. There is no general exception to the provisions of section 85(2).

Schedule 11, however, expressly moderates the provisions of section 85(2)(a) to (d) in relation to those single-sex schools which admit a comparatively small number of pupils of the opposite sex, whose admission is confined to particular courses or classes.

Paragraph 1(4) provides that, in the case of such a school, section 85(2)(a) to (d), so far as relating to sex, does not prohibit confining pupils of the same sex to particular courses or classes.

The use and non-use of quotation marks here is curious:

The Girls' Day School Trust (GDST), which runs 25 schools in England and Wales, will only be admitting pupils based on their "legal sex" rather than their gender identity.

Legal sex doesn't need them. "Gender identity" does. It's not a legal term, no matter how many times people say it and try to add it to discussions.

BBC news story here
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-nottinghamshire-59969443.amp

I can't make sense of what Nadia Whittome is saying. She says schools have a single sex exemption but could still admit pupils of the opposite sex anyway ( in which case they're not single sex any more are they?)

The comments on the petition are along the lines of trans girls are girls. Which of course is even more ridiculous than trans women are women because there definitely won’t be any Gender Recognition Certificates, surgery or hormone treatment (one would hope). These trans girls are boys. What is the world coming to. And they may be boys who may be struggling with their sexuality. How on earth can anyone think it a good idea to then put them in a girls school. It’s so regressive. If reinforces old fashioned gender stereotypes that boys can only behave and feel one way and also is reinforcing homophobia. If it is a young gay boy why convince him he is actually a girl?

Just noticed I had a message deleted up thread. No idea what I said that was so inflammatory I thought I had just posted generally approving mild posts. 🤷‍♀️

Thanks Blessex
I've been meaning to write but will definitely get one off today as my daughters went to GDST and it was wonderful for them. I don't think they have any idea how lucky they are to have gone through their education with one of the pressures and day to day harassment that most girls routinely have to put up with.

I hope the parents will have the sense to ignore that petition. Sad,y I suspect many of the girls will come down on the BeeeKiiiind side and join in.

Oh good god there is a petition circulating to parents to say this is discriminatory. Why are parents putting their girls into girls school if they want boys present? Send them to a co-ed. We need to write directly to the gdst to support this. I have done so already. It is a homophobic, misogynistic ideology that reinforces regressive gender stereotypes.

Glad you found the legal feminist analysis.

This is the right decision for GDST schools - their USP is that they are offering single sex education for girls. In my area the GDST school has competition from some excellent schools that are mixed (and, in particular, a fantastic boys' school that is gradually moving to mixed) so they would be shooting themselves in the foot if they started to accept boys who identified as girls.

I am finding it so appalling that men are putting their heads above the parapet and hopefully waking up to the full extent of the misogynist nature of this ideology. I hope they are having a ‘be kind’ moment like many of us did - and then have the scales ripped from their eyes. It is truly extraordinary how men are debating what a woman is and what safe spaces we should be allowed without realising how this looks.

Extraordinary when at the end he said he couldn’t understand how she could think that a girl going through puberty was suffering more than a man going through the trauma of realising he was trans gender.

He obviously hasn’t the faintest idea of how outrageous his presumption is that girls just don’t count if a man’s identity is at stake. He also has no idea of the abuse and threat of abuse that follows girls through their lives.

KJ gets better at this all the time. She used to wait politely for her turn (in the manner of a woman, naturally). These days she just gets stuck in.
Go go Kelly Jay

Oh KJ just swatted him away like an annoying mosquito buzzing around.