How much longer is this going to take?!

@MangyInseam i guess that’s a key difference with private sector then, you actually do take ownership and responsibility for your work at whatever your level is at, and there are consequences to your career or for your line manager who may or may not back you (or through you under the bus).

Be very scared if Labour get in as they will go the way of scotland

i am in Scotland. Last week a child in one of my DD’s class stood up to announce she was a “they”. Elder DD has “pan sexual” friends. There are posters in school advising there are “a hundred genders”. The material approved by the Scottish government is utterly horrific and it starts in primary one. It’s hard to see it as anything other than state approved grooming

I tell my children it’s “utter shite”. We discuss it and I bring humour into it. I tell them sick people in the government make it up. We actually know someone who is trans later in life and this has helped as they can see the genuine (rare) case where it took a long time and support was given. This has helped.

Your child is a genius.

Can I ask, what school year do they start pushing this?

And yes, very often the people who implement things are essentially anonymous.

It's nothing to do with it being personal.

But other than at the very top levels, it is very difficult to pin that kind of accountability on individuals. There are always guidelines, and if you follow them, you are covered, and the people who made the guidelines generally aren't culpable for any specific decision.

Pomegranate, that is an excellent summary of gender ideology. Many thanks.

I'm not public sector, but have worked in it in the past.

Apologies if you are public sector and taking criticism of them personally.

In this particular instance, the ‘higher up’ DfE have given clear guidelines against the likes of SW and Mermaids, even if the person raising the purchase order for them don’t stop and question it, I expect at least SOMEONE in the chain would say, ‘hey, this is against government guidelines - do we really want to do this?’….implication is that if you go ahead it will be on you. Or are they just so unaccountable that there are no consequences for them.…hence why they are known as the Blob.

Currently it's seen as more risky to stand up for women's rights than it is to question accepted wisdom.

Public sector is v much anonymous decisions made elsewhere and higher up.

@MangyInseam sorry, not buying it, I have worked in both public and private sectors. even in civil service , there are heads of departments etc. . They are known for being risk averse and covering there backsides, which is sort of normal in most places, but in the private sector there are consequences.

the civil service can read the news about mermaids and stonewall like everyone else, by now, I’d expect them to pipe down on the gender BS, knowing which way the wind is blowing and that something is going to hit the fan. But no, it’s all nameless, no accountability.

My 14 and 15 year old are sick of it all and know my position. We keep quiet but we are all aligned. It’s bullshit, regressive, harmful and a trend. Eye roll eye roll in our family and smiles outside.

Civil servants, in many cases.

But I think there is an element to this kind of beurocracy which isn't all that easy, or even fair in many cases, to ascribe to individuals.

And if we did punish civil servants for some of these kinds of decisions, I suspect we wouldn't get many people wanting to take those jobs.

With gender ideology I think a lot of it comes down to the way we have tended to devolve best practice guidelines to lobby groups, and the amount of trust people had in organizations like SW.

People in the civil service learn to follow best practice guidelines and keep their own private thoughts to themselves. And they are very vulnerable to management trends and fads too.

I think we can't really win.

It's sad but probably true. When have we ever been able to win over men?

I don't teach it to her - she taught it to me - as the right thing a child should say, as the logical and honest thing a child should say. As the only defence against adults pushing, pushing, pushing. Against other children, pushing, pushing, pushing her boundaries.
She says no.

We have to allow children to say no.
"Do you have pronouns? What's your sexuality? What's your gender today? Are you born in the wrong body?"

"No. I am a child."

@ArabellaScott

But somebody signs off on that payment to stonewall.

Somebody authorised that D&I or trans policy.

who are these people? Why are they not named and held to account?

why do the police keep twitting trans and self I’d twits in plain sight?

The Sunday Times had this in another context, posted because it seems relevant:

In the autumn of 1954 a young and rather daring psychologist called Leon Festinger infiltrated a UFO cult in Minnesota. The cult insiders believed that they would be picked up in a spaceship at midnight on December 21 and transported to a new planetary utopia on the edge of the galaxy. They had sold their possessions and told the local newspaper what was about to unfold.

Festinger was not interested in the prophecy per se. Many such groups have risen up from time to time in different parts of America. Rather, he was fascinated in what would happen after the prophecy failed. Would the cult members admit their folly? Would they go back to their lives? Would they become reacquainted with reality?

In fact the 35-year-old Festinger, who had spent his career examining dogmatic thinking in all its forms, had a different expectation. He thought their convictions would become even more entrenched. It would be too psychologically threatening to admit they were wrong, too mortifying to confront the stares of those who had warned them. Sure enough, as the clock ticked past midnight, the cult members rapidly found an alternative explanation. The planetary timetable had shifted: the spaceship would now come two years later. Within a week they were back out on a recruitment drive.

I think this warped thinking about gender will be continuing for some time yet.

what I don’t understand is why, or how this stuff can be pushed in such a faceless way with so little accountability.

Because this is how our structures are set up. In some ways it has to be a bit like that - to administrate a huge and very diverse population isn't easy. And lots and lots of people are careless about the effect their words and actions may have. Many care more about their career than doing the right thing.

Politics and government are almost by definition accountability avoidant. They're set up to perpetuate themselves, retain and gain power. Of course there are plenty within the system who are good and honourable people, but they're working against unwieldy, bureaucratic, and clumsy systems.

I'm sorry; I'm quite cynical at this point.

On one hand I feel we are in a way better position now than we've ever been.
On the other I fear the Scottish Parliament. If the Nats get their way it will have a serious negative impact.

work on the assumption that at some point you'll have to have this conversation. if intelligent well educated Cambridge graduates have no clue how to answer the question "what is a woman" you should work on the assumption that your daughter will find it hard to be confident she is passing the test, as no one is prepared to explain the rules. This will make her uncomfortable and as we all know this discomfort is 'proof' that there is something wrong with her.

I would potentially recommend talking about stereotypes and sexist bullshit earlier than you might otherwise have done to try to offer some protection

Yes I understand OP.

I want to know who the decision makers are in school that is actively going again DfE guidelines and ignoring all the stuff in the news about this.

what I don’t understand is why, or how this stuff can be pushed in such a faceless way with so little accountability.

Interesting.

Because they maintain that trans people do not want to be the opposite sex, there is no opposite sex, nor any sex, and they don't wish to be, but are the opposite sex, or rather they are the gender they say they are. And they would therefore say the people you've identified as trans literally do not exist. People who are male and female exist, that's it.

I'm totally sick of it.
Everything they have done has diminished the safeguarding of children and women.
I hate them
Anyone of them that has colluded in this evil is scum

And every teacher, boss, journo who spreads these lies designed to endanger should get no free pass. Oh I didn't realise will no longer wash.

You endangered children
You endangered women

Don't you dare try to pretend it wasn't you.
We see you.
The courts and brave women will redraw The line that you should have upheld , but it turns out as always that you cared more for power than the vulnerable.

Thing is, to be clear, trans people - in the sense of men who change into women or women who change into men - have never existed.

[Even legal fictions don't properly exist; the clue is in the word 'fiction'.]

What needs to change is the lies (or 'mistakes', a little more charitably) claiming the actuality of this impossibility.

Of course trans people in other senses - people who sincerely want to be the other sex, or people who believe in gendered souls and so on - certainly do exist, and may well stick around for a while yet. We should remain sympathetic to such people, however misguided we may consider them to be.