Trans Changing Room issue at mid Wales school

Please use some sanity in the UK. I hate what has happened in the USA. Don't let it take hold. They are the anomally not females - we need to protect ourselves and our children.

There's a very good article in today's Times by Janice Turner detailing how those with predatory values (girls have no right to say no to males requiring them to undress in front of them, adults in schools should keep secrets from parents etc) appear to still be in charge:

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/f00593d6-a97a-11ed-9c9e-78cbfe4237a1?shareToken=ef783ba62767f2a132df5ed5b1d21092

This is outrageous. Parents should stand to it & boycott this sort of mindless policy.

You can turn this into a general thread about nudity if you want. We've had loads of changing room threads over the years.

I live in Wales, I'm actively challenging gender ideology and its effects in schools in Wales and I'd prefer to stay focused on that, because I think protecting girls is the important thing.

Actually it is not for the one inexorably leads to the other. How will women in the gym's changing room react to male bodied people in the open area where they are e.g. changing themselves or helping children to change?

My local gym has a single cubicle for changing privately and a large open area with benches and racks where women strip off without apparent concern. I use the cubicle when I can. I'm older and fatter than most of the other users.

The same at the two local swimming pools. Some family changing rooms, where parents can dry and change children, and a couple of disabled changing rooms, then a women's changing area with a couple of private cubicles but the majority of women changing and drying at the central benches. You would have a private option, if you were prepared to queue for it, in both my gym and swimming pools.

But this is a derail because we are talking on this thread about a specific circumstance of girls (children) being required to compromise their privacy and dignity to a male child and being punished for it if they won't acquiesce. That's quite different from a personal preference expressed by adults.

I thought the thread was about girls being made to undress in front of a boy (which strikes me as pornographic) and that therefore cultural and social norms about undressing were distinctly pertinent. My DH says that young people now strip off in public e.g. on the beach without any difficulty, but I find this transgressive myself - peer group pressure to be cool and not mind strangers seeing you naked. I have NEVER stripped off to shower in a swimming bath women's changing room and I have NEVER seen another woman do so (young or old) so I think doing this is not a social norm in the UK and therefore saying that girls must undress in front of a boy is deeply transgressive of their privacy and dignity and violating local social norms.

I look back 50 years (I think) and hating having to have showers after PE, watched by the mistress who kept a register. She would call our name and we would have to answer "Yes" or "Usual reason, wash". Do schools still do that monitoring of girl's cycles? Bad enough getting naked in front of other girls, but that information getting public wasn't nice. With a male about, it doesn't bear thinking about.

Requiring girls to take their clothes off in front of males for the "benefit" of the males will end up in some major safeguarding disasters.
We must speak out, challenge and organise. Our children need us to protect them.

This

Perfectly worded by @nilsmousehammer

I despair for what young girls and women are expected to endure

This is why I’m sending my youngest to a girls school next September.

There aren't any 'girls schools' in mid-Wales. What are we supposed to do?

This is so depressing.

Am going to bed now but will send to local papers in the morning in case they haven't picked it up (am local).

Extract from Keeping Children Safe in Education:
"Child-on-child abuse is most likely to include, but may not be limited to:

para 35, bullet point 6, .... causing someone to engage in sexual activity without consent, such as forcing someone to strip.....,"

Not sure if this applies to Welsh schools but I suspect a parent / unconsenting girl would have a legitimate complaint if she was compelled by a teacher to undress for swimming in front to boys. It would be a charge under the Sexual Offences At 2003.

@fromorbit
This might be tackled by a section 23 Order, which is a statutory power that the EHRC has to enforce compliance with equality law. This sounds like both direct and indirect discrimination to me. Have a look on their website. The advantage is that they, not you, take on the organisation and you the individual don't have to take them to court. IANAL and I have no direct experience of how these orders work, but I think it's an avenue worth pursuing. And they are a prescribed whistle blowing organisation as well.

This is one of the first subjects which made me prick my ears up, a few years ago. The "advice" then was that any girl, who wasn't happy with it, could change in a single toilet, or a cupboard. What if most of them are brave enough to object? By the time they've finished changing, the lesson will be over.

What's wrong with making the pretend girl change in a single toilet, or a broom cupboard?

I mean, because realistically, they're not actually going to stop him playing netball and make him do rugby, with the other boys.

Is Wales becoming the Canada of the UK?

Yes, and any evidence of translation into Welsh, too. You have to have been involved in a Welsh institution or organisation to understand how important and usually cumbersome the Welsh translation issue is and it always leaves a trail.

I wonder if the Welsh Govt's dog will turn out to have eaten the Equality Impact assessment of this too?

And as established in a previous FoI request, it also ate all the minutes of all the meetings and all the emails that referred to it - the decision to commission it, who carried it out, the progress of it, the evidence gathered, the reporting back on it, how it impacted on decisions..... everything. But they definitely did one, miss. Honest.

This is just crazy. I'm an adult and cos of my period I don't go to the gym for 7days even though my period is only 5 days. Then imagine if in the remaining 3weeks I have to change I front of men trying to wiggle their way into my changing room! I won't bother. How will girls feel about this?

Well, cultural and social norms relating to changing rooms vary and if you feel it's inappropriate for anyone to be expected to change into or out of sports gear in front of anyone else I'm sure you'll find people who'll agree with you. You can start a campaign and offer alternatives and I'll be interested to see it develop because I'm one of those people who has never enjoyed stripping off in public view.

But the OP's situation was about sex and this is the Sex and Gender forum and personally I would prefer it if we could discuss the topic in hand rather than taking a detour into an individual changing rooms debate. That would derail the thread, wouldn't it?

And which LGBT organisations are writing the new national trans guidance for schools on behalf of Welsh Government?

According to the LGBTQ+ Action Plan published this week, the Welsh Government intends to publish national trans guidance for schools by summer 2023. There has been no consultation about this, and it seems unlikely that there will be one before the stated publication date.

www.gov.wales/sites/default/files/pdf-versions/2023/2/2/1675767932/lgbtq-action-plan-wales-contents.pdf

Where exactly in the 'being a woman' handbook does it state that part of being a female is stripping naked in front of other females?

I know plenty of women who don't want to do any such thing, not because they doubt that the other women are not genuinely women, but because they aren't comfortable undressing in front of other people.

How is a 'right' to make girls strip in front of you apparently something anyone is entitled to?

I would also like to know.

And as an L person it makes me furiously angry that when I see 'LGBT org' involved it invariably means the pushing of an open, vigorous anti-female prejudice.

There is no excuse for professionals trained in safeguarding and in positions of responsibility in schools for enabling this sexism, prejudice and harm to female children. None. The male children's needs can always be met without requiring girls to take their clothes off in front of males or depriving female children of their education equality if they will not meekly comply. Wtf is anyone needing to actually say this in this century? How has anyone been so stupid as to enable this?

Seriously considering identifying as a lawyer myself and starting to take these cases because this is abysmal.

And I bet there's a lot of peer pressure on the poor girls not to express their discomfort. This makes me so angry. 🤬

Anyone know which LGBT org ‘helped’ the school write this policy?

Just when you think you've heard it all.

And then the manipulation. When they say 'exempted' they make it sound like a favour to the girls. They've actually been excluded . Don't you need to do something wrong to be excluded? Clearly, it's the boy who should be 'exempted'.

I have a teen DD in secondary school. My ears prick up everytime she mentions OneofSeveralTransChildren'sName and PE in the same sentence.