Tougher transgender guidance for schools is unlawful, Sunak told

Mishy is just here to distract but Mishy has reminded me of a good point. Mishy refers to “trans children”. Listening to Kemi speak, it sounds as though the guidance will not use the term “trans child” but rather refer to gender distressed children. I think this is significant move and the change of language will help reframe the issue as a safeguarding one rather than a social justice one.

Do you have an age in mind or are you for dc of any age being influenced in this way?

So at what age do you think a child should be allowed to legally change sex, Mishy? Any age at all?

Mishy interesting to hear your views on detransitioners, who have deep regrets that their teenage assertion that they were trans was never properly tested or probed.

As usual you fail to either understand, or acknowledge, that all children have rights. You seem to lack the understanding that discrimination is not 'bad' by itself and can be legitimate. And at all times, a balance between rights and needs should be sought.

But, keep cracking on with the misrepresentations and on getting in a general shaming post where ever you can!

It never fails to amaze me the lack of compassion, and empathy for trans children on this forum.

“but what about the normal children and people” what about their rights to be discriminatory?

really sad 😢

Regardless of whether it covers children or not, the Equality Act still allows for single-sex exceptions, so the guidance could still mandate that boys are not allowed to use the girls' changing rooms, however they identify. That would probably reduce the appeal of social transition to some extent.

Yes, exactly - it's obvious that we don't have all the facts on gender issues in children (and probably won't until well after the Cass review has concluded and the new GID centres have made headway with their research), so anyone who thought this awaited schools guidance would be the definitive guide to handling trans children was living in cloud cuckoo land.

What schools urgently need is interim guidance that protects children and their rights under the existing laws (including to single-sex spaces and to holding gender critical views) now, not a perfect, comprehensive guide to everything that might possibly happen published in five years' time.

If they can't come to a conclusion on how to handle the social transitioning aspect now (or need to delay to change the law, etc), they should still release the rest of the guidance as an interim measure before September while they untangle the rest in the background.

This is because if they release no guidance, the schools have to grapple with further inevitable social transitions and how to balance everyone's rights and needs, whereas at least interim guidance on how to balance everyone's rights and needs would help to protect all the other children and school staff who are forced to provide the social aspect of that child's social transition.

It's not good enough for the government to delay again because "it's too complicated" - of course it's bloody complicated, but it's your job to guide schools on how to deal with it, so tough.

Also adults in a position of authority reinforcing a fundamental and basic lie is not without harm to the dc hearing it

It’s scary how simple it is to normalise this for children

Religion endures for a reason

There are dc who do are free to wear what they like etc, at dd’s school, and they do

Adults have a choice, say yes that’s fine and you’re still a boy or girl

Or TRAs use it to promote their cause

Really concerning

Or more bluntly - I say it's bollocks this is about caring about trans children. It's about an adult agenda.

Anyone who cares about children wants robust safeguarding for all children. Social transition as currently happening in schools is destroying safeguarding.

It's hard not to believe there is a definite agenda to destroy safeguarding for children in schools. This will badly affect 'trans' children as well as all the other children.

Social transition should first be discussed in terms of safeguarding of all children, including 'trans' children, according to the relevant laws and statutory guidance for schools and only then should the Equality Act even come into the argument.

100% agree.

Even on here we're falling into the trap - and IMO it is a trap - of focusing only on one piece of legislation which is NOT the main legislation covering children in schools.

Just to be clear, I am not saying that having a condition which relates to reproductive health or fertility is the same as having a DSD.

“These are the things that really need to be addressed, it's not really about the school. The supposed medical basis of the trans child is the real issue, and the idea that people have that transgenderism is some kind of medical phenomena people are born with like being diabetic.”

Yes, and this is why promoting the use of “non-binary and intersex” in the same breath is a key plank of Stonewall’s campaign strategy, and why it has been so useful to the pursuit of Stonewall’s campaign goals that the civil service staff network “a:gender” which groups DSD/intersex and transgender issues together in a single network was created and that its Network Chair is an individual with a DSD affecting those with a Y chromosome who states that their condition is what makes them want to focus on campaigning for those who identify as transgender. The purpose of that Stonewall campaign is to create the impression that self-describing as the opposite sex or as neither sex is equivalent to being born with a congenital condition. If you’ve read the Vice article thread, that campaign/staff network has led to draft Cabinet Office policy on “trans and intersex” inclusion. Apparently with no questioning by anyone in Cabinet Office as to why self-perceived identity issues (gender reassignment) or belief should be grouped together with a condition related to reproductive health. It makes as much sense as producing a “non-binary and endometriosis” inclusion policy.

I just heard someone from a transgender group attacking the politics saying children don’t need to be dragged into who might be a boy or who might be a girl

Yeh right. Spoken like a true male.

My dd wants to run races and do other sports with other girls (if sex divided) and she shouldn’t have boys in her spaces normalised at a young age.

The privilege of men fgs

The blurb before said they couldn’t change it without changing the law. I’m massively hoping this is the run up pitch to change the law.

I've said this before, but I think language is important and we should be using the language which is in the legislation when talking about these issues.

(3)In relation to the protected characteristic of gender reassignment—

(a)a reference to a person who has a particular protected characteristic is a reference to a transsexual person;

(b)a reference to persons who share a protected characteristic is a reference to transsexual persons

The law is about transsexual people. Not 'trans', not 'transgender', but 'transsexual'. The effect of using the words 'trans' and 'transgender' and then declaring that children can be 'trans' has been (in the words of one TRA) to 'desexualise the trans experience'. Can we go back to using 'transsexual', and then challenge those in favour of applying the term of 'trans' to children to explain exactly what makes a child 'transsexual'.

@RebelliousCow I’m not sure who the pp was referring to but this is where I think there could be divergence

Thanks for spotting that. I should have checked.

the GRA 2005

This worries me so much that the Tories are sitting on this issue to make it an election issue. Vote for us, Labour will trans your children, that kind of thing.

This ought to have been sorted because the adults know it needs to be sorted. Not tomorrow but yesterday. Children are being harmed because this has been allowed to become a manifesto talking point.

What’s the WEF stance on transitioning minors? There’s an awful lot of money to be made…

NRTFT Is this block because there isn’t a clear legal definition of gender reassignment?
It can mean anything, even an unexpressed thought? How is something this ludicrously vague applicable to kids?
What a mess. If the Tories ‘know what a woman is’ they only have a very short time to do something about this.

My suspicion is more along the lines that interested/invested actors have inserted theemsleves into various legal bodies and commissions and are intent on blocking.

And who do you suspect this might be?

Do you mean organisations or lobby groups such as The Pritzker foundation, or the George Soros 'Open Society' foundation, maybe?

I think this too. There’s a divergence and it’s showing