Telegraph: No 10 drafts laws to ban children from changing gender in school

Ah OK. A weird non-story....
Odd.
Anyway, good to have it all being discussed and journalists swarming on it. The more it gets out there, the closer people will look at the current non-sensical wording of the law just to see what all the fuss is about.

Telegraph has removed the story from website.

Betty Kemi said:

”This is a legally incoherent, silly season story. It hasn’t come from anyone in my dept or No10 working on Equalities policy.
I know there’s much interest in this area but pls wait for facts. If it isn’t coming directly from me, its probably not accurate!”

What a mess!

It's certainly an interesting step forward that a change to the EA is being considered.

However, it does seem appropriate that someone should be free of discrimination for "gender reassignment" regardless of whether they are applying for a GRC or not. If you're applying for a GRC you need to have lived in your acquired gender (I presume that means following stereotypes of the opposite sex) for 2 years, but presumably during those 2 years you're allowed to be unsure about whether you want a GRC or not i.e. you're exploring your thoughts.

I would have thought it better to clarify a) that sex means biological sex b) the definition of "legal sex" and how this differs from biological sex and relates to a GRC and c) what is meant by discrimination under the gender reassignment protected characteristic. It should simply mean that nobody should be treated unfavourably in direct relation to their gender reassignment e.g. a male undergoing gender reassignment should be treated no less favourably than any other male.

It should not mean that pronouns and social transition need to be affirmed by others. The existing guidance which states this should be removed as incorrect and unlawful. Nobody should be able to compel someone else to affirm their belief. The case law following Maya Forstater's successful tribunal appeal presumably renders all the existing EHRC guidance on this point unlawful anyway?

Kemi’s tweet won’t load for me. What does it say?

Kemi has shut it down pretty quickly

https://twitter.com/kemibadenoch/status/1682787934703960064?s=61&t=8CxL28ZCFDq66yuIWhY6_Q

However, any changes to the EA would also impact Scottish schools and I AM looking forward to ScotGov’s meltdown over this!

I don’t understand either.

I’d also need to know the framing of a complete ban, but on the surface I don’t support that anymore than I support automatic affirmation.

In theory I don’t object to tweaking the EA, but I think the govt needs to fully understand other potential ramifications of a tweak specifically meant for schools. Not understanding wider implications is what got us into this mess in the first place (well, it was intentional by those driving it but not by many voting for it)

Agreed. You can't control their "gender" anymore than you can their favourite colours, animals, football teams, pop stars.

But you can control how they're addressed in schools, and critically how other children are expected to interact with them.

In my best friends' school, their two 12 and 15 year old sons have been told there are a few M>F trans, the new gendered IDs must be accepted by everyone, the new "girls" must be addressed as such, any dissent or unfriendliness is transphobia, using the "old" name and gender is out, highest sanctions reserved. Other than that, nada, the kids (and their parents picking up the chaos) will have to work it out for themselves.

Well, guess what? The kids were always known as gay, but there was little homophobic abuse. However now these boys are "girls", the anti gay chants are prevalent, indeed there's quite the undercurrent of homophobia, my friends' boys say it's actually quite toxic, very little of this in evidence previously.

How is any of this helping? The kids reverting to type to apply playground justice when their group instincts are interfered with. The pupils at the centre probably even more unhappy. Reality basically denied by authorities.

And the school/teachers deserve sympathy too. They're just given directives by their trust, local authority, DfE. And a slew of activist propaganda by whatever Stonewall equity group has been foisted in them.

We already have legislation that children shouldn't be indoctrinated, and it seems that some teachers just ignore the law.

So I doubt guidance is good enough.

This would be my concern. Make a verbal commitment, drag their heels, find some reason for why that can’t go ahead (legal challenges etc) and then wait for the GE, say that if re elected that’s what they’ll do knowing that they are not going to get re elected….

Meanwhile, Labour, Lib Dem and Green leadership, all parties I’ve voted for previously just seem so incredibly and deliberately obtuse on this issue. Swept along in the self congratulatory fuzzy feeling of being righteously kind. Only not to women or children.

More importantly, if Labour leadership persistently and stubbornly refuses to understand and acknowledge the importance of this issue for women’s rights and children’s safeguarding because a) they never gave the wider implications a moment’s thought in the first place and b) feel they cannot backtrack because doing so will make them look ‘weak’, then what else will they screw up on by refusing to reflect on and accept the necessary evidence as it unfolds more clearly?

Starmer is odd in that he is trying hard to project pragmatism rather than ideology and yet is so firmly ideologically wed to this one issue. I am politically homeless..

You'd have thought that safeguarding guidance, political impartiality legislation and an awareness of how social contagion operates amongst vulnerable children would have been enough for schools, unions, the DfE, Ofsted & the government to see off queer theory groups targeting young children. But as evidence shows, it didn't.
Of course no legislation can stop what's going on inside the hormonal soup of a vulnerable child's head. But something must happen to make educators wake up to the damage they've inflicted on vulnerable children by aiding and abetting adult queer theory groups to dabble in school policy and practice.

That. Make things happen ffs. This mess has happened due to politicians sitting with their thumbs up their bums muttering about 'it's complicated' for a decade, and look what's happened?

And yes, the other politicians wouldn't have been sitting around muttering, they'd have been enthusiastically contributing to the disasters in progress.

Me too @Signalbox.

Whatever. I've heard it so many times before. Deeds, not words.

Doesn't need legislation. Code of Practice/Formal guidance would do the job.
And no kid should be transitioned at school.

This would certainly solve a whole heap of shit.

Yes Keegan has to go. I also think Sunak needs to reshuffle Penny Mordaunt away from her current post as Leader of the House so that she doesn’t have any control of use of parliamentary time. She’s full on TWAW.

Tbh I would sack or demote the pair of them. Sick of listening to their nonsense and patronising drivel dressed up as posh Tory ‘common sense’. They are ideological liabilities and always have been. Ditto Nokes and Miller.

Yes, she has to go. She is a spanner in the works.