Finally: Gender questioning children: draft schools and colleges guidance

Gender identity is your own knowledge or understanding of self as a sexed subject (male, female, or otherwise).

I know this is a while back @Tandora but you've been asked a couple of times. Could you explain what you believe one should be basing their gender identity on, in that case? What is the criteria one could use in order to identify it?

Bearing in mind, that this is about teachers' guidance, and therefore should be something that children can understand.

And, just as a heads up, I've never seen a single explanation that doesn't rely completely on rank sexism.

Or the old chestnut, that it's individual to everyone, and you can't explain it.

Which isn't what one would normally consider a useful concept on which to base laws, policy, protocols and guidance.

@Floisme I really don’t know. Helpful posters on here sent me to links to the Safe Schools Alliance in the past which I forwarded onto the pastoral team. I was told that students are encouraged to speak to parents but if they feel they would come to harm, then they won’t be forced - that I agree with, but then I don’t think we should then accommodate the transition. Tbh, many parents are aware of the change and ask that birth names are still on the register and reports but allow chosen name /pronoun. We do have three students whose parents do not know, I teach one and I find parents evening really uncomfortable.

I don't understand the secrecy thing at all. Schools dont exist in a bubble. Parents know each other, they have parent whatsapp groups their children's friends come to their house. Do teachers really think that it is even possible to hide a change of name and pronouns from parents. And if they try to and so called "abusive" parents find out from someone else isnt that likely to make things more difficult for a child. This is where it is so different from being gay. If a child says they are gay there is likely no change. The whole point of a trans identity is to be perceived differently. The only way of keeping that a secret is if all their friends, parents, support staff (who rarely get a mention) at the school etc all collude in that. I dont think that is a reasonable or sensible ask. I'd like to see the guidance explicitly state that children, support staff, parents etc will not be expected to lie to protect a declared "identity".

I haven't read the full thread so apologies if this has already been said. I'm a child protection social worker. What strikes me with the guidance is the issue of keeping secrets from parents and that this may continue if there is a safeguarding risk. In law relating to children the circumstances in which anything can be withheld from a parent are extremely limited. The presumption is they will be told everything.
Even if a child says a parent has hit or otherwise abused them, the parent is told and we then plan how to keep that child safe. You'd be on very dodgy ground withholding anything from a parent without a very very good reason.

The other thing for me is I'm a public servant and effectively work for the government. I enact the policies and law of the day regardless of my own beliefs and it would be misconduct for me to do otherwise. In a very limited circumstance I can decline to take part in some work due to political or religious beliefs but I couldn't ever try to subvert that work or stop it from happening. I'm baffled by teachers (and of course some of them work for academics so are not public servants) saying they will refuse to obey the law. If I said that on social media I would be disciplined so it's very confusing!!

'We call pupils by their chosen names and pronouns and we have a document that tells us if parents are aware or not so when it comes to reports/parents evenings/letters we are using their child’s name whilst they are unaware at school, I call them something else. It’s always made me uncomfortable. If my children were questioning their identity, I would want to know.

I can't quote the whole of your post for some reason MrsMurphy but that detail jumped out at me.

It's a while since I've had much to do with schools but I remember safeguarding protocols and how it was drummed into you that you must never promise a child to keep something a secret.

I've also always had a lot of time for teachers and found them on the whole to be professional, straightforward, questioning and also very often parents themselves. I cannot understand how so many can have been corralled into acting like this. How do you think it's happened?

I’m a teacher and have commented about these issues before on here.

I welcome the guidance and it will be interesting to see what my school says. Currently, I teach transitioning pupils and gender fluid pupils. We call pupils by their chosen names and pronouns and we have a document that tells us if parents are aware or not so when it comes to reports/parents evenings/letters we are using their child’s name whilst they are unaware at school, I call them something else. It’s always made me uncomfortable. If my children were questioning their identity, I would want to know.

(On a selfish note I’ll also be relieved to not feel I’ll be spoken to about misgendering, which has happened before).

There was an article in the Guardian that heavily suggests the guidance needs to be backed by statute as the paper is promoting legal challenge under the equalities acr. Apparently lawyers close to the newspaper have already given interviews about how the guidance could be challenged and there is the veiled threat that teachers may be acting unlawfully by following the guidance. I think the government should pro actively say how teachers or schools need not worry about the legal ramifications of following the guidance and maybe write to governing bodies to allay their fears.

I held back from commenting, but really wanted to say this too. I’m from a mixed race, largely muslim family, although I do have a Jewish uncle and Hindu aunt in the mix. None of my aunts would feel comfortable in a mixed sex environment - nor would my 83 year old British MiL, any of my cousins or my children - of either sex. My 6ft 2, 15yo son would die of embarrassment changing with the girls in his year. That certain posters in this forum have no understanding of the sensibilities of self-conscious teens, reserved older generations, and those of different cultures and faiths indicates what a narrow-minded and self-obsessed movement GI adherents have created.

Please anyone who strongly objects to the guidelines - because they believe that they are caring people, not because they have a nefarious agenda - read this post and explain to us all why you think the guidelines are so wrong....

I held back from commenting, but really wanted to say this too. I’m from a mixed race, largely muslim family, although I do have a Jewish uncle and Hindu aunt in the mix. None of my aunts would feel comfortable in a mixed sex environment - nor would my 83 year old British MiL, any of my cousins or my children - of either sex. My 6ft 2, 15yo son would die of embarrassment changing with the girls in his year. That certain posters in this forum have no understanding of the sensibilities of self-conscious teens, reserved older generations, and those of different cultures and faiths indicates what a narrow-minded and self-obsessed movement GI adherents have created.

There in rests your confusion. Sex is scientific, ‘gender’ is not. Complicated, I know.

A thread has appeared with the David Bell video now.

I should add, that no doubt there will also be a biological underpinning to gender.

That may or may not be true. We’re biological creatures, so biology underpins everything about us in some way. But it’s doesn’t mean that “gender” - if it even exists - in any way trumps, or even exists on the same level as, the reality of material, observable, reproductively necessary sex.

It’s illuminating to see what kind of attitudes and beliefs are held by those who oppose this guidance that schools’ approach to managing the different needs of gender-questioning and non-gender questioning children should be under-pinned by safeguarding considerations.

And here we have it. A poster who dismisses female teenagers’ right to the dignity and privacy of single sex spaces when in a state of undress as “basic prudishness”.

This poster is opposed to the DFE guidance on the grounds that those who object to boys being given access to girls when they are naked or undressing are prudes.

Yes biological facts lend themselves to clear and simple language

Plus language is a weapon in ideology

Taking ownership of words is part of their fight

Funny how trans ideology throws out the concept of plain English

And yet when you read pieces like that by Maya F posted upthread, they inevitably seem to be to models of clarity and precision. Written in plain English that anyone could understand.

‘Moral panic’ is such a duff phrase

And ‘culture wars’

Funny how trans ideology throws out the concept of plain English

Great question! 100 years of it to look forward to. 😂

Ohai Tandy, as there is absolute heaps of studies/scientific research into gender identity that we just can't seem to find, could you link to some research, please. Sorry to be so rubbish 😢Thank you.

Tut.. forgot "moral panic"
Adds it to the list:
prudish, pearl clutching, transphobic, bigot, moral panic....

Good Lord, there’s evidence of it everywhere. What are you - a woman?
Theres been scientific research into gender identity for the best part of the last 100 years, including plenty of research that has nothing to do whatsoever with trans issues. It’s only since about 2015 when people like you heard about being transgender and started having a massive moral panic that people started making the absurd claim that there was no such thing as gender identity.

The next step will be arguing that the sexual assault experienced by girls in schools (and which we know is worse in mixed sex toilets) is something where they need to 'reframe their trauma'.

Yeah, we see this misogynistic word salad for what it is. It's denial of the human rights of female people, fundamentally. Gender ideology quite clearly lays out that females should just be support humans to males.

And also children want single sex toilets, if you bother asking them. A poster on the other thread about the schools guidance said that children have created single sex sides of a mixed sex toilet area themselves.

Adults who impose this ideology on children against all safeguarding rules should not be working with children.

@Tandora

Perhaps you are not aware that they have really, really tried to find a difference in trans brains compared to those of their sex via image scanning, and they really haven't found an obvious biological marker or determinant.

So really what you are arguing for is that a form of stereotyping should be what categorises people? Should we go the whole hog and have a sorting hat?

Not often that we have anyone on a feminist board dismissing the right of women and girls not to be flashed at. And someone unconcerned about the rights of women and girls with religious beliefs, boundaries, awareness of the risk that some men can pose to women in terms of VAWG - and just our right to say no to men demanding we act as support humans for their demands.

I see we've already had accusations of "prudishness". Am expecting pearl clutching, transphobic & bigot shortly.