Please Respond to the Brighton Council Trans Inclusion Toolkit before Friday 11th October - your children are affected even if you do not live in Brighton, or even the UK

I’m glad I got my response in before the deadline, such a poorly worded policy in all respects, even if you were all for trans prioritisation some of the guidance would be detrimental to those ‘trans’ children.

I was a bit surprised by some of the wording as well, the exclusion of the word sexism from all suggested organisational responses, but it’s inclusion within the phrasing of the other responses ales it seem like multiple people were writing the same sections and refusing to read each other’s work.

Exactly. It's pure propaganda. It's of no use to teachers who will be looking to use it for guidance.

The 'advice' theirin is just asking for legal challenge.

@AstonScrapingsNameChange thanks, that's what I thought! I couldn't believe they were asking about balancing the needs of those with and those without protected characteristics - because trans rights directly affect girls the most, and girls definitely have a protected characteristic (unlike the rather dubious argument that a child who has blue hair and goes by the pronouns 'they' has the protected characteristic of gender reassignment). They haven't thought at all about how to protect the rights of girls. I laughed out loud at the sheer muddle headedness of it all, and I said as much in my response. This is what happens when you endorse the madness of "You have to see me as I see myself" - it gives a right to one person at the expense of the other person. The guidance is totally about trans prioritisation - it doesn't even consider the rights of anyone else. The sports section was a total farce basically allowing boys to play with girls and leaving it to the individual PE teacher to organise the lesson according to relative size and strength. How on God's earth is that going to work in team sports and contact sports when there's only one boy in a class full of girls?

My favourite bit was the line where they said terms such as Mum or Grandma might not be transphobic.

@Owly11 you're right, we do all have the protected characteristic of sex (although that's not always relevant to the situation at hand).

I didn't see the section you mention (lost the will to live by then) but it sounds as muddled as the rest of the document.

It's supposed to be guidance on trans inclusion, not trans prioritisation.

Some people are female and also identify as trans, therefore the school (and other orgs) need to ensure they aren't being discriminatory on the basis of sex, even if they are at the same time being inclusive re gender reassignment. E.g. ensuring a trans identifying girl has the same sex based protections as all the other girls.

This seems to have completely passed them by.

Mostly I said no to everything and pointed out, more than once, that it's the job of schools to educate the children in reading, writing and arithmetic, to engender a love of learning and cultivate enquiring minds, not subject their pupils to a social engineering experiment. The had a duty to protect the children in their care and not make them lie and certainly not punish them if they refuse to lie.

I noticed right at the end something about the rights of those with protected characteristics vs those without protected characteristics. I believe sex is a protected characteristic under the equality act and we all have a sex - so doesn't that mean there is no person on the planet who does not have a protected characteristic? Or have I got that muddled? The Act is about protecting people from discrimination on the basis of a protected characteristic, it doesn't suggest that only some people have one. If you were to discriminate against men for being men, male sex would be a protected characteristic and therefore fall under the act. I also noticed that the feelings of girls were not taken into account anywhere, also that schools were pretty much left to decide themselves how to approach everything. It was a very permissive document. I also noticed they didn't directly ask about sport so I put a comment about that in later on.

It's like they think any male who would assault a female (including coercion, I don't mean leap out of a bush and attack a stranger) has a warning clearly marked upon their person, so we will know in advance.

Why do they think we have separate spaces by sex.

Wtaf?

And nore generally, it's the tone of the whole thing. Makes the whole thing way more complicated than it needs to be by implying that teachers need to know about Gillick competence and the like. Schools don't need to know anything about that as it refers to medical consent.

One sentence: schools should not get involved with a pupils medical transistion.

Any bullying or teasing could be dealt with under the existing policies for bullying - it doesn't need a super special category of its own.

(As an aside, I'm reminded of our workplace draft menopause policy. They had tried to shoe horn medical MTF transistion into it. I commented that that should be dealt with under the existing sickness procedure, and it was inappropriate and confusing to conflate two very different medical scenarios suffered by two very distinct and different groups. I was working for the NHS at the time. FFS).

A positive: they clarify (in the appendices) that sex and gender identity need to be referred to and data collected separately in school policies.

So there is that much....

But they don't define 'transphobia' despite referring to it on nearly every page.

I commented that it should be clear that this does not refer to legally held views about sex being Immutable.

Also, schools should be working to tackle ALL forms of bullying and abuse. The guidance implies schools need to prioritise gender identity related bullying which is not true and confusing for teachers. Keeping guidance simple would be much more helpful to staff.

It's not clear what is meant by 'children and young people have a right to explore their identities' - is this a moral right, a human right, a legal right ....? This is an assertion but it is not clear exactly what it means. Children do not have an automatic right to 'explore their identity' in school - this statement could lead to schools feeling unable to implement uniform policies, for example, if a child argues that green hair is essential for 'exploring their identity'.

Bumping this.

Just completed. You can skip questions and go back to make edits.

Please consider responding even if you only respond to one section eg safeguarding or single sex spaces (in section 4). You can just skip the rest.

IMO the entire thing is a confused dogs dinner of inconsistencies. If I was a teacher I'd chuck it in the bin, it's no use to anyone in it's present form.

Eg They propose case by case assessment for single sex spaces, including overnight accommodation. Trans identifying pupils could apparently share a room with 'trusted friends' 🙄

Riiiight. And who would make that decision? How would all the parents be involved? How would they ensure the trusted friends weren't (explicitly or implicitly) coerced into giving consent? How would they ensure no inaporopriate behaviour ensued, whether these friends were trusted or not? Trusted by whom? In what basis? What if, eg in a room of 4 girls 2 agreed to share with a trans girl and one didn't want to - who would look after her interests and needs?

Or a trans boy put in a dorm with teenage boys - how would they ensure the trans boys safety?

Absolute nightmare.

From what I read the Cass report is being mostly ignored over social transition. The entire document entirely misses the effect on girls in schools where unisex toilets are in operation. There is no understanding that having floor-to-ceiling lockable cubicles is dangerous. What's to stop boys putting cameras in them? If sanitary bins are included in all cubicles what is to stop boys vandalising them? I noticed (and pointed out in the comments sections) that only the parents of transchildren are consulted on the sleeping arrangements on residential trips - why not the parents of non-transchildren? Appalling.

This has been going on for many years now in Brighton. You’d think with the CASS report there would be some changes!

Well, I responded. I think I'd have been better off working on my painting-in-progress, though. Doubt Brighton and Hove et al will bother listening. But still...done.

Done - thanks for sharing

I did it. What a fudge.

done - very blunt and torn it to pieces - it really is terrible / biased / factually incorrect / contradictory / potentially a huge safeguarding issue...

Done