Residential trip: club following Stonewall advice

Unless now of the children decided to identify as trans and insists on sleeping in the girls’ room(s). Then what?

Sometimes, rooming on the trip will need to be arranged in line with our responsibilities under the Equality Act 2010 towards young people with a Protected Characteristic.

There is no obligation to provide mixed sex sleeping areas if a child has any of the PC. The SC says Sex is the PC which allows or prevents mix sex provision.

They can no longer say Girl A and Boy B can share a room but Girl C and Boy D cant because A or B are just friends with an "extra" PC while C and D are in a sexual relationship.

So my first question to the org would be what provision are they relying on in the EA to justify mixed sex rooms.

the people concerned must be 16 or over.

Where are they going?

Transporting a minor (cross-border) which enables sexual activity can be a criminal offence in some States.

IE Ireland is an over 17 age of consent State so 16 is not a get out of jail age for the adults in charge. Plus in a 3 person+ room (afaik) an adult allowing a third child (under 17) to be in a room where children (other or same sex) having sex are themselves by the room allocation engaged in a child sex abuse act.

So the org need to understand the laws of the countries they are going to.

Any such arrangement will always be carefully considered and our various responsibilities –
to the Act, to safeguard all the young people in our care, and to the principles of confidentiality

Here is where the org needs to clearly state if they will tell the other child and the childs parent that she or he will be sharing a room with a member of the other sex.

[ ] believes that safe spaces are created by careful agreements
around behaviour; it is behaviour, not bodies, which makes situations unsafe.
This guidance has been developed in line with the following key documents:
• The Equality Act 2010

What provision are they relying on. Becuse the SC ruling now makes it clear its single sex for all or mixed sex for all.

• Data Protection Act 2018
• The Human Rights Act 1998
• The Gender Recognition Act 2004

Catch 22 games of "we can not say" dont matter.

The club are dealing with children and cant build in a special class of protection for some and not all children.

If they know a child is one sex they can not say they are providing single sex provision for the other sex and sneek in the child of the other sex.

If they claim they do know what sex the child is but its ok as we have told the other children involved and these children oked the room share the club is breaching privacy by asking and confirming that a mixed sex room is ok.

They should not be asking any of the children about safeguarding as the first rule is that children need to be safeguarded against themselves.

"Questioning" children need single rooms.

• Stonewall: An Introduction to Supporting LGBTQ+ Children and Young People, a
guide for schools, colleges and settings

No legal standing

• Provisions to support gender-questioning children in schools, commonslibrary.parliament.uk, April 2024“

Is this outdated by the EA?

You ask if they considered your childs PC of sex and can they confirm they provide a single sex sleeping spaces for her.
And get them to confirm how they manage her safeguarding situation it is not relevant to any other decisions made for other childlren.

it is bodies, not behaviour, which makes situations unsafe.

Fixed it for them.
Otherwise every situation becomes mixed sex, even the most necessarily intimate and vulnerable situations like being asleep in a private space shared with another person. And if women want to avoid these risky situations all they can do is stay home and hope for the best there.

This Stonelaw attitude means that women are being dragged back into total reliance on men’s good graces not to attack or assault them. No safeguards allowed because that might offend men. Women and girls are not being allowed to be in the public space in the same way men and boys are.

Misogynists really get off on enforcing that inescapable relative physical female vulnerability compared to men. It makes the misogynists feel powerful and it does genuinely give them power, at women’s expense. This particular issue is a perfect example of why all this is a straight up men’s sexual rights and sexual access to women (and often children) campaign. Please spell it out to them incredibly bluntly. Hold up a mirror for them if they won’t do it themselves.

OP, please follow it up. Please don’t not follow it up because there might not seem to be a risk for your child.

If you can write to them and highlight that they are acting now in violation of the EA, I recommend that you do.

'...towards young people with a protected characteristic...'

ALL young people have a PC and it's called sex. FFS.

My eyebrows were up in my hairline before I even got to the end of the first paragraph, never mind the second.

Quote the SC Judgment at them.

The problem with their “behaviour, not bodies” policy is that it’s a fairly safe bet that they’d fall over backwards to dismiss complaints of poor behaviour that were about a trans identifying club member.

I suspect they’d be categorised as arising from ‘transphobia,’ regardless of the truth, and the roommate forced to continue to share.

Are there any trans people in the club? If not I really shouldn’t worry about it!

Dear club,

The Equality Act has recently been clarified by the SC. In view of this having same sex accommodation is lawful, having accommodation that is not same sex is illegal.

Please amend your policy so that it reflects the current law.

Sorry, OP, that rant isn’t helpful to you. I think you need to message them along the lines of -

I hope this is just a matter of you not having caught up with the recent discourse around the equality act and the protections it provides, especially to women and girls.

The recent Supreme Court ruling highlighted the fact Stonewall has been pedaling dangerous and unlawful advice for years (something even they are half admitting with their new warning about the nature of their advice). It is not acceptable to mix sexes for sleeping accommodation for children. Whatever your logistical difficulties you do not have permission to put my child at risk by placing her in sleeping accommodation with a male, however they identify. And you should not be doing this to any child. Please update your policy to something more lawful.

If the “it’s behaviour not bodies” mantra were a sensible way of approaching this there would be no need to split girls and boys at all. Nor a need for lockable stalls either.

The fatal flaw with the TRA reasoning on this is that no one is complaining about sharing with someone who’s trans, they are complaining about sharing with the opposite sex - the trans or otherwise status is immaterial and you can only justify them sharing if you can justify all the other boys sharing with the girls too.

• Stonewall: An Introduction to Supporting LGBTQ+ Children and Young People, a guide for schools, colleges and settings

Seriously? they are quoting Stonewall as being a valid source of guidance.

Have they not seen the warning on the Stonewall web site that their advice isn't legal?