Charity rejects disabled child for mother's GC views

Children can assess sex accurately the vast majority of the time.

So can adults, especially women.

If only there were some laws which obliged the UK State to provide for education and medical care to children with complex medical needs and safeguard against abusive parents locking their children up at home.

This abusive mother was looking at having her her 8 year old child attending a camp with other children and other adults.

And for the readers changing places campaign to provide families with access to public toilets
https://www.changing-places.org/
And a little win

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/changing-places-toilets-for-severely-disabled-people-to-be-compulsory-in-new-public-buildings

It’s not being polite. It’s encouraging young children to accept the lie that we can be born in the wrong body or that humans can change sex. It fucks with the brain to see a male and feel obliged to say she/her. Why cannot the trans identifying child be told that they can view themselves however they want but that they must not expect other people to see them as they would want? It’s not ‘kind’ to encourage the majority to lie to enable a child to not have to face reality.

Absolutely.

There has been an enormously damaging culture of silencing that has allowed this ideology to take hold.

Safeguarding is everyone's responsibility. Staying silent (though understandable given the backlash) is being complicit at this stage.

Criticising someone for speaking up on a safeguarding concern? Why has this become acceptable?

No one is "assigning" a 'gender' (I presume you mean sex) to a child. You are using religious and ideological terms.

Sex is assigned the moment the sperm enters the ova. You're either a male or female. That's it. And pronouns are sex-based.

She is insisting on her child's right to say 2+2=4 and not 7. That her child not be gaslit to deny reality, to deny their eyes. It's something any responsible mother who safeguards her child would do.

It's best that we encourage an open environment where we discuss how people vary despite being the same sex.

Completely agree. Which is why organisations need to stop lying to children about sex.

I find it disturbing how many people are quick to label this mother "a nightmare" or "a problem" based on the heresay of someone else and on her having - gasp! - the gall to voice her own views. 'She should have just kept that answer blank"...why should she have to hide her views? I doubt very much the conversation went as the clinician reported.

Agree 👆

There is no need for that question to even be on the form! It signifies ideology, and is confrontational. It has no place even being on a form that deals with innocent vulnerable children.

Why shouldn't she 'vent' her views? Why should she say nothing and be silent? You can be damn sure the 'trans child' 's parents would not be silent! A woman stating her view is now 'confrontational'!? Sounds misogynistic to me. This is how batshit ridiculous this pernicious ideology is.

The use of the affirmation only approach for young children is at best very controversial.

See Cass report.

On the contrary, having had what I suppose could be called 'mental health issues related to gender', or 'gender dysphoria' as a child, if that is an acknowledged thing, I can tell you that the least useful thing would have been to 'pander to my delusions' .

It is cruel to tell a child that if they keep saying they are the opposite sex, if they keep insisting that other people accept them as the opposite sex, they will actually be able to change sex - holding out the possibility future of non-medically-necessary chemical and surgical interventions at worst, or living their lives in a questionable identity at best.

The term 'transgender child' is inappropriate - it is sticking a highly contested, adult label on a child who deserves to be treated as an individual little human being who is either a boy or a girl, and who will inevitably grow up to be either a man or a woman.

'Being a man' or 'being a woman' does not have to be limited to the gender stereotypes that the trans movement has reinforced - a gender-questioning child can grow up to be a gender-non-conforming man or woman. Labelling them 'transgender' at a young age is forcing gender stereotypes onto them - if you're not a girly girl, you must be a transboy etc.

And yes, it does imply that there is something wrong with their bodies, so although the trans movement has 'retired' the 'born in the wrong body' thing, probably because it was so obviously at odds with the body positivity movement, the implication is clear: a little boy who believes he is a girl, or a little girl who believes she is a boy, have an obvious disconnect with the inescapable reality their physical bodies.

What gender-questioning children need is loving, caring, understanding but fact-based support to help them accept that they have been born with just one of the two biological sexes, and it is impossible to change that - now how can we lovingly support you to grow up in the sex you were born with, free from stereotypes, loving yourself as you are, and the body you will always have?

So the reason given for rejecting this child - “Our decision was influenced by the fact that we had accepted a family with a transgender child for that camp" -
is based on the damaging idea that a child can be 'transgender' - no, a child can be gender-questioning - 'transgender' is an adult label that damages children's freedom to grow up beyond gender stereotypes.

If one child's fantasy (or is it their parents' ie transhausen by proxy?) impacts the lived reality, experience and safeguards of all other children, then yes. Perhaps the parents of the supposed 'trans child' should have prepared their child that not everyone will go along with their fantasy and they need accept that and accept they cannot force other children to see a different reality. If the child wasn't spoiled and mollycoddled and taught they can order people to lie, then it wouldn't be a problem.

Then that would be the complete opposite of what is being discussed here, wouldn't it? That would be a case where the children were wrong about the sex of the other child and therefore should be corrected. The situation the mother fears at the camp is that her son may be 'corrected' about the sex of another child when he was not wrong.

The beliefs were clearly documented by the staff member.

So either
a) the staff member made a decision which was not per policy or
b) the policy was followed.

As the organisation is not offering an apology or discussing retraining of staff (b) would be held to be true.

Its a christian camp insisting that the child and mother believe that "Christ has Risen" in order to attend.

They believe in gender and dont place importance on sex. Which is a problem when safeguarding and safeguarding risk assessments require the designer to understand the importance of being able to recognise sex and to be able to be truthful.

Well I think that's a leap. A Muslim person may be expected share space with a Jewish person and accept that they are of a different religion. They're not expected to share each other's beliefs, though.

And as I was saying, I'd expect this to be almost a non-issue if this was at a group holiday for something that had nothing to do with religion and of more significance if religion was the purpose of the getaway.

Were the disabled children going away for some sort of activity related to gender identity? Or sort of like a summer camp thing where they do outdoorsy stuff?

It seems that it is:

“I attempted to explain that as a charity, we value diversity and inclusion, and our primary focus is to ensure that every child feels safe and respected at camp, regardless of their gender identity."

From the archive link on the opening post

Not regardless of their sex, disability, age etc. BTW

Such a statement does assume acceptance of gender ideology, and an expectation that others share that belief.

The problem with saying this to a child is that so far, their only agency of socialisation has been the family and we have no idea what the family has been teaching the child about gender. This goes for everyone by the way. You're as likely to see people with extremely rigid views of gender expression at either end of the spectrum when it comes to this issue. You see the parents of "trans children" insisting their child is really a girl because they like dolls, and you see people at the other end who insist their boys can only play with cars and "masculine" stuff.

What this child "sees" will be through the lens of his parents. It's best that we encourage an open environment where we discuss how people vary despite being the same sex.

Are you me? I experienced sexism for the first time at playgroup when Father Christmas came and all the girls got Barbies and all the boys got Transformers. Not a single boy would swap with my and I was really upset that Father Christmas gave me something girly.

Any organisation that is asking the question of pronouns has bought into the idea that in some situations it is ok to lie about a child's sex.

It is not ok.

Reading posts from trans young people and the mistrust it causes when adults 'affirm' what they know deep down to be untrue has only solidified for me that this has to stop. It is not a 'kindness'. It is actively harming children.

Well it is now, isn't it? When attendees are required to conform to gender ideology, in defiance of reality and of the law, in order to attend, then the camp has chosen to focus on gender and identity to the detriment of it's actual stated purpose.

The charity caused this problem, not the mother.

Was the pronoun question compulsory?

Well no, because you could leave it blank after stating the sex/gender (depending on the form phrasing). So for my son, I'd say he is male or a boy or whatever, and then leave the pronouns question blank. People are most likely to assume he uses the pronouns most commonly associated with a male identity and I haven't played into the idea that they would be anything different.

I don't know about focussed.

But a declared belief in gender ideology certainly seems compulsory in order to attend.