Not again! - Government is proposing to allow trans-identifying boys into under 18s girls’ school sport - unless it is deemed unsafe

My experience of kids is that, most of the time, they don't give a monkey's about having the occasional trans child in their midst.

I appreciate your concerns but you need to be wary of projecting your own views onto others that don't share them, based on zero evidence.

Girls drop out of playing sport and participating in PE lessons for a variety of reasons.

Having dance classes or yoga might entice them back to the lessons. Having boys in the class will exclude many girls. It's not a matter of safety or fairness, its not wanting to bend over or shake their bits in front of boys.

That's pretty much how I read the policy - if a girl wants to play whatever sport with the boys, and vice versa, and there's no safety issue, and (very much secondarily) no fairness issue, then happy days.

I can get onboard with lots of what's posted here about trans women, or males with DSDs, competing in women's sports. But this is a million miles removed from that.

Some posters seem to just have a kind of knee jerk overreaction to anything that could possibly be relevant to trans people, including (in this case) seeing things that simply aren't there.

I know what the act says. My point is the draft guidance makes safety a mandatory consideration but fairness to girls as optional.

I think they've put the social transition bit in for clarification - to allow people to say no in most circumstances - giving reasons - not in child's best interest, not fair to wider group

If it's not there then there will be activist parents saying 'what about my extra special child' - now there is answer to this

I'm confused, the policy specifically references fairness twice?

@MyAmpleSheep "The Equality Act 2010 contains an exception in relation to single-sex sport. It applies to participation in any sport or game, or activity of a competitive nature, where the physical strength, stamina or physique of the average girl would put her at a disadvantage in competition with the average boy (or vice versa). This means that schools and colleges can separate children according to their biological sex in these circumstances without discriminating unlawfully against them on the basis of their sex."

So this is where it says - if there is unfair advantage to competition (ie fairness) (which there is at secondary school, maybe not at primary) then sex segregation is fine.

It's not just about safety. Fairness is also considered here - and later it states that some schools have sex segregated totally on the grounds of fairness.

I don’t know that they need to put any references to social transition in here. Surely if a girl wants to play football with the boys, or a boy wants to do dance class with the girls, they can just request this and the teachers can assess it on these criteria without needing a big gender and social transition chat?

This should be a straightforward bit of guidance on mixed sex sports, to cover all children, no matter what their ‘gender’. You don’t have to pretend to change sex.

How about fairness to the girls being a criterion? Why does it explicitly not take into account the disadvantage to girls?

"Where there are no safety concerns and a child makes a request relating to
how they participate, schools and colleges will need to consider the request in light of the advice on “considering requests for support with social transition”. This means that the school or college would need to take into account all the relevant factors, including whether supporting social transition is overall in the best interests of the child, as well as considering the impact on other children and the aim of creating safe and fair environments for children to participate in PE"

This says to me that social transition is not instant - has to be in the interest of the child AND impact on others must be considered.

I think this allows teachers/schools/other parents an ability to protest and to say no to social transition, even if parents are pushing for it - or child is. They can say 'no, this is not in your best interests or - it has a negative impact on others in the school'

In terms of the equality act even a socially transitioned child should have no access to single sex provision such as toilets /changing rooms which are provided for safety and dignity of each sex.

Why do girls not need to know about condoms and boys about self defence?

More widely looking at the guidelines, this abandons “fairness” as a criterion of having sex separated sports. Only “safety” is to be taken into account.

Can you say “girls as support animals for troubled boys” any louder?

Sorry, exactly how is it like sharia law?

Is this posted on the wrong thread? MN will move it for you if so.

As I read it, that would be a decision to be made between the school and the child, with the only constraint being if it would reasonably be considered unsafe. That would nearly always mean a boy being excluded from competing with girls. I can't see a problem with this.

The only relevant case law is you can only have some thing single sex if you rely on the EA exemptions and in that case it must be single sex. Any case prior to FWS that might suggest different is now dead.

So would this only apply to extra-curricular sports in schools or would this apply to Physical Education classes in general? When I was at school PE was often split boys and girls, boys would go off and do rugby, girls would do netball etc but also in those split lessons boys would learn about condoms and male puberty, the girls had sessions about periods and self defence. Which group would the trans identified kids go into?

The guidance is not saying any boy can take part in girls sports and vice versa if they meet the criteria. It’s saying if they are supporting “social transition”.

If they said any boy or girl I.e. no social transition then I agree with you.

Looks sensible enough to me too. Of course it's all in the application but I can see no inherent reason why this is problematic, unless you take a hard ideological line.

Also, the Equality Act and case law arising from it really doesn't entail what some posters on this thread think it does. If you're going to make trans people the hill you die on, perhaps a bit more reading round the subject could be in order?

This is bloody typical, isn't it? It's not too difficult to think of scenarios where there's a pragmatic case for mixed sex PE - might be non-competitive non-contact activities like dance or yoga, might be a very small school where you have trouble finding enough kids for single-sex activities.

None of that makes a case for mixing the sexes in competitive or contact sports, much less mixed sex showers or changing rooms.

So, unless we actually push for a total ban on mixed sex PE, we're still going to have officials bolting on "social transition" and using that to give schools an opportunity to make mixed sex the default.

Of course we could just insist that it is not the business of schools to support "social transition".

I disagree that it is absolute.

This is about school PE, it's about participation - not competition.

Competitions will have their own rules about access to categories.

I don't see the issue with some boys wanting to join in with the girls to do dance or a girl who is particularly skilled at football wanting to join the boys team - especially if there is no access to them playing this sport in their own sex group. As mentioned before risk assessments may need to be done for safety and they change with their own sex.

Also things like trampolining, swimming, badminton.

There are more that can be done as mixed sex lessons though - gym, swimming, athletics, climbing etc can be done in a mixed sex environment in schools - though clearly they still need single sex changing rooms and outcome measures.

There are team sports e.g. mixed doubles tennis, athletics with mixed teams e.g.4 x 100, 400 etc where teams of two girls and two boys compete.

Edited to add but very few where they compete one on one. Go carting is another one but as you point out the are niche sports that cost ££.

I agree this is an improvement. However it’s still structural misogyny that women and girls have to “be kind” and not have firm boundaries. If it’s not a total ban then it will be used to slowly destroy women’s rights.

The thinking behind allowing men into women’s prisons was once you achieve that it’s hard to say no to any female SSS.

The bottom line is you either have single sex sports or mixed sports.

What are these sports that girls & boys can compete in equally and safely?

I think equestrian events comply with those requirements, but what sort of school offers that? Roedean & Eton, probably but not the local comp. Then there's mixed doubles in racquet sports, but that's one m & one f on each side of the net.

What do they mean, does anyone know?

For goodness’ sake. It’s getting weird to see this reappearing when the argument is now long-settled, but you forget how long the lag is for normies to catch up. Just as it took the activists a decade-plus to get gender thoroughly embedded in the first place, it’s probably going to take a decade for the drones to unlearn the idea that magic words are all you need.

There are genuinely some PE situations where it is fine for boys and girls to be in classes together - dance is one of them.

Sex segregation for competitive sport for fairness is different.