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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

..to think Stonewall should not be involved with schools?

999 replies

ConcernedMum100 · 04/02/2021 14:02

AIBU to think Stonewall should not be involved with schools...

Historically, Stonewall has done amazing work and led the way for equality. However, over recent years their priority seems to be a different sort of activism, which has caused many of their original supporters to abandon them.

I want to stress that I am very much in favour of primary schools teaching about diversity and different types of families including same sex parents, etc. I believe that's very important. I do however have reservations with Stonewall for various reasons, as follows:

-Its school resources with regards to transgenderism and gender identity, such as An Introduction to Supporting LGBT children, breach the Department of Education’s guidelines in many ways, including the sexist and regressive suggestion that children enjoying clothes or toys typically associated with the opposite sex is a sign they may be transgender. The resources also say that children are given a label at birth (they mean their sex is recorded) and that sometimes this label will have been wrong. They are not referring to the tiny percentage of babies born with a DSD, but children whose gender identity is supposedly different to their sex. Whatever that means. The resources also say that a school should not tell the child’s parents about their gender identity if the child does not want them to. Which means they’re suggesting schools change a child’s name and pronouns without informing the parents. Seeing as they communicate that children with gender dysphoria are often vulnerable and even suicidal, this seems very irresponsible.

-Its stance on child safeguarding. Stonewall have been very clear that they disagree with the High Court’s ruling which concluded that children under the age of 16 are highly unlikely to be able to consent to puberty blockers. They are in favour of medicating children as young as 10 years old, who are experiencing gender dysphoria and say they want to live as the opposite sex. This follows research showing puberty blockers do not have a positive effect on the children’s mental health, but do cause issues with brain development and bone density. Nearly 100% of children who have taken puberty blockers go on to take cross sex hormones which will likely lead to loss of sexual function and infertility. There has been an alarming increase in children identifying as trans over the last few years and the reasons for this is unknown, and there has been no research to understand the apparent strong link between autism and gender dysphoria, nor homosexuality and gender dysphoria.

-Its stance on women’s single sex spaces. Via both Tweeting and their school resources, Stonewall have made clear they believe women and girls do not have the right to single sex spaces at time when they may be vulnerable, because they believe males who identify as women (the prerequisite of which is to declare themselves a woman-no need for any medical treatment or diagnosis) should be treated as females in every aspect of life. This means access to women’s communal changing rooms, prisons, hospital wards, toilets, and rape shelters, to name a few examples.

-Its stance on women’s sports. Stonewall disagreed with World Rugby’s decision to prevent transwomen competing in women’s rugby. This decision was reached by World Rugby because they found that to include TW in the women’s teams would be unfair and unsafe (in increased risk to the women on the team by at least 20-30%) Stonewall appear to believe (and say) that inclusion comes above all else, even the safety of women and girls and their right to fair competition.

I don’t feel comfortable that an organisation with these highly controversial and political viewpoints has access to primary school children, whether it’s via face to face sessions, training school staff, or learning resources.

Of course Stonewall are not the only organisation which has these worrying beliefs. However, they are the biggest and most well funded. They are also listed on the Department of Educations “experts” page, despite breaching its own guidelines, which I think is wrong and also makes it very difficult for parents to complain to schools.

What are your thoughts?

OP posts:
Thread gallery
17
wellbehavedwomen · 06/02/2021 12:05

Gloucestershire Healthy Living and Learning is the site provided to schools in the county for their curriculum teaching. This site is not linked to anywhere I can fine on NHS or LA sites, despite being funded by them, and nor do schools I know of tell parents about it, or link to it themselves.

They cite Stonewall as a partner org.

This resources page is for KS3 and KS4 (11-16 year olds) kids - and it has a leaflet for teachers to give gender questioning kids. We know that 75% of them will be girls, and roughly half autistic - many with complex trauma profiles, according to the Tavistock evidence. Almost all will also be under the age of consent. So we're talking an immensely vulnerable group of children. And this is in the resource teachers are given for these children:

Types of sex can include: penetrative, non-penetrative, oral, vaginal, anal, rimming, rubbing, scissor sisters (or brothers… or others), 69, missionary, gay, straight, queer, threesomes, toys, restraint, sub, dom, top, bottom, vanilla, kinky, mutual masturbation, and any type of body engaging in these! Put simply, sex is as diverse as any human activity has ever been. There are as many ways to enjoy sex as there are ways of being human. If a way of having sex feels wrong for you then it probably is, but this just means you need to find a way of enjoying sex that is more pleasurable.

That is the state-sanctioned advice, available on the NHS/LA funded site, for a group of kids who are statistically hugely more likely to be groomed and sexually abused.

And then there's the page on equality and diversity. Run with Stonewall.

It links to trans inclusion toolkits withdrawn across the country after judicial review, because they ignore good safeguarding practice for the children in question, and ignore the rights of children to single sex provision and their feelings about sharing dorms, changing rooms, loos and sporting competition with the opposite sex. Those toolkits explicitly say that the Equality Act allows a person access to single sex spaces on the grounds of gender identity, when in fact the Equality Act says the exact opposite. Changing rooms and dorms are explicitly cited as examples of reasonable exemptions under the Act, where gender reassignment doesn't allow a right to access single sex spaces, alongside hospital wards and sport. All can remain single sex - and they are non-exhaustive examples. Yet the exact opposite is claimed in this advice to schools, and the rights of women and girls in the law completely ignored.

Stonewall link to their own resources on sport - you need teaching credentials to view them - but Stonewall's views on women and girls having any interests at stake where people with male bodies compete in women's sports are well known. What may not be quite as well known is the gulf between the sexes, in sport. Top women athletes can easily be beaten by schoolboys. National women's teams have been beaten by schoolboy teams. The Williams sisters were thrashed, one after the other, by a male player outside the top 200, after he had a drink and a round of golf to prepare. How is that fair, or right? To insist that gender identity, and not sex, should be the focus? Stonewall even think it unfair that international rugby won't allow transwomen to play in women's teams. There is no limit to their views on this. None. And they have that view given to schools as the gold standard for inclusion on this state site.

Stonewall call women who object to being told they must accept that a lesbian can have a penis transphobes... and indicate that parents who question their children's transition may expect social services involvement. On a site for schools.

They link to the withdrawn Stonewall/Gendered Intelligence/Mermaids CPS guidance, that told girls that questioning adult males in single sex women's spaces would make them responsible, if those males were then assaulted in male spaces for not complying with male clothing and behaviour expectations - that they would be responsible for male-on-male violence, if they sought to set boundaries around women's spaces that are statistically proven to keep us far safer - and that any such questioning could even be a hate crime. It also explicitly said that it's worse to bully over sexuality or gender identity than race or disability. And no reference to bullying on grounds of sex at all. None. We have a rape on school premises reported (and we all know most such assaults are never reported) every single day of the school year, yet the mere idea that girls may suffer harassment on the basis of sex is just erased as an issue altogether - curious, in context. Or perhaps not. Perhaps recognition that women and girls are at specific disadvantage because of our bodies, and the best way to mitigate that being single sex provision for areas where we are vulnerable, might not be entirely where they were going with that one. Hmm

There's even a link to a fundraising pack - for an, "Equalitea." So a highly controversial lobby group, agitating for changes in the law that adversely impact women and girls, are allowed to ask teachers to fundraise for them on a state-funded schools site. The law says all political views given to children in schools must be balanced, and an opposing view would be that of Transgender Trend - a safeguarding group, seeking to protect kids from early transition on child protection grounds, as well as the rights of girls to single sex spaces, and considered sufficiently reputable that the High Court allowed them to intervene in the Tavistock case - while denying Stonewall permission, twice. But the sole mention of them on this site is by Stonewall, when they trash them. Again, the law says balance on active political issues is mandatory. So where is it, then?

If this is all so legit, and there's no problem, then why don't most parents have a fucking clue it is happening?

Whatwouldscullydo · 06/02/2021 12:08

No wonder they want to keep us in our FWR box, so they can pretend it's just a handful of nasty 'transphobes' who object to the bullshit

Actually makes me really angry tbh. If women had kept quiet then most of us wouldn't even be here. We'd be in jail fir trying to drive or beaten for wearing trousers and obtaining their contraception from dark allys hoping they don't get caught. They don't wanna know about us but happy to reap the benefits

Sulkywoman · 06/02/2021 12:12

Great post wellbehavedwoman as well as many others.

lovemylot1 · 06/02/2021 12:17

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

wellbehavedwomen · 06/02/2021 12:31

There's a difference between a hate crime (which means the criminal law has been broken) and a hate incident (which is completely subjective, and just needs someone to feel that something was hateful - that's all it takes).

The Citizen's Advice Bureau explain it www.citizensadvice.org.uk/law-and-courts/discrimination/hate-crime/what-are-hate-incidents-and-hate-crime/here.

It's worth noting that women are not presently covered by hate crime or hate incidents. Cressida Dick, the Met chief, said a few years ago when dismissing the suggestion that the police would have no time to do anything else otherwise. Which seemed a rather odd approach for the police to take - "Oh, we won't protect the group most at risk, far too much work - we'll go for low-hanging fruit, instead."

But there is now a new private member's Bill which aims to make misogyny and misandry a hate crime, too. Can't recall what the outcome was in terms of phrasing - sex or gender as the protected characteristic - because there was some concern on that score.

butwhatcanwedo · 06/02/2021 12:37

thank you wellbehavedwoman. (I’ve nc and requested my previous post to be deleted)

jj1968 · 06/02/2021 12:40

Hey where is this poll? I'm not familiar with this side of the forum. I only found this thread thanks to Glinner's email.

chuckles I don't think you were supposed to tell everyone about Glinner's email.

Now we see the real reason the vote results look the way they do.

Quaagars · 06/02/2021 12:43

@jj1968

Hey where is this poll? I'm not familiar with this side of the forum. I only found this thread thanks to Glinner's email.

chuckles I don't think you were supposed to tell everyone about Glinner's email.

Now we see the real reason the vote results look the way they do.

Yes, I noticed that, looks like a bat signal has gone out lol
JoodyBlue · 06/02/2021 12:45

the real reason is all of the arguments above

IWillSqueakAgain · 06/02/2021 12:45

All the aibu unreasonable polls on this look the same way. The vast majority vote on the side of women’s rights, knowing biological fact, free speech, protecting the sex within our laws, protecting safe guarding first and formost.

OldCrone · 06/02/2021 12:45

If this is all so legit, and there's no problem, then why don't most parents have a fucking clue it is happening?

The trans lobby have said that they know what they are advocating for is unpopular, and the best way to achieve their aims is to keep things under the radar and attach their cause to more popular ones (like LGB rights).

See this article:
www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-document-that-reveals-the-remarkable-tactics-of-trans-lobbyists

Also these links which are referred to in the article:
www.rollonfriday.com/news-content/dentons-campaigns-kids-switch-gender-without-parental-approval

www.iglyo.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/IGLYO_v3-1.pdf

Last link is to the Denton's report which the Spectator and Roll On Friday refer to. Denton's is a large international law firm.

Some quotes from the report:

'It is recognised that the requirement for parental consent or the consent of a legal guardian can be restrictive and problematic for minors.'

'In many of the NGO advocacy campaigns that we studied, there were clear benefits where NGOs managed to get ahead of the government and publish progressive legislative proposal before the government had time to develop their own. NGOs need to intervene early in the legislative process and ideally before it has even started. This will give them far greater ability to shape the government agenda and the ultimate proposal than if they intervene after the government has already started to develop its own proposals.'

This sounds a lot like what Stonewall have been doing. They are actually shaping government policy through recruitment to their Stonewall Champions schemes, and then advising government to do what they want.

More from the Denton's document:
'In Ireland, Denmark and Norway, changes to the law on legal gender recognition were put through at the same time as other more popular reforms such as marriage equality legislation. This provided a veil of protection, particularly in Ireland, where marriage equality was strongly supported, but gender identity remained a more difficult issue to win public support for.'

James Kirkup in the Spectator article says:

According to the report, the countries that have moved most quickly to advance trans rights and remove parental consent have been those where the groups lobbying for those changes have succeeded in stopping the wider public learning about their proposals. Conversely, in places like Britain, the more 'exposure' this agenda has had, the less successful the lobbying has been

A major international law firm has helped write a lobbying manual for people who want to change the law to prevent parents having the final say about significant changes in the status of their own children. That manual advises those lobbying for that change to hide their plans behind a 'veil' and to make sure that neither the media nor the wider public know much about the changes affecting children that they are seeking to make. Because if the public find out about those changes, they might well object to them.

You can see why the trans lobby want to shut up the people on Mumsnet who are discussing this. Their protective veil of secrecy is being well and truly removed.

lifeturnsonadime · 06/02/2021 12:46

wellbehavedwoman that is mindblowing.

gardenbird48 · 06/02/2021 12:47

@jj1968

Hey where is this poll? I'm not familiar with this side of the forum. I only found this thread thanks to Glinner's email.

chuckles I don't think you were supposed to tell everyone about Glinner's email.

Now we see the real reason the vote results look the way they do.

And what might the ‘real reason’ be then jj?

People who are concerned about the state of things and want to have an open discussion are taking an interest on a public forum?? Is there anything wrong with that?

Why are you so unkindly disposed to people talking about issues that concern them?

IWillSqueakAgain · 06/02/2021 12:49

The social and media rhetoric around it has been very well managed also.

Most parents will think of one random sweet trans kid. They don’t register self id means all and any males can follow their girl to the bathroom.

Wotapolava · 06/02/2021 12:50

@wellbehavedwomen

Gloucestershire Healthy Living and Learning is the site provided to schools in the county for their curriculum teaching. This site is not linked to anywhere I can fine on NHS or LA sites, despite being funded by them, and nor do schools I know of tell parents about it, or link to it themselves.

They cite Stonewall as a partner org.

This resources page is for KS3 and KS4 (11-16 year olds) kids - and it has a leaflet for teachers to give gender questioning kids. We know that 75% of them will be girls, and roughly half autistic - many with complex trauma profiles, according to the Tavistock evidence. Almost all will also be under the age of consent. So we're talking an immensely vulnerable group of children. And this is in the resource teachers are given for these children:

Types of sex can include: penetrative, non-penetrative, oral, vaginal, anal, rimming, rubbing, scissor sisters (or brothers… or others), 69, missionary, gay, straight, queer, threesomes, toys, restraint, sub, dom, top, bottom, vanilla, kinky, mutual masturbation, and any type of body engaging in these! Put simply, sex is as diverse as any human activity has ever been. There are as many ways to enjoy sex as there are ways of being human. If a way of having sex feels wrong for you then it probably is, but this just means you need to find a way of enjoying sex that is more pleasurable.

That is the state-sanctioned advice, available on the NHS/LA funded site, for a group of kids who are statistically hugely more likely to be groomed and sexually abused.

And then there's the page on equality and diversity. Run with Stonewall.

It links to trans inclusion toolkits withdrawn across the country after judicial review, because they ignore good safeguarding practice for the children in question, and ignore the rights of children to single sex provision and their feelings about sharing dorms, changing rooms, loos and sporting competition with the opposite sex. Those toolkits explicitly say that the Equality Act allows a person access to single sex spaces on the grounds of gender identity, when in fact the Equality Act says the exact opposite. Changing rooms and dorms are explicitly cited as examples of reasonable exemptions under the Act, where gender reassignment doesn't allow a right to access single sex spaces, alongside hospital wards and sport. All can remain single sex - and they are non-exhaustive examples. Yet the exact opposite is claimed in this advice to schools, and the rights of women and girls in the law completely ignored.

Stonewall link to their own resources on sport - you need teaching credentials to view them - but Stonewall's views on women and girls having any interests at stake where people with male bodies compete in women's sports are well known. What may not be quite as well known is the gulf between the sexes, in sport. Top women athletes can easily be beaten by schoolboys. National women's teams have been beaten by schoolboy teams. The Williams sisters were thrashed, one after the other, by a male player outside the top 200, after he had a drink and a round of golf to prepare. How is that fair, or right? To insist that gender identity, and not sex, should be the focus? Stonewall even think it unfair that international rugby won't allow transwomen to play in women's teams. There is no limit to their views on this. None. And they have that view given to schools as the gold standard for inclusion on this state site.

Stonewall call women who object to being told they must accept that a lesbian can have a penis transphobes... and indicate that parents who question their children's transition may expect social services involvement. On a site for schools.

They link to the withdrawn Stonewall/Gendered Intelligence/Mermaids CPS guidance, that told girls that questioning adult males in single sex women's spaces would make them responsible, if those males were then assaulted in male spaces for not complying with male clothing and behaviour expectations - that they would be responsible for male-on-male violence, if they sought to set boundaries around women's spaces that are statistically proven to keep us far safer - and that any such questioning could even be a hate crime. It also explicitly said that it's worse to bully over sexuality or gender identity than race or disability. And no reference to bullying on grounds of sex at all. None. We have a rape on school premises reported (and we all know most such assaults are never reported) every single day of the school year, yet the mere idea that girls may suffer harassment on the basis of sex is just erased as an issue altogether - curious, in context. Or perhaps not. Perhaps recognition that women and girls are at specific disadvantage because of our bodies, and the best way to mitigate that being single sex provision for areas where we are vulnerable, might not be entirely where they were going with that one. Hmm

There's even a link to a fundraising pack - for an, "Equalitea." So a highly controversial lobby group, agitating for changes in the law that adversely impact women and girls, are allowed to ask teachers to fundraise for them on a state-funded schools site. The law says all political views given to children in schools must be balanced, and an opposing view would be that of Transgender Trend - a safeguarding group, seeking to protect kids from early transition on child protection grounds, as well as the rights of girls to single sex spaces, and considered sufficiently reputable that the High Court allowed them to intervene in the Tavistock case - while denying Stonewall permission, twice. But the sole mention of them on this site is by Stonewall, when they trash them. Again, the law says balance on active political issues is mandatory. So where is it, then?

If this is all so legit, and there's no problem, then why don't most parents have a fucking clue it is happening?

It is like when every parent and child had their child benefit data stolen - parents didn't do anything about that. Not yet!
BrumBoo · 06/02/2021 12:50

Now we see the real reason the vote results look the way they do

Yes, because Glinner has Ultimate Say on these matters. It's certainly not because a high proportion of parents agree with it. Hell, you know it's also Glinner that means left-wing parties have lost many female voters as well? He also is personally putting an end to self-ID! We wimmin can't do anything with validation from a male, so we found the most famous one we could to take our side and speak for us.

MsMcWibble · 06/02/2021 12:52

My personal belief is that Stonewall are a dangerous woman-hating and now homophobic organisation. They should not be in schools or any other organisation.
Thanks for this poll.

requiredwriting · 06/02/2021 12:57

@Ard77 (and anyone else who is interested). This is a really interesting article unpicking the basis of queer theory.

weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1330/a-world-without-gender/

Once you get to the bottom of this, it becomes really easy to refute. I have two arguments, for starters.

One is that, as with the idea that grandparents are evolutionarily useful, I can see that 10% of non-breeding people in any generation is probably very helpful for the overall survival of the group.

Secondly (and I am actually writing a bloody book about this right now) there is no evidence that gender oppression goes back to the start of time. In fact, it's much more likely that it comes along with farming, in as much as it's possible to tell.

PatsArrow · 06/02/2021 13:02

Yes, because Glinner has Ultimate Say on these matters. It's certainly not because a high proportion of parents agree with it. Hell, you know it's also Glinner that means left-wing parties have lost many female voters as well? He also is personally putting an end to self-ID! We wimmin can't do anything with validation from a male, so we found the most famous one we could to take our side and speak for us

Exactly. Just because Glinner mentions this thread (because it's his activism subject) that means all the silly little naive women and parents who voted in this thread just did what they were 'told'

Utter bollocks.

Wotapolava · 06/02/2021 13:03

I'm trying to keep up with these posts but I can't concentrate with all the noise of complaints from feminists about FGM and male infant circumcision.

Whatwouldscullydo · 06/02/2021 13:10

That would require not capitulating to organisations which want to erase biological sex no?

I mean how do you define what's happening to who otherwise?

Thank you for highlighting the importance of preventing children from being confused about their sex

Quaagars · 06/02/2021 13:18

Exactly. Just because Glinner mentions this thread (because it's his activism subject) that means all the silly little naive women and parents who voted in this thread just did what they were 'told'

No, wasn't meaning it like that at all (I wasn't anyway)
Just was quite funny "hello, where's the poll (on the thread btw) found you via the email bat signal
Can just imagine what it would be like if say jj or me or anyone else who sometimes posts against groupthink sent out an email (no idea where I'd be sending one to, but you get my gist lol)
the someone popped up "hello, I'm here via jj's email, where's this poll!"
it'd probably go into meltdown and shouts of Trump stop the counts lol

BrumBoo · 06/02/2021 13:24

@Quaagars the fact that you and @jj1968 cannot see that anyone mentioning Glinner would have this 'aha!' moment from people like you, really suggest you actually believe anything that furthers your cause (even without evidence). If there really was a secret agenda going on, lead by a TV writer, don't you think the last thing people would be doing would be announcing it on a thread?

'OH IS THIS WHERE WE'RE HOLDING THE SECRET MEETING AS ARRANGED BY THAT DUDE WHO GOT SUPER BANNED FROM TWITTER. KEEP IT ON THE DOWN LOW OK!'.

Maybe Glinner has shown an interest in it, I personally have no idea. I do doubt that the level of response is personally down to him. Though, I think you put far too much faith in how many dedicated followers he has on here.

wellbehavedwomen · 06/02/2021 13:29

@Quaagars

Exactly. Just because Glinner mentions this thread (because it's his activism subject) that means all the silly little naive women and parents who voted in this thread just did what they were 'told'

No, wasn't meaning it like that at all (I wasn't anyway)
Just was quite funny "hello, where's the poll (on the thread btw) found you via the email bat signal
Can just imagine what it would be like if say jj or me or anyone else who sometimes posts against groupthink sent out an email (no idea where I'd be sending one to, but you get my gist lol)
the someone popped up "hello, I'm here via jj's email, where's this poll!"
it'd probably go into meltdown and shouts of Trump stop the counts lol

This isn't the first poll on this subject and it won't be the last - I mean, you must know that. You always arrive on such posts yourself, in fact.

The results are always like this, because this is what most women in the country believe, as all properly conducted polls show. No decent person would or could agree with discrimination or abuse on the basis of someone's sense of performed gender. That's light years away from denying the vulnerability of women's bodies, in a world that sees us in terms of our reproductive and sexual potential, and where we are smaller and weaker than males. Gender identity is irrelevant to that. Women need rights, and to be identifiable, as a biological sex class, because our biology renders us vulnerable, and that biology is not shared by male people, by definition. That doesn't mean trans people shouldn't also have rights and protections. It just means that they need to be additional to, and not instead of, our rights.

The problem isn't trans rights. The problem is trying to argue that women have no rights. And as soon as you start to pretend that transwomen are women just like female women, and so there should be absolutely none of the protections based on biological sex retained, then you advocate not for the rights of trans people, but for the abuse of women and girls.

And when those arguments are being introduced into schools by stealth, in formats that ride roughshod over safeguarding and behind parents' backs, and when the present guidance and indeed the law says that that is wrong - you shouldn't be surprised that people are against it.

Ereshkigalangcleg · 06/02/2021 13:46

The problem isn't trans rights. The problem is trying to argue that women have no rights. And as soon as you start to pretend that transwomen are women just like female women, and so there should be absolutely none of the protections based on biological sex retained, then you advocate not for the rights of trans people, but for the abuse of women and girls.

Well put.