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

[ConcernedMum100]

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?

@TalkingtoLangClegintheDark

In his Lordship’s judgment, and as recognised by the European Court of Human Rights, a public authority’s record keeping function had to respect the article 8 rights of individuals, but that did not extend to inserting information in records which was not supported by evidence and was considered, on good grounds, to be inaccurate or misleading. That had to be the case no matter how serious the consequence for a particular individual.

Oh, the irony.

Quite.

So how was the 'legal fiction' of the GRA ever permitted?

I think the GRA was intended to obviate any need for legal marriage between homosexuals, really, wasn't it?

Beg pardon if this has already been posted but since @Wotapolava was asking what Stonewall's motivation might be, here's an excellent article by James Kirkup about the tactics and motivation behind trans ideology.

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

This Twitter thread by Malcolm Clark (documentary maker) explains the whys and demonstrates how:

twitter.com/TwisterFilm/status/1307894016818769922

Referenced December 2019 Spectator article by James Kirkup on the IGLYO document is important:

'The document that reveals the remarkable tactics of trans lobbyists'
(extract)
"A great deal of the transgender debate is unexplained. One of the most mystifying aspects is the speed and success of a small number of small organisations in achieving major influence over public bodies, politicians and officials. How has a certain idea taken hold in so many places so swiftly?

People and organisations that at the start of this decade had no clear policy on or even knowledge of trans issues are now enthusiastically embracing non-binary gender identities and transition, offering gender-neutral toilets and other changes required to accommodate trans people and their interests. These changes have, among other things, surprised many people. They wonder how this happened, and why no one seems to have asked them what they think about it, or considered how those changes might affect them. (continues)

Well, thanks to the legal website Roll On Friday, I have now seen a document that helps answer that question.

The document is the work of Dentons, which says it is the world’s biggest law firm; the Thomson Reuters Foundation, an arm of the old media giant that appears dedicated to identity politics of various sorts; and the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer and Intersex Youth & Student Organisation (IGLYO). Both Dentons and the Thomson Reuters Foundation note that the document does not necessarily reflect their views.

The report is called 'Only adults? Good practices in legal gender recognition for youth'. Its purpose is to help trans groups in several countries bring about changes in the law to allow children to legally change their gender, without adult approval and without needing the approval of any authorities. 'We hope this report will be a powerful tool for activists and NGOs working to advance the rights of trans youth across Europe and beyond,' says the foreword.

As you’d expect of a report co-written by the staff of a major law firm, it’s a comprehensive and solid document, summarising law, policy and 'advocacy' across several countries. Based on the contributions of trans groups from around the world (including two in the UK, one of which is not named), it collects and shares 'best practice' in 'lobbying' to change the law so that parents no longer have a say on their child’s legal gender.
In the words of 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.' (continues)

Here’s a broad observation from the report about the best way to enact a pro-trans agenda:

'While cultural and political factors play a key role in the approach to be taken, there are certain techniques that emerge as being effective in progressing trans rights in the "good practice" countries.'

Among those techniques: 'Get ahead of the Government agenda.' (continues)

I’m not going to tell you what I think of the report, or the agenda it sets out. I’m not going to pass comment on it or its authors. I’m just going to try to summarise its nature and contents.

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." (continues)
www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-document-that-reveals-the-remarkable-tactics-of-trans-lobbyists

“What upsets me most is that this is all based on the legitimacy we created,” Harris told me

It must indeed be awful for those who campaigned and fundraised for Stonewall, and made them the respected, highly influential and yes, legitimate organisation they are today, to see what direction they have gone in - and how they are now in fact working against the interests of those they were set up to champion. Awful to see your own efforts and contribution being used against you.

If you’d said to the average LGB person back in the 70’s/80’s/90’s that the country’s leading gay rights org would now effectively be saying “some lesbians have penises, get over it”, I just don’t think they would have believed you.

And the trajectory that has brought us here is not progress, however it’s portrayed.

It hurts me to think of young lesbians in schools being presented with Alex Drummond as any kind of a role model or mentor. A person who knows nothing of same sex attraction, or of being female, and how it feels for those two realities to collide in your life as a teenage girl.

I still don’t know how anyone can keep a straight face when claiming that an opposite-sex attracted male is actually a same-sex attracted female, or that the former’s experience has any commonality with the latter’s, beyond that potentially shared by any other people.

Impatiens Cross-posted!

I hope people will continue this thread - the more light shone on Stonewall the better. Perhaps there'll be some hope of beginning to root them out of schools and all other organisations they've inserted their sinister way into.

Ha @R0wantrees - it's worth reading twice!

Straight males?

I know there is panic among males. Try asking for female assistance to find the ones they send your way are end up being unhelpful to the point you sense it is done on.purpose to change your stance.

Oh the panic among them. So telling they only end up confirming their own stupidity.
Surprisingly predictable too at times.

[quote Impatiens]Beg pardon if this has already been posted but since @Wotapolava was asking what Stonewall's motivation might be, here's an excellent article by James Kirkup about the tactics and motivation behind trans ideology.

www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-document-that-reveals-the-remarkable-tactics-of-trans-lobbyists[/quote]
It's worth reading that, as well as the report by Denton's that is referred to in the article.

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

Some excerpts from the Denton's report:
'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.'

'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.'

This under the radar lobbying is exactly what Stonewall is doing.

I posted a bit more about this yesterday

@Impatiens

I hope people will continue this thread - the more light shone on Stonewall the better. Perhaps there'll be some hope of beginning to root them out of schools and all other organisations they've inserted their sinister way into.

Some people say things others disagree with on here. Do you want them removed too?

In that case Bye bye.

So how was the 'legal fiction' of the GRA ever permitted?

It seems crazy, doesn’t it. Yes, we know it was a workaround because of the homophobia that prevented gay marriage - but why was the right of this tiny group of people to marry so much more pressing than the right of the much larger group of lesbians/gay men to marry?

And how did it come about that so few parliamentarians, in either House, were actually opposed to it? How come there were only a handful of voices saying it’s not a good idea to put demonstrably false information on official state documentation?

I was so happy when Labour finally got back into power in 97, after nearly 20 years in opposition. All my adult life up till then had been lived under the conservatives; it genuinely felt like the dawning of a new era. If I’d known though that Blair’s government would bring this legislation in... tbh, if someone had told me, I would probably have dismissed them as some kind of conspiracy theorist crank. Shows how much I knew.

Anyway. Going a bit OT again.

I’m just going to repeat this bit from Kirkup’s piece about the Dentons report, linked to upthread, because parents need to know that we aren’t conspiracy theorist cranks, and that this is the way things have been going on for quite a while now, there has been intention to effect social change/change re parental safeguarding of children via stealth and concealment, and the acknowledgment comes from those doing the concealing:

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.

Some people say things others disagree with on here. Do you want them removed too?

This is a discussion forum for adults. Not the education system for our children. Do you understand the difference?

@TalkingtoLangClegintheDark

In his Lordship’s judgment, and as recognised by the European Court of Human Rights, a public authority’s record keeping function had to respect the article 8 rights of individuals, but that did not extend to inserting information in records which was not supported by evidence and was considered, on good grounds, to be inaccurate or misleading. That had to be the case no matter how serious the consequence for a particular individual.

Oh, the irony.

Pffftt. Sometimes the kind of professionals who worry about that would never use confidential data to throw around among their mates or under force?

Yeah riiiiight!

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.

And how did it come about that so few parliamentarians, in either House, were actually opposed to it? How come there were only a handful of voices saying it’s not a good idea to put demonstrably false information on official state documentation?

Jan 2013 Guardian article by Patrick Barkham decribes how the transactivist group Press For Change was formed and lobbies:

'Voices from the trans community: 'There will always be prejudice'
(extract)
" [Stephen] Whittle, who "transitioned" nearly 40 years ago, was one of three trans men and three trans women who did an unusual thing in 1992: they went to meet Liberal Democrat MP Alex Carlile in Westminster. The unusual element was not the meeting but the fact that they travelled together – at the time, trans people never dared to because it increased the likelihood that they would be spotted and abused. These six wanted to start a campaign group; Carlile advised them to avoid the word "transsexual". So, in Grandma Lee's teashop opposite Big Ben, an anodyne name, Press for Change, was chosen. (continues)

In the 90s, when [Christine Burns] was chair of the Women's Supper Club of the local Conservative party association in Cheshire, she quietly joined Press for Change. Even then, the new activists dared not be openly trans. "The thing that held us back in the 1990s campaigning was that fear of being out," admits Burns. Eventually, she came out in 1995; she jokes that she realised she was more embarrassed to be a member of the Conservative party than openly transsexual.

Much of their campaigning remained on the quiet. The passage of the 2004 law to give trans people legal status was "remarkable," says Burns, because "the government was able to pass an entire act in parliament without anyone throwing a fit in the press". In popular culture, the activists became more forthcoming in their attempts to increase popular understanding of trans issues. Although the arrival of trans character Hayley Cropper in Coronation Street in 1998 was one breakthrough, Julie Hesmondhalgh, who plays Cropper, is a non-transsexual woman." (continues)
www.theguardian.com/society/2013/jan/22/voices-from-trans-community-prejudice

Who knows why they left it out.
I have asked why logbook rules were changed and why they put a hold on changing legislation around coroners verdicts around 2010 (not certain but there abouts).
Who knows if it is left open simply for others in the legal system to do well out of it.

Lawyers etc all have conversations and talk about their star employee whose Daddy has a condo in the Bahamas.
Sometimes these things are arranged.
Some people are born into well-to-do and it is by design. Or, they have mates pulling strings to suit them.

And why are crowdfunds used to fight these things?
Not to mention using crowdfunding for personal libel suits when a journalist? While others denied justice because of money?
The damage is done!

It seems crazy, doesn’t it. Yes, we know it was a workaround because of the homophobia that prevented gay marriage - but why was the right of this tiny group of people to marry so much more pressing than the right of the much larger group of lesbians/gay men to marry?

And how did it come about that so few parliamentarians, in either House, were actually opposed to it? How come there were only a handful of voices saying it’s not a good idea to put demonstrably false information on official state documentation?

The GRA debates are worth reading, not least to be clear which MPs who are still in Westminster drove it through.

Twitter threads with highlights by Vulvamort:

"Tweets from 2003: The Gender Recognition Bill
I'm going to tweet out a few of the illuminating comments from the debates that led to the GRA 2004, to save you all ploughing through Hansard." (continues)

twitter.com/HairyLeggdHarpy/status/1049289194370002945

"Time for another thread of quotes from the GRA debates of 2003/04, I think.
This one about how critical it is to define SEX and GENDER in law and never to conflate the two.
And how the Government repeatedly refused to allow that distinction, despite being asked to."

twitter.com/HairyLeggdHarpy/status/1052160108489334785

Thread#3 of the GRA debates of 2003/04.

This time, SPORT.
Funnily enough, although the govt argued that all females were to be rendered legally indistinguishable from MalesWithFemalePersonalities 'for all purposes', they DID decide that sports was a bridge too far."

twitter.com/HairyLeggdHarpy/status/1177699388719845377

@Impatiens

Some people say things others disagree with on here. Do you want them removed too?

This is a discussion forum for adults. Not the education system for our children. Do you understand the difference?

Yes. Just as if I never had a child or child in school, I wouldn't need to know what is going on in them.

Would I?

Yes. Just as if I never had a child or child in school, I wouldn't need to know what is going on in them. Would I?

I don't understand your post - are you being ironic or straight? How is that a response to my post that you quoted?

current thread:

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4158554--DontSubmitToStonewall-suggested-quick-action-by-Legal-Feminist

TalkingtoLangClegintheDark
"So how was the 'legal fiction' of the GRA ever permitted?"
It seems crazy, doesn’t it. Yes, we know it was a workaround because of the homophobia that prevented gay marriage - but why was the right of this tiny group of people to marry so much more pressing than the right of the much larger group of lesbians/gay men to marry?

Precisely because there were so few of them, I'd say at a guess.

The "there are a tiny number of these people and we can get brownie points with very little actual effect on everyone's lives" argument probably swayed a lot of MPs who didn't really care or see any possible further consequences.

It is otherwise known as "the thing end of the wedge".

thin. Dratted speelchock.

'thing edge of the wedge'

The 'legal fiction' - I still haven't recovered from the shock of finding out that people were being allowed to falsify their birth certificates, it's so incredible. I'm sure the wider public would be equally shocked if they knew.

Just as if I never had a child or child in school, I wouldn't need to know what is going on in them.

Would I?

1. Society has a stake in how kids are educated and cared for.
2. This is fucking Mumsnet.

Posts below showing what is happening in schools are jaw-dropping. Absolutely fucking jaw-dropping - sometimes just on basic child protection grounds alone. And it is all, seemingly quite deliberately, happening without parental knowledge. That is not just jaw-dropping. It is actively sinister.