Am a subscriber so:
Our granddaughter is a bright, funny, articulate 15-year-old who enjoys life. One of her best friends, a genetic male, has this term started to live as a girl and is about to begin hormone treatment. It is clear that the school is uncertain how to react to the circumstances. Our granddaughter is keen to support her friend, but is being very hurt by some of the behaviour she is exhibiting, for example making fun of our granddaughter’s make-up and pushing her around physically.
We can see that this is probably the result of a very confused young person, who has lived as a boy for 15 years, trying to work out how to be a teenage girl. Our granddaughter, as a trusted friend, is seen as a safe person with whom the new girl can try things out without fear of rejection. However, her behaviour is hurting our granddaughter so much that she wants to draw back from the friendship simply to protect herself.
How can we support our granddaughter in supporting her friend and affirming her? How can she try to explain to her friend that some of her behaviour amounts to bullying, regardless of gender?
Ellen
A People often bully because they are directing their frustrations, hurt, anger or helplessness at others in an attempt to make themselves feel less vulnerable and more in control. I suspect that this is what may be going on between your granddaughter and her friend. In effect, the young transgender person is confused and insecure owing to a challenging process that is little understood, rarely supported properly and often judged.
As you rightly point out, your granddaughter provides a safe place in which to project the distress because she is loyal and less likely to abandon her friend, who may also be testing out their female identity against hers.
Gender identity relates to who we are, not what we are, and describes the personal sense of being a man or a woman or gender fluid (outside that gender binary). For transgender people, the sex they were assigned at birth and their internal gender identity do not match. Children who experience issues with their gender development may or may not be transsexual because after puberty some will identify themselves as gender fluid.
Gender dysphoria (or gender identity disorder) describes a clinical condition, which can present as early as the age of two. Some people choose to undergo treatment such as hormone blockers and surgery to ameliorate the symptoms associated with being transgender. However, not everyone makes this choice and therefore being transgender is not dependent on medical procedures (see gids.nhs.uk).
For your granddaughter’s friend this process will be extremely challenging at a personal and a societal level. Many young transgender people I work with encounter significant difficulties owing to a lack of understanding and compassion, discrimination and violence (see endtransdiscrimination.org/report.html).
Indeed, studies by the Scottish Transgender Alliance have highlighted that 62 per cent of transgender people have experienced transphobic harassment, with 84 per cent of transgender people having thought of ending their lives and 35 per cent attempting suicide at least once. In 2015 it was found that the number of transphobic hate crimes reported to the police had almost trebled in five years, with sexual assaults, violence, threatening behaviour and harassment part of a 170 per cent rise in hate crime.
Discrimination comes from narrow-minded ignorance, prejudice and hate, and for transgender people may include not respecting the name or pronoun they use, in order to bully and belittle them. For students, this can be compounded by a lack of understanding or clear explanations and leadership in schools, which in turn can generate confusion, causing people and communities to revert to learnt negative gender stereotyping.
The bullying needs to be understood as coming from a place of vulnerability. The school, the family and the wider community need to come together and think about the support this young person needs because their behaviour highlights a struggle as it is played out through their relationship with your granddaughter. There needs to be a clear plan of support that addresses everything, such as name and gender-marker (pronoun) change, including on documents, school records, awards and certificates etc; the date of transition; uniform requirements; and toilet and changing facilities.
Legislation that informs the participation of trans (including gender variant) pupils in schools include the Human Rights Act 1998, Gender Recognition Act 2004 and the Equality Act 2010. Schools fall under the public sector equality duty, whereby they must eliminate discrimination, provide equality of opportunity and foster good relations between minority groups and others. There should be a robust and preventative anti-bullying strategy that will deal with many of the issues that may arise for transgender pupils. Confidentiality and privacy must be upheld with clarity around disclosures to whom and by whom, including procedures for press intrusion.
All this should be written up in a memorandum of understanding, which is a confidential, informal document that is access-restricted and protects the transgender person and clarifies the school’s obligations (see the UK Trans Info website at tinyurl.com/zg2xpwq).
Schools can appoint a mentor for a transgender pupil and signpost other support groups for family (see tranzwiki.net, gires.org.uk, mermaidsuk.org.uk and beaumontsociety.org.uk).
In addition, and to address the whole school culture, human right concepts should be explored in lessons (see gires.org.uk/education/classroom-lesson-plans) and any training needs for teachers, pastoral staff and governors should be identified (see UK Trans Info at tinyurl.com/j6y9qk6 and genderedintelligence.co.uk).
As well as getting support in place for this young person, your granddaughter should be supported to think through how to address the uncomfortable relationship dynamic with her friend. For helpful advice see Ditch the Label at tinyurl.com/hshuu5o.
Your granddaughter needs to be able to depersonalise the comments and help her friend to understand that she recognises they come from her friend feeling vulnerable and confused. She can become an advocate for her friend, enabling them to get the support they need.
It may also be that your granddaughter is receiving hostile communications (face to face or through social media) from others who project their discrimination on to her friend through her, so she is in effect being bullied. This needs to be understood and robust steps taken to protect against it, and a community effort made to change hearts and minds. I admire her loyalty to her friend and see this experience as one that could strengthen her resilience and resolve to make the world a better, more inclusive place.
If you have a problem and would like Professor Tanya Byron’s help, email [email protected]