Boys can enter girls' dormitories at state boarding school

[pisacake]

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/transgender-boys-to-board-withgirls-at-gordons-school-qrllwztm3

"Gordon’s School in Woking, Surrey, is drawing up guidance for pupils saying they can ask to wear the uniform of the opposite sex, be addressed by a different name and/or pronouns, use gender-neutral ­lavatories, grow their hair long if they are boys, change their accommodation and wear make-up and jewellery."

Note that the uniform policy says:

www.gordons.surrey.sch.uk/uniform

"Make-up and nail varnish are both not allowed. This includes all make-up.
Girls are only allowed one earring in the lobe of each ear – no other piercings are allowed. With the exception of the above rule, jewellery is not allowed."

So it appears they are allowing make-up in order to cater for boys who want to dress up as girls. Line edited by MNHQ

"The school said it had acted because it had “become aware of students who would ‘come out’ after leaving the school”. It wanted pupils to feel safe to do so while still in their care."

Being safe obviously means allowing boys to sleep in the girls dormitories which are supposed to be safe spaces for girls who may be thousands of miles from their parents (most boarders are army children).

"The Boarding Schools’ Association has issued guidance to schools saying that if a boy intends to change gender he should be offered the chance to sleep in the girls’ dormitory and vice versa."

"Not all parents are happy about such changes. On Friday, parents at Highgate, a coeducational London private day school, received a letter from the head teacher, Adam Pettitt, apologising for the introduction of gender-neutral lavatories. Some younger pupils, he admitted, had felt “less comfortable and happy at school” as a result.

Highgate brought in the lavatories “to support gender-fluid pupils”, only for parents to ask if the change was “proportionate” given how few such students were at the school."

poppl
I also dislike the word 'cis'. I find it offensive and disrespectful. Ibelieve it has been imposed on women without any consultation or agreement.
Selma is correct, most posters on the feminist board find it an offensive term.

I dislike cis also, as it implies that women are happy with the stereotypes forced onto us.

Also have no 'gender identity'. I just AM female.

I respect your right to be offended by the term cis.

Theend and Brienchon that all makes for very interesting reading, and I admit I haven't looked closely at source statistics so my next job is to go and read that myself.

It's been refreshing to have a measured "conversation" on MN about this issue.

I make no apology

Many women find 'cis' highly offensive. I note that your earlier post refers to 'men and female people', which is typical. Men are still allowed to define their own boundaries & terminology; it is only women who are gas-lighted by being told that their existence has no biological reality and that any man who declares himself a woman is one. The correct term for 'female people' is 'women'. There is no such thing as cis.

The most at risk child here is the trans child, in terms of mental health, in terms of abuse, in terms of educational outcome. A child. All too easily brushed aside by some on this thread.

That's a massive assumption, gobsmacking in fact. Having attended a school with boarders, there were plenty of girls who had eating disorders, self-harmed or had mental health difficulties. Some vulnerable children are also placed in state boarding schools to protect them from chaotic or harmful home lives. We also know that some girms are sexually abused by make relatives, siblings and peers. It is absolutely unacceptable to put boys in with girls and vice versa, however they identify. It's outrageous!

Very, very good point about the (mis)use of suicide statistics, theend

See also the death of Leelah Alcorn. The reporting on that was a ticklist of everything not to do when reporting a suicide - blaming one cause, publishing a suicide note, referring to methods - you name it, news outlets did it. I wonder how many attempted suicides that affirming, inclusive reporting caused? Why do we chuck out everything else we know about children and mental health when it comes to trans issues?

Sarah Ditum nails it.

Having attended a school with boarders, there were plenty of girls who had eating disorders, self-harmed or had mental health difficulties

Anorexia has the highest mortality rate of any psychiatric condition. I think children experiencing gender dysphoria are vulnerable and need support, including being kept safe from self-harm. But I don't understand why their needs are prioritised over other vulnerable groups. Where is the outrage about the death rates from eating disorders?

Poppl, I agree it is nice to share back and forth without it becoming a mud slinging match.

I also find cis offensive. I do not need a prefix to validate someone else. I am an adult, human female - a woman.

Most conversations about this issue are measured tbh. If more people fight the urge to call us transphobes and run away and instead read what we actually say, they would think the same. It was the people on mumsnet that opened my eyes to the issue tbh, I used to think anything that was not 'transwomen are women' was transphobic and horrible. Now look at me...

What do you mean by ‘cis’ Poppl?

Damn, lots of typos in my post. I meant to say that vulnerable children are placed by social services in boarding schools. How does the mixed sex dormitory environment sit with social services' duty of care towards those children?

And 'cis' is offensive. Please stop.

I believe that this school mainly serves military children, who are at higher risk of anxiety, depression and other psychological disorders.

Thank you poppl for taking the trouble to engage.
So many people shout 'transphobic' and then run.
Although people on here may sound a bit 'harsh' - eg about 'cis' it's because so many of us started from the position of being completely trans positive / uncritical. It has only been when you start looking at all the hostility (shouts of terf, putting down 'cis' women, stopping meetings. no platforming etc etc) that I started to wonder why were we not being able to question? why is comment forbidden (think Jenni Murray) and why is it always women's lives and experiences (women's sport anyone?) being eradicated.
Then once the parent and teacher thinking kicks in, you start to realise that all is not well. I have worked in a school where a 14 year old boy transitioned to a girl. The school has a large Muslim population who were not happy about girls sharing changing rooms and toilets with this child. It was a legal and moral nightmare to resolve. Ironically, I always felt that the boy was actually gay but was from a complex family where homosexuality was unthinkable
Hope that you find the website helpful and maybe insist on some guidance from above so that you don't need to hold all the responsibility for the situation.

Taking a risk with my comment, but I hope others will have the maturity to have a calm discussion.
I honestly applaud the school, this is a very long thread but from what I’ve read most people seem greatly against what their doing. Would anybody like to explain to me how this policy will inflict more harm than good?
(Of course I understand how harm could possibilities arise, but from my own experiences and knowledge this is extremely unlikely compared to the extremely likely good that will be caused)

I also find cis offensive. I am not cis. I do not conform to social expectations of the female gender. I accept that I am a woman but I reject femininity. HTH.

The thing is poppl - the Times article says the Boarding School Association has said that trans girls should be allowed to board in the girls dorms. There is no ambiguity or thorny-ness about that. A boy ‘comes out’ - Gordon’s want him to be able to do safely in their care, including sharing same sex space with girls.

It is not ambiguous, there is no discussion about safeguarding all children and making difficult decisions, it says the trans girl will be able to share same sex sleeping space with biological girls.

In terms of what living as a woman means, this is puzzling as it falls back on gender norms feminists have sought to dismantle. And if one considers biological factors, most women (unless very androgynous) look like women. And most men (ditto) look like men. So if you want to sustain the mythology that men can be women, it has to come to external factors. A man cannot have operations to make his shoulders less broad or his hips curvier or whatever. Even if one has surgery, the body shape is still going to give it away. Even if that body wears dresses.

Institutional settings are ripe for abuse. History tells us that. Yet this one is being walked into, with no caution. I find this astounding.

Temp, here is an example of a transgender teen having a very negative impact on female pupils in their school.

edition.cnn.com/2015/09/03/living/missouri-transgender-teen-feat/index.html

Lila Perry refused to accept a compromise offer of a single cubicle to change in and insisted on their 'right' to change with the girls. The girls stopped changing in their locker room.

For their own health , girls need to play sport. Their health has been harmed by the policy of allowing a transgender person with a penis to use the female facilities.

TempStamos, why do you think girls and boys have separate sleeping areas?

Thank you theend. Of course, as a woman I share concerns about what this means for safe spaces etc. I don't usually comment on trans threads but the boarding element interested me.

Anyway I'm definitely bowing out now as I have 65 teenagers to wake up tomorrow morning

I see from the article the negative effect on that occurred to other girls, but what about the negative impact on the trans girl? And this is a rare occasion, can you not see how in so many instances allowing trans people to live as the gender they identify as is so greatly beneficial?
This isn’t about having communal toilets and bedrooms, there is still going to be male and female but the school is including trans females as female and trans males as males.

TempStamos
Firstly, by removing the rights to privacy and dignity that currently society allows the sexes. Would I want to share washing / changing / toilet facilities as a 12 year old struggling with my first periods with a teenage boy (plus penis) who has identified as a girl? Shared sleeping facilities? Nope.
Is that transphobic? Unreasonable?
All children have rights but in this instance it appears as if the rights of the transgender child to live their life as they would wish take priority of the rights of girls to make a similar decision.
No one knows what the long term impacts of all these recent developments will be. There is significant evidence of 'social contagion'. We are familiar with this with anorexics and everyone works hard to guide anorexics away from the 'pro ana ' sites that celebrate anorexia.
The people guiding these changes have to date been the transgender activist organisations - pushing their own agenda. Because no one wants to be unkind or discriminatory, people seem to have gone along with it - including the government. But of course, because the debate has been silenced with threats and aggression, people have started to ask the questions that the activists are so desperate we don't ask. because the actual harm being done to children is very significant!

It is harmful to growing insecure girls to share their personal space, to which men (even their own fathers) were hitherto completely banned, with males.

All the girls are harmed.

The 'no makeup' policy, designed to ensure that they focus on their work, has been tossed out the window to suit the whims of ONE male.

The boys, who may be homophobic and violent, are taught that being homophobic and violent is par for the course, and the solution for effeminate and/or gay boys to avoid this is to 'become a girl'.

So essentially boys are being told that it's ok to be homophobic, because not to worry there are some nice 'nurturing' girls for non-confirming boys to run off to.

So the responsibility for male violence is on the shoulders of the girls.

Girls suffer disproportionately, not least because there are far more transgirls than transboys.

Furthermore, the carefully structured safeguarding policies designed to protect very vulnerable children are tossed out of the window. If 'Joe' can become 'Jo' and move to the girls' dorms that spells an end to some part of the boundaries to protect young, vulnerable children, whose parents may be thousands of miles away fighting a war from which they may never return.

Why does ONE boy's wish to sleep in the same room as the girls trample the wishes the dozens of girls who have hitherto been separate? Why does one trump dozens?

Why should girls have to share a room with a boy who may want to have sex with him (and don't say that is being transphobic or whatever, at least 50% of transwomen identify as either 'lesbian' or bisexual, so potentially half of transgirls desire sex with girls ).

Hospitals, nursing homes and others, have ALWAYS been segregated based on genitals. Why is that being tossed out the window?

Why can't the school manage homophobia within what is after all a boarding school (albeit with a stereotypically macho army background) to protect effeminate boys from bullying? There is no argument here, as there might be in the outside world, that a transwoman in the male toilets at school might be attacked by some random thug, because all the people present at the school are students there and subject to disciplinary sanction.

Why must the girls' rooms be the 'safe space' for these males?

poppl

Thank you for engaging. It's vital that people in your position are fully informed. I hope you read this comment. Because I also urge you to look at transgendertrend.

It's run by Stephanie Davis Arai. She set it up to help support parents of trans-children. She is passionate about safeguarding and care.

She's also a gender critical feminist. She is gentle, kind and rational.

The reason why your school is having trouble writing the guidelines is because the rights of female identified trans people clash directly with the rights of women/girls.

There isno way round it.

At least long-term. In the short term, as children, they will have to do as they are told. But, as I'm sure you know, trans-activism does not allow for a third space.

I urge you to contact her. Her only agenda is children. All of them. She will speak to you directly, of that I am certain.

But can't you in the same vein understand how it is beneficial for girls to board in a sex (rather than gender) segregated environment?

May be missing the point here, but I've never understood why there can't be separate 'trans' facilities. So instead of being boy / girl it would be boy / girl / trans boy / trans girl.

I don't see anything in real life that needs to be gender segregated, and this would address the sex segregation issue.

Would also work for sports etc.