Even the NSPCC doesn't understand the difference between sex and gender

[Ofew]

I have recently started a small business and needed to draft a safeguarding statement. The NSPCC website has some helpful guidance and a template, and I used them to help me write my own.
However when referring to equalities they list most of the relevant protected characteristics but the omit both sex and gender reassignment, and seem to conflate them as gender, which seems all kinds of wrong!

So I sent them an email. I wonder if they'll respond.

Here's what I sent:

Dear Sir/Madam

I am writing to express my disappointment in the NSPCC's otherwise helpful guidance on safeguarding statements.

I came to the NSPCC's guidance because I am drafting a safeguarding statement for a newly established small business. The guidance and template were extremely helpful and I used them to inform my own document.

However, I was extremely disappointed to see that the NSPCC omits the protected characteristics of sex and gender reassignment in its equality statements. It states:

Your organisation should make sure that all children and young people have the same protection regardless of age, disability, gender, racial heritage, religious belief, sexual orientation or identity.

It appears that the NSPCC may have conflated sex and gender reassignment under "gender". However these two protected characteristics are very different in law and in practice, and the kinds of discrimination experienced by people holding these protected characteristics are very different. Moreover, "gender" is not a protected characteristic in law under the Equality Act 2004. "Gender" is simply a social construct referring to certain societal norms.

I am especially disappointed that an organisation such as NSPCC should fail to acknowledge the particular discrimination, abuse and harassment experienced by women and girls because of their sex (not gender).

In addition, your approach of conflating sex and gender reassignment fails to recognise the very particular challenges faced by children who consider they may be transsexual.

I would be very happy to discuss this with you further and I look forward to hearing from you.

Yours faithfully

www.nspcc.org.uk/preventing-abuse/safeguarding/writing-a-safeguarding-policy/

safeguardingtool.nspcc.org.uk/documents/167/Safeguarding-policy.pdf?_ga=2.109359751.387708123.1528445170-1286254606.1528445170

Brilliant!

Thank you very much! I have had previous dealings with them when they wanted to know if the ‘sex’ of child I was calling about was ‘male’ ‘Female’ or ‘transgender’ They’re very confused, I dread to think where they are getting advice from.

Its everywhere once you're alert to it.

I had to point out to a charity that transgender was not a sexual orientation! That was a small local charity though, you'd expect the NSPCC to do better. It's the NHS that really winds me up asking for gender when it's about medical procedures where you'd have thought it was sex that was important.

It really is everywhere, but this one really got me because this is an organisation which should be totally on top of protecting children and the reasons why they might need protecting. Both sex and gender reassignment seem pretty crucial to me!

Well done, it really winds me up. If the protected characteristics aren't properly represented the EA isn't going to be properly applied.
I've seen literature at work talking about gender on birth certificates and I had to check my daughter's in case I'd missed something. Luckily not.
I like your letter can we use it as sort of a template as I have baby brain?

It really is everywhere, but this one really got me because this is an organisation which should be totally on top of protecting children and the reasons why they might need protecting. Both sex and gender reassignment seem pretty crucial to me!

YY. How can one write a safeguarding policy without considering this?

Well done. Who did you send it to? - I hope you cc'd it to the CEO.

Yep feel free and use it .

I only sent it to the generic email address but you're right, I should send it to the CEO.

email address here (allegedly. I don't know this website, I'm going on trust)

It really is everywhere, but this one really got me because this is an organisation which should be totally on top of protecting children and the reasons why they might need protecting. Both sex and gender reassignment seem pretty crucial to me!

This is what concerns me when government says it will listen to other groups than trans lobby groups when reviewing legislation. It depends which groups.

All of our large corporate sector organisations have been taken over by the pomo/social contructionists. This is why the pomo domination of the academy is a problem - its graduates are the ones who walk into high level third sector jobs. This is why sex-pozzie leadership at Oxfam and Save the Children led to prostitution and child abuse scandals. This is also why the big women's orgs have failed to protect women in the face of the transactivist onslaught. And now, it appears, also children via the NSPCC.

The corporatising of charities has simply led to another layer of pomo-addled idiots running things who are light years from understanding the real lives and needs of their service users.

It's hard not to despair, it really is.

It would be easy to think "it's just words" but this advice is being given out by our most well known child protection charity to other, smaller organisations who are likely to take it as correct because it comes from the NSPCC. What does that do over the long run to approaches to safeguarding and child protections? I worry that it means that abuse of a girl because she is a girl will not recognised for what it is - sex based abuse, because sex has quietly been dropped as a protected characteristic.

All of our large corporate sector organisations have been taken over by the pomo/social contructionists. This is why the pomo domination of the academy is a problem - its graduates are the ones who walk into high level third sector jobs. This is why sex-pozzie leadership at Oxfam and Save the Children led to prostitution and child abuse scandals. This is also why the big women's orgs have failed to protect women in the face of the transactivist onslaught. And now, it appears, also children via the NSPCC.

The takeover of the university discourse has been astounding. They should be teaching using Magdalen Berns videos on every gender studies course IMO.

"It appears that the NSPCC may have conflated sex and gender reassignment under "gender". However these two protected characteristics are very different in law and in practice, and the kinds of discrimination experienced by people holding these protected characteristics are very different. Moreover, "gender" is not a protected characteristic in law under the Equality Act 2004. "

Correct.

"In addition, your approach of conflating sex and gender reassignment fails to recognise the very particular challenges faced by children who consider they may be transsexual."

Non-sequitur because you are substiting your own understanding of the term "sex" for the meaning that it has in law.

Looking at that wording I actually think that the NSPCC have used 'gender' for 'sex' as so many organisations do now and that they consider gender reassignment to be covered by 'sexual orientation or identity', where sexual orientation = heterosexual/homosexual etc and sexual identity = well anything really but I assume that anything includes transgender. Not that that makes is any less of a mess.

This is what they were doing all those years 'under the radar' (transactivist direct quote) when women were trying to be nice and accommodate them.

What meaning does 'sex' have in law, gibberty?

Children can't have a GRC.

So sex of children relates entirely to biology.

There are about 3k max biological males with their bit of paper from the Ministry of Truth that makes them legally "female" for most purposes. They are the only people who share with millions of women the protected characteristic of their sex under the law.

If self ID comes in watch that number skyrocket in the first year.

The corporatising of charities has simply led to another layer of pomo-addled idiots running things who are light years from understanding the real lives and needs of their service users.

It's hard not to despair, it really is.

A shock that the NSPCC isn't carrying out it's duty of care towards safeguarding children but no surprise - those poor children. I feel like lawyers have got involved and are driving this behind the scenes to conform to "policy" and UN etc - and no one but no one, apart from us women, are pushing back.

Thx for highlighting this OP and taking some action.

nooka, you might be right about that, but either way both sex and gender reassignment are omitted. As someone said on the local authority thread I don't understand why they don't just copy and paste from the Equality Act (and add some more characteristics if they think that's appropriate). I have no idea what the nspcc mean by "identity"!

Gibberty - I understand the legal definition of sex thanks. As Eresh has said, it is only possession of a GRC that expands the legal definition of sex further than simply biology. Children can't get a GRC. TBH I was giving a fairly generous interpretation of gender reassignment as being able to apply to children, in that arguably a child could be proposing to undergo a process to change their sex, even if they can't actually do it until adulthood. But maybe puberty blockers count? Anyway, I do think it's important to recognise that children who may be experiencing gender dysphoria or who are gender non-conforming or whatever deserve to have their specific needs recognised in safeguarding policies. And it goes without be saying that I think the same about needs related to sex.

Womenformerlyknownaswomen

I dont think lawyers have touched it at all. Rather it is delegated to policy officers who have E&D in their job descriptions. Rather than using the Equality Act, they go on courses and use materials from pressure groups uncritically, without assessing if they are accurate or have an agenda

"Gibberty - I understand the legal definition of sex thanks. As Eresh has said, it is only possession of a GRC that expands the legal definition of sex further than simply biology"

Not true. Read about P v S and Cornwall County Council for instance and all the various material published by various parts of the EU since