Transgirl in friend's school

[mikado1]

I immediately thought of MN when I heard this story tonight! My friend works in a secondary school (Ireland) and they've had a student identify as trans. He had long hair, now wears it tied up and awards skirt. School v accepting and supportive, parents v demanding, almost looking for school to trip up. Use of girls' toilet was asked for and principal denied access point blank, said if he had a 12yo DD he wouldn't be happy (trans student 17). Unused toilet next to office was offered. Done.

I was impressed by his decisiveness and instinctive rationale, I was beginning to think only MN saw the light. He apparently said he knew he could be sued but took a stand and it was accepted.

Another poster agreeing with Lurkacus here. Lumping changing facilities and anything else in with disabled loos is massively unfair to the disabled, who are never provided with enough spaces anyway.

Agree that allowing the use of a disabled toilet is massively unfair on the disabled people that need to use it.

Ive been struggling to articulate in my head why single sex spaces are important even if there is no threat of assault. And I think it's because privacy is really important but I think easy to dismiss somehow.

There's also another contradictory thing creeps in. The transgirl must be protected and given privacy from males because?? If natal females do not require privacy from the transgirl? But it's the conflating of sex and gender again isn't it? And/or the raising of the importance of gender above the importance of sex.

I was very struck by the advice give re. toilets posted above. "Everyone" deserves this but the transchild deserves it more. All animals are equal but some are more equal than others.

We don't know in this case that there are any disabled children at the school who need disable toilet facilities. And perhaps there is only one such child, if a second disabled child came along that would be ok, but not the transgirl!?

Yes in the general case that if there are. Lot of transpeople then redesignatiting disabled loos as unisex withou increasing the number of units would be daft, but In this case there is no information that suggests disabled people are losing resources

There's also another contradictory thing creeps in. The transgirl must be protected and given privacy from males because?? If natal females do not require privacy from the transgirl?

YY.

Dreadful attitude towards safeguarding SarahAr. Don't really get how you think that's ok. Are you a perv?! Shows exactly what you think of females; even 12 year olds should budge up and accept the penis holder as king.

Its just common sense. Let pupils dress as they want, use the name they want, but when it comes to gendered spaces a 3rd space is the most sensible option.

Sounds like our government could learn a lot from Ireland in the practical implementation of self ID.

There's also another contradictory thing creeps in. The transgirl must be protected and given privacy from males because?? If natal females do not require privacy from the transgirl?

We have sex segregation because male and female bodies are different from each other. A transgirl in a school is physically no different from a boy, since a child should not be taking cross-sex hormones and should not have had surgery. Changing which facilities they use based on feelings is insane.

I really don't understand why so many people seem to have lost the capacity for rational thought over this issue.

Having attended an extremely rough comprehensive school I would think that it is safer for everyone including the trans pupil that there be a third safe space toilet designated. Not all teenage girls are shrinking violets or woke. Depending on the school of course.

I cannot imagine how difficult it must be for the girls being expected to change in front of boys and share the same toilets. We used to have enough girls changing in the toilets because they didn't want to change in front of the other girls. Going through puberty can be incredibly difficult.
Why is it only the transgirl's feelings that need to be taken into consideration?

I can see the attraction of a third space, but what about all the other genders? Should they get one each?

And if that's not complicated enough it might avoid racist bullying if we have them for each ethnic group too so why stop there?

Since splitting toilets/changing rooms was always about bodies and there are only two sexes let's just have one for male and one for female.

Sorted!

Good for that headmaster - really refreshing!

If young children or teenagers are sincere about transitioning then they might need protection from others as they could be vulnerable whether anyone wishes them harm or not.

I can easily see that it would be terrifying as a boy-becoming-a-girl to go into the boys toilets, or vice-versa.

But they also need to know that part of transitioning and growing up means still being courteous and considerate of others, and aware of the realities of their own bodies. Others might still feel vulnerable in front of them, whether they like it or not - just like they have their own terrors.

If they're not sincere about transitioning, then others definitely need protection from them.

Either way, third (or fourth if you include disabled) spaces are the way.

Ten years of teaching girls in schools all over the UK that the only escape from rigidly enforced sex roles is transitioning.
Ten years from now the evil they have done by abrogating their safeguarding responsibilities to these children will come home to administrators and facilitators.

There are nine protected characteristics under the Equality Act of 2010.
Taking the position that one protected characteristic trumps the rights of all others is the antithesis of equality.

Making 'woman' and 'girl' identities that anyone can adopt removes the protected characteristic of sex.