Women's Hour today, Michelle Moore and Layla Moran, on safeguarding

[MrsSnippyPants]

twitter.com/BBCWomansHour/status/1067347907911782400

I HATE the way it gets hooked onto being gay.

If a child is exploring their sexuality that's fine. And I can understand keeping that private. The child can come to no harm.

The consequences for a child exploring their gender is completely different. We are talking about life changing decisions here. Schools should support gender non conformity. Schools shouldn't follow trans activists blindly. It absolutely is a safeguarding issue and Michelle made a great point in linking alienation at home to children being at greater risk. That's a tale as old as time.

Good to see a civilised discussion though.

Life changing MEDICAL decisions

Gender Incongruence is still down under WHO as a medical issue.

I think Michele could have been clearer about what exactly she meant by safeguarding and what the specific safeguarding issues are that could arise. People don't know this stuff.

Its scary that MP's don't understand or promote safeguarding.
Its extremely worrying that an ex teacher doesn't.

If a teacher didn't understand safeguarding that would in itself be a safeguarding concern, wouldn't it?

And I ask again, where did Layla Moran teach? She goes on about being a teacher all the time, but where, for how long and when? There's a vague reference to a comp in London somewhere, but mostly private and international schools as far as I can see. The idea that this woman has any real sense of what goes on in the average British classroom is offensive.

Layla tried hard to attack Michele on safeguarding - this shows that she knows its very strong ground that 'our side' stand on. She tried to draw a distinction between safeguarding and inclusivity and by implication attack Michele for not being inclusive.
Michele is a professor of inclusive education.

Layla hasn’t read up on it.
She is a physicist by training so deep down she knows fine well that she is ignoring facts.
Likewise NAS are pushing the trans agenda. Rightly or wrongly. I had training from them recently and they listed trans writers and reference for reading around autism (fine but disproportionate I would have thought) and kept saying ‘gender is a spectrum’.

Why do both sides keep banging on about it being good that school kids are exploring thier identity? It isn't good if they explore it in any other way. We don't allow kids to deviate from the regulatory school uniform or to explore thier identity with tattoos, piercings or hair styles so why is 'gender' different?

I've worked in education. I have many real life friends who work in education. Including autism advisors. We've talked privately about this.
No one believes that a person can be born in the wrong body. Not one.

Gender Incongruence is a horrible situation for people and an adult may decide to transition to help that, but we all need to be very very wary of this in kids.

The refusal to acknowledge there's anything odd about the number of autistic spectrum children presenting as trans is just insane.

"Oh it's just they feel more comfortable coming forward"
Bullshit
These kids particularly are at risk.

And as for the rest you make absolutely sure theres no underlying mental health issues and / or trauma . And guess what, you can't tell that from the eyes.

Wow, the juxtaposition with the 'black phishing(sp?) was amazingly resonant. Literally every part of the discussion was relatable back to the trans debate.'. It was about white womens appropriation of black cluture.

'taking everything but the burden. ' was an excellent quote

Those women talking about the subject sounded awesome. Passionate, well informed (and unable to talk about it as openly as they would wish).

Thingy
Well I guess it's like my girls wearing trousers. I don't see I problem with flexibility within the set uniform regulations.

Two things:

This was a brilliant example of someone who thinks they're an expert and expressed opinions based on brief personal anecdotal experiences verses someone who has been researching this in depth and expresses the evidence and facts.

Professionally dangerous yes as Layla is now a policy influencer. Sticking your fingers in your ears and disagreeing with facts based on anecdotal experiences is dangerous.

Also, if Layla had taught PE she wouldn't be spouting this crap. You're not allowed to mix sexes in changing rooms. Sports days are sex split for a bloody good reason.

Secondly - there has been much criticism of WH for not taking these issues on. Better late than never however I've noticed that the scheduling around these specific trans programmes is especially strong with regards to really important biological female concerns as well as the nod to appropriation that was on today.

Even when WH hasn't had these specific trans issues on, it has only ever been able to feature articles on women, and has never especially included TW, bar that awful play that isn't exactly part of the programme and repeated late at night. They simply can't be fully 'inclusive' of TW but they're gagged by diversity policies so can't 'come out' like this so to speak.

This series is far too late GRC wise but I'm so glad it's on. I hope Layla attempts to listen to the other programmes as she needs to get up to bloody speed with this.

I find it frightening that Layla Moran couldn't see a problem with schools not sharing with parents discussions that they are having with a student about being trans. Michelle Moran pointed out how dangerous it was to cut young people off from their natural support group this way, making them more vulnerable to pressure groups who are allowed to operate in schools.
It seems, to me at least, as part of the authoritarian narrative that the state knows best. But then, that is a left wing view IMO

Great posts NeurotrashWarrior & lucydo

People really don't join up the dots do they? We've had Rotherham etc where girls were specifically groomed into leaving support / care of their families (or the care system). We've had countless Serious Case Reviews into murdered and abused children - every one of which will have called out a lack of professionals sharing information. Yet trans groups advocate both parental alienation and keeping a child's secrets and politicians smile and throw them more £££.

“Our identity is being stripped hollow and that, in some tiny way, is where I can help by saying who I am and what I am,” she said.

Oh the irony, this was Layla Moran speaking about the Israel/Palestine situation and her increasing fear of the loss of her Palestinian identity. “In all the speeches about the embassy, the word ‘Palestinian’ was never used. They spoke about ‘the other side.’
Indeed.

I do have some sympathy about keeping the confidentiality, especially for teens.

But, surely that would be more about when the feelings and thoughts are told to the teacher in confidence. Not for when the child is openly trans at school and being known as a new name and being treated as their acquired gender.

I've mostly just felt that the discussion is always too short and not able to cover all of the nuances.

No discussion today about the toilets at schools, or which dorms will be used on school trips etc. That for me is more of the safeguarding than the talk of bullying. It was a very narrow discussion really.

But hey, four good programmes in a row, and on the BBC. Hopefully these will provide evidence that there are meaty issues to debate and that women's voices need to be heard.

Sport was mentioned yesterday as something to be covered- I wonder when?

Why is this a new phenomenon in autistic children, Layla? Autistic children were not being 'upfront about being trans' five or ten years ago. They are the canary in the social contagion coalmine. Vulnerable children. It is disgraceful that adults are enabling this. as dragon 3 said earlier.
Why is it so obviously social contagion to concerned parents and just not acknowledged by others in positions of power?

Sport is coming up, JG keeps saying so, so maybe next week?

Just listened to the whole! very impressed with the program and running order which perhaps gave a larger context and allowed connections to be drawn between many things

Reality of female biology including developmental and menopausal , fertility preservation for young women undergoing cancer treatment, touching on the issues of an early medically induced menopause and menopausal reversal for this group, plus discussion on the ethics of menopause reversal and use of hormonal etc treatments , analogous to trans age-trying to reverse biological ageing processes, also a good discussion of issues around menopause eg needs of symptom control vs side effects/unknown effects on whole body systems

sandwiching a debate between 2 very polite speakers on current demands for unquestioning social transition for school children and safeguarding, with one citing her own data and research, the other underprepared and being pulled up on poor analogies or disengenious confusion of terms/concepts

and then a discussion on blackfishing, authenticity, appropriation of culture and experience, privilege and relations between groups, with the obvious analogies to transition and assumption of identity without shared experience!

Im very glad someone has sat and thought this order through

I agree that, at first glance, it's astounding Layla Moran obviously thought she needed to do no research around this topic, before appearing on Radio 4. Even a cursory read would have brought up the issue of the high proportion of autistic children.

Thinking further about it, however, it's actually shocking testimony to the effectiveness of the Guardian, the BBC, and above all Stonewall, in allowing left-wing politicians to exist in a delusional complacency that they "know" there is only one valid side to this discussion, and thus any kind of research is unnecessary.

Spot on did.

I've said it before; I'll say it again.

A high number of children on the spectrum are extremely addicted to YouTube. Great when it's mostly science or mine craft; not so great when they're looking at things that perhaps are rather complex and will affect their sense of self.

Maybe her advisor let her down.

Good point about you tube.