Looks like the National Lottery and Stonewall have picked a side in the cotton ceiling debate

[pimmsnlemonade]

No surprises that it isn't lesbians' side - or women's generally:

www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/new-lottery-bonanza-for-transgender-lobby-3bqjhr730

The Big Lottery Fund (BLF) will pay £494,000 to “empower trans leaders and organisations” in “facilitation, media and influencing”. The money is being handed to the advocacy group Stonewall for distribution to other activists, creating a “network of leaders” to lobby for change. Stonewall was central to the campaign for contentious changes to gender laws.

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/lottery-thousands-pay-for-former-trans-stripper-to-sway-public-opinion-6lw9xbwgr

Life has moved on for Page since then. Now in London, she is working for the advocacy group Stonewall on its “transgender leadership programme”, which is managing a new national lottery grant of almost £500,000. This was given to Stonewall to “empower trans leaders and organisations” with a “particular focus on leadership, media and influencing”.

Page’s activism in Canada may not assuage those feminist concerns. In 2012, amid some controversy, she ran a workshop called Overcoming the Cotton Ceiling. The “cotton ceiling” is a term used by some trans lesbian women to criticise biological lesbian women for refusing to have sex with them because they have penises.

A search of its grants database reveals that last year £5.5m was paid to projects mentioning the word “women’s”, the lowest for any full year since 2004. In the first 10 months of 2018, £3.7m was paid to women’s projects, suggesting a further drop across the full year.

Also if the fact that DBS checks aren't being done in specific situations becomes public knowledge then predators will be taking note of it. There are lots of things "trainings" could be done on, they'd just have to find a subject that schools would go for.

When a school permits a speaker to come in they give them legitimacy.
I expected that an individual speaking on behalf of a well funded organisation that regularly gives talks to schools should have at least a basic DBS, and cant see any good reason for them not to.
I didn't know they were optional.

Also if the fact that DBS checks aren't being done in specific situations becomes public knowledge then predators will be taking note of it. There are lots of things "trainings" could be done on, they'd just have to find a subject that schools would go for.

Yes. Any chinks in the armour are ripe for exploitation.

The new sex ed guidelines (consultation just finished) puts the onus on schools to check the credentials of all visiting speakers. If a school allows any adult to speak directly to children about sex, sexuality, relationships, drug use, identity etc then that school had better be very certain that the speaker hasn't a published history of celebrating porn, flashing, public involvement with fetishes, involvement with pedophiles, promoting under age sex, personal drug use etc.
Teachers are expected to "avoid conflict between their professional
work and private interests which could reasonably be deemed to impact negatively on pupils/students" (Code of Professional Conduct). It seems reasonable to expect anyone wishing to influence both children or educators to abide by the same standards.

Indeed chatty, silence from Stonewall on the inaccuracies supposedly contained in the articles is hardly a convincing refutation.

"I expected that an individual speaking on behalf of a well funded organisation that regularly gives talks to schools should have at least a basic DBS, and cant see any good reason for them not to. "

You see Idon't agree with this.

I am AOK with eg a parent or someone with an interesting job or a local figure or an author or whatever coming in to give a talk. If they are never alone with the children then that's fine.

DBS check wont' stop schools inviting people who talk bollocks will it.

I think it could be very restrictive and have unforseen consequences if everyone to enter a school had to have a DBS.

Don't disagree that Mermaids shouldnt' be peddling their sexist homophobic bullshit to little kids obviously. That wouldn't stop them though.

Yep - nothing's point is the reasoning behind it and is the current state of play. But I do think, as many of you suggest, that there needs to be more of a duty of care for those who are coming in to do SRE - we should be holding them to a far higher standard. We can't just leave it up to schools alone because it would be quite easy for inappropriate people/material to get in; schools do like recommendations from other schools. We also can't tie schools to a package bought in by the MAT or LA, dictated from on high. I think any training ing materials should at the very least be open to scrutiny and that scrutiny done regularly. I used to think Bish was pretty good a couple of years ago, going off their Twitter feed. Now I know better, and it's not that long ago.

silence from Stonewall on the inaccuracies supposedly contained in the articles is hardly a convincing refutation.

So a month later, have Stonewall ever actually responded about what these inaccuracies are - or provided any reassurances to lesbians that they do not support pressuring us to have sex with males? (Okay, I'm fairly confident I know the answer to the latter as they have clearly forgotten that they were ever supposed to be our representatives.)

Similarly, has anyone ever got a response from the National Lottery on this or the Mermaids grant?

"The Stonewall CEO, Ruth Hunt, has a dig at Get the L Out, which is (I think) a group of six, (maybe eight?) peaceful, lesbian protestors at London Pride in 2018 who lay down in the road for a short while at the start of the Pride march, then peacefully marched along with everyone else."

You misspelt: "Tried to hijack a specifically LGBT+ event with the specific intention of making people who had every right to be there feel unwelcome and unsafe."

The only response I have seen mentioned so far is the Lotterys response to Bernard's FOI request.
It is about halfway down this thread.
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3481426-Mermaids-and-the-Lottery-are-they-hoping-well-forget

"The Stonewall CEO, Ruth Hunt, has a dig at Get the L Out, which is (I think) a group of six, (maybe eight?) peaceful, lesbian protestors at London Pride in 2018 who lay down in the road for a short while at the start of the Pride march, then peacefully marched along with everyone else."

Thank you for the reminder MsVanillaRose, it was indeed a brave and peaceful protest.

Trans are trying to memory hole the cotton ceiling thing hosted by Planned Parenthood Toronto.

They forgot about Wayback Machine.

<a class="break-all" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20120722002609/pleasureandpossibilities.com/programming/workshop-descriptions" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">web.archive.org/web/20120722002609/pleasureandpossibilities.com/programming/workshop-descriptions

Interesting how that pick up artist from USA was banned from entry but this equivalent 'trainer' is getting lottery funding via Stonewall.

I don't agree that anyone going into schools to do anything should have to be DBS checked. I do agree that materials should be checked before they are used in front of children - but that is the great success of organisations like Mermaids, isn't it? They get to use the logos of the places that fund them (Department for Education, National Lottery) and the other places where they have delivered training (police forces, FTSE100 companies etc etc) and you can forgive anyone for not thinking that their materials will b full of regressive jelly baby crap

So, the “cotton ceiling” is a campaign to get some women to allow people they find repellent, to fuck them. Hmm.

£500,000 may not be enough!

A de transitioned lesbian who attended a youth group run by Page has posted this concerning account of Page's lack of appropriate boundaries and disregard for safeguarding:

4thwavenow.com/2019/01/26/my-trans-youth-group-experience-with-morgan-page/

That article is terrifying

No safeguarding at all.